The Firebird

She said, ‘Because he has a reputation that does go before him, as does yours, and you feel moved by that to grant him all the benefit of doubt that you are oftentimes denied.’

‘Of all the … woman, you exhaust me, do you know that? Yes, you’re right, you have exposed me. I do feel a sense of kinship with the man.’

‘You see? I knew it.’

‘One day,’ Edmund warned, ‘I’m going to fall down dead, stone dead, right in the middle of the street, and when I meet St Peter at the Gates he’ll ask me: Edmund, what became of you? And I’ll say, I did walk with Anna Jamieson a mile too far, that’s what.’

She told him, calmly, ‘You’re assuming it’s St Peter you’ll be meeting.’

‘Up or down,’ he said, ‘the sympathy will no doubt be the same.’

They walked some paces more, and then she said, ‘A man like Captain Deane seems charming at the first, but he is charming for a purpose, and in truth he values nothing but himself. So long as any other man can be of use to him, if only to pay homage to his high opinion of his value, he will let them think he is their greatest friend and ally, but let any man oppose him, even question him, and he will show the venom that does flow within his veins.’ She looked at Edmund. ‘You must watch his face when he is watching someone else, for then you’ll truly see the workings of the man.’

‘Now that,’ said Edmund, ‘sounds like an instruction from your nuns.’

‘Not from the nuns.’ Her smile was faint. ‘From someone who was all that Captain Deane is not.’

‘And have you ever tried that trick with me?’

She took a sudden interest in a passing cart, and Edmund grinned.

‘You have! Pray, who was I then watching when you saw my inner self?’

She told him, ‘Helen, if you must know.’

‘Helen Lacy? Little Helen?’

Anna nodded. ‘You were telling her about the Cailleagh. Telling her she need not be afraid.’

‘And you discovered me from that?’

‘I think I did, yes.’

He stayed silent after that until they’d nearly reached the line of Colleges. And then he asked, ‘Why do you not say “aye”?’

She turned her head, a little puzzled by the question, and it must have showed because he carried on, ‘When you are angry, you say “aye”. But not at any other time.’

‘“Yes” is more ladylike.’ The answer came with automatic ease, as she’d been hearing it for years. ‘It was the wish of those who raised me I should always act as though I were a lady.’

‘And is acting for your whole life something that will give you pleasure? For my part, I could not do it.’

Anna told him, ‘No one ever would suspect you, sir, of acting like a lady.’

Edmund laughed aloud at that, a sound that drew the stares of people round them, and one figure moved through all the rest and came at them with black skirts billowing like sails.

‘Good morrow, Mistress Jamieson,’ said Mrs Hewitt, ‘and Mr O’Connor.’

‘Mrs Hewitt.’ Anna watched the woman warily as they exchanged their honours, for it was a rare thing for the merchant’s wife to seek her out, when Mr Hewitt and Vice Admiral Gordon had been openly at odds this year upon the matter of a rented house.

‘You know my husband is at Moscow,’ said the woman, ‘but today being his birthday I did think to hold a supper in his honour at the house. Not an assembly, mind, for in this time of mourning that would never do. More like a gathering of friends. And I’d be honoured if you’d come, Mr O’Connor.’

Edmund, who’d been taking interest in some goings-on across the square, not paying true attention, brought his gaze back with a lifting of dark eyebrows. ‘Me?’

The woman nodded. ‘Captain Deane did ask me, in particular, if you would be there, and we are so short on men. He said—ah, here he is now. Captain Deane, good morrow to you, sir.’

The captain on this day, as ever, made a most attractive figure, with a face most women did find handsome and compelling. His black suit had been tailored to the very latest fashion, like the thick white wig tied neatly with a ribbon at his collar, underneath a fine, expensive hat. He was quite tall, and strongly built, and straight of back, and gave the full appearance of a man of all accomplishments and power, one whom others would do very well to follow.

And his smile, as always, showed teeth of a perfect even whiteness.

Like a wolf’s, thought Anna. For although there was no outward cause to fault the captain, there was something she found wanting in his eyes, a strange detachment mixed with cunning that put her in mind of the grey beasts that prowled the untamed forests just outside St Petersburg, and sometimes came within the city’s streets to seek their meals.

And wanting Edmund, now, to see it too, she did not hide her feelings when Deane greeted her, for well she knew his mask slipped much more easily when he did not receive the adulation that he took to be his due.

‘I should imagine, sir, you find St Petersburg more welcoming than you did find it when you left,’ she said.

His smile stayed, although his eyes grew colder. ‘Yes,’ he answered, in his smoothly English voice, ‘I do.’

‘It is a shame that you did not return while yet the Tsar was living, for I should expect your welcome then would have been even warmer.’

He dismissed her with a glance, and would have said something to Edmund had not Anna drawn him back with, ‘Tell me, when do you take up your new position?’