Ashworth Hall - Anne Perry [23]
“Under Parnell?” Kezia said harshly. “Do you think he’ll survive this? Katie O’Shea put an end to that!”
“Don’t be such a hypocrite,” Iona retorted. “Sure he’s as guilty as she is. It’s Captain O’Shea who is the only innocent one.”
“The way I read it,” Charlotte interrupted, “Captain O’Shea threw them together for his own political advancement. Which makes him as guilty as anyone, and for a less honorable reason.”
“He didn’t commit adultery,” Kezia lashed out, her face flushed with anger and indignation. “That is a sin next to murder.”
“And manipulating another man to fall in love with your wife, and then selling her to him for your profit, and when it doesn’t work, pillorying her in public is all right?” Charlotte asked incredulously.
Emily let out a long groan.
Eudora looked around the room frantically.
Suddenly Charlotte wanted to laugh. The whole scene was absurd. But if she did, they would all think she had taken leave of her senses. Perhaps that would not be a bad thing. Anything might be better than this.
“Have another crumpet?” she offered Kezia. “They really are delicious. This conversation is appalling. We have all been unpardonably rude and placed ourselves in positions from which we have no way of retreating with any dignity at all.”
They stared at her as if she had spoken in tongues.
She took a deep breath. “The only way would be to pretend none of it happened and start again. Tell me, Miss Moynihan, if you had a considerable sum of money, and the time to indulge yourself, where would you most like to travel, and why?”
She heard Emily gulp.
Kezia hesitated.
The fire sank with a shower of sparks. In a minute or two Emily would have to ring for the footman to come and stoke it up again.
“Egypt,” Kezia replied at last. “I should like to sail up the Nile and visit the Great Pyramids and the temples at Luxor and Karnak. Where would you like to go, Mrs. Pitt?”
“Venice,” Charlotte said without thinking. “Or …” She had been going to say “Rome,” and then bit her tongue. “Or Florence,” she said instead. She could feel hysteria rising in her. “Yes, Florence would be marvelous.”
Emily relaxed and rang the bell for the footman.
Gracie had a very busy afternoon. She found Gwen continuously helpful, but it was Doll, Eudora Greville’s maid, who taught her how to make silk stockings look flesh colored by adding, to the washing a little rose-pink and thin soap, then rubbing them with a clean flannel and mangling them nearly dry. The result was excellent.
“Thank you very much,” she said enthusiastically.
Doll smiled. “Oh, there’s a few tricks as are worth knowing. Got plenty of blue paper, have you? Or blue cloth will do as well.”
“No. What for?”
“Always put white clothes away in a box or drawer lined with blue. That way they won’t go all yellow. Nothing looks worse than whites as ’ave gone yellow. Come to that, I s’pose you know how to care for pearls?” She saw from Gracie’s face that she didn’t. “It’s easy when you know how, but make a mistake an’ you could ruin ’em—or worse, lose ’em altogether. Like in vinegar!” She gave a wry little laugh. “You boil bran in water, then strain it, add a little tartar and alum, hot as you can stand. Then rub the pearls in your ’ands till they’re white again. Then rinse ’em in lukewarm water and set ’em on white paper and leave ’em in a dark drawer to cool off. Works a treat.”
Gracie was very impressed. A few days at Ashworth Hall, paying attention, and she was going to be on the way to becoming a real lady’s maid. And she could read and write as well.
“Thank you,” she said again, lifting her chin a little higher. “That’s very gracious of you.”
Doll smiled, and something of the guardedness in her relaxed.
Gracie would like to have stayed and talked longer with her, learned more, but in displaying her own lack of experience she was inviting speculation as to why Charlotte should have such an ignorant maid.
“I’ll make a note o’ that, for if any of our pearls should get dull or lose their color,” she