acknowledgement he got out, strode across the footpath and rapped sharply on the door of the nearest house. After less than a minute it was opened by a middle-aged woman in a white apron, her hair tied in a knot on top of her head. Narraway spoke to her and she invited him in, closing the door again behind him.
Charlotte sat and waited, suddenly cold now and aware of how tired she was. She had slept poorly last night, aware of the rather cramped cabin and the constant movement of the boat. But far more than anything physical, it was the rashness of what she was doing that kept her awake. Now, alone, waiting, she wished she were anywhere but here. Pitt would be furious. What if he had returned home to find the children alone with a maid he had never seen before? They would tell him Charlotte had gone off to Ireland with Narraway, and of course they would not even be able to tell him why!
She was shivering when Narraway came out again and spoke to the driver, then at last to her.
‘There are rooms here. It is clean and quiet and we shall not be noticed, but it is perfectly respectable. As soon as we are settled I shall go to make contact with the people I can still trust.’ He looked at her face carefully. She was aware that she must look rumpled and tired, and probably ill-tempered into the bargain. She had not a very flattering picture of herself in her mind. A smile would help: it normally did. But in the circumstances it would also be idiotic.
‘Please wait for me,’ he went on. ‘Rest, if you like. We may be busy this evening. Unfortunately we have no time to waste.’
He held out his arm to assist her down, meeting her eyes earnestly, questioning, before letting go. He was clearly concerned for her, but she was glad that he did not say anything more. It had all been discussed. It was inevitable there would be times of terrible doubt, perhaps even times when she was quite sure they would fail, and the whole undertaking was completely irresponsible. They must be endured with as much fortitude and as little complaint as possible. She should not forget that it was his career that was ruined, not hers, and it was he who would in the end have to bear it alone. He was the one accused of theft and betrayal. No one would blame her for any of this.
But of course there was every likelihood that they would blame Pitt.
‘Thank you,’ she said with a quick smile, then turned away to look at the house. ‘It seems very pleasant.’
He hesitated, then with more confidence he went ahead of her to the front door. When the landlady opened it for them, he introduced Charlotte as Mrs Pitt, his half-sister, who had come to Ireland to meet with relatives on her mother’s side.
‘How do you do, ma’am?’ Mrs Hogan said cheerfully. ‘Welcome to Dublin, then. A fine city it is.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Hogan. I look forward to seeing it very much,’ Charlotte replied.
Narraway went out almost immediately. Charlotte began by unpacking her case and shaking the creases out of the few clothes she had brought. There was only one dress suitable for any sort of formal occasion, but she had some time ago decided to copy the noted actress, Lillie Langtry, and add different effects to it each time: two lace shawls, one white, one black; special gloves; a necklace of haematite and rock crystals; earrings; anything that would draw the attention from the fact that it was the same gown. At least it fitted remarkably well. Women might be perfectly aware that it was the same one each time, but with luck, men would notice only that it became her.
As she hung it up in the wardrobe along with a good costume with two skirts, and a lighter-weight dress, she remembered the days when Pitt had still been in the police, and she and Emily had tried their own hands at helping the detection.
Of course, at that time Pitt’s cases had been rooted in human passions, and occasionally social ills, but never secrets of state. There had been no reason why he would not discuss them with her, and benefit from her greater insight into society’s rules and structures, and especially the subtler ways of women whose lives were so different from his own he could not guess what lay behind their manners and their words.
At times it had been dangerous; almost always it had involved tragedy, and afterwards a greater anger at injustice, and compassion for confusion or grief. But she had loved the adventure of both heart and mind, the cause for which to fight. She had never for an instant been bored, or suffered that greater dullness of soul that comes when one does not have a purpose one believes in passionately. What does one value, if one cannot imagine losing it?
She laid out her toiletries, both on the dressing table and in the very pleasant bathroom, which she shared with another female guest. Then she took off her travelling skirt and blouse, and the pins out of her hair, and lay down on the bed in her petticoat.
She must have fallen asleep because she woke to hear a tap on the door. She sat up, for a moment completely at a loss as to where she was. The furniture, the lamps on the walls, the windows were all unfamiliar. Then it came back to her and she rose so quickly she was dragging the coverlet with her.
‘Who is it?’ she asked.
‘Victor,’ he replied quietly, perhaps remembering he was supposed to be her brother, and Mrs Hogan might have excellent hearing.
‘Oh.’ She looked down at herself in her underclothes, hair all over the place. ‘A moment, please,’ she requested. There was no chance in the world of redoing her hair, but she must make herself decent. She was suddenly self-conscious of her appearance. She seized her skirt and jacket and pulled them on, misbuttoning the latter in her haste and having then to undo it all and start anew. He must be standing in the corridor, wondering what on earth was the matter with her.
‘I’m coming,’ she repeated. There was no time to do more than put the brush through her hair, then pull the door open.
He looked tired, but it did not stop the amusement in his eyes when he saw her, or a flash of appreciation she would have preferred not to be aware of. Perhaps she was not beautiful — certainly not in a conventional sense — but she was a remarkably handsome woman with a fair, warm-toned skin and rich hair. And she had never, since turning sixteen, lacked the shape or allure of womanhood.
‘You are invited to dinner this evening,’ he said as soon as he was inside the room and the door closed. ‘It is at the home of John and Bridget Tyrone, whom I dare not meet yet. My friend Fiachra McDaid will escort you. I’ve known him a long time and he will treat you with courtesy. Will you go. . please?’
‘Of course I will,’ she said instantly, as much to commit herself before she could let her caution prevent her as to assure Narraway. ‘Tell me something about Mr McDaid, and about Mr and Mrs Tyrone. Any advantage I can have, so much the better. And what do they know of you? Will they be startled that you suddenly produce a half- sister?’ She smiled slightly. ‘And how well do you and I know each other? Do I know you work with Special Branch? We had better have grown up quite separately, because we know too little of each other. Even one mistake would arouse suspicion.’
He leaned against the doorjamb, hands in his pockets. He looked completely casual, nothing like the man she knew professionally. She had a momentary vision of how he must have been twenty years ago: intelligent, elusive, emotionally unattainable — but to some women that in itself was an irresistible temptation. Before her marriage, and occasionally since, she had known women for whom that was an excitement far greater than the thought of a suitable marriage, even than a title or money.
She stood still, waiting for his reply, conscious of her travelling costume and extremely untidy hair.
‘My father married your mother, after my mother died,’ he began.
She was about to express sympathy, then realised she had no idea whether his mother was dead, or if he were making it up for the story they must tell. Perhaps better she was not confused with the truth, whatever that was.
‘By the time you were born,’ he continued, ‘I was already at university — Cambridge — you should know that. That is why we know each other so little. My father is from Buckinghamshire, but he could perfectly well have moved to London, so you may have grown up wherever you did. Always better to stay with the truth where you can. I know London. I would have visited.’
‘What did he do — our father?’ she asked. This all had an air of unreality about it, even ridiculousness, but she knew it mattered, perhaps vitally.
‘He had land in Buckinghamshire,’ he replied. ‘He served in the Indian Army.You don’t need to have known him well. I didn’t.’
