Dorchester Terrace (16 page)

“They do matter,” Herbert agreed. “Far too much to wait thirty years for revenge.”

Narraway could not argue with that. Almost certainly all the people concerned were dead, or too old to execute revenge anymore, just as Serafina herself was.

“Thank you.” He acknowledged the point. “Can you think of anyone else who might shed more light on the subject of why she is so afraid?”

“The current expert in that area of the Foreign Office is Tregarron. But you know that. And, of course, for northern Italy, with which Serafina was most concerned, it is Ennio Ruggiero, and for Croatia, Pavao Altabas.”

Narraway got to his feet. “I’m much obliged.” He held out his hand. “Thank you again.”

Herbert smiled. “It’s good to see you, Narraway. I always knew you’d do well.”

“You taught me well,” Narraway replied sincerely. “I hope to hell I taught my successor as much.” He hesitated.

“Why do you say that?” Herbert asked.

“Did you worry about me?” Narraway asked him. “Whether I would succeed, whether I had the steel, and the judgment?”

Herbert smiled. “Of course, but I had more sense than to let you know it at the time.”

“Thank you,” Narraway said wryly.

“Wouldn’t have done you any good,” Herbert replied. “But you caused me a few sleepless nights—unnecessarily, as it turned out.”

Narraway did not ask him about what.

N
ARRAWAY WENT TO SEE
Ruggiero, as Herbert had suggested, and spent over an hour without learning anything beyond what Herbert himself had already mentioned. Ruggiero was an old man and his memory was clouded by emotions. Italy was now united, and he wanted to forget the frictions and griefs of the past. He especially wanted to forget the losses, the sacrifices, and the ugliness of fighting.

Narraway thanked him also. To have probed and argued, perhaps caught the old man in lies, not of intent but of wishful thinking, facts covered over by dreams, would have benefited no one.

Next he went to visit Pavao Altabas and found only his widow. He had died recently, and Herbert had been unaware of it.

The widow was much younger than Pavao had been, and she knew nothing of the uprisings. The name of Serafina Montserrat meant nothing at all to her.

Lastly, he went to see Lord Tregarron, not at the Foreign Office but at the club where both were members. It was the end of the day and Tregarron was tired and unwilling to talk. However, Narraway gave him no civil alternative, short of getting up very conspicuously and leaving.

They sat opposite each other in armchairs on either side of a huge log fire. Narraway ordered brandy for both of them. The steward brought it with murmured words of apology for interrupting them, although they were not as yet in conversation.

“Leave us to talk, will you, Withers?” Narraway asked him. “No interruptions, if you please!”

“Certainly, my lord,” Withers said calmly. “Thank you.” He bowed and withdrew.

Tregarron looked grimly at Narraway, waiting for him to explain his intrusion.

“Damned long day, Narraway,” he said quietly. “Is this really necessary? You’re not in Special Branch anymore.”

Narraway was surprised how deeply the reminder cut him, as if his position had defined his identity, and without it he had no standing with those who had so recently treated him with something akin to awe. He hid his hurt with difficulty. If he had not needed Tregarron, he would have found a way to retaliate, even though, at the same moment, he realized that any retaliation would betray his own vulnerability.

He forced himself to smile, very slightly. “Which removes the responsibility from me, but does not take away the freedom to meddle, if I can do it to the good,” he replied.

Tregarron’s dark face tightened a little. “Am I supposed to deduce from your last remark that you are justifying some interference in foreign affairs that I otherwise might object to?”

Narraway’s smile grew bleaker. “I have no intention of interfering in foreign affairs, justifiably or not. But my concern is with information about the past that may prevent an action in the present of which I am uncertain, and I need to know more.”

Tregarron’s heavy eyebrows rose. “From me? You must know that I cannot tell you anything. Do not keep obliging me to remind you that you are no longer head of Special Branch. It is uncomfortable, and ill-mannered of you to put me in a position where I have no choice.”

Narraway kept his temper with difficulty. He needed Tregarron’s information, and he no longer had any means of forcing it from him, as Tregarron knew. It was this aspect of having lost power to which he was finding it hard to accustom himself.

