Cardington Crescent - Anne Perry [76]
Tassie opened her mouth to retaliate but closed it again. Charlotte felt a sudden surge of anger for her. Above all things being patronized galled her soul.
“Neither do I,” she said bluntly, “know of any reason why someone should have killed George.”
“You would say that, wouldn’t you.” Mrs. March stared at her malevolently. “I always said George married badly.”
Fire rushed up Charlotte’s cheeks and the blood pounded in her temples. The hard, accusing look in the old woman’s eyes was too plain to misunderstand. She thought Emily had murdered George and intended to see her punished for it.
She gulped air and then hiccuped loudly. Everyone was looking at her, their faces a pale sea mirrored with eyes, horrified, embarrassed, compassionate, accusing. She hiccuped again.
Next to her William leaned forward, poured her a glass of water, and passed it to her. She took it from him in silence, hiccuping once more, then drank a little and tried holding her breath, her napkin held to her lips.
“At least George’s wife was his own choice.” Vespasia filled the void with chipped ice. “He was encumbered with his family regardless of his wishes, and I think there were times when he found it distinctly a burden.”
“You have no notion of loyalty, Mama-in-law!” Eustace said with a slight flaring of his nostrils and a warning note in his voice.
“None at all,” she agreed. “I always felt it a spurious value to defend what is wrong merely because you are related to its perpetrators.”
“Quite.” Eustace avoided Charlotte’s eyes and looked at Emily. “If we find that the—offender—is one of this family, we will still do our duty, painful as it may be, and see that they are locked away. But discreetly. We do not wish the innocent to be hurt as well, and there are many to consider. The family must be preserved.” He flashed a smile at Sybilla. “Some people,” he continued, “ignorant people, can be most unkind. They are apt to tar all of us with the same brush. And now that Sybilla is at last to bear us a child”—his tone was suddenly jubilant, and he gave William a conspiratorial glance—“we trust, the first of many, we must look to the future.”
Emily had a suffocating feeling of being crowded in. She looked at Mrs. March, who looked away, dabbing stupidly at the water she had spilled across the cloth, but it had long since soaked in. Jack Radley gave a half smile, but it died on his lips as he thought better of it.
William had eaten little and now he stopped altogether. His face was as white as the sauce on the fish. Emily already knew him well enough to be aware that he was an acutely private man, and such open discussion of so personal a subject was agonizing to him. She looked away along the table to Sybilla.
But Sybilla was gazing at William, then at Eustace, her face filled with a loathing so intense it was incredible he should be unaware of it.
Tassie picked up her wineglass, and it slipped through her fingers to crash on the table, spilling wine everywhere. Emily had no doubt whatsoever she had done it on purpose. Her eyes were wide, like pits in the bleached skin of her face.
Sybilla was the first to recover. She forced a smile that was painful, worse than the hate before because of the effort behind it. “Never mind,” she said huskily. “It’s a white wine—I daresay it will wash quite easily. Would you like some more?”
Tassie opened her mouth soundlessly, and closed it again.
Emily stared at William, and he looked back at her, ashen, and with a complexity of emotions she could not unravel. It could have been anything, most probably pity for her; perhaps he also believed she had murdered her husband in a frenzy of hopeless jealousy, and that was what he pitied her for. Perhaps he even felt he understood. Was it Eustace, with his complacency, his boundless energy,