Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [69]
“Thank you,” she replied, her voice cracking, and she swallowed hard. Quite possibly Florence Ivory had killed this woman’s husband, mistaking him in the lamplight for another man. “I should like to.”
“Then please come through to the withdrawing room. It is warmer. And tell me, Miss Ellison, how you came to know my husband?”
There was no answer except to mix as much of a lie as necessary with all the truth she could remember.
“I worked some time ago on an attempt to have the workhouse laws altered. Of course, I was just a very small part of the attempt; I merely collected a little information. There were others far more important, people with influence and wisdom. Sir Lockwood was most kind to us then, and I felt he was a man of both compassion and integrity.”
“Yes,” Amethyst Hamilton agreed with a smile, leading the way into the withdrawing room and offering Charlotte a chair by the fire. “You could not have described him better,” she said, sitting down herself. “There were many who disagreed with him over one subject or another, but none I ever knew who felt he had been either self-seeking or dishonest.” She pulled the bell rope at her elbow, and when the maid appeared she ordered tea to be brought, and after a glance at Charlotte, sandwiches and cakes as well. When the maid had gone she continued speaking.
“It is strange how many people do not wish to speak of the dead. They send cards or flowers, but if they call they talk of the weather or my health, or of their own. Of anything but Lockwood. And I feel as if they are wishing him out of existence. It is most unreasonable of me; I daresay they do it out of consideration for my feelings.”
“And perhaps out of embarrassment,” Charlotte added, before remembering that this was a formal visit; she did not know this woman at all, and her frank opinions were not called for. She felt the heat rise in her face. “I am sorry.”
Amethyst bit her lip. “You are perfectly right, Miss Ellison. We so seldom know how to deal honestly with other people’s emotions when we do not share them. It is most unpatriotic of me to say so, but I fear it is something of a national failing.”
“Indeed.” Charlotte had never been anywhere else, so she had no idea whether it was so or not, but she had just rashly claimed to have returned from a visit abroad, so she could only nod and agree.
“I had a sister,” she rushed on, “who died in most tragic circumstances, and I found it exactly the same. Please, if you wish to, tell me of Sir Lockwood, anything you care to recall. I should be neither embarrassed nor uninterested. It is part of the respect we feel for those we admire that we should continue to speak of them when they are no longer with us, and to praise them to others.”
“You are very kind, Miss Ellison.”
“Not at all.” Charlotte felt again a guilt which she expected would hurt her indefinitely, but she could not stop now. “Tell me how you met? I expect it was romantic?”
“Not in the slightest!” Amethyst nearly laughed, and her face became soft at the memory, the echo of the girl she’d been was in the lines of her mouth and the momentary smoothness of her brow. “I bumped into him at a political meeting where I had gone with my elder brother. I remember I was wearing a cream hat with a feather on it, and a necklace of amber beads of which I was so fond I kept fingering it. Unfortunately it broke and scattered all over the floor. I was very upset, and bent to pick the beads up, and only made it worse. The rest cascaded all over the place. One gentleman stepped on one and lost his balance, falling against a large lady with a dog in her arms. She shrieked, the dog jumped and ran away under her neighbor’s skirts. All of which put the speaker off, who quite lost his place. Lockwood glared at me and told me to compose myself, because I am afraid I was beginning to giggle. But he did help me find the beads.”
Tea was brought and she poured it, having dismissed the maid, and for the next thirty minutes Charlotte listened while she recounted her courtship, and one or two later