Traitors Gate by Anne Perry Page A

personal capacity. “It is an excellent idea. Thank you for your assistance, sir.”
    “Yourself and your wife? You are married, I presume?”
    “Yes indeed.”
    “Excellent. I shall have my footman deliver them by six. Your address?”
    Pitt gave it, with pleasure that it was the new house, and after a moment or two, took his leave. If he were to attend a reception at Marlborough House in a few hours, he had a very great deal to attend to. And Charlotte would have even more. Her sister, Emily, from whom she usually borrowed gowns for the better social occasions, was currently abroad in Italy again. Her husband, Jack, was very newly a member of Parliament, and since Parliament was in recess for the summer, they had taken the opportunity to travel. Borrowing from her would not be possible. She would have to try Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould, Emily’s great-aunt by her first marriage, to Lord Ashworth.
        “What?” Charlotte said in disbelief. “Tonight? That’s impossible! It’s nearly five o’clock now!” She was standing in the kitchen with plates in her hand.
    “I do realize it is not much time….” Pitt began. It was only now beginning to dawn upon him what an enormity he had committed.
    “Not much time!” Her voice rose in something close to a squeal and she put the plates down with a clatter. “To prepare for something like this would take a week. Thomas, you do know who the Duchess of Marlborough is, I suppose? There could be royalty present! There could be everybody who is anyone at all—there almost certainly will be.” Suddenly the outrage vanished from her face and wasreplaced by an overwhelming curiosity. “How in Heaven’s name did you get an invitation to the Duchess of Marlborough’s reception? There are people in London who would commit crimes to get such a thing.” Amusement tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Don’t tell me someone has?”
    He felt laughter at the absurdity of it well up inside him too. It was such a wild contrast with the truth. Perhaps he ought not to mention it to her. It was a highly confidential matter, but he had always trusted her in the past, although of course no previous case had involved matters of state.
    She saw his hesitation. “They have!” Her eyes were wide, and she was uncertain whether to laugh or not.
    “No—no,” he said hastily. “The matter is very much more serious than that.”
    “Are you not working on Sir Arthur’s death?” she said quickly. “That can’t have anything to do with the Duchess of Marlborough. And even if it had, you wouldn’t just get an invitation because you wanted one. I don’t think even Aunt Vespasia could do that.” That was the height of social power.
    Vespasia had been the foremost beauty of her day, not only for her classic features and exquisite coloring, but for her grace, wit and extraordinary panache. Now in her eighties, she was still beautiful. Her wit had sharpened because she was assured in her position, and no longer cared in the slightest what anyone thought of her, as long as she rested easily in her own conscience. She espoused causes few others dared to, liked and disliked whom and what she pleased, and enjoyed pastimes of which many a younger and more cautious woman would have been afraid. But she still could not command an invitation to the Duchess of Marlborough’s receptions at short notice, and for someone else.
    “Yes, I am working on Sir Arthur’s death,” Pitt answered with some stretching of the truth. He followed her as she whirled into sudden activity, turning to go into the passage and up the stairs.
    “But I am also working on another matter Matthew left with me this morning, and it is in connection with that,” Pitt said from behind her, “that we are going to the Duchess of Marlborough’s this evening. The invitations came through Mr. Linus Chancellor, of the Colonial Office.”
    She stopped on the landing. “Linus Chancellor. I’ve heard of him. He’s very