“I am not seeking any current information,” he said levelly. He found himself suddenly reluctant to explain his reasons to Tregarron. “It is the general climate of issues thirty or forty years ago.”

“Thirty or forty years ago? Narraway, what the devil are you playing at? Thirty or forty years ago where?” Tregarron leaned forward a little in his chair. “What is this about? Is it something I should know?”

“If I should come to believe that it is, I shall certainly tell you,” Narraway answered. “So far it is only rumors, most of which seem to me more like overheated imagination. I wish to prove, or disprove, them before I bother anyone else with them.”

Tregarron’s attention sharpened. “Regarding what, exactly?”

Now Narraway had no choice but to either tell the truth, or very deliberately lie. “Certain whispers about a woman named Serafina Montserrat,” he answered.

A shadow crossed Tregarron’s face. “How on earth could she matter now?”

Narraway changed his mind about what to say next.

“Memories, stories,” he said fairly casually. “If I know the truth, or something close to it, I can dismiss them safely.”

Tregarron tensed. “Who is talking about Mrs. Montserrat?” he asked. “This all sounds like gossip. But it could be dangerous, Narraway. Damage can be done that is hard to reverse. You did the right thing in coming to me. I have looked into her past since we last spoke. She worked mostly in the Austro-Hungarian sphere. She apparently knew a lot of people, and was regrettably free with her favors.”

“But all years ago,” Narraway pointed out. He was surprised how much he resented Tregarron’s implication, even though he had never met Serafina himself. She was Vespasia’s friend. He took a deep breath before he continued. “I imagine most of the men concerned are also dead, and their wives, who might have cared, as well.”

“Would you like it said of your father?” Tregarron snapped.

Narraway could not imagine it. His father had been rather dry, highly intelligent but remote, not a man who would have been accessible to a woman such as he imagined Serafina Montserrat to have been. He smiled at the thought, and saw a flash of fury in Tregarron’s face; it was gone again so rapidly that he was not certain if it had been real, or his imagination.

“The thought amuses you?” Tregarron asked. “You surprise me. Would it have amused your mother too?”

That was a sharp wound, a territory Narraway did not wish to explore. “Of course not,” he said quietly, his voice tighter than he had meant it to be. “It is so far from the truth of what I was inquiring into that it had an oblique humor. No one’s reputation in that area is in jeopardy, so far as I am aware.”

“So what area is it to do with, then?” Tregarron asked, his face now all but expressionless.

Narraway chose his words carefully, thinking of what exactly Vespasia had said. “It is to do with political freedom, old plots and current ones regarding Croatia throwing off the Austrian yoke. And possibly northern Italy.”

“Perhaps you don’t understand me,” Tregarron said, now allowing a faint smile onto his face. “Serafina Montserrat must be in her mid-seventies, at least. According to what I have heard, she was reckless and something of a troublemaker. She created an unfortunate reputation for herself, although some of the stories about her are probably apocryphal. If even half of them are true, she was a highly colorful character, and a passionate Italian nationalist. She would have been quite capable of planning an assassination, and she had the steel in her nature to carry it out. However, so far as I know, she never succeeded in actually doing so.”

He crossed his legs, easing back in his chair a little, his eyes never leaving Narraway’s face.

“The only event anything like that,” he continued, “I heard as a story. I’m not sure what truth there is in it.”

Narraway watched him intently.

Tregarron assumed the air of a raconteur. “A group of dissidents plotted to assassinate one of the leading Austrian dukes who was particularly vehement in his grip on the local government in northern Italy. It would be fair to say that he was oppressive, and at times unjust. The emperor Franz Josef has always been excessively military, but he used to be less dictatorial than he is now. Nevertheless, this dissident group planned the assassination of some duke—I forget his name—and very nearly succeeded. The plot was clearly thought out and very simple in essence. No clever tricks to go wrong, nothing left to chance.”

“But it didn’t succeed?” Narraway questioned him.

“Because they were betrayed by one of their own,” Tregarron answered. “They fled. It seems Montserrat was among those who fought the hardest to save them, but she couldn’t. She was wounded in the struggle that followed, and the ringleader was taken, summarily tried, and executed.”

