Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [123]
13
IT WAS LATE the following morning when Pitt returned to Cardington Crescent. The euphoria of capturing Clarabelle Mapes had vanished, and in the dull, warm daylight he remembered that he had gone to Tortoise Lane to find out what Sybilla March had wanted there. And he had learned nothing. No amount of questioning was going to get anything more from Clarabelle, and none of the children had ever seen a lady like Sybilla.
The butler let him in and he asked that Charlotte be sent for. He was permitted to wait in the morning room. It was oppressive, curtains half drawn, pictures draped with black, black crepe fluttering in unlikely places like cobwebs stained with soot.
Charlotte came in, dressed in exquisitely fashionable lavender; it flickered through his mind that it was a gown of Aunt Vespasia’s altered a little at the bosom to fit Charlotte. Vespasia never wore black, even for death.
Charlotte was pale; there were smudges of tiredness under her eyes. But her face lit up with pleasure as she saw him, and he found it extraordinarily good. In a sense deeper than walls or possessions, wherever she was, he would be at home.
“Oh, Thomas, I’m so glad you’ve come,” she said immediately. “Everything is getting worse. We are looking at each other with terrible thoughts in our eyes and strings of words we want to mean, and can’t.” She turned and closed the door behind her and stood leaning against it, staring at him, biting her lips, her hands clenched tightly. “It isn’t Tassie. I’ve discovered what she does at night, where she goes and gets splashed with blood.”
A monstrous anger welled up inside him, sharp as a dagger, because it was principally fear, not only for her but for himself, fear of losing all that was most precious to him, all the deep, warm safety that supported every other courage and dream he held.
“You what?” he shouted involuntarily.
She closed her eyes, her face tight. “Don’t shout, Thomas.”
He strode forward and took her by the arm, pulling her away from the door and around to face him in the center of the room. He was hurting her and he knew it.
“You what?” he repeated fiercely. The very fact that she had remained by the door instead of coming to him and kissing him, that she had not replied with any righteous anger of her own, meant that she was conscious of her guilt. “You followed her!” he accused with certainty.
Her eyes opened wide and there was no apology in them.
“I had to find out where she went,” she explained. “And it was perfectly all right—she goes to help deliver babies! A lot of poor women, or unmarried women—girls—can’t afford a midwife. That’s why so many die. Thomas, it’s a wonderful thing she’s doing, and the people love her.”
He was too angry at the idiotic risk she had taken to be relieved that Tassie’s conduct was so innocent, where he had feared such horror. Without realizing it he was shaking Charlotte.
“You followed her to some woman’s home, alone, at night?” He was still shouting. “You ... you fool! You imbecile! She could have taken you anywhere! What if she had been responsible for the woman whose body was found in bloody pieces in Bloomsbury? You might have been the next one!” He was so furious he could have slapped her, as one does a beloved child who has just escaped falling under the carriage wheels. In the rush of relief one dares to imagine all the possible dangers so narrowly missed. Memory of Clarabelle Mapes and the appalling labyrinth he had so lately left were stronger in him than this comfortable, civilized house. “You stupid, irresponsible woman! Do I have to lock you up before I can leave the house safely and be sure you’ll behave yourself like an adult?”
What had begun as guilt in her was now overridden by a sense of injury. He was being unjust and she was correspondingly angry in her own right. “You are hurting me,” she said coldly.
“You deserve to be thrashed!” he retaliated without altering his grip in the slightest.
She answered by kicking him