Charlotte realized she had been half hoping Vespasia would say she was mistaken, that there was some other, more personal answer, and society as they were familiar with it was in no danger. Her agreement swept away the last pretense.
“Is it the Inner Circle who support the monarchy at any cost?” Charlotte asked, lowering her voice in spite of the fact there was no one to overhear them.
“I don’t know,” Vespasia admitted. “I do not know what their aims are, but I have no doubt they are willing to follow them regardless of the rest of us.
“I think it is best you keep silent,” Vespasia went on gravely. “Speak to no one. I believe Cornwallis is an honorable man, but I do not know it beyond doubt. If what you have suggested is true, then we have stumbled into something of immense power, and one murder more or less will be of no consequence at all, except to the victim and those who loved him or her. I hope Mrs. Fetters will do the same.”
Charlotte felt numb. What had begun as her private sense of outrage at injustice to Pitt had developed into a conspiracy that could threaten everything she knew.
“What are we going to do?” she asked, staring at Vespasia.
“I have no idea,” Vespasia confessed. “At least not yet.”
After Charlotte had left, looking confused and deeply unhappy, Vespasia sat for a long time in the golden room, staring out of the window and across the lawn. She had lived through the whole of Victoria’s reign. Forty years ago England had seemed the most stable place in the world, the one country where all the values were certain, money kept its worth, church bells rang on Sundays, and parsons preached of good and evil and few doubted them. Everyone knew their places and largely accepted them. The future stretched out ahead endlessly.
That world was gone, like summer flowers.
She was startled how angry she was that Pitt should have been robbed of his position and his life at home, and sent to work in Spitalfields, almost certainly uselessly. But if Cornwallis was the man Vespasia judged him to be, then at least Pitt was relatively safe from the vengeance of the Inner Circle; that was one good thing.
She no longer received the vast number of invitations she once had, but there were still several from which to choose. Today she could attend a garden party at Astbury House, if she wished to. She had meant to decline, and had even said as much to Lady Weston yesterday. But she knew various people who would be there—Randolph Churchill and Ardal Juster, among others. She would accept after all. Perhaps she would see Somerset Carlisle. He was one man she would trust.
The afternoon was fine and warm, and the gardens were in full bloom. It could not have been a better day for a party in the open air. Vespasia arrived late, as was her habit now, and found the lawns bright with the silks and muslins of beautiful gowns, the cartwheels of hats decked with blossom, swathed with gauze and tulle, and like everyone else she was in constant danger of being skewered by the point of some carelessly wielded parasol.
She wore a gown of two shades of lavender and gray, and a hat with a brim which swept up like a bird’s wing, arching rakishly to one side. Only a woman who did not care in the slightest what others thought would dare to choose such a thing.
“Marvelous, my dear,” Lady Weston said coldly. “Quite unique, I’m sure.” By which she meant it was out of fashion and no one else would be caught wearing it.
“Thank you,” Vespasia said with a dazzling smile. “How generous of you.” She glanced up and down Lady Weston’s unimaginative blue dress with total dismissal. “Such a wonderful gift.”
“I beg your pardon?” Lady Weston was confused.
“The modesty to admire others,” Vespasia explained, then, with another smile, flicked her skirt and left Lady Weston furious, knowing she had been bested and only now realizing how.
Vespasia passed the newspaper proprietor Thorold Dismore, whose keen face was sharp with heightened emotion. He was talking with Sissons, the sugar manufacturer. This time Sissons too seemed to be driven by some vigor and enthusiasm. He was barely recognizable as the same man who had been such a thundering bore with the Prince of Wales.
Vespasia watched for a moment with interest at the change in him, wondering what they could be discussing which could so engage them both. Dismore was passionate, eccentric, a crusader for causes in spite of being born to wealth and position. He was a brilliant speaker, a wit at times, if not on the subject of political reform.
Sissons was self-made and had seemed leaden of intellect, socially inept when faced with royalty. Perhaps he was one of those who simply freeze when in the presence of one in direct line to the throne. With some people it was genius which paralyzed them, with some beauty, with a few it was rank.
Still, she was curious to know what they held in common that so engrossed them.
She was never to know. She found herself face-to-face with Charles Voisey, whose eyes were narrowed against the sun. She could not read the emotion in his face. She had no idea whether he liked or disliked her, admired or despised her, or even dismissed her from his thoughts the moment she was out of sight. It was not a feeling she found comfortable.
“Good afternoon, Lady Vespasia,” he said politely. “A beautiful garden.” He looked around them at the profusion of color and shape, the dark, trimmed hedges, the herbaceous borders, the smooth lawn and a stand of luminous purple irises in bloom with the light through their curved petals. It was lazy in the warmth, dizzy with perfume. “So very English,” he added.
So it was. And even as they stood there she remembered the heat of Rome, the dark cypresses, the sound of falling water from the fountains, like music in stone. During the days her eyes had been narrowed against the lush sun, but in the evening the light was soft, ocher and rose, bathing everything in a beauty that healed over the scars of violence and neglect.
But that was to do with Mario Corena, not this man in front of her. It was a different battle, different ideals. Now she must think of Pitt and the monstrous conspiracy of which he was one of the victims.
“Indeed,” she replied with equally distant courtesy. “There is something particularly rich about these few weeks of high summer. Perhaps because they are so brief and so uncertain. Tomorrow it may rain.”
His eyes wandered very slightly. “You sound very reflective, Lady Vespasia, and a trifle sad.” It was not quite a question.
She looked at his face in the unforgiving sunlight. It found every flaw, every trace left by passion, temper, or pain. How much had it hurt him that Adinett had hanged? She had heard a raw note of rage when he had spoken at the reception, before the appeal. And yet he had been one of the judges who had been of the majority opinion, for conviction. But since it had been four to one, had he voted against, it would have betrayed his loyalty without altering the outcome. That must have galled him to the soul!
Was he driven by personal friendship or political passion? Or simply a belief in John Adinett’s innocence? The prosecution had never been able even to suggest a motive for murder, let alone prove one.
“Of course,” she replied noncommittally. “Part of the nature of one’s joy in summer’s fleeting beauty is the knowledge that it will pass too soon, and the certainty that it will come again, even if we will not all see it.”
He was watching her intently now, all pretense of casual politeness gone. “We do not all see it now, Lady Vespasia.”
She thought of Pitt in Spitalfields, and Adinett in his grave, and the unnamed millions who did not stand amid the flowers in the sun. There was no time to play.
“Very few of us do, Mr. Voisey,” she agreed. “But at least it exists, and that is hopeful. Better flowers bloom for a few than not at all.”
“As long as we are of the few!” he returned instantly, and this time there was no disguising the bitterness in his face.