him hard. “Don’t give up,” he said firmly. “That decision is hasty and may be born of serious misinformation.” He tried to keep the contempt for men who would make such a cruel decision—childless men without pity or understanding—out of his voice and knew he failed. He didn’t want to add that grief to Castelbranco’s all but unbearable burden. Now, above all else, the man needed his faith.
“Perhaps this should be the subject of a proper inquiry after all,” he said. “If such a thing is being alleged, then the discretion I have tried to exercise may be pointless.”
“It is,” Castelbranco said hoarsely. The tears were now running down his cheeks. He was too harrowed to be self-conscious. “It has been suggested that she was with child, and the disgrace of it drove her to take both their lives. That is a double crime, self-murder and murder of her innocent babe. I don’t know how my wife can live with it. She is already dying inside. I fear that would …”
His eyes searched Pitt’s face as if to find some hope he could not even imagine there. He was teetering on the edge of an abyss of despair. “I need the truth,” he whispered. “Whatever it is, it cannot be worse than this. I loved my daughter, Mr. Pitt. She was my only child. I would have done anything to make her safe and happy … and I could not even keep her alive. Now I cannot save her reputation from the mouths of the filthy, and I cannot save her soul to heaven. She was a child! I remember …” He lost command of his voice and faltered to a stop.
Pitt tightened his grip. “I know. My own daughter is willful, erratic, hot-tempered one moment, tender the next.” He could see Jemima in his mind. He remembered holding her as a baby, her tiny, perfect hands clinging to his thumb. He remembered her discovering the world, its wonders and its pain, her innocence, her trust that he could make everything better, and her laughter.
“She can seem so wise I marvel at her,” he went on. “Then the instant after she’s a child again, with no knowledge of the world. She’s a baby and a woman at the same time. She looks so like my wife, and yet when I look into her eyes, it is my own I see looking back at me. I can imagine what you are suffering well enough to know that I know nothing of it at all.”
Castelbranco bent his head and covered his face with his hands.
Pitt let go of his wrist and sat back in his chair, silent for several seconds.
“I have a certain degree of discretion as to what I can investigate,” he said at last. “As you are the ambassador of a country with whom we have a powerful and long-standing treaty, it could be in the national interest that we do not allow you to be victimized in this way while you and your family are in London. That I can do, as a courtesy to you as the representative of your country.”
Castelbranco rose to his feet awkwardly, swaying a little until he regained his balance.
“Thank you, sir. You could not have offered more. I appreciate your understanding.” He bowed and turned round slowly before walking upright to the door. Once outside he closed it softly behind him.
Pitt shifted only slightly, to look out his window, to bring order to his thoughts. He had meant what he said: he could not grasp the enormity of the man’s pain, his helplessness that his child had been destroyed both on earth and, in his belief, in heaven as well; and he had been unable to do anything to prevent it.
Pitt was not sure what he believed of heaven. He had never given it much consideration. Now he was certain he did not worship a God who would condemn a child—and Angeles was little more than that—for any sin, let alone an unproven one, and for which she had already paid such a hideous price.
Castelbranco must be wrong about God’s nature. Such judgment was a law of men, who flexed their muscles to dominate, to keep the disobedient under control, to frighten the willful into submission. God must be better than that, or what exactly is His mercy for?
But that was an argument for another time. Nothing would bring Angeles back. The truth might restore at least her good name, and perhaps help