He looked at her, for a moment without discretion or guard in his face. “No.” It was only one word, but the passion in his voice filled it with all she was waiting to hear.
She felt the color burn up inside her, the relief dizzying. He had not changed. He had said nothing, just answered a simple question about travel, one word, but the meaning was like a huge wave buoying her up, lifting her as if into the air. She smiled back, allowing her other feelings to be unconcealed for an instant, then she turned back to the portrait. She said something meaningless, a remark about color or texture of paint. She was not listening to herself, and she knew he was not, either.
She put off going home for as long as possible. It would be the end of a dream, the return to the daily reality from which she had escaped, and the inevitable guilt because her heart was not where it ought to be, even if her body was.
Eventually, at nearly seven o’clock, she went in through the front door and as soon as she was inside, felt imprisoned in the grayness of it. That was ridiculous. It was really a very pleasant house, full of soft color and most agreeably furnished. The lack of light was inside her. She walked across the floor to the foot of the stairs and reached the bottom just as the Bishop’s study door opened and he came out, his hair a little tousled as if he had run his hand through it. His face was pale, his eyes dark-ringed.
“Where have you been?” he demanded querulously. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Five minutes before seven,” she replied, glancing at the long case clock against the farther wall.
“The question was rhetorical, Isadora!” he snapped. “I can read a dial as well as you can. And that does not answer where you have been.”
“To see the exhibition of Hogarth’s paintings at the National Gallery,” she replied blandly.
He raised his eyebrows. “Until this hour?”
“I met some acquaintances and fell into conversation,” she explained. That was true literally, if not in implication. She resented the fact that she had justified herself to him. She turned away to go up the stairs and remove her hat and change into an appropriate gown for supper.
“That is most unsuitable!” he said sharply. “He painted the sort of person you should have no interest in. Rake’s Progress, indeed! Sometimes I think you have lost all sense of responsibility, Isadora. It is time you took your position a great deal more seriously.”
“It was an exhibition of his portraits!” she said tartly, turning back to look at him. “There was nothing unsuitable about them at all. There were several of domestic servants with very agreeable faces and dressed right up to the ears. They even had hats on!”
“There is no need to be flippant,” he criticized. “And wearing a hat does not make one virtuous! As you should know!”
She was stunned. “Why on earth should I know that?”
“Because you are as aware as I am of the laxity and spiteful tongues of many of the women who attend church every Sunday,” he replied. “With hats on!”
“This conversation is absurd,” she said, exasperated. “What is the matter with you? Are you unwell?” She did not mean it in any literal way. He bordered on hypochondria and she no longer had patience with it. Then she realized the remarkable change in him. The little color he had bleached out of his skin.
“Do I look ill?” he demanded.
“Yes, certainly you do,” she answered honestly. “What did you have for luncheon?”
His eyes widened as if a sudden thought had come to him, a bright and uplifting one. Then anger swept over him, color making his cheeks pink. “Grilled sole!” he snapped. “I prefer to dine alone this evening. I have a sermon to prepare.” And without saying anything further, or even glancing up at her, he turned on his heel and went back to his study, closing the door with a sharp snap.
However, at dinnertime he changed his mind. Isadora did not particularly wish to eat, but the cook had prepared a meal and she felt it ungracious not to partake, so she was seated alone at the table when the Bishop appeared. She wondered whether to make any remark on his feeling better, and decided not to. He might construe it as sarcasm, or criticism—or worse, he might tell her, in far more detail than she wished to know, exactly how he was.
For the entire soup course they ate in silence. When the parlormaid brought in the salmon and vegetables the Bishop at last spoke.
“Things are looking dark. I don’t expect you to understand politics, but new forces are gaining power and influence over certain parts of society, those easily enamored of new ideas, simply because they are new—“ He stopped, apparently having forgotten his train of thought.
She waited, more out of courtesy than interest.
“I am afraid for the future,” he said quietly, looking down at his plate.
She was used to pompous statements, so it startled her that she really believed him. She heard fear in his voice, not pious concern for mankind, but real sharp anxiety, the sort that wakens you in the night with sweat on your body and your heart knocking in your chest. What could he possibly know that would shock him out of his habitual complacency? Certitude that he was right was a way of life with him, a shield against all the arrows of doubt that afflict most people.
Could it be anything that mattered? She really did not want to know. It was probably some miserable issue of insult or quarrel within the church hierarchy, or more tragic, someone he cared for fallen from grace. She should have asked him, but tonight she had no patience to listen to some variation on old themes she had heard over and over, in one form or another, all her married life.
“You can only do your best,” she said calmly. “I daresay when you tackle it a day at a time, it will not be so bad.” She picked up her fork and began to eat again.
They both continued in silence for a while, then she looked up at him and saw panic in his eyes. He was staring at her as if he peered far beyond to something unendurable. His hand holding the fish fork was trembling and there were beads of sweat on his lip.
“Reginald, what has happened?” she said with alarm. In spite of herself she was concerned for him. It angered her. She did not want to have any involvement with his feelings at all, but she could not escape the fact that he was profoundly and mortally afraid of something. “Reginald?”
He gulped. “You are quite right,” he said, licking his dry lips. “A day at a time.” He looked down at his plate. “It’s nothing. I should not have disturbed your dinner. Of course it’s nothing. I am seeing”—he took a deep, shuddering breath—“much too far ahead. Trust the divine . . . divine . . .” He pushed himself back from the table and stood up. “I have had sufficient. Please excuse me.”
She half rose herself. “Reginald . . .”
“Don’t disturb yourself!” he snapped, walking away.
“But . . .”
He glared at her. “Don’t make an issue of it! I am going to do some work, reading. I need to study. I need to know . . . more.” And he closed the door with a bang, leaving her alone in the dining room confused and just as angry as he was, but with a growing feeling of unease.
The cottage on the edge of Dartmoor was beautiful, exactly what Charlotte had hoped for, but without Pitt it lacked its heart, and for her its purpose. She had found the Whitechapel affair very hard to bear. More than Pitt himself, she had burned at the injustice of it. She accepted that it was pointless to fight, but it did not ease the anger inside her. It had seemed in Buckingham Palace as if, at a terrible price for Great-aunt Vespasia, it was all going to be all right for Pitt. Voisey was robbed of his chance ever to be president of a Republic of Britain, and Pitt was back in charge at Bow Street.
Now, inexplicably, it was all gone again. The Inner Circle had not collapsed, as they had hoped. In spite of the Queen, it had had the power to remove Pitt again and send him back to Special Branch, where he was junior, unskilled in whatever arts they required, and responsible to Victor Narraway, who had no loyalty to him and, it seemed, no sense of honor to keep his promises regarding a holiday which had been more than earned.