An Anne Perry Christmas_ Two Holiday Novels - Anne Perry [13]
The silence in the room was broken by the sound of a sudden shower lashing the windows.
“I won't!” Isobel said in a rush of outrage. “The north of Scotland! At this time of year? And to… to face… absolutely not.” She stood up, her body shaking, her face burning with hectic color. “I will not do it.” For a moment she stared at them, and then left the room, grasping the door until it slammed against the farther wall, then swinging it shut after her.
Vespasia half rose also, then realized the futility of it and sat down again.
“I thought she wouldn't,” Lady Warburton said with a smile of satisfaction.
Vespasia thought for an instant of a crocodile who fears it is robbed of its prey, and then feels its teeth sink into flesh after all. “You must be pleased,” she said aloud. “I imagine you would have found it nigh on impossible to know something unkind about someone and be unable to repeat it to others.”
Lady Warburton looked at her coldly, her face suddenly bloodless, eyes glittering. “I would be more careful in my choice of friends, if I were you, Lady Vespasia. Your father's title will not protect you forever. There is a degree of foolishness beyond which even you will have to pay.”
“You are suggesting I desert my friends the moment it becomes inconvenient to me?” Vespasia inquired, although there was barely an inflection in her tone, only heavy disgust. “Why does it not astound me that you should say so?” She also rose to her feet. “Excuse me,” she said to no one in particular, and left the room.
Outside in the hall she was completely alone. There was no servant in sight, no footman waiting to be called. They had taken Omegus's request for privacy as an absolute order. There was something strangely judicial about it, as if everything, even domestic detail, might be different from now on.
She crossed the wooden parquet and climbed slowly up the great staircase. A few words had changed everything. But they were not merely words: They sprang from thoughts and passions, deep tides that had been there all the time; it was only the knowledge of them that was new.
espasia found it difficult to concentrate on dressing for dinner. Her maid suggested one gown after another, but nothing seemed appropriate, nor for once did she really care. The silks, laces, embroidery, the whole palette of subtle and gorgeous colors seemed an empty pleasure. Gwendolen was dead, from whatever despair real or imagined that had gripped her, and Isobel was on the brink of suffering more than she yet understood.
She thought everyone else would be dressing soberly, in grief for Gwendolen, and in parade of their sense of social triumph, somber but victorious. She decided to wear purple. It suited her porcelain skin and the shimmering glory of her hair. It would be beautiful, appropriate for half mourning, and outrageous for a woman of her youth. Altogether it would serve every purpose.
She swept down the stairs again, as she had only an evening ago, to gasps of surprise, and either admiration or envy, depending upon whether it was Lord Salchester or Lady Warburton. The merest glance told her that Isobel was not yet there. Would she have the courage to come?
Omegus was at her elbow, his face carefully smoothed of expression, but she could not mistake the anxiety in his eyes.
“She is not going to run away, is she?” he said so quietly that Blanche Twyford, only a yard or two from them, could not have heard.
Vespasia had exactly the same fear. “I don't know,” she admitted. “I think she is very angry. There is a certain injustice in putting the blame entirely upon her. If Bertie was so easily put off, then he did not love Gwendolen with much depth or honor.”
“Of course not, my dear,” Omegus murmured. “Surely that is the disillusion which really hurt Gwendolen more than she could bear.”
Suddenly it made agonizing sense.