Callander Square (12 page)

She found Pitt in the morning room, warming his hands in front of the fire. It was another bitter day, a hard east wind driving needles of sleet in from the North Sea, and she could hardly blame any living creature for availing itself of any warmth at all, yet she resented this policeman in front of her fire. He did not move because he had not heard her enter.

“Good morning, Mr. Pitt,” she said coldly. “What is it this time?”

He was startled, and he took a moment to compose himself before he turned to face her.

“Good morning, ma’am. I’m afraid we have not yet discovered the truth regarding the bodies in the square—”

“Do you seriously imagine, Mr. Pitt, that you ever will?” She raised her eyebrows in disbelief.

“Perhaps not, ma’am; but I must try a great deal harder before I give up.”

“Indeed. It seems like a waste of public money to me.”

“It was perhaps a waste of human life, which is infinitely more precious.”

“We also seem to have infinitely more of it,” she said dryly. “But of I presume you have to do your duty, as you see it. What is it you imagine I can do that will help you?”

“Give me your permission to speak to your staff again, ma’am; and perhaps to Miss Christina Balantyne. She may have observed some behavior, some small sign that you have been too busy to note.”

Augusta felt her stomach tighten. Was it conceivable he had already heard something? Could Max have been so—no, surely not! Max was, above all, ambitious. He wanted his advantage to use, not to squander.

“I’m sorry, you may speak to the servants, of course; although I must insist that you do not distress them unnecessarily, and I shall have some responsible person with you, to that end; but I regret my daughter is unwell and confined to her bed. Naturally she cannot see anyone.”

“Oh dear,” his expressive face composed itself into lines of sympathy. She had no idea whether he meant it or not. “I do hope it is only a passing indisposition.”

“We believe so,” she replied. “The season of the year, no doubt. It is inclined to affect one. Now which of the servants do you wish to see? The female ones, I presume?”

“If you please.”

She reached for the bell.

“I shall have the butler assist you.”

“I should prefer to speak to them alone. His presence might inhibit them, make them feel less free to—”

“No doubt. But for their protection, the butler will remain with you. I will not have young girls who are my responsibility intimidated, even unwittingly, into saying things which they may afterward regret. Perhaps you do not realize how young and how ignorant some of them are; most suggestible, and easily led.”

“Lady Augusta—”

“Those are the conditions on which you may speak with them, Mr. Pitt. Quite reasonable, I believe.”

There was no further argument he could offer without betraying foreknowledge of some particular guilt, and she defied him at this point to do so.

“Ma’am,” he acquiesced with a slight smile in recognition of her superior tactics. Had he been a gentleman, she might even have liked him, for a moment.

She felt no such sentiment toward Charlotte Ellison when she arrived shortly before midday to assist the general with his papers. Miss Ellison was a young woman she could not warm to—there was an element of emotion about her, of unpredictability, which was dangerous. One could not plan for it because it fell within none of the rules. And yet she seemed harmless enough. She came and went silently and was certainly both civil and, at least to all appearances, well-bred enough. But why should any young woman desire to help a middle-aged general sort out papers pertaining to battles and regiments, instead of seeking herself a husband? It was a question to which, at a less preoccupied time, she would have sought an answer.

As it was she contented herself with asking Brandon over luncheon what manner of creature she was, and if she gave satisfaction as to her clerical ability.

“Yes,” he said with slight surprise, “she appears to be of uncommon intelligence, for a woman.”

“You mean of uncommon interest in those things which interest you—for a woman,” Augusta replied with some asperity.

“Is that not more or less what I said?”

“No, it is not. Most women have perfectly good intelligence for the things which matter, such as the conduct of one’s daily life; but do not desire to apply themselves to the dissection of battles that concerned other people in other countries and at other times. I consider such an interest quite eccentric, and most unnatural in a young woman of decent upbringing.”

“Nonsense,” he said briskly. “Anyone of intelligence ought to appreciate the great history of our nation. We are the greatest military nation in the world; we have spread our civilization to every land and clime God made. We have created an empire and a peace that is the envy and the blessing of the world. Every woman of British blood should be proud of that.”

