Callander Square - Anne Perry [97]
“Disillusioned?” Emily pressed the point.
“Well, she was hardly the innocent she pretended to be,” Christina said stingingly. “She met some lover in an empty garden, and obviously lay with him, or she would not have been with child! Surely that is enough to disillusion anybody!”
“Then it might become you to be exceedingly discreet yourself,” Emily observed. She did not like moral hypocrisy, and she did not particularly like Christina.
Christina’s color deepened and she glared at Emily with something akin to hatred. Was it conceivable that at this peculiar point she had actually learned some regard for Alan Ross? It seemed the obvious explanation. She was safely married and had thus acquired the respectability she needed if she were indeed to be pregnant, although that now appeared less and less probable. Unlike Charlotte, she was still wearing gowns with small waists, and her figure betrayed nothing. Yes, perhaps she really had developed an admiration for her husband. It was a bitter thing, but in Emily’s opinion, unless Christina were very much to alter her character, the better Mr. Ross were to know her, the less likely was he to return that feeling. Still, that was not something Emily could accomplish for her, nor had she any desire to attempt it.
She remained a little longer, speaking of Helena again but learning little except that Christina heartily disliked her. However, she could not tell whether that dislike predated Christina’s regard for Mr. Ross. Half an hour later she took her leave, her mind humming with new and interesting thoughts.
It was the morning after hearing from Emily about this episode, and more importantly about the conclusions she had drawn from it, that Charlotte decided she must go again to see Jemima, and regardless of temporary hurt, must this time convey some warning to her more specific of her danger. She also wished to see if she could learn something about Reggie Southeron that might tell her who really was blackmailing him; if indeed anyone was. Whatever the facts, for Jemima’s safety she must learn the reason behind the accusation.
To see Jemima alone, she must find her before classes began for the morning, which might well be nine o’clock. Therefore it was a little before quarter past eight, and barely light on a leaden, sleet-driven morning when she alighted from the hansom. The driver had mistakenly arrived at the wrong side of the square and refused to go round it because of the danger to his horse’s knees on the slimy cobbles where rotting leaves had piled from the night’s wind.
Charlotte did not argue. She had no wish that the animal should fall and be injured, not particularly for the cabbie’s expense, but for the creature’s own sake.
Accordingly she was left to walk, and rather than risk the same difficulty herself, she cut across the garden where there were no stones on which to slip, and where the night frost had hardened the ground to support her weight without sinking into the mud. At night she would not have gone alone, as she carried a memory of Cater Street, which would probably last as long as she lived; but it would be a desperate marauder indeed to be waiting around in this icy gray morning amid the spindly black branches and the falling vegetation.
She moved briskly because the cold bit into her flesh and the sleet on the wind stung her unprotected skin. She was watching where she put her feet, in order not to miss her step and fall over some fallen branch or slip in a patch of gathered slush. It was thus that she did not see the dark mound until she was almost upon it. It was not quite on the path, but close by the side of it, as if it had been on the path and blown from it. Surely no branch could have that mass? A feeling of disaster, a foreknowledge, came to her before she reached it and she stopped.
It was wet clothes: and in among the roots of last year’s Michaelmas daisies there was the head, hair dark in the wet, but it would have been fair normally: and the skin was white, as only the cold of death