Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [73]
“No, my carriage is outside,” she said without a flicker, exactly as if she were in the habit of having such an equipage at her disposal. She turned to Amethyst. “Thank you for giving me so much of your time, Lady Hamilton. I came to offer my condolences, and I find I have enjoyed your company more than most people’s. Thank you.”
For the first time since Barclay Hamilton had been announced, Amethyst smiled warmly.
“Please call again—that is, if you do not mind.”
“I should be delighted to,” Charlotte accepted, without knowing if it would be possible, and without the faintest hope it would further the cause of Florence Ivory and Africa Dowell. In fact her visit had done nothing except confirm that Lockwood Hamilton was exactly what he seemed, and must surely have been killed in mistake for someone else, presumably Vyvyan Etheridge.
She bade them good-bye and climbed into Aunt Vespasia’s carriage feeling that she had accomplished nothing, except possibly the elimination of a certain avenue of thought. She would find it very hard to believe Amethyst Hamilton had had anything to do with her husband’s death. She might ask Aunt Vespasia to inquire further about Barclay Hamilton; perhaps they might learn something of his mother. But it was a very slender thought. Sharper and blacker was the figure of Florence Ivory. The sooner she formed some personal impression of her, Charlotte felt, the better.
“Walnut Tree Walk, please,” she instructed the coachman, before realizing she should not have said please; after all she was instructing a servant, not requesting a friend. She had forgotten how to behave.
Zenobia Gunne sat in her own carriage with many of the same misgivings as Charlotte had had in Vespasia’s. She was not in the least afraid of Mary Carfax, but she did not like her, and she knew the feeling was returned with some fervor. It would take an extraordinary reason to bring Zenobia to call upon her unannounced, and Mary would believe nothing less. The last time they had met, at a ball in 1850, Mary had been an imperious and fragile beauty, betrothed satisfactorily but unromantically to Gerald Carfax. Zenobia was single. They had both fallen in love, in their wildly different ways, with Captain Peter Holland. To Mary he had been comely and dashing, and she had suddenly seen romance leaving her forever as she tied herself to Gerald; to Zenobia he had been a man too poor to afford a wife, but the most immense fun, full of laughter and imagination, his mouth always ready to smile, sensitive to the beautiful, and to the absurd, a brave, tender and funny man she had loved with all her heart. He had been killed in the Crimea, and she had never loved anyone since with the same depth, or without at some moment seeing Peter’s face in his and feeling all the old dreams return. And with every other man at all the best, the tenderest times, it was Peter’s eyes she saw, Peter’s laughter she heard.
It was after that that she had first gone to Africa, scandalizing her family, as well as Mary Carfax. But what did it matter, with Peter dead? Better to be alone than live a pretense with someone else.
Now as the carriage sped through the spring streets towards Kensington she racked her brains for a credible tale. It would be hard enough even for a long-standing friend and confidante to learn anything useful that might throw light on the murder of Vyvyan Etheridge; she would learn nothing at all if she did not even get through the door! Did Mary remember that ball? Did she know that Peter had loved Zenobia, and that she would have persuaded him that she did not care about money or Society, had he not died on the battlefield of Balaklava? Or did Mary still imagine it might have been she he would have chosen, had he the freedom to choose anyone?
Desperation was the element! She must use as much of the truth as possible. She must find a reason she could He about convincingly; emotions were far harder to stimulate. She was at her wits’ end ... and she needed to know—that was it! She needed to know the whereabouts of a mutual friend,