Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [73]
He too moved forward a bit and Charlotte realized with a blush of relief, and as if a guilt had been removed, that it was not she he was looking at, but someone beyond her and a trifle to her left. She returned the glasses to Vespasia with a whisper of thanks, and thus was able to look to her left with good excuse. The only person there was Lord Anstiss, and he was watching the singers on the brilliantly lit stage as though oblivious of everything and everyone else, the other members of the audience.
The second interval was less diverting but Charlotte was still full of the exhilaration of the occasion and all the glamour and laughter and swirl of silks. She felt as if she walked on air and she wanted to see and hear and remember it all so she would recall everything years from now when she was back in her own home on the ordinary days that would come so soon, full of comfortable, repetitive chores. And she would have to tell Gracie as much as she could. She would want to know every detail.
Pitt stood with his back against a pillar; this time he had fewer duties of courtesy towards the women. Jack was escorting Emily, Lord Anstiss had offered to fetch refreshment for Vespasia, which she had accepted, and Charlotte was too interested in looking and listening to care about such things.
“Enjoying yourself?” Pitt asked quietly, putting his arm around her shoulders and leaning a little closer so he could be heard above the buzz and clatter.
She looked at him wordlessly; the bubble of happiness inside her was too large to need description, and nothing could do it justice anyway. They stood together watching the people pass by in twos and threes, in groups, and here and there one alone. It was halfway through the apportioned time when she saw the tall, lean figure of one such man, his face intent in thought, apparently not seeing the crowd as individuals but merely as a bright mass, like a field of flowers. After a moment or two Charlotte recognized Peter Valerius, the young man at Emily’s ball who had been so passionate about finances and the rates of interest charged and the restrictions attached where certain businesses were involved in colonial countries, dependent upon the rich nations of Europe, and on Britain in particular. It was a subject in which she had no interest whatever, but his face had such a power of feeling in it she had found herself drawn to him, in spite of her complete lack of intellectual engagement. He seemed to be alone, and she wondered why he was here at such a social event, in so many ways superficial.
A few moments after he passed, going back towards the stairs up to the boxes, she saw Lord and Lady Byam. They were walking close to each other, side by side, but she was not on his arm, and she held herself very erect. He seemed a little abstracted, his mind elsewhere. He turned as something caught the edge of his vision, and saw Pitt, a little taller than the average and outlined against the pink stone of the pillar. A flicker of recognition crossed his face, then puzzlement, a small furrow between his brows as he struggled to place him in his mind.
It was all over in a few moments. Byam passed and his attention was taken by someone else. Pitt smiled with a dark, wry amusement.
“That’s Lord Byam,” Charlotte whispered. “Do you know him?” Pitt’s smile became softer, reflective. He came to some decision within himself. He turned to face her and exclude the party of laughing people behind him.
“Yes. Yes I do. The usurer whose murder I am investigating was blackmailing Byam over Lady Anstiss’s death.”
“What?” she gasped, looking at him in amazement. “Laura Anstiss. But what had he to do with that? It was an accident, wasn’t it?”
“No,” he said very quietly. “She fell passionately in love with Byam, who was Anstiss’s closest friend, and when he did not return it, she took her own life. They covered it up to make it look like an accident, to protect