Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [68]
“She died by accident. It was dreadful; she went out onto her balcony at night, and slipped over the edge. She must have been leaning out, although one cannot imagine for what reason.” She shivered a little at the thought. “There was speculation that she might have had a good deal too much wine at dinner. It is not easy to fall over the edge of a balcony if one is stone cold sober.”
“What was she like?” Pitt asked, screwing up his face. “What kind of woman?”
“Beautiful,” Emily answered without hesitation. “The most beautiful woman in London, so they said, perhaps in England.”
“Her nature?” Pitt pressed. “Was she spoiled? Many great beauties are.”
Charlotte hid her smile, but did not interrupt.
The carriage jerked and moved forward yet again.
“Really the traffic is getting so bad,” Jack said sharply. “I wonder if it can go on like this much longer, or we shall all be reduced to walking!”
“People have been saying that for years,” Emily replied soothingly. “But we still manage.” She turned back to Pitt. “I suppose she may well have been spoiled, but I haven’t heard it. No, that’s not true: Lord Anstiss himself did say something that was not quite that, but one has to make allowances for his own emotions, and his grief. He did say all manner of people loved her and she had a charm that made everyone her slave. I think it was his own way of admitting that no one ever denied her anything, which is the same as being spoiled, isn’t it?”
“It sounds like it,” Pitt agreed.
“Except Great-Aunt Vespasia,” Emily went on. “She said she only met her a few times, but she liked her, and Aunt Vespasia loathes spoiled people.” She grinned broadly. “And from a woman who was one of the greatest beauties herself, and ruled London society with a glance of steel in her day, it is an opinion that merits much respect.”
The carriage moved forward again, this time considerably, and Jack leaned out of the window.
“I think we are nearly there,” he said with satisfaction.
And indeed within a few minutes they were alighting. Emily on Jack’s arm, Charlotte on Pitt’s, they mounted the steps and went into the foyer, which was glittering with lights, swirling with satins, laces and velvets, and patched and dotted with the slender black of men’s dress jackets and white gleam of shirt fronts, the blaze of jewels at throats and ears and in hair. Everywhere the babble of sound rose and mounted in pitch.
Charlotte felt a thrill of excitement. She gazed around at the beautifully decorated walls, the sweeping stairs, the chandeliers; in fact she leaned so far backwards staring up that it was well she was on Pitt’s arm or she might have overbalanced. It was all so vivid, so pulsing with life and anticipation. Everyone was talking, moving; the air was filled with the rustle of skirts and chatter of voices.
She leaned closer to Pitt and squeezed his arm, and he tightened his hold. There was no need for words, and for once she could think of none that would fill the occasion.
As they were moving up the stairs towards their box she glanced down and saw quite clearly Lord Byam’s dark head. It was quite distinctive in its smooth, handsome shape, and in the sprinkling of silver at the temples. He carried it at an angle not quite like anyone else, and when he glanced around to acknowledge an acquaintance she saw his marvelous eyes. Next to him Eleanor Byam was elegant, but without the remarkable individuality he possessed. She seemed somehow more subdued and not quite as effortlessly graceful. Neither of them looked up, nor in all likelihood would they have remembered her if they had.
At the top of the stairs she turned for one last look down at the foyer and saw a man’s head. He had thick hair, too long, like Pitt’s, but as richly toned as dying leaves, and she wondered if it were the odd young man who at Emily’s ball had seemed so obsessed with the injustices he saw, or thought he saw, in international finance.
Upstairs they had no difficulty in getting to Emily’s box. She had kept it ever since her marriage to George Ashworth, and still retained