Bluegate Fields - Anne Perry [94]
“Well, men do tend to be a bit pompous,” Charlotte offered.
“Mr. Jerome was,” Fanny said. “Oh, he was very stuffy, too. He had an expression as if he was eating rice pudding all the time! But he was an awfully good teacher. I hate rice pudding—it always has lumps in it and it tastes of nothing, but we have to have it every Thursday. He used to teach the Latin. I don’t think he liked any of us very much, but he never lost his temper. I think he was sort of proud of that. He was terribly—I don’t know.” She shrugged. “He never had any fun.”
“But he hated your cousin Arthur?”
“I never thought he liked him a lot.” Fanny considered it carefully. “But I never thought he hated him either.”
Charlotte felt a quickening of excitement.
“What was he like, your cousin Arthur?”
Fanny wrinkled up her nose and hesitated.
“You didn’t like him?” Charlotte helped.
Fanny’s face ironed out, the tension relieved. Charlotte guessed it was the first time the decencies of mourning had allowed her to speak the truth about Arthur.
“Not very much,” she admitted.
“Why not?” Charlotte pressed, trying to hide at least some of her interest.
“He was awfully conceited. He was very good-looking, you know.” Fanny shrugged again. “Some boys are very vain—just as vain as any girl. And he behaved as if he was superior, but I suppose that’s just because he was older.” She took a deep breath. “I say, isn’t that piano dreadful? It sounds like a maid dropping a whole load of knives and forks.”
Charlotte’s heart sank. Just as they were really touching Arthur, the boy behind all the trappings of grief, Fanny had changed the subject.
“He was very clever,” Fanny went on. “Or perhaps I mean cunning. But that isn’t a reason to kill him, is it?”
“No,” Charlotte said slowly. “Not by itself. Why did they say the tutor killed him?”
Fanny scowled. “Now that’s what I don’t understand. I did ask Titus, and he told me it was men’s business, and not proper for me to know. It makes me sick! Boys really are so pompous sometimes! I’ll bet it’s nothing I don’t know anyhow. Always pretending they know secrets that they don’t.” She snorted. “That’s boys all the time!”
“Don’t you think this time it might be true?” Charlotte suggested.
Fanny looked at her with the scorn she felt for boys.
“No—Titus doesn’t know what he’s talking about really. I know him very well, you know. I can see right through him. He’s just being important to please Papa. I think it’s all very silly.”
“You mustn’t monopolize our guests, Fanny.” It was a man’s voice, and familiar. With a light flutter of nervousness, Charlotte turned around to face Esmond Vanderley. Dear heaven—did he remember her from that awful evening? Perhaps not; the clothes, the whole atmosphere, were so utterly different. She met his eyes, and the hope died instantly.
He smiled back at her with a sharp glint of humor, so close to laughter it dazzled.
“I apologize for Fanny. I think the music bores her.”
“Well, I find it a great deal less pleasing than Fanny’s company,” she replied a little more tartly than she intended. What was he thinking of her? He had given evidence about Jerome’s character, and he had known Arthur well. If he had the charity to ignore their first meeting, she was extremely grateful, but she could not afford to retire from the battle all the same. This could be her only opportunity.
She smiled back at him, trying to take some of the sting out of her words. “Fanny was merely being an excellent hostess and relieving my solitude, since I know so few people here.”
“Then I apologize to Fanny,” he said pleasantly; apparently he had taken no offense.
Charlotte searched her mind for some way to keep alive the subject of Arthur without being too offensively curious.
“She was telling me about her family. You see, I had two sisters, while she has only a brother and male cousins. We were comparing differences.”
“You had two sisters?” Fanny seized on it as Charlotte had hoped she would. She was ashamed to use tragedy in such a way,