Ashworth Hall - Anne Perry [94]
She turned around slowly on the stool and stared at Pitt.
“Did she kill him?”
“Doll or Eudora?” he asked, staring at her.
“Doll, of course!” Then she realized that it could also be Eudora, from the same act, for different reasons. Was that why Pitt had looked so very gentle with her? He understood and pitied her? She was beautiful, vulnerable, so desperately in need of strength and support. Her world had been shattered, the present, the future, and some of the past too. In a space of days she had been robbed of all that she was. No wonder he was sorry for her. She called out to all that was best in him, the gentleness, the ability to see without judgment, to pursue truth—and yet still suffer for the pain it brought.
There was much of the knight errant in him, the hunger to be needed, to struggle and to rescue, to measure his strength against the dragons of wrong. Eudora was the perfect maiden in distress. Charlotte was not, not anymore. She was vulnerable in quite different ways, only inside herself. She stood in no danger, just a faint sense of not being entirely included, not factually but in some depth of the emotions.
“No, I don’t believe so,” he said, answering her question about Doll.
“Does it have anything to do with Greville’s death?”
“I don’t know … directly or indirectly. I hope not.”
She turned back to the dressing table, reaching for the rose milk. She was not ready to go to bed yet. She smoothed the milk into her face over and over again, then into her neck, then her face once more, pressing her hands up to her temples, regardless of getting it into her hair. It was ten more minutes before she turned out the gas lamp and crawled into bed beside Pitt. She touched him gently, but he was already asleep.
Breakfast was extremely trying. Charlotte made the effort to rise early, though she did not feel in the least like it, but she could not leave Emily to cope alone. As it was, she was the first to arrive, followed almost immediately by Padraig Doyle. She welcomed him, watching with interest as he helped himself to food from the sideboard and took his place. As he had been every day since he arrived, he was immaculately dressed, and his sleek, dark hair was brushed almost to a polish. His long face, with its humorous eyes and mouth, was set in lines of perfect composure.
“Good morning, Mrs. Pitt,” he said with a slight lift to his voice. She was not sure if it was genuine indifference to the distress in the house, a determination to overcome it, a natural will to fight despair and the courage to sustain the battle, or simply the music of the Irish brogue. She could not help responding to it. Regardless of its reason, one felt better for it. She liked him so much better than Fergal Moynihan, with his somber, rather dour air. If she had been Iona, looking for someone to fall in love with, she would have chosen Padraig Doyle far sooner, regardless of the twenty years or so between them. He would have been so much more interesting, more fun to be with.
“Good morning, Mr. Doyle,” she replied with a smile. “Have you seen what a clear sky it is? It will make walking in the woods very pleasant.”
He smiled back; it was a gesture of understanding as well as friendship.
“A relief,” he agreed. “It is rather difficult to find sufficient to do on a wet day, when conversation is as full of pitfalls as ours.”
She allowed herself to laugh very slightly, and reached for the toast and apricot preserves.
Iona came in, greeting them both and taking her place. As usual, she declined the food on the sideboard and took instead toast and honey. She was dressed in a deep, romantic blue which heightened the shadowed blue of her eyes. She ate without speaking again. She was remarkably self-contained. Her beauty was dramatic, almost haunting, but it had a remoteness to it which to Charlotte was cold. Was it because she was absorbed in her own problems