Callander Square - Anne Perry [28]
“Miss Ellison.” Max’s heavy-lidded eyes followed Charlotte in, lingering on her shoulders and her waist.
The door closed behind her and Charlotte stood still, waiting for the general to look up. She was no longer trembling inside; Lady Augusta’s patronage had turned her fear into anger.
General Balantyne sat behind an enormous desk. She saw the handsome head, the lean bones of the face. Her interest was immediate. In her imagination she saw the long battle line of history stretch out behind him: Crimea, Waterloo, Corunna, Plassey, Malplaquet…
He looked up. The bland courtesy washed out of his face and he stared at her. She stared back.
“How do you do, Miss—”
“How do you do, General Balantyne. My sister, Lady Ashworth, considered I might be of some service to you. I hope that may be so.”
“Yes.” He stood up, blinking, still staring at her, frowning a little. “She said you had some interest in military affairs. I am setting in some order the history of my family, which has served with distinction in every great battle since the time of the Duke of Marlborough.”
Thoughts as to how she should answer flashed through Charlotte’s mind.
“You must be very proud,” she said honestly. “It is a good thing you should record it accurately for people to know; especially those in the future, when the men who can remember our great battles are gone.”
He said nothing, but his shoulders straightened as he considered her, and there was a very small smile at the edges of his mouth.
In the rest of the house the usual business of the morning was conducting itself, housemaids and upstairs maids and ladies’ maids were all furiously occupied. Augusta was supervising because she was expecting guests of great social importance for dinner, and also because she had nothing else to do. At half past ten she could not find the tweeny. The wretched girl had left a distinct rime of dust on the frames of the pictures on the landing—it showed gray on Augusta’s finger—and the child was nowhere to be seen.
Augusta had long known the favorite bolt hole of idle servants, between the stillroom and the butler’s pantry, and she now repaired to it with some determination. If the girl was loitering among the footmen or bootboys, she would give her a criticism that would not lightly be forgotten.
At the stillroom door she stopped, conscious that there was someone in the small room beyond. There was a whispered voice, she could not hear the words, nor even if they were spoken by a man or a woman; then the rusle of—surely not silk—on a maid?
She pushed the door open soundlessly and saw black-suited arms cradling a taffeta bodice, and over the slender shoulder the sloe-eyed, sensuous face of Max, his lips on the white neck. She knew the neck, knew the elegant coils of dark hair. It was Christina.
Please, dear heaven, they had neither of them seen her! She could not look anyone in the face at this moment. Her heart rose cold in her chest, beating painfully. She backed away from the door. Her daughter, giggling, in the arms of a footman! Horror froze her normally agile brain. Icy, paralyzing minutes passed before she could even begin to think what to do about such a monstrous thing, how to nullify it, obliterate it from existence. It would take work, skill: but it must be done! Otherwise Christina would be ruined. What man of birth in his right mind would marry her after this, if it were known?
FOUR
REGGIE SOUTHERON SAT in the library in his house and stared out at the leafless trees in Callander Square. The gray November sky scudded past above them and the first heavy gusts of rain clattered on the glass. He had a schooner of brandy on the small table beside him and the decanter winked comfortably in the firelight. Under any other circumstances he would have been entirely happy, but this miserable business in the gardens was causing him a nagging anxiety. Of course he had no idea who might be responsible—any one of a score! There was little else of entertainment in a servant’s life, and everyone