It was the kind of bitter tale that Narraway had heard often enough, especially when he had been in Ireland. He thought of Kate O’Neil, and of the actions he had thought responsible for his own loss of office. And then, in spite of himself, he thought of Charlotte Pitt, of love, loyalty, and wounds that would ache eternally.

Was this what it was about, a retreat into ancient sorrows, coming back to haunt one in old age? Was Serafina going back in her mind to that time, or another like it? Could she have been the one who betrayed the would-be assassin, and now feared some final revenge? Or justice?

Tregarron interrupted his thoughts.

“What can this have to do with anything today, Narraway? I can’t help you if I don’t know what on earth you’re really looking for. Or why.”

“From what you say, I rather think it has nothing to do with anything today,” Narraway lied. “As you point out, she must be in her seventies, at least. That is, if she is still alive at all, of course.” He rose to his feet, smiling very slightly. “Thank you for your time, and your candor.”

B
UT THAT WAS FAR
from what Narraway thought as he rode home in a hansom through the wet streets, glancing every now and then at the cobblestones gleaming in the reflected lamplight.

Tregarron had lied to him, if not in words, then in intent. There was something Tregarron feared, but Narraway was not sure if it was an old danger resurfacing, some past error that would jeopardize Tregarron’s present reputation or relationships, or if it was some totally new issue of which Narraway was unaware. But then, if it concerned the Austrian Empire, even had he still been in Special Branch,
he might not have been informed. Regular diplomatic affairs had nothing to do with Special Branch.

If Serafina believed she had made lasting enemies, then it was certainly possible that she was right. The idea of such a once-magnificent woman lying old and broken, fearing for her life, deeply and painfully aware that she could no longer protect herself, hurt him with a disturbing depth.

Was he becoming soft, no longer able to judge an act impartially? Yes, he did love Charlotte. It was time to admit that to himself. In fact, after Ireland, it would be absurd to deny it. He had always despised self-delusion in others, and he had come very close to practicing it himself. That she would never care for him as more than a friend was something he had to accept. If he did so with grace, then he could keep her friendship at least.

Had that devastating vulnerability changed him?

Yes, perhaps it had. For one thing, it had given him a tenderness toward Vespasia he had not felt before: a greater understanding of her as a woman, not merely her formidable courage and intelligence. She too could be hurt in ways she would never have allowed him to see, had he not also newly experienced personal pain, surprise, and self-doubt.

It was a frightening change, but not entirely a loss.

He was determined to learn a great deal more than the very general picture he had of Austro-Hungarian affairs, particularly in reference to the dictatorial emperor Franz Josef, whose only son, Crown Prince Rudolf, had died so tragically at Mayerling.

The old man’s heir was now his nephew, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, a man of whom Franz Josef did not approve. For one thing, Ferdinand had chosen to love a woman inappropriate to become the wife of the heir to the empire. The poor creature was merely some countess or the other. That made Ferdinand, in the old man’s opinion, of unsound judgment, and lacking in the dedication to duty necessary to succeed him. But he had no choice. The laws of heredity could not be argued with, or the legitimacy of the entire monarchy would be destroyed.

Should Narraway tell Vespasia the little he had learned? Perhaps
so. It would be a courtesy to Serafina. Then she would know that at least one person believed her. Next time he saw Vespasia he would do so. It would be a good reason to see her again.

And should he speak to Pitt?

Not unless anything he learned about present-day Austrian affairs indicated that there could be an assassination attempt on some visiting royalty. Pitt had more than enough to do without chasing the current danger of that, if any existed, as well as all the usual Special Branch fears of anarchist bombings, and the constant rebellions in Ireland. There were Russian dissidents in London, fleeing from the ever-increasing oppression and grinding poverty at home. Additionally, there were British-grown socialists who believed that the only way to improve life for the poor was to commit outrages against the Establishment.

Pitt did not need to hear rumors about a betrayal that happened thirty years ago and a thousand miles away. Narraway had done the job himself long enough to know the importance of leaving alone what did not matter. Telling Vespasia would be sufficient.