chill run right through him. The smell of the place seemed to have crept into his nose and mouth. “Before she was raped, or after?” His voice sounded hoarse. “Do you know?”
“After,” Brinsley said. “Knox found the laudanum bottle and the glass from which she’d which she’d drunk in the hall cabinet. There was blood on the glass.”
“Her attacker forced her to drink it?” Narraway knew the question was foolish even as he asked it.
Brinsley’s face was filled with pity, for Catherine, but possibly for Narraway as well. “Far more likely she was stunned, close to despair,” he answered. “Either didn’t realize how much she’d taken or, more probably, meant to drink that much. The attack was very brutal. God knows what she must have felt. Many women never get over rape. Can’t bear the shame and the horror of it.”
“Shame?” Narraway snapped.
Brinsley sighed. “It’s a crime of violence, of humiliation. They feel as if they have been soiled beyond anything they can live with. Too many times the men they think love them don’t want them after that.” He swallowed with difficulty. “Husbands find they can’t take it, can’t live with it. They can’t get rid of the thought that somehow the woman must have allowed it.”
“She was beaten to—” Narraway started, his voice rising to a shout.
“I know!” Brinsley cut him off sharply. “I know. I’m telling you what happens. I’m not justifying it, or explaining it. It does strange things to some men, makes them feel impotent, that they couldn’t defend their own woman. I’m sorry, but it looks as if she drank it herself. God help her.” He swallowed, his face pinched with pain. “Find this one, will you? Get rid of him somehow.”
“We will.” Narraway felt his throat tighten and a helpless anger scald through him. “I will.”
CHAPTER
3
PITT WAS DISTRACTED AT the breakfast table. He ate absentmindedly, his attention absorbed by whatever he was reading in the newspaper. He looked up briefly to bid goodbye to Jemima and Daniel, then returned to his article. He even allowed his tea to go cold in the cup.
Charlotte stood up and took the teapot to the stove, pushed the kettle over onto the hob, and waited a few moments until it reached a boil again. With the teapot refreshed, and carrying a clean cup, she returned to the table and sat down.
“More tea?” she asked.
Pitt looked up, then glanced at his cup beside him, puzzled.
“It’s cold,” she said helpfully.
“Oh.” He gave a brief smile, half-apologetic. “I’m sorry.”
“From your expression, it’s not good news,” she observed.
“Speculation on the Jameson trial,” he replied, folding the paper and putting it down. “Most people seem to be missing the point.”
She had read enough about it to know what he was referring to. Leander Starr Jameson had returned to Britain from Africa, accused of having led an extraordinarily ill-conceived invasion from British-held Bechuanaland across the border into the independent Transvaal in an attempt to incite rebellion there and overthrow the Boer government, essentially of Dutch origin.
“He’s guilty, isn’t he?” she asked, uncertain now if perhaps she had misunderstood what she had read. “Won’t we have to find him so?”
“Yes,” Pitt agreed, sipping his new hot tea. “It’ll be a question of what sentence is passed and how much the public lionizes him. Apparently he’s a remarkably attractive man; not in the ordinary sense of being handsome or charming, but possessing a certain magnetism that captivates people. They see him as the ideal hero.”
She looked at Pitt’s face, the somber expression in his eyes that belied the ease of his voice.
“There’s more than that,” she said gravely. “It matters, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” he answered softly. “Mr. Kipling believes him a hero for our time: brave, loyal, resourceful, seizing opportunity by the throat, a born leader, in fact.”
Charlotte swallowed. “But he isn’t?”
“Mr. Churchill says he is a dangerous fool who will, in the near future, cause war between Britain and the Boers in South Africa,” he replied.
She was horrified. “War! Could it?” She put her cup down with a slightly trembling hand. “Really? Isn’t Mr. Churchill being … I mean, just drawing attention to himself? Emily says he does that a bit.”
Pitt did not answer immediately.
“Thomas?” she demanded.
“I don’t know. I have a fear that Churchill could be right.” His gaze did not waver from hers. “Not just because of the Jameson Raid—there are other things as well. The gold found there is going to attract a lot of adventurers and profiteers.”