Anne Perry - Dorchester Terrace

Blantyre sighed wearily. “Is this all about your promotion, and the fact that you don’t think you are fit for the job?”

Pitt clenched his jaw to keep his temper. “It’s about the fact that most of the information we have on the assassination planned here came from you, and that you are a murderer and a liar, whose principal loyalty is to the Habsburg crown, and not the British,” he replied, carefully keeping his voice level. “If Duke Alois was your enemy rather than your friend, you would be perfectly capable of having him murdered wherever it was most convenient to you.”

Blantyre winced, but he did not speak.

“Or alternatively, there is no plot at all,” Pitt continued. “You wanted to keep Special Branch busy, and the police away from investigating the murder of Serafina Montserrat, and then, most regrettably, of your wife. You had to kill Serafina, once you knew she was losing her grip on her mind, and might betray you to Adriana. And you need to survive now, or else how can you be of service in helping Austria keep control of its rapidly crumbling empire, after the suicide of its crown prince, and his replacement by Franz Ferdinand, who the old emperor despises?”

Blantyre’s jaw was tight, his eyes hard.

“A fair estimate,” he said between his teeth. “But you will not know if I am telling the truth or not, will you? You have checked all the information I gave you, or you should have. If you haven’t, then you are a greater fool than I took you to be. Dare you trust it?” He smiled thinly. “You damned well don’t dare ignore it!”

Pitt felt as if the ground were sinking beneath him. Yet the fire still burned gently in the hearth, the flames warming the whisky glasses, which shone a luminous amber.

“Be careful, Pitt,” Blantyre warned. “Consider deeply what you do, after Alois has been here and gone. Assuming you manage to keep him alive, don’t entertain any ideas of arresting me, or bringing me to any kind of trial.” He smiled very slightly. “I visited Serafina quite often, and I listened to her. A good deal of that time she had no idea who I was. But then you know that already. You will have heard it from Lady Vespasia, if nothing else.”

“Of course I know that,” Pitt said tartly. “If you were not afraid of her talking candidly again, to others, you would not have taken the risk of killing her.”

“Quite. I regretted doing it.” Blantyre gave a slight shrug. “She was a magnificent woman, in her time. She knew more secrets about both personal and political indiscretions than anyone else.”

Pitt was aware of a change in the atmosphere: a warmth in Blantyre, a chill in himself.

Blantyre nodded his head fractionally. “She rambled on about all manner of things and people. Some I had already guessed, but much of it was new to me. I had no idea that her circle was so wide: Austrian, Hungarian, Croatian, and Italian were all what I might have imagined. But the others: the French, for example; the German; and of course the British. There were some considerable surprises.” He looked very steadily at Pitt, as if to make certain that Pitt grasped the weight of what he was saying.

Pitt thought of Tregarron, also using Nerissa Freemarsh to disguise his visits to Serafina. What did he fear that could be so much worse than being thought to have an affair with a plain, single woman of no significance, and almost on his own doorstep? It was a despicable use of a vulnerable person whose reputation it would permanently ruin.

“The British Special Branch, and various other diplomatic and intelligence sources, have a record of some very dubious actions,” Blantyre continued. His voice dropped a little. “Some have made them vulnerable to blackmail, with all its shabby consequences. And of course there are also the idealists who set certain values above the narrow love of country. Serafina was another little Englander like you. She kept silent.” He left the suggestion hanging in the air. It was not necessary to spell it out.

Pitt stared at him. He had no doubt whatsoever that Blantyre meant everything he was saying. There was a confidence in him, an arrogance that filled the room.

Blantyre was smiling broadly. “Victor Narraway would have killed me,” he said with almost a kind of relish. “You won’t. You don’t have the courage. You may think of it, but the guilt would cripple you.

“I like you, Pitt,” he said with intense sincerity, his voice thick with emotion. “You are an intelligent, imaginative, and compassionate man. You have quite a nice sense of humor. But in the end, you haven’t the steel in your soul to act outside what is predictable, and comfortable. You are essentially bourgeois, just like my father.”

He took a deep breath. “Now you had better go and make sure you save Duke Alois. You can’t afford to have him shot in England.”

Pitt rose to his feet and left without speaking. There was no answer that had any meaning.

Outside he walked along the windy street. He was chilled and shivering in spite of the sun, which sat low in the sky, giving off a clean-edged, late winter light. Was Blantyre right? Would Narraway have shot Blantyre? Would he find himself unable to do the same, standing with a pistol in his hand, unable to kill in cold blood a man he knew, and had liked?

He did not know the answer. He was not even certain what he wanted the truth to be. If he could do such a thing, what would he gain? And what would he lose? His children might never know anything about it, but it would still be a barrier between them and him.

And what ruthlessness would Charlotte see in him, which she had not seen before, and had not wanted to? Or Vespasia? Or anyone? Above all these, what would he learn about himself? How would it change him from who he was now? Was Blantyre right that his inner comfort was what he cared about most, in the end?

He was walking rapidly, not certain where he was going. He was less than half a mile from the part of the Foreign Office where Jack worked. There were no secrets left about Blantyre. Pitt knew the worst. But the resolution as to what to do was lost in the turmoil of his own mind.

Vespasia knew from the moment Victor Narraway came into her sitting room that he had serious news. His face was pinched with anxiety, and he looked cold, even though it was a comparatively mild evening.

Without realizing she was doing so, she rose to greet him.

“What is it, Victor? What has happened?”

His hands were chill when he took hers, briefly, but she did not pull away.

“I have learned something further about Serafina, which I am afraid may be more serious than I had supposed. Tregarron visited Dorchester Terrace several times. I thought at first it was primarily to see Nerissa …”

“Nerissa?” For an instant she wanted to laugh at the idea, then the impulse died. “Really? It seems an eccentric idea. Are you sure?”

“No, I’m not sure. Men do sometimes have the oddest tastes in affairs. But now I believe that Nerissa was the excuse and Serafina the reason.”

“She was at least a generation older than he, and there is no proof, in fact, not even a suggestion, that they knew each other,” she pointed out.

“But his father knew Serafina,” Narraway said grimly, watching her face. “Very well.”

“Oh. Oh, dear. Yes, I see. And you are assuming that perhaps Serafina was indiscreet about that too. Or perhaps others were able to deduce that the present Lord Tregarron was visiting for fear of her saying something unfortunate. Who is he protecting, though? His father’s reputation? Is his mother still alive?”

“Yes. She is very old, but apparently quite clear in her mind.” His expression was sad and gentle. “What a devil of a burden it is to know so many secrets. How much safer it would be to understand nothing, to see all manner of things before you, and never add it up so you perceive the meaning.”