Bedford Square - Anne Perry [35]
That morning Charlotte opened the first delivery of mail and found a letter addressed to her in handwriting which swept away the years like leaves on the wind. Even before she opened it she was certain it was from General Balantyne. What was written inside was very brief:
My dear Mrs. Pitt,
It was most generous of you to be concerned for my welfare, and to offer your renewed friendship in this present unpleasantness.
I thought of taking a brief walk around the British Museum this morning. I shall be in the Egyptian exhibit at about half past eleven. If you should find yourself free, and passing that way, I should be delighted to see you.
I remain your obedient servant,
Brandon Balantyne
It was a stiff and very formal way of saying that he very much needed the friendship she had offered, but the fact that he had written at all made his feelings most plain.
She folded the paper with a quick movement and rose from the kitchen table to lift the lid from the stove and put it in. The flames consumed it with an instant flare, and it was gone.
“I shall be going out this morning,” she told Gracie. “I have a desire to look at the Egyptian exhibit in the British Museum. I cannot say when I shall be back.”
Gracie shot her a look of fierce curiosity, but she forbore from asking any questions.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said with wide eyes. “I’ll see ter everythink.”
Charlotte went upstairs and took out her second-best summer morning dress, not the pale yellow which was her best—she had worn that the first time—but a pink-and-white muslin she had been given by Emily, whom it had not become as she had hoped.
The British Museum was in comfortable walking distance, which was presumably why he had selected it, and she set out at ten past eleven in order to be at the exhibit by half past. This was a meeting of friendship, not a romantic or society appointment where lateness could be considered fashionable or a suitably modest reluctance.
She was there by twenty-five minutes past, and saw him immediately, standing upright, shoulders straight, hands behind his back, the light on his head, catching the fair hair turning to gray. He looked extraordinarily lonely, as if the other people passing by were all part of some great unity which excluded him. Perhaps it was his stillness that marked him apart. He was very obviously waiting for someone, because his gaze did not appear to move as it would were he actually looking at the mummified figures in front of him or at the intricate carving and gold of the sarcophagus.
She walked over to him, but for a moment he was unaware of her.
“General Balantyne …”
He turned quickly and his face filled with delight, and then embarrassment at his betrayal of emotion.
“Mrs. Pitt … how kind of you to have come. I hope I do not presume … I …”
She smiled. “Of course not,” she assured him. “The Egyptian exhibit is something I have always wished to see, but no one else I know has the least interest in it, and if I came down and stood around looking at it alone, I might be taken for a most undesirable kind of woman and attract attention I do not wish.”
“Oh!” He obviously had not thought of that. Being a man gave him a freedom he had taken for granted. “Yes … indeed. Well … let us look at it.”
He had misunderstood. She could have seen it any time—with Emily, or Great-Aunt Vespasia, or Gracie, for that matter. She was trying to make him feel a little less ill at ease by making a joke of it.
“Have you ever been to Egypt?” she asked, staring at the sarcophagus.
“No. Well … only to pass through.” He hesitated, then, as if making a great decision, he continued. “I have been to Abyssinia.”
She glanced at him. “Have you? Why? I mean, was it to do with interest in the country or were you sent there? I didn’t know we had ever fought Abyssinia.”
He smiled. “My dear, we have fought just about everywhere. You would be hard put to name a place on the face