“Proud of it, of course,” she agreed testily, reaching for the anchovy pate, “but not concerned with the details!”

He took the last piece of toast and did not bother to reply.

It was after that conversation that Augusta turned her thoughts uninterruptedly to the matter of Max’s silence; and at last came up with a satisfactory answer. It was in the quiet hour previous to dinner that she decided to tackle the practical application of it. She went to the small withdrawing room where she would be undisturbed, and sent for Max to attend her.

She felt an overwhelming, almost suffocating dislike of him when he came in. He looked completely bland, as if he expected to discuss some small domestic affair with her. She had never noticed before how insolent his eyes were, how veiled. She must keep the most perfect control of herself.

“Good evening, Max,” she said coolly.

“Good evening, my lady.”

“There is no purpose to be served by our prevaricating. I have sent for you to discuss a matter which I intend shall be dealt with, if not to our mutual advantage, at least not to the disadvantage of either of us. Whether that turns out to be so, depends on you.”

“Yes, my lady?” his face betrayed nothing.

“You have been foolish enough to engage yourself in a liaison with my daughter. You will cease immediately to pay her any attentions whatsoever. You will leave my employ and take up a post in Scotland, which I shall arrange for you and for which I will provide you with references—”

“I have no wish to work in Scotland, my lady.” He stood square in front of her, his eyes burning with slow amusement.

“Probably not. But that is of no concern to me. I have relations in Stirlingshire who will oblige me by finding you a place. The alternative is prison, which I believe is even colder and more barbarous than Scotland.”

“Prison, my lady?” he raised surprised eyebrows. “To lie with a lady of quality, especially if that lady is more than willing, I may add, may be indiscreet, even socially offensive to some, but it is not a crime. And even if it were, I doubt you would wish to charge me with it.” There seemed a distinct sneer on his mouth.

“No, of course not. But stealing silver from one’s employer is a crime.” She met his eyes equally unflinchingly.

His face froze for an instant, understanding dawning in his eyes.

“I have not stolen any silver, my lady.”

“No. But if silver were to be missing, and it were to be found in your belongings, you would find it uncommonly difficult to prove that you had not.”

“That is blackmail.”

“How perceptive of you. I thought you would take the point quite easily.”

“If I were to be charged with such a thing, I should naturally, in my own defense, give the reason for your accusation,” he watched her carefully, waiting for the slightest sign of weakness.

She gave him nothing.

“Possibly,” she said coolly. “But that would be foolish, because you would then find yourself charged with slander as well. And who do you imagine would be believed—Lady Augusta Balantyne, dealing with a dishonest servant with ideas above his station, or the servant, bearing a grudge for having been discovered? Come, Max, you are, above all, not stupid.”

He stared at her with malignant hate swelling in his sensuous face.

She did not look down, but stared back at him with equal and undeviating steadiness.

G
ENERAL
B
ALANTYNE WAS
very satisfied with the way his memoirs were coming along. The military history of his family really was remarkable, and the more he put his papers in order, the more outstanding he perceived it to be. There was a heritage of discipline and sacrifice of which anyone might be proud. But far more than that, there was an urgency, an excitement to it more real than the petty domesiticity and the polite fictions of his daily life in Callander Square. The early winter rain drenched the gray cobbles outside, but his imagination felt the rain of Quatre Bras and Waterloo nearly seventy years ago, where his grandfather had lost an arm and a leg struggling through the mud of Belgian fields behind the Iron Duke; scarlet coats and blues, the charge of the Scots Grays, the end of an empire and the beginning of a new age.

