Midnight at Marble Arch - By Anne Perry Page 0,105

Daniel from turning into a monster? Would they ask of him one day, “Papa, why did you let it happen?” Charlotte wouldn’t accuse him, but it would be in her mind, it would have to be. Try as she wished, she would never again see him as the man she trusted always, the man he wanted to be.

And what was he doing? Advising Townley and Castelbranco to do nothing, admitting that the law, his law, was helpless to protect them or to find any justice. The legal system too would look the other way and pretend nothing had happened: timid, circumspect, afraid of making a fuss.

Neville Forsbrook, and anyone else like him, would go on without someone standing in their way or calling them to account. He reached to pull the curtain closed and it stuck. He yanked it harder and it tore.

“Thomas …” Charlotte began.

“Don’t tell me to sit down!” he shouted, yanking harder at the curtain and pulling the whole thing down off the wall to lie in a heap.

“I wasn’t going to,” she replied, standing up herself and walking over to join him at the glass, completely ignoring the pile of velvet on the floor. “You are sure Forsbrook will go on and rape other people?”

“Yes. I’d stop him if I could, Charlotte!” He felt his hands clench. He was behaving like a fool and he knew it. It was not her fault, but every word seemed like criticism, because he blamed himself. It was his responsibility to do better than this.

She took a deep breath and held it a moment or two. She was controlling her own temper, and he was sharply aware of it. There was no point in apologizing because he knew he would do it again, probably within moments.

“I was going to say …” She was choosing her words carefully, still ignoring the curtain. “I was going to say that if this pattern of violence stretches into the future, how do we know that it does not also stretch into the past?”

“I imagine it does,” he said slowly.

“Then might there not be something there that you could find, and prosecute, without mentioning Angeles, or this new poor girl?” she asked. “Perhaps it was something less serious, but still enough to bring a charge?”

He let the idea take form slowly, testing every step of it. “Anyone who did not accuse him then would be unlikely to do so now,” he pointed out. “The disgrace would be the same, and the proof even harder to find.”

“But if you know the pattern of the past, then you can predict the future more accurately, maybe even prevent him next time he tries?” She would not give up. “One woman alone can’t do anything to him, but several might be able to. Or at least the fathers of several, if they know they are not alone.”

He turned to look at her. In the evening light the tiny lines of her face were invisible. To him she was more beautiful at forty than she had been in her twenties, though the softness of youth was gone. She still looked at life bravely and honestly with her steady eyes, but was better able to deal with it in a measured way.

“And do what?” he asked quietly, but he was not dismissing it. “It still may not be possible; Pelham Forsbrook will defend Neville to the very last ditch. It is not only his son’s reputation on the line, but his own.”

“The victims won’t accuse him because to do so would ruin them socially for the rest of their lives,” she began.

He almost interrupted her, but bit back the words.

“Surely the accusation from many people, all prepared to stand together, whether it was proven in a court of law or not, would also ruin him?” she asked. “Reputation doesn’t require legal proof. If it did there’d be thousands of people still in Society who are not here now, because ill is believed of them, although never more than whispers. They do not fight because there is nothing said plainly enough for slander.”

He blinked. “You mean we should spread a rumor?”

“No!” Now she was angry too. “You don’t need to do it! Just prove you could, so Pelham Forsbrook knows it is true, and that you mean to stop his son because he has to be stopped.”

He turned it over in his mind, carefully, uncertain.

“Thomas?” She put her hand on his arm. He felt the strength of her fingers as well as