“Disillusion?” Charlotte heard her voice become hard-edged with incredulity. “His wife was raped and beaten half to death, then in her unbearable pain she dosed herself too heavily with laudanum, and died of that. I should imagine that is the cause of his devastating grief. Not any disillusion.”
“My dear Mrs …. Pitt?” Arabella hesitated as if she were not certain as to exactly who Charlotte might be. “Decent women do not get raped. Perhaps you did not read in the newspapers that she let the man in herself? I ask you, what respectable woman dismisses the servants for the night, then lets a younger man into the house and entertains him alone, while her husband is out?”
Charlotte raised her eyebrows. “Oh, was he younger? You clearly read different articles of the newspapers than I do. Or perhaps different newspapers altogether.”
Arabella’s face flared red. It was an insult she could not ignore. Ladies with the slightest pretension to gentility did not read sensational papers. “It is common knowledge!” she snapped.
“Very common,” Charlotte said under her breath. Only Flora, sitting closest to her, heard it. She affected a fit of sneezing to stifle her laughter. Sabine handed her a glass of water.
“Standards are slipping all over the place,” Marie remarked, perhaps to fill the silence. “That poor Portuguese girl committed suicide as well. Heaven only knows why.”
Sabine looked at her in surprise. “Well, everyone says she fell in love with Neville Forsbrook, and when he didn’t want her, she completely lost her senses and threw herself out of the window. Far too highly strung, these younger girls. And to blame young Forsbrook is awful. His poor father; first he lost his wife, now this wretched scandal. Not that it’s in the remotest way his fault, of course.”
“Yes, his wife,” Flora said. “She died—”
“She died in an accident,” Emily interrupted.
“Nobody imagined she was having an affair,” Arabella added. “It was a tragic accident in a coach.”
“An ordinary hansom, I believe,” Sabine corrected her. “Late at night. The road was wet and something made the horse bolt. Poor cabby was killed as well. Dreadful.”
“Such a terrible thing to happen,” Charlotte said with as much sincerity as she could manage through her anger. She remembered Vespasia telling her of the tragedy. She hadn’t known Eleanor Forsbrook, but she would not have wished her any harm. Her son’s brutality would surely have caused her as much grief as it would any other woman. “Perhaps we should treasure our own safety with a little more gratitude.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Arabella said coldly.
Flora looked at her with a bright smile. “I do. You are perfectly right, Mrs. Pitt. We take our happiness and our safety far too much for granted. I am alive and well. It is a beautiful day and I am in a lovely garden, among friends. I shall enjoy it to its fullest.” She looked at Charlotte, meeting her eyes directly. “Thank you for a most timely reminder. I’m so glad you came this afternoon.”
There was another moment of startled silence, then Emily picked up a dish of tiny cakes and passed them round. She bit her lip to stop herself from smiling, and carefully looked away from Charlotte’s eyes.
PITT STOOD IN HIS office facing Rafael Castelbranco. He had dreaded this moment since he had heard the date set for Alban Hythe’s trial. The Portuguese ambassador was white-faced, except for the bruised shadows around his eyes and the hectic spots of color high on his cheeks. If Pitt had not known his story, he would have thought he was drunk.
“This man raped a married woman with whom he was having an affair. You arrested him and you are now bringing him to trial,” Castelbranco said, his voice wavering, catching in his throat as if he could barely force the words out. “If he is found guilty, you will hang him, and her family will have at least a sense of justice. Yet you know who raped my child, and you can do nothing? Is this how your justice works?”
He made it sound absurd, outrageous, as if it were a deliberate action against him. He was trembling with the savagery of his emotions.
“Rafael,” Pitt said gently, “I do not know who raped Angeles. I had believed it was Neville Forsbrook, but the husband of Catherine Quixwood, the married woman who was raped, says that he was in the company of young Forsbrook at the time we believe Angeles was