Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [156]
Fitz’s face was unyielding, but he had no argument. Whatever his belief, the facts were as Anstiss had said. He was painfully unhappy, but he refused to give ground. He stood upright, head high, lips tight.
“Can you give me a date when you will marry Miss Morden?” Anstiss said levelly, his voice courteous and cold. “Keep Miss Hilliard as a mistress if you wish, only for God’s sake be discreet about it. And wait a couple of years—she’ll still be in the business.”
“That is not my standard of morality, sir,” Fitz said stiffly. His face was hot as he was hideously aware of how pompous he sounded, and how offensive, but unable to retreat. “I am surprised that you should suggest such a thing.”
Anstiss smiled sourly. “It is not mine either, Fitzherbert. But then I have no amorous interest in Miss Hilliard. You have made it apparent that you do. I am telling you that is the only arrangement with such a woman that society will accept.”
Fitz stood ramrod straight.
“We shall see.” He bowed. “Good day, sir.”
“Good-bye,” Anstiss replied with the faintest inclination of his head. The dismissal was unmistakable and absolute.
Fitz turned away. With a glance at Anstiss by way of excusing herself, Charlotte followed Fitz through the crowd, as he trod on skirts, brushed past people balancing glasses and plates, till he stood next to a glorious rosebush trailing flowers over an ornamental arch.
There he stopped and faced her.
“I hope you haven’t come to argue me out of it? No—of course you haven’t. You are Mrs. Radley’s sister.”
“I am also Fanny’s friend,” Charlotte said with chill.
He blushed. “I’m sorry. That was appallingly rude, and quite unjustified. I have no one to blame but myself, for any of it. And I’ve treated Odelia abominably. I hope her father will break off our engagement officially, and say that I have consorted with an unsuitable woman and proved myself unworthy of his daughter. Otherwise her reputation…” He left the rest unsaid. They both knew the ugly speculations that followed when a man jilted a young woman. There was the inevitable whisper that he had discovered she was not above suspicion.
“That will damage your own reputation,” Charlotte pointed out. “And untruly.”
“Not untruly. I have consorted with totally unsuitable women.”
“Have you?”
“Fanny …”
“You haven’t consorted with her—you have met her only socially in a way we all have.”
“I will have consorted with her by then—if you will be good enough to tell me where I may find her? You said across the river.”
“I don’t know where, but I can find out, if you are sure. She did not deny her relationship with Mr. Carswell, you know.”
He was very pale.
“I know.”
A few yards to the left a large gentleman in a hussar’s uniform gave a roar of laughter and slapped the shoulders of a slender young man with a large mustache. Behind them two ladies laughed vacuously.
“What Lord Anstiss says is true,” Charlotte went on carefully. But there was a growing hope in her, quite unreasonable and against all her common sense. What happiness could there be for Fitz and Fanny Hilliard? Even if he was rash enough to marry her, and she accepted him, that would not lift her to his social status. His friends would never look upon her as one of them. Whatever they supposed the truth to be, they would remember the charges, and that she had not denied them. She was a loose woman, and he a fool for marrying her. And Anstiss had made it plain that selection for Parliament was ended. Fanny would have to realize what it would cost him. And knowing Fanny better than Fitz did, Charlotte thought she would not marry him at that price.
The hussar hailed someone he knew and went striding over, crying out loudly.
“And consider it from Fanny’s view,” Charlotte went on. “If she loves you, she will not accept you at such a price to you.