Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [53]
But it was hard to commit oneself to such an intimate and permanent tie without something of the magic, even if it was very often an illusion. And sometimes it was real! Most of the time Charlotte took Thomas for granted, like a profound friendship, but there were many moments when her heart beat in her throat and she still knew him in a crowded street among hundreds by the way he stood, or recognized his step with a lift of excitement.
“And Mr. Radley, I take it, is a realist?” she said aloud.
“Oh, I think so,” Sybilla agreed, looking back at Charlotte and biting her lip very slightly. “I don’t think circumstances have allowed him a choice.”
Charlotte opened her mouth to ask if he might not have become obsessed with Emily all the same, then realized that the question was anything but helpful. Tassie March might inherit a pleasing sum from both her grandparents, but it would pale beside the Ashworth fortune that would now be Emily’s alone. Why look for a motive of love of any degree when that of money was so apt?
They were at the doorway of the conservatory, and there was nothing more to say. Charlotte excused herself and escaped inside. She had learned nothing that she had not already surmised, except that instinctively she felt an empathy for Sybilla March which threw all her budding theories into turmoil again.
Luncheon yielded nothing but platitudes. Afterwards, Charlotte spent an hour with Emily, ever on the brink of pressing her for answers and, seeing her white face, changing her mind. Instead she went to find William March, who was still painting in the conservatory. She knew perfectly well that she was interrupting him and he would hate it, but there was no time to nurse her own sensibilities.
She found him in the studio that had been cleared for him beyond the lilies and vines. He stood with the angular grace of someone who uses his body and is unaware of being observed. There was nothing posed about him: his elbows stuck out, his head was to one side, and his feet were apart. Yet his balance was perfect. The top window was open and there was a whispering of wind in the leaves like water through pebbles on a shore. He did not hear Charlotte’s approach, and she was almost beside him when she spoke. Ordinarily she would have felt a crassness that would chill her stomach to speak to him, but after talking with Sybilla she was even more conscious of the danger in which Emily stood. To any unbiased observer she must look guilty. There was only her word that George had quarreled with Sybilla, whereas everyone had seen George’s affair—and had seen Emily accept attention from Jack Radley. If there was a reason anyone else in the family was involved, she had not yet found it.
“Good afternoon, Mr. March,” she said with forced cheerfulness. She felt like a fool and a philistine.
He was startled and the brush jerked in his hand, but she had chosen a moment when it was still far from the canvas. He turned to look at her coldly. His eyes were surprisingly dark gray, and deep-set under the red brows.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Pitt. Are you lost?” It was plain to the point of rudeness. He resented being disturbed and still more being placed where he was obliged to conduct a pointless conversation with a woman he did not know.
She lost any hope of fooling him. “No, I came here on purpose, because I wished to talk with you. I realize I am preventing your work.”
He was surprised; he had expected some silly excuse. He still held the brush in the air and his face was tight with concentration. “Indeed?”
She looked past him at the picture. It was far cleverer than she had foreseen; there was a shivering in the leaves—an impression more than an outline—and just beyond the brightness of sunlight there was ice, wind that cut the skin, a sense of isolation and pain. It was as much the tail end of winter, with sudden frost that