silver tray bearing sherry and two long-stemmed crystal glasses.
Maris hesitated.
The manservant poured a little of the rich dark golden liquid into one of the glasses and placed it on the table beside her. He poured a second and gave it to Narraway.
After he had gone Narraway picked his up, so she might do the same, and waited attentively for her to speak.
“Nothing Mr. Knox finds could prove my husband’s guilt, because he is not guilty,” she said, forcing herself to meet his eyes. “But every new fact does make it look worse for him.”
“He has never denied that he and Mrs. Quixwood were friends,” Narraway pointed out. “What new information has been added to that?”
She kept her composure with difficulty, taking a sip of sherry, probably more to hide her eyes for a moment than because she wished for its taste.
He waited.
“Small gifts he gave her,” Maris replied very quietly. “I didn’t know about them. I think he felt sorry for her. She … she was very lonely. Mr. Quixwood has been both honest and contrite about it, as if he blames himself for putting so much effort into his work that he did not accompany her to the places she wished to go.”
“It is natural to feel guilty when it is too late to go back and make a better task of it,” he said with a twinge of guilt for his own sins of omission.
She smiled very slightly. “I think he is a kind man who did not see how she really felt. And perhaps she did not tell him. One doesn’t. It sounds so like complaining, and when you have comfort, position, no need to worry … and respect as well, from a man who is honorable, to ask for more is … greedy, don’t you think?” She looked at him as if she genuinely wished for an answer.
“I have no idea,” he admitted. He tried to think of the women he knew. Charlotte would certainly want more. She would sacrifice financial security or social position for love, she had already proved that. Perhaps within the definition of “love” she would include a sharing of purpose, and a commonality of interest. Above all she might require to be needed, not an ornament but a part of the fabric of life.
Her sister Emily loved her husband and had considerable wealth and social standing, and yet she envied Charlotte her purpose, her excitement, the danger and variety. Narraway had seen it in her eyes, heard it in the sharp edge of her voice in a rare unguarded moment.
And what of Vespasia? That was a question perhaps he preferred not to consider. Because of her title and extraordinary beauty she had lived in the public eye all her adult life, but she was still acutely private with her emotions. He had never thought of her as vulnerable, capable of such frailties as doubt or loneliness.
“My lord …” Maris interrupted a little anxiously.
He returned his attention to her, slightly embarrassed to have been discourteous. “I’m sorry. I was considering what you had said about Catherine Quixwood.” That was true, in a way. “It is perceptive of you to have seen the possibility of her loneliness.”
A look that he could not read flickered across her face. The only thing he recognized in it for certain was fear.
He leaned forward a little more to assure her that she had his attention, in spite of his earlier lapse. “What is it you would like me to do, Mrs. Hythe?”
“Mr. Knox is still working on the case,” she replied. “I really don’t think he will give up until his superiors tell him he must. He seems to me to be a good man, gentle, in spite of the terrible things he has to deal with every day.” The ghost of a smile was in her eyes for an instant. “He speaks of his family once in a while, when he is in my house. He admired a teapot I have, and said his wife would like it. It seems she collects teapots. I wondered why. Surely two or three are sufficient? But he said she likes to arrange flowers in them, so I tried it myself—daisies. It worked extraordinarily well. Now every time I look at the thing it makes me think of him, and then of Catherine.”
Narraway did not know how to respond to that. How had Pitt dealt with the reality of people, the details of their lives that stayed in the mind?