She knew he was watching her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly.
She understood what he was apologising for. He had made Pitt unpopular by singling him out, preferring him, confiding in him. Now, without Narraway, he would be vulnerable. He had never had any other profession but the police, and then Special Branch. He had been forced out of the police after his long struggle against the Inner Circle. He could not go back there. It was Narraway who had given him a job when he had so desperately needed it. If Special Branch dismissed him, where was there for him to go? There was nowhere where he could exercise his very particular skills, and certainly nowhere where he could earn a comparable salary.
They would lose this house in Keppel Street and all the comforts that went with it. Mrs Waterman would certainly no longer be a problem. Charlotte might well be scrubbing her own floors; indeed, it might even come to her scrubbing someone else’s as well. Pitt would hate that for her more than she would for herself. She could imagine it already, see the shame in his face for his own failure to provide for her, not the near luxury she had grown up in, nor even the amenities of a working-class domesticity.
She looked up at Narraway, wondering now about him. She had never considered before if he were dependent upon his salary or not. His speech and his manner, the almost careless elegance of his dress, said that he was born to a certain degree of position, but that did not necessarily mean wealth. Younger sons of even the most aristocratic families did not always inherit a great deal.
‘What will you do?’ she asked, then was aware how intrusive that sounded, and that it might be a painful question. Certainly it was one to which she had no right to expect an answer. She could feel the heat mounting up her cheeks. Would apologising make it better, or worse?
‘How like you,’ he replied. ‘Both to be concerned for me, and to assume that there is something to be done.’
Now she felt foolish. ‘Isn’t there?’
He hesitated. The silence between them was full of all sorts of memories and emotions. Yesterday he had been Pitt’s superior, a man with enormous power. Today he had no authority, possibly even no income beyond a few weeks.
Did he have friends, people he could call on, or might he be too proud to do that? She had known him, through Pitt, since Pitt had joined Special Branch, but she was sharply aware now how superficial that knowledge was. What of his past? What was his life beyond the Branch? Perhaps there was not much.
She knew that in the last case, Pitt had made an enemy of the Prince of Wales. Perhaps that enmity extended to Narraway as well. Remembering the circumstances, she could only believe that it must. There may be many other enemies. People do not forgive knowledge of the intimate and painful kind that Narraway possessed.
She looked at his face in the lamplight, and then lowered her eyes. She was not sure what she wanted to say, only that silence was of no use to Pitt, or to Narraway himself.
‘What are you going to do?’ she asked him again.
‘To help Pitt? There’s nothing I can do,’ he replied. ‘I don’t know the circumstances, and to interfere blindly might do far more harm.’
‘Not about Thomas, about yourself?’ She had not asked him what the charge was, or if he was wholly or partially guilty. Suddenly that omission seemed so enormous she drew in her breath to say something to amend it. Then she felt inexcusably clumsy, and ended saying nothing.
The ashes settled even further in the fire.
Several seconds passed before he answered. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted, his voice hesitant for the first time in her knowledge. ‘I am not even certain who is at the root of it, although I have at least an idea. It is all. . ugly.’
She had to press onward, for Pitt’s sake. ‘Is that a reason not to look at it?’ she said quietly. ‘It will not mend itself, will it?’
He gave the briefest smile. ‘No. I am not certain that it can be mended at all.’
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ she asked.
He was startled. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You look uncomfortable standing there in front of the fire. Wouldn’t sitting down be better?’
He turned slightly to look behind him at the hearth and the mantel, and took a step sideways. ‘You mean I am blocking the heat,’ he said ruefully.
‘No,’ she smiled. ‘Actually I meant that I am getting a crick in my neck staring up and sideways at you.’
For a moment the pain in his face softened. ‘Thank you, but I would prefer not to disturb Mrs. . whatever her name is. I can sit down without tea, unnatural as that may seem.’
‘Waterman,’ she supplied.
‘Yes, of course.’
‘I was going to make it myself, provided, of course, that she will allow me into the kitchen. She doesn’t approve. Ladies of the social order she is accustomed to working for do not even know where the kitchen is. Although how I could lose it in a house this size, I have no idea.’
‘She has come down in the world,’ Narraway observed. ‘It can happen to the best of us.’
Charlotte watched as he sat down, elegantly as always, crossing his legs and leaning back as if he were comfortable.
‘I think it may concern an old case in Ireland,’ he began, at first meeting her eyes, then looking down awkwardly. ‘At the moment it is to do with the death of a present-day informant there, because the money I paid did not reach him in time for him to flee those he had. . betrayed.’ He said the word crisply and clearly, as if deliberately exploring a wound: his own, not someone else’s. ‘I did it obliquely, so it could not be traced back to Special Branch. If it had been, it would have cost him his life immediately.’
Watching his face, Charlotte had no impression that he was being deliberately obscure. She waited. There was silence beyond the room, no sound of the children asleep upstairs, or of Mrs Waterman, who was presumably still in the kitchen. She would not retire to her room with a visitor still in the house.
‘My attempts to hide its source make it impossible to trace what actually happened to it,’ Narraway continued. ‘To the superficial investigation, it looks as if I took it myself.’
He was watching her now, but not openly. She saw the apprehension in his eyes; it was there just for a moment, then gone again. She tried to keep all expression from her face. What did she believe of him? She did not know, but for Pitt’s sake she could not afford to allow doubt.
‘You have enemies,’ she said.
His body eased so minutely it was barely visible, just an alteration in the way the fabric of his suit stretched across his shoulders. He was not a large man: average height, slender, wiry. The bones of his hands resting on his knee were lean. In fact his hands were beautiful. She had not noticed them before.
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘I have. No doubt many. I thought I had guarded against the possibility of their injuring me. It seems I overlooked something of importance.’
‘Or someone is an enemy whom you did not suspect,’ she amended.
‘That is possible,’ he agreed. ‘I think it is more likely that an old enemy has gained a power that I did not foresee.’
‘You have someone in mind?’ She leaned forward a little. The question was intrusive, but she had to know. Pitt was in France, relying on Narraway to back him up. He would have no idea Narraway no longer held any office.
‘Yes.’ The answer seemed to be difficult for him.
Again she waited.
‘It’s an old case. It all happened more than twenty years ago.’ There was a roughness in his voice and he had to clear his throat before he went on. ‘They’re all dead now, except one.’