Seven Dials Page 0,20

She regarded him very soberly, but there was a wry humor in her silver-gray eyes, and for an instant he dared to imagine that she spoke from experience and not merely opinion.

"And how do you guarantee that your lover will remain within the law?" he asked politely.

"Ah!" she said with instant understanding. "Is that the story? Who is the lover who has behaved with such ungoverned stupidity? I assume there is no question of self-defense?" A flicker of concern crossed her face. "Is that why you are here to see me, Thomas, on the lover's behalf?"

"Yes, I am afraid it is. At least not his behalf, but in his interest."

"I see. So she was not alone, and he is a person in whom Victor Narraway has some concern. Of whom are we speaking?"

"Saville Ryerson."

She sat perfectly still, facing him with a steady, curiously sad gaze.

"Do you know him?" he asked gently.

"Of course I do," she replied. "I have known him since before his wife was killed... twenty years, at least. In fact, I fear it is more... perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three, by now."

He felt a tightening inside him. He studied her face and tried to read how much it was going to hurt her if Ryerson was guilty. Which would matter most to her-his political disgrace or the fact that he was ill-judged enough to allow what should have been a casual affair, with a woman of a different race, religion, and national loyalties, to rule his passions to the point where he colluded in murder? Sometimes one knows a person for years but sees only a surface the person wishes to show. There are vast tides underneath which are not even guessed at.

"I'm sorry," he said sincerely. He had come to her for help without thinking for a moment that perhaps the truth could be painful for her. Now he was ashamed of taking it for granted. "I need to know more of him than public opinion can tell me," he explained.

"Of course you do," she agreed with asperity. "May I ask what it is you suspect him of? Not actually murder, surely?"

"You think he would not kill, even to protect his reputation?"

"You are being evasive, Thomas!" she replied, but there was a slight tremor in her voice. "Is that your way of allowing me to understand that you do?"

"No," he said quickly, guilt biting a little deeper. "I spoke with him, and he confuses me. I want a clearer impression of him, without unintentionally placing the thoughts in your mind by telling you too much."

"I am not a servant girl to be so easily led," she said with undisguised disparagement. Then, when she saw him blush, she smiled with the charm she had used to devastate men, and occasionally women as well, all her life. "I do not believe for a moment that Saville Ryerson would kill to protect his reputation," she said with conviction. "But I do not find it impossible to accept that he would do so to defend his life, or someone else's, or for a cause that he held sufficiently important. Which I profoundly doubt would be anything to do with cotton strikes in Manchester. What other issues are there at stake?"

"None that I know of," he replied, the tightness easing out of him again at her warmth. "And I don't know of any real reason why Lovat should be a threat to Miss Zakhari."

"Might he have attacked her, or attempted an assault which she rejected?" Vespasia asked with a frown.

"At three o'clock in the morning, in her back garden?" he said dryly.

Her expression was momentarily comical.

"Oh-hardly," she agreed. "One does not meet in such circumstances unless one has some nature of assignation." Then total seriousness returned. "And one does not innocently take a gun. It was her gun, I assume?" Hope of denial was born and died in the same instant. "I admit, I read only the headlines. It seemed of no concern to me then."

"Yes," he agreed. "It was her gun, but she said she found it there. She heard the shot and that is why she went outside. He was already dead when she reached him."

"And what does Saville Ryerson say?" she asked.

"That Lovat was dead when he got there," he replied. "And he helped her lift the body into a wheelbarrow in order to take it to Hyde Park and leave it there. The police were called by someone, we don't know who, and arrived in time to find her