Treason at Lisson Grove: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel Page 13

  She took the ornament out of her hair, and then had to restyle it accordingly. All of which meant she was late, and flustered, when Narraway knocked on the door to tell her that Fiachra McDaid was there to escort her for the evening again.

  “Thank you,” she said, putting the comb down quickly and knocking several loose hairpins onto the floor. She ignored them.

  He looked at her with anxiety. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes! It is simply an indecision as to what to wear.” She dismissed it with a slight gesture.

  He regarded her carefully. His eyes traveled from her shoes, which were visible beneath the hem of her gown, all the way to the crown of her head. She felt the heat burn up her face at the candid appreciation in his eyes.

  “You made the right decision,” he pronounced. “Diamonds would have been inappropriate here. They take their drama very seriously.”

  She drew in breath to say that she had no diamonds, and realized he was laughing at her. She wondered if he would have given a woman diamonds, if he loved her. She thought not. If he were capable of that sort of love, it would have been something more personal, more imaginative. A cottage by the sea, however small, perhaps; something of enduring meaning that would add joy to its owner’s life.

  “I’m so glad,” she said, meeting his eyes. “I thought diamonds were too trivial.” She accepted his arm, laying her fingers so lightly on the fabric of his jacket that he could not have felt her touch.

  Fiachra McDaid was as elegant and graceful as the previous evening, although on this occasion dressed less formally. He greeted Charlotte with apparent pleasure at seeing her again, even so soon. He expressed his willingness to help her to understand as much of Irish theater as was possible for an Englishwoman to grasp. He smiled at Charlotte as he said it, as if it were some secret aside that she already understood.

  It was some time since she had been to the theater at all. It was not an art form Pitt was particularly fond of, and she did not like going without him.

  Here in Dublin the event was quite different. The theater building itself was smaller; indeed there was an intimacy to it that made it less an occasion to be seen, and more of an adventure in which to participate.

  McDaid introduced her to various of his own friends who greeted him. They varied in age and apparent social status, as if he had chosen them from as many walks of life as possible.

  “Mrs. Pitt,” he explained cheerfully. “She is over from London to see how we do things here, mostly from an interest in our fair city, but in part to see if she can find some Irish ancestry. And who can blame her? Is there anyone of wit or passion who wouldn’t like to claim a bit of Irish blood in their veins?”

  She responded warmly to the welcome extended her, finding the exchanges easy, even comfortable. She had forgotten how interesting it was to meet new people, with new ideas. But she did wonder exactly what Narraway had told McDaid.

  She searched his face and saw nothing in it but good humor, interest, amusement, and a blank wall of guarded intelligence intended to give away nothing at all.

  They were very early for the performance, but most of the audience were already present. While McDaid was talking she had an opportunity to look around and study faces. They were different from a London audience only in subtle ways. There were fewer fair heads, fewer blunt Anglo-Saxon features, a greater sense of tension and suppressed energy.

  And of course she heard the music of a different accent, and now and then people speaking in a language utterly unrecognizable to her. There was in them nothing of the Latin or Norman-French about the words, or the German from which so much English was derived. She assumed it was the native tongue. She could only guess at what they said by the gestures, the laughter, and the expression in faces.

  She noticed one man in particular. His hair was black with a loose, heavy wave streaked with gray. His head was narrow-boned, and it was not until he turned toward her that she saw how dark his eyes were. His nose was noticeably crooked, giving his whole aspect a lopsided look, a kind of wounded intensity. Then he turned away, as if he had not seen her, and she was relieved. She had been staring, and that was ill-mannered, no matter how interesting a person might seem.

  “You saw him,” McDaid observed so quietly it was little more than a whisper.

  She was taken aback. “Saw him? Who?”

  “Cormac O’Neil,” he replied.

  She was startled. Had she been so very obvious? “Was that … I mean the man with the …” Then she did not know how to finish the sentence.

  “Haunted face,” he said for her.

  “I wasn’t going to …” She saw in his eyes that she was denying it pointlessly. Either Narraway had told him, or he had pieced it together himself. It made her wonder how many others knew, indeed if all those involved might well know more than she, and her pretense was deceiving no one.

  “Do you know him?” she asked.

  “I?” McDaid raised his eyebrows. “I’ve met him, of course, but know him? Hardly at all.”

  “I didn’t mean in any profound sense,” she parried. “Merely were you acquainted.”

  “In the past, I thought so.” He was watching Cormac while seeming not to. “But tragedy changes people. Or then on the other hand, perhaps it only shows you what was always there, simply not yet uncovered. How much does one know anybody? Most of all oneself.”

  “Very metaphysical,” she said drily. “And the answer is that you can make a guess, more or less educated, depending on your intelligence and your experience with that person.”

  He looked at her steadily. “Victor said you were … direct.”

  She found it odd to hear Narraway referred to by his given name, instead of the formality she was used to, the slight distance that leadership required.

  Now she was not sure if she was on the brink of offending McDaid. On the other hand, if she was too timid even to approach what she really wanted, she would lose the chance.

