Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [141]
Charlotte smiled to herself and walked a few paces to keep warm.
When at last she saw Fanny about twenty yards away, coming from the Kensington Road, she thought for a moment it could not be her. She looked so unlike her previous self; the joy was emptied out of her, the grace gone from her step, all the vividness and life from her face. Whatever she had done, and why she had done it, all Charlotte could feel for her was a wrenching pity.
She went over to her quickly, almost at a run, taking the younger woman’s hand in hers and holding it tightly.
“I don’t know why you’ve come,” Fanny said in a voice so husky Charlotte knew in a moment she had been weeping so long her throat ached. She could remember the same pain long ago, over other loves before Pitt, rejections that hurt abominably at the time, even though their faces were long faded from her memory now.
“I want to know the truth,” she said simply. “Maybe there is something that can be done—and if there isn’t, then I am still your friend.”
The tears spilled down Fanny’s cheeks as though the kindness were more than she could bear. She had steeled herself against condemnation, but this caught her unguarded.
For several seconds she fought to master herself.
Charlotte pulled out a wholly inadequate handkerchief and gave it to her, then hunted for another, and when she found it, passed that over too.
Fanny blew her nose and sniffed fiercely. It was extremely inelegant.
“Do you love Mr. Carswell?” Charlotte asked.
A ghost of a smile crossed Fanny’s face, the tears brimmed over and slid unregarded down her cheeks. Her eyes were red rimmed, her skin blotched and she was barely recognizable as the glowingly pretty girl Charlotte had first seen, but it was of no importance now.
“Yes,” she said hesitantly, then with a choking laugh. “Yes-I do.”
Charlotte was taken aback, but she had committed herself too far to retreat.
“I would have sworn you were in love with Fitz.”
“I am.” Fanny sniffed. “I am—” She swallowed convulsively and reached for the sodden handkerchief again.
Trying to be practical, Charlotte reached into her reticule for yet another handkerchief and failed to find one. Resenting the extravagance, but feeling Fanny’s pain too sharply to deny it, she fished very discreetly under her skirts and tore off a strip of her cotton petticoat.
“Blow your nose,” she ordered. “And then explain yourself.” She felt like Vespasia as she said it. Someone had to take command of the situation.
Fanny was too weary and too wretched to fight anymore.
“I love them both—quite differently,” she said haltingly, in little more than a whisper.
“That’s nonsense,” Charlotte said briskly. “Unless you are just plain silly. You cannot for a moment imagine you can have the position of financial help from a man like Addison Carswell, deceiving his wife, who is a very nice woman and does not deserve it, and at the same time say you love Fitz.”
“I do!” Fanny looked desperate, as if her only friend were threatening to abandon her. She blushed hard and made some last terrible decision. “Not the way you think. Addison Carswell is my father.”
For a moment Charlotte was stunned. Then gradually a whole new picture took shape.
“Oh! You are illegitimate? I’m so sorry! How dreadfully painful for you.”
“No I’m not. That is the whole point.” Now that Fanny had at last committed herself to telling the truth, she was eager to tell it all. “Papa was married to my mother first—that is the whole awful thing of it.” She looked at Charlotte with anguished eyes.
“Then your mother is dead?”
“No.” It was little more than a whisper. “Divorced?” Charlotte was amazed. Divorce was so terribly rare, and a fearful scandal. Divorced women were worse than