The Whitechapel Conspiracy by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online

at Vespasia with regret, a shred of humor, and then played his part in the trivialities.
    Vespasia was able to excuse herself and moved on to speak to a politician she had known for years. He looked weary and amused, his face deeply lined, full of character. They had shared personal crusades in the past, triumph and tragedy, and a fair share of farce.
    “Good evening, Somerset,” she said with genuine pleasure. She had forgotten how fond of him she had been. His failures had been magnificent, as had his successes, and he had carried them both with grace.
    “Lady Vespasia!” His eyes were alight. “Suddenly a breath of sanity!” He took the hand she offered, barely brushing it with his lips in a gesture rather than an act. “I wish we had a new crusade, but this is beyond even us, I think.” He glanced around at the opulent room and the ever-increasing numberof men and women in it, laughing together, diamonds blazing, light on silks and pale skin, swathes of lace, shimmering brocades. His eyes hardened. “It will destroy itself … if it doesn’t see sense in the next year or two.” There was regret in his voice, and confusion. “Why can’t they see that?”
    “Do you really think so?” She assumed for a moment that perhaps he was speaking for effect, a little dramatic overstatement. Then she saw the tightness of his lips and the shadow over his eyes. “You do….”
    He turned to her. “If Bertie doesn’t curtail his spending a great deal”—he inclined his head momentarily towards the Prince of Wales ten yards away, laughing uproariously at someone’s joke—“and the Queen doesn’t come back into public life and start courting her people again.” There was another guffaw of laughter a few yards away.
    Somerset Carlisle lowered his voice. “Lots of us suffer grief, Vespasia. Most of us lose something we love in our lives. We can’t afford to give up—stop working because of it. The country is made up of a few aristocrats, hundreds of thousands of doctors, lawyers, and priests, a million or two shopkeepers and traders of one sort or another, and farmers. And dozens of millions of ordinary men and women who work from dawn to dusk because they have to, to feed those who depend on them, the old and the young. Men die, and women break their hearts. We go on.”
    Somewhere at the far end of the room the music started. There was a tinkle of glass.
    “You can’t lead people from more than a certain distance away,” he went on. “She isn’t one of us anymore. She has allowed herself to become irrelevant. And Bertie is too much one of us, with his appetites—only he isn’t indulging them on his own money, as the rest of us have to!”
    Vespasia knew that what he said was true, but she had not heard anyone else put it quite so boldly. Somerset Carlisle had an irresponsible wit and a high sense of the bizarre, which she knew only too well. She still felt a note of hysteria rise inside her when she thought of their past battles and the grotesque things he had done in his attempts to force throughreform. But she knew him too well to think he was joking or exaggerating now.
    “Victoria will be the last monarch,” he said almost under his breath, a harsh edge of regret in his voice. “If some people have their way … believe me. There is unrest in the country more profound than anything we’ve had in two centuries or more. The poverty in some places is almost unbelievable, not to mention the anti-Catholic feeling, the fear of the liberal Jews who’ve come into London after the ’48 revolutions in Europe, and of course there are always the Irish.”
    “Exactly,” she agreed. “We’ve always had most of these elements. Why now, Somerset?”
    He remained silent for several moments. People passed them. One or two spoke, and the others nodded in acknowledgment but did not intrude.
    “I’m not sure,” he said finally. “A mixture of things. Time. It’s nearly thirty years since Prince Albert died.