A Christmas Homecoming - Anne Perry [49]
“What time was that?”
“Just before midnight. I waited around, like, but it wasn’t goin’ to get any better, so I gave up.”
“How long do you think they argued?”
“ ’Alf hour, maybe more.”
“So I don’t think they could have seen what happened to Mr. Ballin.”
“No, ma’am. They was too angry to see anythin’ else but the curtains an’ walls an’ the like.”
“Were they going to redecorate the bedroom as well?”
“Yes, ma’am. An’ the mistress says as it in’t goin’ to be brown this time.” She looked pleased. “Wot lady, ’ceptin’ ’is mam, wants a brown bedroom?”
“None,” Caroline agreed. “Mine is mostly pink and red, and I love it.”
Tess breathed out in a sigh of pleasure. “Cor! An’ your husband don’t mind?”
“If he did I wouldn’t have done it. The pink is very pale and cool, and the red is hot. He likes it.”
Tess went out smiling so widely that Caroline heard the other maid on the landing asking her what had happened. The tale of Caroline’s bedroom would be all over the house in an hour.
The last person Caroline spoke to was Alice herself. She found her alone after dinner in a long gallery overlooking the snowbound darkness of the countryside. There was nothing to see except an occasional light in the distance where the city lay, shrouded in snow, just like them.
“I shall miss you when you’re gone,” Alice said quietly. It was simply a statement. She did not seem to be expecting a reply. She took a deep breath. “And I miss Mr. Ballin. Do you think it was Douglas who killed him, Mrs. Fielding?”
“No,” Caroline replied without hesitation. “Nor was it your father.”
Alice turned to face Caroline. Even in the candlelight and shadow of the gallery, Caroline could see the shock and shame in Alice’s face.
“Were you not afraid of that as well?” Caroline asked her. “You know if you want to break off your engagement to Douglas and come to London, it will take a great change of heart on your father’s part, to allow that.” She bit her lip. “And he might be a good deal less inclined to back our company in the future, if he feels that we have influenced you toward that.”
“But he invited you up here to help me!” Alice protested. “You came. If he then blamed you for what happened as a result, that would be monstrously unfair.”
“Not really. He has no obligation to back us.”
“But that is why you came?”
Caroline felt the heat in her own face. But she could not deny it now. “Yes. But things don’t always work out the way you expect.”
“I have enough money to live for quite a while in London, even if I don’t earn anything right away.” Alice turned again to stare back out the window into the darkness.
“It would be a very big change,” Caroline warned.
“I know. Leaving home always is, but there are all sorts of ways in which I am not really at home here. I … I feel that if I marry Douglas I shall have stopped growing, the way a plant does if you put it in too small a pot. The flowers never open, the fruit never forms … that will be what I’ll feel like.” She looked at Caroline again. “Is it worth dying a little inside, just to be safe from hurt, or failure? And there’s more than one kind of loneliness. You could spend all your life with people who only know what they think you are, what they think you ought to be, and never let you be anything different.”
“Yes, but growing can hurt, and you don’t always get what you want,” Caroline warned. “Or sometimes you do, and then find that you don’t want it so much after all.”
“So is it better to not even try?” Alice asked earnestly. “I was going to say ‘to stay at home,’ but surely home is where you are yourself, your best self, isn’t it? I don’t think that for me it is Whitby. Not any more.”
“Then perhaps you had better find out where your home truly lies,” Caroline