Acceptable Loss - Anne Perry [36]
It was the first time he had ever avoided seeking the truth, and he was ashamed. Fate had allowed him to escape facing the possible reality, and it was an undeserved gift.
This evening he would take Margaret to the dinner party for which they had already accepted an invitation. He would make it a celebration, a time of happiness she would remember. He allowed himself to think of that until the clerk told him the first client of the day had arrived.
THE DINNER PARTY WAS magnificent. Rathbone had recently given Margaret a beautiful necklace of garnets and river pearls, with earrings and a bracelet to match. It was a bit extravagant, but exactly the kind of rich yet discreet setting she most liked. This evening she wore them with a gown of deep wine-red silk. It was fuller-skirted than she usually chose and perhaps even a little lower at the bosom. The jewels gleamed against her pale, flawless skin, and with a faint flush of happiness in her cheeks she was lovelier than he had ever seen her before.
They swept into the main reception room with a rustle of silk and to polite words of welcome. There were nearly a score of people present. The men were in elegant black, women in a blaze of colors, from the youngest in gleaming pastels to older doyennes of the aristocracy in burgundies, midnight blues, plums, and rich browns. Diamonds glinted with suppressed fire; ropes of pearls glowed on bare skin. There was soft laughter, the clink of glass, slight movement, like a wind through a field of flowers.
Margaret held Rathbone’s arm a little more tightly. He could smell the warmth of her perfume, sweet and indefinable.
“Ah! Sir Oliver—Lady Rathbone! How delightful to see you.” The welcome was repeated again and again. He knew them all and didn’t need to rack his memory for a name, a position, or an achievement. He replied easily, shared a joke or an item of news, a comment on the latest book or exhibition of art.
It was not until they went in to dinner that he realized there was an odd number of them, something no hostess in England would ever allow intentionally.
“What is it?” Margaret whispered, seeing his puzzlement.
“There are nineteen of us,” he replied, speaking almost under his breath.
“Something must have happened,” she said with certainty. “Someone is ill.” She looked around casually, trying to conceal the fact. “It’s a man,” she said finally. “There are ten women here.”
Then suddenly the answer was obvious, as was the reason no one had mentioned it. The missing man was Lord Cardew.
Considering who had been invited, Rathbone was certain that when the ladies had retired after dinner, the gentlemen would be discussing over port and cigars the vexed question of industrial pollution. He remembered Ballinger saying it was a subject Lord Cardew had been involved in for years. Rathbone wondered if it had been Cardew who had somehow prevailed upon Lord Justice Garslake to change his mind, and thus the ruling of the Court of Appeal on the case.
He felt a sinking sensation of misery inside himself, and guilt that he was here with his happiness unclouded. It was in no way his fault that Rupert Cardew had murdered Parfitt. It was Rathbone’s relief that shamed him, and the fact that he had been prepared to look the other way when discomfort threatened his own happiness. Perhaps Lord Cardew had done that for years—refused to see what Rupert really was, face the truth and at least attempt to do something about it. In that, then, they would be the same, except that Rathbone had not had to pay anything for it.
“Oliver?” Margaret’s voice interrupted his thoughts.
He dismissed them immediately, forcing himself to think only of the moment, and of her.
“Yes,” he lied. “Someone must have been taken ill. Let us hope it is slight and he will soon be better.” He put his hand over hers briefly, then moved forward, smiling, and took his place at the table.
No one mentioned Cardew,