it is a monstrous wrong. I didn’t think so at first, but I realize now that if there is something I can do, then I must do it. I am not involved with the police, or law, or government. There are avenues I can explore that they cannot. And I have no other demands on my time.”
“It could be dangerous,” he began urgently, his face creased with anxiety. “Pelham Forsbrook is a very powerful man, and you have no proof that Angeles’s death was anything other than a simple tragedy. You—”
She fixed him with a withering look.
He stopped speaking and smiled, but did not lower his gaze.
She realized with surprise that the look that froze almost anyone else was having no effect upon him, but she did not avert her gaze either.
“What is it you wish of me?” he asked. “Other than my discretion, which you have.”
“I want to know what the law does about rape, when they are tragically certain of it. For example, what the police are doing to find out who raped Catherine Quixwood,” she replied. It was a guess—she had only suspected as much from the bits of gossip she had heard—but the shadow that fell over his face immediately confirmed it.
“How did you …” he began, his face troubled.
“I thought it was a possibility, given the circumstances,” she said gently.
Narraway sighed. “It seems that whoever attacked her was someone she knew—she let him in without fear,” he said simply. “The rape was violent and brutal, but in itself it didn’t kill her. It seems, according to the doctor, that she managed to drag herself to the cabinet and pour herself a glass of Madeira, which she heavily laced with the laudanum. I thought the hall cabinet was an odd place to have laudanum, but apparently that’s where it was. Perhaps she liked it with the wine because the wine masked the taste. I don’t know.”
Vespasia was stunned. The ugliness of the act and its aftermath crowded in on her and she felt crushed by its inevitability. So Catherine herself would be blamed for her circumstances; drinking the laudanum would be interpreted as an act of shame, an admission of some kind of guilt, and the fact that she had opened the door to her attacker would be read as an invitation to intimacy, not her innocent trust in the man.
Narraway was watching her. She saw the pain and confusion in his eyes and wondered how much he understood of what people would say, and what the additional burden would be for Quixwood: all the searing confusion and anger, his own life violated also.
“I see,” she said in little more than a whisper.
“I don’t,” he answered. “Not really. I can’t shake it from my mind. To realize that another human being has experienced such horror stays with me, as if a part of myself has been touched unforgettably.”
She looked at him with surprise and then felt unexpected warmth for this sensitivity in him she had never perceived before. She wanted to reach out and touch his hand, but it was too intimate a gesture and she did not do it.
“Tell me about her,” she asked instead. “Have you learned anything that might be of use in discovering who her assailant was?”
The waiter came and removed their dishes, replacing them with the next course.
At the table closest to them a couple was talking, heads bent close together. He laughed and moved his hand across the white cloth to touch hers. It was a possessive gesture. She pulled away from him, her face coloring.
Vespasia looked away. She could remember being so young, so uncertain. But it felt very long ago.
Narraway began slowly, feeling his way. “Knox seems to be a competent man and I think he understands the crime better than many. He moves very carefully. To begin with I wished he had been quicker. Now I’m starting to appreciate how very complicated the situation is.”
“And Quixwood?” she said gently. “He must be torn apart.”
“Yes. And I fear that if we find who did it, it will be even harder for him when it comes to trial. It will be as if it is all happening again, but this time in public. Strangers will be discussing the intimacy and the dreadfulness of it, pulling apart the details and speculating as to what happened. Even if it is done with compassion, it hardly makes things any easier.”
“No, it won’t,” she agreed. “Perhaps that is why the people who do