The heat from the fire in the grate scorched his legs and he felt in it the blistering sun of India, thought of Tippoo Sultan, the Black Hole of Calcutta, where his great-grandfather had perished. He knew the heat himself. The spear wound on his thigh was not yet totally healed from the Zulu Wars, only three years ago. It still ached in the cold to remind him. Perhaps that would be his last battle, as the nightmare of the Crimea had been his first. He was still frightened far back in the recesses of his memory by the dreadful cold and the slaughter at Sebastopol, the dead lying all over the place, bodies wasted with cholera, blown apart by shot, frozen to death in grotesque positions, some huddled like children asleep. And the horses! God knew how many horses dead, poor beasts. Foolish that the horses should worry him so much.

He had been eighteen at Balaclava. He had come up with a message from his own commander for Lord Cardigan in time to see that unspeakable charge. He remembered the wind in his face, the smell of blood, gunpowder, and the torn-up earth as six hundred and seventy-three men and horses galloped against the entrenched guns of the entire Russian position. He had sat his horse beside the craggy old men, bemused in the uproar, angry, while below them in the valley two hundred and fifty men and six hundred horses obeyed their orders and were slaughtered. His father was in the Eleventh Hussars, and was one of those who did not stagger back.

His uncle had been in the Ninety-third Highlanders, and held the “thin red line,” five hundred and fifty men between thirty thousand Russians and Balaclava itself. Like so many he had died where he stood. It had been he, Brandon, who had sat in the bitter cold of a trench to write to his mother to tell her her husband and her brother were dead. He could still feel now the agony of trying to find the words. Then he had gone on to fight at Inkerman, and the fall of Sebastopol. It had seemed then as if the whole tide of Asia were sweeping over them with the fetch of half the earth behind it.

Surely those not yet born would hear in their hearts the guns of these battles and feel the pride and the pain, the confusions—and the sweep of history? Could he be so inarticulate as to have lived it himself, and pass on nothing of the taste in the mouth, the beat of the blood, the tears afterward?

The young woman, Miss Ellison, seemed competent, and pleasant enough. Although perhaps “pleasant” was not the word. She was too definite in her attitudes and opinions to be entirely agreeable to him. But she was intelligent, that was beyond question. He was relieved of the necessity of having to explain anything more than once, in fact on occasion he had found she had seized the point before he had finished with a first instruction, which he had found faintly annoying. And yet she meant no harm, and she certainly gave herself no airs. Indeed, she appeared to be more than happy to eat in the servants’ hall, rather than put cook to the trouble of setting her a separate tray.

More than once she had actually made suggestions as to how he might proceed, which he had difficulty in accepting with grace. But he was obliged to admit that her ideas were quite good, in fact he had not actually thought of anything better himself. As he was sitting in the library now, he considered what he would write next, and what Miss Ellison might judge of it.

He was irritated to be interrupted by Max at the door to say that Mr. Southeron was in the morning room, wishing to see him, and was he at home?

He hesitated. The last thing he wanted was to be bothered with Reggie Southeron right now, but Reggie was a neighbor, and as such had to be tolerated. Not to do so would provoke reactions that would be endless, and cause all sorts of minor discomforts.

Max was waiting silently. His immaculate figure and calm smile annoyed him as much as the request he made. Wish Augusta would get rid of him and find someone else.

“Yes, of course,” he said tartly. “And you’d better bring something to drink—the Madeira, not the best.”

“No, sir,” Max withdrew, and a moment later Reggie came in, large, affable, clothes already settled in comfortable creases, although he could not have had them on for more than a couple of hours.

“Morning, Brandon,” Reggie said cheerfully, eyes glancing round the room, noting the fire, the comfortable, deep leather chairs, looking for the decanter and glasses.

“Good morning, Reggie,” Balantyne replied. “What brings you visiting on a Saturday morning?”

“Been meaning to see you for a while, actually.” Reggie sat down in the chair nearest the fire. “Not had a decent opportunity before; always something else going on, what? Place like a beehive lately.”

Balantyne had not, to this point, been paying more than nominal attention to him, but now he began to hear a note of strain in Reggie’s voice, and that in spite of his bonhomie, he had come about something specific that caused him an anxiety he was needing to share. Max would be back with the Madeira in a moment, and there was no point in approaching anything serious until he had gone.