are, just as hurt, and just as impetuous,” he admitted. “And it would also probably do no good at all. Loving someone makes you care passionately. It makes you a decent person, warm, vulnerable, generous, and brave. But it doesn’t make you right, and it certainly doesn’t make you effective in finding the truth.”
“I think the truth is she was raped,” she said quietly, tears suddenly bright in her eyes.
“And I still can’t believe that anyone would truly blame her for that,” he responded.
“Oh, Thomas! Don’t be so … blind!” she said desperately. “Of course they can blame her. They have to! If they don’t, they have to accept that it can happen to anyone, to them or their daughters.”
She shook her head. “Or else you’re the kind of person who has to stand and stare at it, probe to see where it hurts the most, and make yourself important by knowing something other people don’t.” Her voice was brittle with contempt. “Then you can be the center of attention while you tell everyone else, making up any details you might not happen to know.”
He took a step toward her, touching her lightly. Her arms were rigid under his fingers. The wind outside rattled harder in the trees and blew in through the door with the first patter of rain and the sweet, rich smell of damp earth.
“Aren’t you being a little hard on everyone, generally?” he asked.
Her eyes widened. “You mean I’m being a bit hysterical, perhaps? Because I’m afraid that one day it could be our daughter?”
“No,” he said firmly. “Rape is very rare, thank God, and Jemima will not be allowed to keep the company of any young man we don’t know, or whose family we don’t know.”
“For the love of heaven, Thomas!” Charlotte said between her teeth. “How on earth would you know how many rapes there are? Who is going to talk about it? Who’s going to report it to the police? And do you really think that it’s never young men we know who could do such things?”
Pitt felt a sudden icy twinge of fear, and then helplessness. His imagination raced.
She saw it in his eyes, and bent her head forward to rest her brow against his neck. The wind ruffled her skirt and then pushed the door wider, so it banged against the wall.
“It’s a hidden crime. All we can do is bite the heads off anyone who speaks lightly or viciously about Angeles Castelbranco. And don’t tell me I shouldn’t do that. I don’t care if it’s appropriate or suitable. I care about protecting her mother.”
He slid his arms around her and held her very tightly.
PITT COULD NOT DEVOTE his own time to making discreet inquiries into the character and reputation of Angeles Castelbranco, and to send anyone else might raise more speculation than it would answer. Why would any man unrelated to the girl be asking such questions unless there was cause to suspect something; for example, her virtue?
He was still weighing the various possibilities open to him, and discarding them one by one, when two days later Castelbranco came to his office again, his face even more haggard than before. He seemed barely able to stand and he gripped his hands together when he sat in the chair Pitt offered him, as though to keep them from trembling. Twice he began to speak and then stopped.
“I visited de Freitas,” Pitt told him quietly. “He equivocated. First he said it was Angeles who broke off the engagement, then he admitted it was he. I have been considering how to prove it either way without raising even further malicious speculation.”
“It is too late,” Castelbranco said, shaking his head. “I don’t know what happened or who is behind it. I cannot think who would say such things, or why they would. I fear it is some enemy I have made who is taking the cruelest possible revenge on me.”
“If that is so, there may be something Special Branch can do,” Pitt began, then realized he might be offering a false hope. “What makes you think this?”
“Someone has said that her death was not a terrible accident but a deliberate act of suicide.” Castelbranco had difficulty keeping his voice from choking. “And suicide is a mortal sin,” he whispered. “The Church will not bury her with Christian rites—my … my child is …” The tears slid down his cheeks and he lowered his head.
Pitt leaned forward and put his hand on Castelbranco’s wrist, gripping