The Saint and the Sinner Read Free Page A

tragic death.
    Pandora even in her grief sometimes thought it better that her father and mother had died together, because either would have been completely lost without the other.
    That was the sort of marriage she wanted for herself, so how, having seen two people so happy, so content with each other, could she contemplate being married to someone like Prosper Witheridge?
    It was not only that she shrank from him physically, he was also pompous, sanctimonious, and ready to criticise and find fault with everything, just like her aunt.
    Her father had been extremely tolerant of the failings of others.
    “They do their best,” he would say when someone was criticised, or, “We must give them a chance. People can only give what they are capable of giving, and often we ask too much.”
    Prosper Witheridge would never think like that, and Pandora knew that he would have a great deal to say about the party that was taking place at Chart Hall.
    Nobody in the Bishop’s Palace ever thought how much it hurt her to hear them disparaging the man who was her cousin.
    He might be all they said he was, but she thought it would have been tactful if they had kept their condemnation of him until she was not present.
    She had never met the present Earl of Chartwood because her grandfather, the fourth Earl, had died two months after the death of her father and mother.
    He had been old and ailing for some time, and, as was to be expected, Pandora knew that he had hated his heir presumptive ferociously and had never allowed him to come to Chart Hall.
    It was understandable because her mother’s two brothers had both been killed in the war.
    The youngest had been a sailor, killed when he was only sixteen at the Battle of the Nile, fighting with Nelson in his magnificent victory over the French fleet.
    The elder son, of whom Pandora had been very fond, had been killed at Waterloo.
    Their father had been stricken not only at losing them but in knowing that the title and the Estate must now go to an obscure cousin in whom he had never taken any interest.
    It had seemed that the succession was assured, but then suddenly his sons had been swept away from him and then his daughter had died.
    As one of the villagers had said to Pandora,
    “When your mother went, His Lordship just turned his face to the wall and there was no heart left in him.”
    Pandora could understand because she felt the same, but it had been painful to learn that the fifth Earl of Chartwood was a very different man from what her uncles had been.
    Stories soon reached Lindchester of his extravagances, of wild parties, of huge wagers laid on horses, of behaviour that was apparently so outrageous that people only whispered about it in Pandora’s presence.
    Then, soon after his succession, the new Earl had come to Chart Hall and Pandora had hoped a little wistfully that he might invite her to meet him.
    There were plenty of people both in the house and on the Estate to tell him where she had gone to live, but instead there were stories at Christmastime of what amounted to an orgy.
    It had kept the gossips of the Cathedral town chattering like an aviary of parrots.
    They talked of little else until he came for the second time, two months later. Then it appeared that the County families who had intended to call were too scandalised to do so.
    When Pandora spoke to people in the village, they talked of changes and of the Earl himself with fear in their eyes.
    Her aunt denounced him in no uncertain terms, and Pandora learnt that her uncle had called formally, not only to make the new Earl’s acquaintance but also to remonstrate with him about certain things that were being done on the Estate.
    He came back both angry and affronted.
    “It is a long time since I have been insulted in such a manner!” he said.
    But he would not relate exactly what had happened, except, Pandora gathered, that the Earl had made a mockery of everything her uncle revered.
    It was now June and Pandora