Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [47]
Charlotte knew she was half hoping for a contradiction, and yet she would not have believed one had it been offered.
“We never do know anyone else completely,” she said instead. “And nor should we—it would be an intrusion. And I daresay, at times it would be painful and destructive. And perhaps boring. How long would you stay in love with someone you could look through like glass, and see everything? One has to have mystery somewhere ahead left to explore, or why go on?” She crept a hand forward and took Emily’s gently. “I’d hate Thomas to know everything I thought or did—some of the weak and selfish things. I’d rather fight them on my own, and then forget them. I couldn’t do that if he knew—I’d wonder at all the wrong times if he remembered. He’d never find it so easy to forgive me if he knew some of the thoughts in my mind. And there are some things about people it is better not to know, just because if you did, you couldn’t ever completely dismiss them.”
Emily looked up, her face angry. “You think I flirted with Jack Radley, that I led him to expect something!”
“Emily, I never even heard of him until just now.” Charlotte met her eyes frankly. “You are accusing yourself, either because Thomas has said something, or you think he will, or because there is a thread of truth in it.”
“You’re damnably pious about it!” Emily suddenly lost her temper again and snatched her hand away. “You sit there as if you’d never flirted in your life! What about General Ballantyne?3 You lied to him just to do your detecting—and he adored you! You used that! I never treated anyone like that!”
Charlotte burned at the memory, but there was no time for the self-indulgence of guilt or explanation now. Not that there was an explanation—the charge was true. Emily’s anger hurt, but Charlotte understood, even though her feelings made her want to lash back that it was unfair, and had nothing to do with the problem now. But more powerful than that superficial abrasion was the deep hurt for Emily, the knowledge of a loss more profound than she had ever felt herself. Sometimes when Pitt had followed thieves into the dark alleys of the rookeries, Charlotte had feared for his life till she was cold and sick. But it had never been a reality, something that did not finally end in the overwhelming warmth of his arms and the certainty that, until next time, it was all a mirage, a nightmare vanished with the day. There would be no sunlit awakening for Emily.
“Some people are incredibly vain,” she said aloud. “Could Mr. Radley have imagined you might offer him more than friendship?”
“Not unless he’s a complete fool,” Emily said less harshly. She seemed about to say something more, then lost the words.
“Then we are left with William and Sybilla, or someone else in the family who has a reason we haven’t even guessed at.”
Emily sighed. “It doesn’t make much sense, does it? There must be something very important—and very ugly—that I don’t know. Something I haven’t even imagined. It makes me wonder how much of my safe and pretty life was all a lie.”
Charlotte had met no one on her arrival except Great-aunt Vespasia, and her only briefly. She knew she was going to be given the dressing room where George had slept, partly because it was immediately next to Emily, but also because no one else