Anne Perry - The Whitechapel Conspiracy

“Do you wish to meet him?” Carlisle asked curiously.

“Perhaps,” she replied. “But I am quite sure I do not wish him to know that I do.”

Carlisle grinned. “I shall make sure he does not,” he promised. “It would be grossly presumptuous. I shall certainly not allow him to affect airs above his station. If it is contrived at all, he will believe it was his idea and he is profoundly grateful that I have accomplished it for him.”

“ Somerset, you verge on the impertinent,” she answered, aware that she was very fond of him. He was brave, absurd, passionate about his beliefs, and beneath the flippant exterior, pleasingly unique. She had always loved eccentrics.

It was after midnight and Vespasia was beginning to wonder if she wished to stay much longer, when she heard a voice which dissolved time, hurling her back about half a century to an unforgettable summer in Rome: 1848, the year of revolutions throughout Europe. For a wild, euphoric time-all too brief-dreams of freedom had spread like fire across France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. Then one by one they had been destroyed. The barricades had been stormed, the people broken, and the popes and kings had taken back their power. The reform had been overturned and trampled under the feet of soldiers. In Rome it had been the French soldiers of Napoleon III.

She almost did not turn to look. Whoever it was, it could only be an echo. It was memory playing a trick, an intonation that sounded the same, some Italian diplomat, perhaps from the same region, even the same town. She thought she had forgotten him, forgotten the whole tumultuous year with its passion, its hope and all the courage and pain, and in the end the loss.

She had been back to Italy since then, but never to Rome. She had always found a way to avoid that, without explaining why. It was a separate part of her life, an existence quite different from the realities of her marriage, her children, of London, even of her recent adventures with the extraordinary policeman Thomas Pitt. Who could have imagined that Vespasia Cumming-Gould, the ultimate aristocrat who could trace her blood to half the royal houses of Europe, could join forces with a gamekeeper’s son who had become a policeman? But then worrying what others thought crippled half the people she knew, and denied them all manner of passion and joy, and pain. Then she did turn. It was not really a thought so much as a reaction she could not help.

A dozen feet away stood a man almost her own age. He had been in his twenties when she met him, slender, dark, lithe as a dancer, and with that voice that filled her dreams.

Now his hair was gray, he was a little heavier, but the bones were still the same, the sweep of his brows, the smile.

As if he had felt her stare, he turned towards her, for a moment ignoring the man he was speaking with.

His recognition of her was instant, with no moment of doubt, no hesitation.

Then she was afraid. Could reality ever be equal to memory? Had she allowed herself to believe more than had really happened? Was the woman of her youth even remotely like the woman she was today? Or would she find time and experience had made her too wise to be able to see the dream anymore? Did she need to see him in the passion of youth, with the Roman sun on his face, a gun in his hand as he stood at the barricades, prepared to die for the republic?

He was coming towards her.

Panic drenched her like a wave, but habit, the self-discipline of a lifetime, and absurd hope prevented her from leaving.

He stopped in front of her.

Her heart was beating in her throat. She had loved many times in her life, sometimes with fire, sometimes with laughter, usually with tenderness, but never anyone else as she had loved Mario Corena.

“Lady Vespasia.” He said the words quite formally, as if they were merely acquaintances, but his voice was soft, caressing the syllables. It was, after all, a Roman name, as he had told her, teasingly, so long ago. The Emperor Vespasian was no hero.

It was her correct title. Should she reply equally correctly? After all they had shared, the hope, the passion, and the tragedy, it seemed like a denial. There was no one else listening.

“Mario…” It was strange to say his name again. Last time she had whispered it in the darkness, tears choking her throat, her cheeks wet. The French troops were marching into Rome. Mazzini had surrendered to save the people. Garibaldi had gone north towards Venice, his pregnant wife fighting beside him, dressed as a man, carrying a gun like everyone else. The Pope had returned and undone all the reforms, wiped out the debt, the liberty, and the soul in one act.

But that was all in the past. Italy was united now; that much at least had come true.

He was searching her eyes, her face. She hoped he would not say she was still beautiful. He was the one man to whom it had never mattered.

Should she say something to forestall him? A trite word now would be unbearable. But if she spoke, then she would never know. There was no time left for games.

“I have often imagined meeting you again,” he said at last. “I never thought it would happen… until today.” He gave the tiniest shrug. “I arrived in London a week ago. I could not be here without thinking of you. I quarreled with myself whether I should even enquire for you, or if dreams are best left undisturbed. Then someone mentioned your name, and all the past returned to me as if it were yesterday, and I had no power to deny myself. I thought you would be here.” He glanced around the magnificent room with its smooth pillars, its dazzling chandeliers, the swirl of music and laughter and wine.

She knew exactly what he meant. This was her world of money, privilege, all of it passed down by blood. Perhaps in some distant past it had been earned, but not by these men and women here now.

She could so easily pick up the old battles again, but it was not what she wanted. She had believed as desperately as he had in the revolution in Rome. She had labored and argued for it too, worked all day and all night in the hospitals during the siege, carried water and food to the soldiers, in the end even fired the guns beside the last defenders. And she had understood why, in the end, when Mario had had to choose between her and his love of the republic, he had chosen his ideals. The pain of it had never completely left her, even after all these years, but had he chosen otherwise it would have been worse. She could not have loved him the same way, because she knew what he believed.

She smiled back at him, a little bubble of laughter inside her.

“You have an advantage. I would never, in even my silliest dreams, have thought to find you here, all but shoulder to shoulder with the Prince of Wales.”

His eyes were soft, old jokes remembered, absurdities within the tears. “Touché,” he acknowledged. “But the battlefield is everywhere now.”

“It always was, my dear,” she answered. “It is more complicated here. Few issues are as simple as they seemed to us then.”

His gaze did not waver. “They were simple.”

She thought how little he had changed. It was only the superficial things: the color of his hair, the faint lines on his skin. Inside he might be wiser, have a few scars and bruises, but the same hope burned just as strongly, and all the old dreams.

She had forgotten love could be so overwhelming.

“We wanted a republic,” he went on. “A voice for the people. Land for the poor, houses for those who slept in the streets, hospitals for the sick, light for the prisoners and the insane. It was simple to imagine, simple to do when we had the power… for a brief spell before tyranny returned.”

“You hadn’t the means,” she reminded him. He did not deserve to be patronized by less than the truth. In the end, whether the French armies had come or not, the republic would have fallen because those with the money would not give enough to keep its fragile economy going.