Bedford Square - Anne Perry [58]
Vespasia turned around holding the cream silk. It was soft as gauze, faintly shimmering. “This will lighten it,” she said with decision. “This piece as a fichu, and this around the bustle and down the front. It will warm the whole effect. Of course you went to see him because you care for him, and you wanted him to know that that was not changed by this new circumstance.” Her face become more grave, touched with a gentleness. “How was he?” She looked very carefully at Charlotte, and her own perception of distress became deeper as she read Charlotte’s feelings. “Not well …”
“He is being blackmailed,” Charlotte replied, surprised how sharply it troubled her to say so, as if she were learning it for the first time herself. “Over something he did not do, but he cannot prove it.”
Vespasia remained without speaking for several moments, but it was transparent in her face that it was the silence of thought, not of indifference or a failure of understanding.
Charlotte had a sudden, chill feeling that Vespasia knew or guessed something which she herself did not. She waited with a tightening of her throat.
“For money?” Vespasia said, almost as if she did not expect an answer in the affirmative.
“Not for anything,” Charlotte replied. “Just … just to show that the blackmailer has the power, so far …”
“I see.” Vespasia draped the silk over Charlotte’s gown and tied it expertly. She fiddled with it, pulling it here and there, rearranging it, but her fingers moved absentmindedly. “There,” she said when she had finished. “Do you care for that more?”
Charlotte surveyed herself in the glass. It was a great deal better, but that was hardly important.
“Yes, thank you.” She turned. “Aunt Vespasia …”
But Vespasia was already walking away towards the landing and the stairs down. She held the banister to steady herself, something she would not have done a year or two before. Charlotte had an acute sense of her fragility, and painful knowledge of how much she loved her. She wanted to say so, but it might be overfamiliar; after all, they were not really related. And this was not the time.
At the bottom of the stairs in the hall, Vespasia started back towards the morning room, now full of sunlight.
“I have a friend,” she said thoughtfully. “Mr. Justice Dunraithe White.”
Charlotte caught up with her and they went into the pale, bright room. There were early white roses in the green bowl on the center table, and the sun through the leaves outside made shifting patterns on the carpet.
“Theloneus tells me he has made some very … odd … decisions lately, quite out of the character he has hitherto shown. He has delivered opinions which at the very kindest could be described as eccentric.” Theloneus Quade was also a judge, and a longtime admirer of Vespasia. Twenty years before he had been deeply in love with her, and would have married her had she accepted him, but she had felt the difference in their ages to be too great. He was still in love, but now it was also a deeper friendship.
She sat down on her favorite seat near the window and let the stick go. The black-and-white dog thumped its tail with pleasure. Vespasia looked steadily at Charlotte.
“You think he is ill … or …” Charlotte began, then realized her slowness of perception. “You think he is being blackmailed too!”
“I think he is under very great pressure of some sort,” Vespasia said more exactly. “I have known him for many years, and he has always been a most honorable man, scrupulously so. His responsibilities to the law are central to his life, second only to his love for Marguerite, his wife. They have no children, and perhaps have consoled each other for this and grown closer than many others.”
Charlotte sat opposite her, rearranging the newly glamorous gown. She was hesitant to ask the next question, but it burned in her mind, and her concern for Balantyne gave her a boldness she would not normally have had.
“Are these decisions in favor of anyone in particular, or any interests?