  She smiled at him. “What was O’Neil like, when you knew him?”

  His eyes widened. “Victor didn’t tell you? How interesting.”

  “Did you expect him to have?” she asked.

  “Why is he asking, why now?” He sat absolutely still. All around him people were moving, adjusting position, smiling, waving, finding seats, nodding agreement to something or other, waving to friends.

  “Perhaps you know him well enough to ask him that?” she suggested.

  Again he countered. “Don’t you?”

  She kept her smile warm, faintly amused. “Of course, but I would not repeat his answer. You must know him well enough to believe he would not confide in someone he could not trust.”

  “So perhaps we both know, and neither will trust the other,” he mused. “How absurd, how vulnerable and incredibly human; indeed, the convention of many comic plays.”

  “To judge by Cormac O’Neil’s face, he has seen tragedy,” she countered. “One of the casualties of war that you referred to.”

  He looked at her steadily, and for a moment the buzz of conversation around them ceased to exist. “So he has,” he said softly. “But that was twenty years ago.”

  “Does one forget?”

  “Irishmen? Never. Do the English?”

  “Sometimes,” she replied.

  “Of course. You could hardly remember them all!” Then he caught himself immediately and his expression changed. “Do you want to meet him?” he asked.

  “Yes—please.”

  “Then you shall,” he promised.

  There was a rustle of anticipation in the audience and everyone fell silent. After a moment or two the curtain rose and the play began. Charlotte concentrated so that she could speak intelligently when she was introduced to people at the intermission.

  But she found following it difficult. There were frequent references to events she was not familiar with, even words she did not know, and there was an underlying air of sadness.

  Was that how Cormac O’Neil felt: help
less, predestined to be overwhelmed? Everybody lost people they loved. Bereavement was a part of life. The only escape was to love no one. She stopped trying to understand the drama on the stage and, as discreetly as she could, she studied O’Neil.

  He seemed to be alone. He looked neither right nor left, and the people on either side seemed to be with others.

  The longer she watched him, the more totally alone did he seem to be. But she was equally sure that he was never bored. His eyes never strayed from the stage, yet at times his expression did reflect the drama.

  By the time the intermission came Charlotte felt herself moved by the passion emanating from players and audience alike. But she was also confused by it. It made her feel more sharply than the lilt of a different accent, or even the sound of another language, that she was in a strange place, teeming with emotions she caught and lost again.

  “May I take you to get something to drink?” McDaid asked her when the curtain fell and the lights were bright again. “And perhaps to meet one or two more of my friends? I’m sure they are dying of curiosity to know who you are, and of course how I know you.”

  “I would be delighted,” she answered. “And how do you know me? We had better be accurate, or it will start people talking.” She smiled to rob the words of offense.

  “But surely the sole purpose of coming to the theater with a beautiful woman is to start people talking?” He raised his eyebrows. “Otherwise one would be better to come alone, like Cormac O’Neil, and concentrate on the play, without distraction.”

  “Thank you. I’m flattered to imagine I could distract you.” She inclined her head a little, enjoying the trivial play of words. “Especially from so intense a drama. The actors are superb. I have no idea what they are talking about at least half the time, and yet I am conquered by their emotions.”

  “Are you sure you are not Irish?” he pressed.

  “Not sure at all. Perhaps I am, and I should simply look harder. But please do not tell Mr. O’Neil that my grandmother’s name was O’Neil also, or I shall be obliged to admit that I know very little about her, and that would make me seem very discourteous, as if I did not wish to own that part of my heritage. The truth is I simply did not realize how interesting it would be.”

  “I shall not tell him, if you don’t wish me to,” he promised.

  “But you have not told me how we met,” she reminded him.

  “I saw you across a room and asked a mutual acquaintance to introduce us,” he said. “Is that not always how one meets a woman one sees, and admires?”

  “I imagine it is. But what room was it? Was it here in Ireland? I imagine not, since I have been here only a couple of days. But have you been to London lately?” She smiled at him. “Or ever, for that matter?”

  “Of course I’ve been to London. Do you think I am some provincial bumpkin?” He shrugged. “Only once, mind you. I did not care for it—nor it for me. It was so huge, so crowded with people, and yet at the same time anonymous. You could live and die there, and never be seen.”

  “But I have been in Dublin only a couple of days,” she said to fill the silence.

  “Then I was bewitched at first sight,” he said reasonably, suddenly smiling again. “I’m sorry I insulted your home. It was unforgivable. Call it my own inadequacy in the midst of three million English.”

  “Oh quite a few Irishmen, believe me,” she said with a smile. “And none of them in the least inadequate.”

  He bowed.

  “And I accepted your invitation because I was flattered, and irresponsible?” she challenged.

  “You are quite right,” he conceded. “We must have mutual friends—some highly respectable aunt, I daresay. Do you have any such relations?”

  “My great-aunt Vespasia, by marriage. If she recommended you I would accompany you anywhere on earth,” she responded unhesitatingly.

  “She sounds charming.”

  “She is. Believe me, if you had met her really, you would not dare to treat me other than with the utmost respect.”

