Belgrave Square - Anne Perry [82]
“But that’s absurd!” Charlotte protested.
“The whole thing is absurd,” he answered. “And now I hear they are talking of police perjury—”
“Oh! Which station did you say it was?”
“Bow Street.”
She drew in a deep breath. Under the table Emily reached out and touched her. There was nothing she could say. She forced herself to smile.
“Oh dear. How unfortunate,” she said meaninglessly, aware how inadequate it sounded.
Emily folded her napkin and laid it on the table.
“It has been the most charming afternoon,” she said with a smile at each of them. “It is time we excused ourselves and went home to change for the evening.”
“Of course.” Both Fitz and James Hilliard rose to their feet. Good-byes were said and Emily and Charlotte departed to their carriage.
Charlotte reached her own home at nearly six o’clock and swept in to find Gracie preparing dinner and giving Jemima and Daniel their supper at the same time. She looked tired and harassed, her hair falling out of her cap, her sleeves rolled up, her face flushed.
Charlotte was smitten with instant guilt, aware how long she had been away, and that she had neglected her duties. It did not help at all when Pitt came home shortly afterwards and, on seeing the state of the kitchen, Charlotte’s gloriously piled hair and flushed face, and Gracie looking weary and untidy, he lost his temper.
“What the devil is going on?” he demanded, staring at Gracie then at Charlotte. “Where have you been?”
There was no point in lying. He would find out, and she was no good at it anyway, not to him.
“At the Royal Academy exhibition—”
His face was bleak, the warmth and tenderness vanished. His eyebrows rose.
“Indeed? And for what purpose did you go there?”
For a wild moment she thought of saying “To look at the pictures,” then saw his eyes and knew it was not the moment for levity.
“Just to accompany Emily,” she said very quietly.
“And left Gracie here to do your work!” he snapped. “I don’t admire your selfishness, Charlotte.”
It was the most cutting thing he could have said, and she had no answer to it. The only way she could defend her dignity was to force herself into sufficient anger to stop herself from crying.
Supper was eaten in miserable silence. Gracie had gone upstairs, sniffing with unhappiness at the unusual conflict in what she regarded as her own home, and in a curious sense, her family.
Afterwards, Charlotte sat in her chair in the parlor opposite Pitt and pretended to be sewing, but she had no pleasure in it, and accomplished nothing. She knew she had been selfish, thinking only of the glamour and the excitement, not of her children and house, where she should have been, or at the very least of her responsibility.
Pitt sat quietly reading a newspaper, without once looking over it at her.
At bedtime she went upstairs alone, more crushingly miserable than she could remember being for a year or more.
She took off her dress and hung it up, then extricated the pins from her hair and let it fall over her shoulders without the usual sensual pleasure, knowing that Pitt loved it. Strange how all the warmth and light could go out of everything just because she felt such a gulf between them. Odelia Morden’s face kept coming back into her mind as she climbed into bed, feeling the sheets chill on her skin. She could see her so clearly, the look of sudden, wounded surprise as she saw Fitz’s eyes on Fanny Hilliard, heard them laugh together, and realized that something was slipping away from her and she was powerless to cling onto it. There was a warmth between Fitz and Fanny Hilliard, an ease of understanding, laughter at the same things. Odelia would never be part of it. Today Charlotte had seen the first wing of loneliness touch her, and a premonition of loss. Whatever happened in the future, Odelia had become aware that something precious was beyond her reach.
And Charlotte had thought her so complacent. She was just at the beginning of pain.
Aunt Vespasia had said it was Charlotte who was too satisfied, not