Free The Secret Adventures of Charlotte Brontë by Laura Joh Rowland Page B

Noticing his bleak, strained expression, however, I realized that he must know, and I felt a rush of sympathy.
    “Please let me explain,” he said as a flock of chattering patrons streamed into the gallery. “I’m the vicar of a parish outside Canterbury.” His voice was quiet but resonant, with the same North Country accent as Isabel; he held a black hat in hands that were well shaped and clean. “Isabel and I had arranged to meet in London for a holiday together, but when I went to our rendezvous place yesterday, she never came. I didn’t know what else to do except go to the police. They told me Isabel had been killed.”
    Gilbert White drew deep breaths; looking away from me, he blinked rapidly.
    “I am so sorry for your loss,” I said, moved by his grief and wishing I had more to offer than condolences. As a parson’s daughter, I regularly have occasion to comfort the bereaved, but I always feel my helplessness.
    “It is God’s will, and I must accept it,” he murmured. “Yet I shall have no peace until I know what happened to Isabel. Somehow I cannot believe she was killed by a common thief.” He turned on me a gaze filled with anguish and frustration. “The police told me you knew her and that you witnessed the murder. I decided that I must speak with you and learn as much as possible about my sister’s death, so I went to the Chapter Coffee House—the police said you had lodgings there. The proprietor told me where to find you.”
    I did not recall telling the proprietor I was going to the National Gallery, but I supposed he had overheard Anne and me discussing our plans at breakfast. Neither did I think to wonder how Mr. White had recognized me, a stranger, in the crowd.
    “Might I beg a few more moments of conversation with you, Miss Brontë?” His keen face alight with entreaty, Gilbert White said, “Would you let me buy you a cup of tea?”
    Ordinarily I would have declined an invitation from a stranger, yet I could hardly refuse aid to a bereaved brother. He was a respectable man of the cloth, and drinking tea with him in public would harm neither my person nor my reputation. And perhaps he represented an opportunity to discharge the duty I felt towards Isabel White.
    “Yes; I would be glad to tell you whatever I can,” I said.
    Anne came looking for me then, and I introduced her to Gilbert White. We went to a coffee shop whose clientele consisted of modestly dressed ladies and a few clergymen. A maid in a frilled cap and apron served us tea. When I told Gilbert White about Isabel’s behavior on the train, he reacted with bewilderment.
    “I had no idea that Isabel was in such a bad state,” he said. “Her recent letters to me indicated naught of the sort. Did you ever see the person she feared?”
    “No,” I said. “I couldn’t be sure whether anyone was actually following her, or whether she just thought so.”
    “Did she say who it was?”
    Regretting to disappoint him, I again replied in the negative, then described what had happened to me at the opera and the Chapter Coffee House. “I suspect those incidents might be connected to Isabel’s murder, but unfortunately, I don’t know who was responsible.”
    “That someone would attack innocent women!” Gilbert White exclaimed, clearly shaken. “The world has become a dangerous place.”
    “I wondered if Isabel was in trouble of some kind.” I related Isabel’s strange remark about hoping to escape punishment. “I also wondered if her trouble stemmed from her employment with Mr. Lock of Birmingham.”
    Gilbert White stirred sugar into his tea, his expression dazed as if he could make no sense of all he’d heard. Studying him covertly, I decided that most people would think him too dark, sharp-featured, and disheveled for fashion, but I found his looks oddly alluring. I couldn’t help comparing him to George Smith. He wasn’t as handsome, but I discerned in him a depth of character and feeling that George Smith