  “Where did I meet this formidable lady?”

  “Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould. It doesn’t matter. Any surroundings would be instantly forgotten once you had seen her. But London will do.”

  “Vespasia Cumming-Gould.” He turned the name over on his tongue. “It seems to find an echo in my mind.”

  “It has set bells ringing all over Europe,” she told him. “You had better be aware that she is of an indeterminate age, but her hair is silver and she walks like a queen. She was the most beautiful and most outrageous woman of her generation. If you don’t know that, they will know that you never met her.”

  “I am now most disappointed that I did not.” He offered her his arm, and they began to descend the stairway.

  Together they walked down to the room where refreshments were already being served, and the audience had gathered to greet friends and exchange views on the performance.

  It was several minutes of pleasant exchange before McDaid introduced her to a woman with wildly curling hair named Dolina Pearse and a man of unusual height whom he addressed as Ardal Barralet. Beside them, but apparently not with them, was Cormac O’Neil.

  “O’Neil!” McDaid said with surprise. “Haven’t seen you for some time. How are you?”

  Barralet turned as if he had not noticed O’Neil standing so close as to brush coattails with him.

  “ ’Evening, O’Neil. Enjoying the performance? Excellent, don’t you think?” he said casually.

  O’Neil had either to answer or offer an unmistakable rebuff.

  “Very polished,” he said, looking straight back at Barralet. His voice was unusually deep and soft, as if he too were an actor, caressing the words. He did not even glance at Charlotte. “Good evening, Mrs. Pearse.” He acknowledged Dolina.

  “Good evening, Mr. O’Neil,” she said coldly.

  “You know Fiachra McDaid?” Barralet filled in the sudden silence. “But perhaps not Mrs. Pitt? She is newly arrived in Dublin.”

  “How do you do, Mrs. Pitt,” O’Neil said politely, but without interest. McDaid he looked at with a sudden blaze of emotion.

  McDaid stared back at him calmly, and the moment passed.

  Charlotte wondered if she had seen it, or merely imagined it.

  “What brings you to Dublin, Mrs. Pitt?” Dolina inquired, clearly out of a desire to change the subject. There was no interest in either her voice or her face.

  “Good report of the city,” Charlotte replied. “I have made a resolution that I will no longer keep on putting off into the future the good things that can be done today.”

  “How very English,” Dolina murmured. “And virtuous.” She added the word as if it were insufferably boring.

  Charlotte felt her temper flare. She looked straight back at Dolina. “If it is virtuous to come to Dublin, then I have been misled,” she said drily. “I was hoping it was going to be fun.”

  McDaid laughed sharply, his face lighting with sudden amusement. “It depends how you take your pleasures, my dear. Oscar Wilde, poor soul, is one of us, of course, and he made the world laugh. For years we have tried to be as like the English as we can. Now at last we are finding ourselves, and we take our theater packed with anguish, poetry, and triple meanings. You can dwell on whichever one suits your mood, but most of them are doom-laden, as if our fate is in blood. If we laugh, it is at ourselves, and as a stranger you might find it impolite to join in.”

  “That explains a great deal.” She thanked him with a little nod of her head. She was aware that O’Neil was watching her, possibly because she was the only one in the group he did not already know, but she wanted to engage in some kind of conversation with him. This was the man Narraway believed had contrived his betrayal. What on earth could she say that did not sound forced? She looked directly at him, obliging him either to listen or to deliberately snub her.

  “Perhaps I sounded a bit trivial when I spoke of fun,” she said half apologetically. “I like my pleasu
re spiced with thought, and even a puzzle or two, so the flavor of it will last. A drama is superficial if one can understand everything in it in one evening, don’t you think?”

  The hardness in his face softened. “Then you will leave Ireland a happy woman,” he told her. “You will certainly not understand us in a week, or a month, probably not in a year.”

  “Because I am English? Or because you are so complex?” she pursued.

  “Because we don’t understand ourselves, most of the time,” he replied with the slightest lift of one shoulder.

  “No one does,” she returned. Now they were speaking as if there were no one else in the room. “The tedious people are the ones who think they do.”

  “We can be tedious by perpetually trying to, aloud.” He smiled, and the light of it utterly changed his face. “But we do it poetically. It is when we begin to repeat ourselves that we try people’s patience.”

  “But doesn’t history repeat itself, like variations on a theme?” she said. “Each generation, each artist, adds a different note, but the underlying tune is the same.”

  “England’s is in a major key.” His mouth twisted as he spoke. “Lots of brass and percussion. Ireland’s is minor, woodwind, and the dying chord. Perhaps a violin solo now and then.” He was watching her intently, as if it were a game they were playing and one of them would lose. Did he already know who she was, and that she had come with Narraway, and why?

  She tried to dismiss the thought as absurd, then remembered that someone had already outwitted Narraway, which was a considerable feat. It required not only passion for revenge, but a high level of intelligence as well. Most frightening of all, it needed connections in Lisson Grove sufficiently well placed to have put the money in Narraway’s bank account.