Bethlehem Road - Anne Perry [94]
“You may,” Florence agreed dryly. She regarded Charlotte closely, and her expression gradually became one of barely disguised contempt. Only her need for help and a residue of good manners concealed it at all. “It is a subject which produces great emotion, Miss Ellison, of which you seem to be largely unaware. I have no idea what your life has been. I can only assume you are one of those comfortable women who are satisfactorily provided for in all material ways and are happy to pay for your keep with a docile temperament and skill in keeping a home—or organizing others who do it for you—and that you consider yourself fortunate to be in such a position.”
“You are quite right—you do have no idea what my life has been!” Charlotte said extremely sharply. “And your assumptions are impertinent!” As soon as the words were out of her mouth she remembered how this woman had suffered, had lost her children, and she realized with a flood of shame that perhaps she was precisely as comfortable as Florence had accused her of being. She had little money, certainly, but what part of life’s ease or joy was that? She had enough. She had never been hungry, and she was not so often cold. She had her children, and Pitt treated her not as a possession, which in law she had indeed been until only recently, but as a friend. As she sat in the green and white chair with the sun coming in through the garden windows and the air full of the scent of the hyacinths, she realized with a powerful gratitude that she had freedom an uncounted number of women would have given all their silks and servants to possess.
Florence was staring at her, and for the first time since they had met, there was confusion in her face.
“I apologize,” Charlotte said with great difficulty. She found this woman highly irritating, profound as her pity for her was. “My rudeness was unnecessary, and in some ways you are perfectly correct. I cannot truly understand your anger, because I have not been a victim of the wrongs of which you speak. Please tell me.”
Florence’s eyebrows rose. “For goodness’ sake, tell you what? The social history of women?”
“If that is the issue,” Charlotte replied. “Is that why these men were killed?”
“I’ve no idea! But if I had done it, it would be!”
“Why? For a vote on who sits in Parliament?”
Florence’s tolerance snapped, and she stood up sharply, the raffia basket and needle falling to the carpet. She faced Charlotte with stinging condescension.
“Do you think you are intelligent? Capable of learning? Do you have emotions, even passions? Do you know anything about people, about children? Do you even know what you want for yourself?”
“Yes of course I do,” Charlotte said instantly.
“Are you sure you are not just an overgrown child?”
Now Charlotte was equally angry. She rose as well, the color burning in her cheeks. “Yes I am perfectly sure!” she hissed back through her teeth. “I am very perceptive about people, I have learned a great deal about many things, and I am quite capable of making wise and sensible judgments. I make mistakes sometimes, but so does everyone. Being adult doesn’t make you immune to error, it just makes those errors more important, and gives you more power to cover them up!”
Florence’s face did not soften in the least. “I agree. I am every bit as sure as you that I am no child, and I resent profoundly being treated as one, and having my decisions made for me by either my father or my husband, as if I had no will or desire of my own, or as if what they wanted was always the same as what I wanted for myself, or could be relied upon to be in my best interest.” She swung round and went behind the chair, leaning forward over the back of it, the muslin of her dress straining across her thin body. “Do you suppose for one second that the law would be as it is if those who made it were answerable to us as well, instead of only to men? Do you?”
Charlotte opened