Free Brunswick Gardens by Anne Perry Page A

it.
    “Actually, I can imagine it only too easily,” he confessed.
    “Can you?” She was surprised, and he thought there was a hint of satisfaction also. Was it because she would rather it were he than her father? The thought chilled him. He was suddenly aware of being an outsider, the one person in the house who was not a member of the family. It was a shock that it should be Clarice of all of them who reminded him of it. She had seemed the warmest, the one who had the fewest barriers between herself and the world.
    “I imagine we all could, if we were hurt,” he said a little coolly. “Mallory certainly expressed plain enough satisfaction that she was gone.”
    “Mal?” Her eyebrows rose. “I thought he rather liked her, underneath all the arguments.”
    “Liked her?” Dominic was amazed.
    “Yes.” She turned and started towards the foot of the stairs. “He hung that Rossetti picture back in the library for her. He hates it. He hid it away in the morning room where none of the family ever go.”
    “Are you sure he doesn’t like it?”
    “Yes, of course I am. It is far too sensuous, almost provocative.” She shrugged. “She liked it, but then she would.”
    “So do I. I think Rossetti’s subject is lovely.”
    “She is, but Mal thinks she is wanton.”
    “Then why did he hang it back in the library?”
    “Because Unity asked him to!” she said with a lift of impatience at his slowness. “He also went for her to pick up a parcel of books from the station … three times in the last two weeks. He was in the middle of studying, and it was pouring with rain. Why?” Her voice rose. “Because she asked him to! And he stopped wearing that green jacket he is so fond of … because she objected to it. So I am not entirely sure that he disliked her as much as you think.”
    He cast his mind back to the incidents she was referring to, and in each case she was right. The more he thought about it, the less did Mallory’s behavior seem in character. He hated the rain. He spoke often of how he looked forward to the warmer, drier climate of Rome; it was an incidental blessing of his vocation. Dominic had never known him to run errands for anyone else. Even his mother met with a polite refusal when she asked him to go to the apothecary. He was studying; it took precedence over everything. Dominic knew nothing about the green jacket. He seldom noticed what men wore—though always what women did. But the Rossetti picture was different. That was unforgettable.
    How curious. So Mallory had done Unity a number of favors in spite of his apparent contempt for her. Dominic did not have to look far for an explanation that was believable. Unity had been a remarkably attractive woman. It had been far more than a beauty of face or coloring, it was a vitality, an intelligence, aconstant awareness of the joy and the challenge of life. He still remembered it himself with pain. But he had not realized it had touched Mallory.
    “Perhaps you are right,” he said aloud. “I didn’t know about that.”
    “He was probably trying to convert her,” Clarice remarked dryly. “He could have beaten Father soundly if he won her for the Church of Rome after all the time she’s spent translating learned documents for the Church of England.”
    “They were the same at the period of time they are dealing with,” he pointed out.
    “I know that!” she said tartly, although it was obvious she had forgotten. “That’s why they need all these different translations. One for each sect, don’t you know,” she added, and with that she went up the stairs quickly and without looking back at him.
        No one bothered with luncheon. Ramsay remained upstairs in his study. Vita wrote letters, Tryphena mourned in private, and Clarice went down to the music room and played the Dead March from “Saul” on the piano.
    It would be nice to think the tragedy would be left as an unsolved mystery, something about which the truth could never