Bethlehem Road

Sometimes those who cannot create enjoy the power to destroy,” Vespasia went on. “It is all they have.

Those who hold power have never in all history been inclined to relinquish it willingly. Usually it has been taken from them by force, or it has slipped from their hands because they were too weak or corrupt to retain it.

Pitt arrived at the Broad Street Station of the Great Northern Railway just in time to catch his train to Lincolnshire. He slammed the carriage door as the engine started to belch forth steam and the fireman stoked the furnace, and with a roar and a clash of iron they moved out of the vast, grimy dome into the sunlight and began the long journey past the factories and houses and through the suburbs of the largest, wealthiest, and most populous city in the world. Within its bounds lived more Scots than in Edinburgh, more Irish than in Dublin, and more Roman Catholics than in Rome.

Lady Mary came last. She looked magnificent, even regal. Her dress was highly fashionable; dark slate blue overlaid with black fleur-de-lis and stitched with jet beads across the throat and bosom, the sleeves garnered. A black hat adorned her head at a rakish angle, dashing and precarious.

She has a kind of courage I find myself admiring more with each day. She is determined to be happy, to see what is good and to make the best of what is not.