Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [55]
This one had a broad, rakish brim, plenty of veiling, and quite marvelous feathers. It was wildly flattering, accenting the bones of Charlotte’s face and her wide gray eyes, and was as glamorous as only a touch of mystery could be.
She did not know if one was supposed to wear black to a trial. Decent society did not attend trials! But after all it was for murder, and that necessarily had to do with death. Anyway, there was no one she could ask, at this late date. They’d probably say she should not attend at all, and make it difficult for her by pointing out to Pitt all the excellent reasons why she should not. Or they’d say that only women of scandalous character, like the old women who knitted at the foot of the guillotine in the French Revolution, attended such things.
It was cold, and she was glad she had saved enough from the housekeeping money to pay for fare in a hansom cab both ways, every day of the week, should it be necessary.
She was very early; hardly anyone else was there—only court officials dressed in black, looking a little dusty like summer crows, and two women with brooms and dusters. It was bleaker than she had imagined. Her footsteps echoed on the wide floors as she followed directions to the appropriate room and took her seat on the bare wooden rows.
She stared around, trying to people the room in her mind. The rails around the witness box and the dock were dark now, worn by the hands of generations of prisoners, of men and women who had come here to give evidence, nervous, trying to hide private and ugly truths, telling tales about others, evading with lies and half lies. Every human sin and intimacy had been exposed here; lives had been shattered, deaths pronounced. But no one had ever done the simple things here—eaten or slept, or laughed with a friend. She saw only the anonymous look of a public place.
Already there were others coming in, with bright, sneering faces. Hearing snatches of conversation, she instantly hated them. They had come to leer, to pry, to indulge their imaginations with what they could not possibly know. They would come to their own verdicts, regardless of the evidence. She wanted Eugenie to know there was at least one person who would keep pure friendship, whatever was said.
And that was odd, because her feelings for Eugenie were still very confused. Charlotte was irritated by her saccharine femininity; not only did it scrape Charlotte raw, but it was a perpetuation of all that was most infuriating in men’s assumptions about women. She had been aware of such attitudes ever since the time her father had taken a newspaper from her, and told her it was unsuitable for a lady to be interested in such things, and insisted she return to her painting and embroidery. The condescension of men to female frailty and general silliness made her temper boil. And Eugenie pandered to it by pretending to be exactly what they expected. Perhaps she had learned to act that way as a form of self-protection, as a way of getting what she wanted? That was a partial excuse, but it was still the coward’s way out.
And the worst thing about it all was that it worked—it worked even with Pitt! He melted like a complete fool! She had watched it happen in her own parlor! Eugenie, in her own simpering, self-deprecating, flattering way, was socially quite as clever as Emily! If she had started from as good a family and had been as pretty as Emily, perhaps she too might have married a title.
What about Pitt? The thought sent a chill throughout her body. Would Pitt have preferred someone a little softer, a little subtler at playing games; someone who would remain at least partly a mystery to him, demanding nothing of his emotions but patience? Would he have been happier with someone who left him at heart utterly alone, who never really hurt him because she was never close enough, who never questioned his values or destroyed his self-esteem