Exactly where the soft ground changed to mud, he turned her to him and asked once again, with gentleness, ‘What is it?’
‘I have heard something.’ She gathered up her courage and then took a breath and looked him in the eye. ‘I have heard something that I do not believe, nor will I yet believe it until I have heard it from yourself, sir.’
She’d imagined it, she told herself. She’d only just imagined that he’d stiffened in response to that, the way a man might brace himself against a coming blow.
She said, ‘I’m told that you did talk to Captain Deane, the day before he left St Petersburg. And that you did inform him of some things that you should not have, and did promise to inform him further.’
Edmund let her go, and turned a little from her so she could not see the whole of his expression, though she saw enough to know his face was serious. ‘Who told you this?’
She asked him, ‘Does it matter?’
He looked down at that, and she could see the faint edge of that half-smile that was not a smile, the one that held no humour. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose it matters much at all.’
Her voice betrayed her with a tremor. ‘Is it true?’
He turned his head then, and his eyes found hers. ‘You really don’t believe it?’
‘I confess that I cannot.’
Why that should make his eyes turn sad at first, then darken into anger, Anna could not claim to know, but he controlled the anger as he asked, ‘And why is that?’
‘Because,’ she started, but he had turned fully back towards her now and come a slow step forwards, and she faltered. ‘I …’
‘Because you saw me looking at a child once, and you think you know my nature?’ Leaning in, he brought his face to hers and told her, ‘Look again.’
She still saw only Edmund, but she felt the heated pricking as her eyes began to fill, and with an oath he straightened to his full height.
‘’Tis the truth. You’ve heard correctly.’
Anna forced the tears back with an effort, looking up at him, unable to look elsewhere for a few long, painful seconds. When her hand moved, she was almost unaware of it. Until she heard the slap, and felt the stinging of her palm, and saw the red mark spread along his jaw. She slapped him once again, still harder, and he stood there silently and let her do it.
Nothing in his face changed, nor his stance, and Anna had the strong impression that he would have stood there for as long as she desired to hit him, without ever moving to defend himself. She wondered if he’d stood like that, so stoically, when as a boy he had been whipped in punishment until his hand was cut and bleeding, for a crime that was not his. Except this time, she told herself, he was not being noble. This time he deserved the blame.
She let her hand drop. Turned away before the tears spilt over.
She did not ask for details, for in truth it hardly mattered. But there was one thing she wished to know. ‘What did he offer you?’ she asked. ‘What was your price?’
The silence stretched. And then he said, ‘A pardon, Mistress Jamieson. A pardon from King George.’
She gave a nod, and in a small voice told him, ‘Well, then. Now you can go home again.’
And without looking back, she walked away.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
The reception was nearly half over before I arrived. I had spent a long time in the shower, just standing there, letting the water wash over me, thinking. I’d spent even longer deciding what I ought to wear. But the longest time had been spent willing my own feet to carry me, step after step, from the hotel and down to the river and over the long bridge back onto the island, the same way I’d walked there this morning with Rob.
I had not seen or heard from him. I knew he’d closed himself off and he wanted to keep it that way, so I hadn’t intruded. I didn’t know whether he knew that I’d done a whole vision without him, alone. Had it happened a day ago, I’d have been wanting to tell him about it, exchanging my pride for his praise, but today it had been such a hollow victory, and what I’d seen had been so sad, I’d felt no sense of triumph or accomplishment.
And now I stood in the beautiful Great Hall upstairs in the Menshikov Palace, a full and untouched glass of wine in my hand, and tried taking an interest in what everybody was saying, and I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t.
‘Hey.’ Wendy Van Hoek nudged my shoulder. ‘Are you OK?’
With her striking looks and a pair of truly amazing high-heeled shoes, she managed somehow to make a plain cream-coloured pantsuit look more glamorous than my black cocktail frock. Even though my wine was white, I held it with new care, remembering Sebastian’s disaster.
I forced a smile. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Good. Your timing was perfect, you’ve missed all the speeches,’ she said with a smile. ‘We’ll be heading downstairs in a moment, to tour the exhibit.’
Terrific, I thought. I did drink the wine, then, if a little too quickly.
Downstairs, Yuri took his turn giving the guests several insights into the selected works, slipping from Russian and French into English with laudable ease so that everyone there had a chance to appreciate what he was saying.
‘This was a great strength of the Peredvizhniki – their portraiture. They moved it from the realm of privilege, the family portrait or the portrait of great persons, to the universal, yes? Their art was not for private viewing, it was for the public, and their subjects were the ordinary Russian people. This was very new, very exciting. Here you see it, in this study from a mural done by Surikov.’ He stopped, to my dismay, in front of the one painting in the whole room I’d been doing my best not to look at. ‘When he painted this, Surikov was just beginning, just from the Academy, but you can already see what will come in his portraits. This face, this is not done for anyone’s vanity, is it? It’s real.’