Death in the Devil's Acre - Anne Perry [63]
The ballroom glittered and people laughed around them, but for a moment Emily was unaware of it. Chandeliers full of tinkling facets filled the ceilings; violin strings scraped briefly, then found the full, rich tone; footmen moved with elegance while balancing glasses of champagne and fruit punch.
All she had intended was to scratch the veneer of Christina’s temper, and perhaps to learn in a moment of carelessness a little of what she knew about the society women who might have frequented Max’s brothel. The last thing Emily wanted was to cause a real and permanent injury. Please heaven Charlotte knew what she was doing!
Her thoughts were interrupted by the necessities of polite conversation. She attended with only half her mind, making some silly observations about who might or might not win a horse race in the summer—she was not even sure if it was the Derby or the Oaks. Certainly the Prince of Wales’ name was mentioned.
It was some thirty minutes or so before the subject exhausted itself, and Alan Ross asked Emily if she would honor him with the next dance. It was an odd exercise, to be so close to a person, sharing a movement, at times touching each other, and yet hardly speaking at all; they came together and swirled apart so briefly that any exchange of meaning was impossible.
She watched his face. He was not as handsome as George, but there was a sensitivity about him that became more and more attractive as she knew him better. The events in Callander Square flashed back into her memory and she wondered how deeply he had been hurt. It had been no secret that he had loved Helena Doran. Was that wound still raw? Was that the pain inside him that honed fine his cheeks and the lines of his mouth?
That could be a very good reason for Christina’s sharpness, for her apparent need to hurt Charlotte. Charlotte would remember about Helena, and was now overstepping the lines of accepted flirtation with the general by making a friend of him. It was understandable, if a little crude, to entertain a relationship simply on the fullness of a bosom or the curve of a hip. But to engage the mind, the compassion, and the imagination was beyond the rules.
What rules did Christina observe? What did she even know?
Emily glanced around the room as she turned in Alan Ross’s arms and, over his shoulder, saw Christina clinging close to a cavalry officer in resplendent uniform. She was laughing up into his eyes and she looked brilliantly alive. The officer was obviously enthralled.
Emily looked back at Alan Ross. He must have seen it; he had faced that way only the moment before, but there was no change in his expression. Either he was so used to it that he had learned to mask his emotions, or else he no longer cared.
The thought after that was obvious, and yet it was so unpleasant that for an instant Emily lost her footing and was clumsy. At another time she would have been mortified, but consumed as she was by the new thought, the triviality of mere physical gaucheness seemed quite banal.
Was Christina herself one of Max’s women? Alan Ross was neither old nor in the slightest way boring. But perhaps his very charm, the unattainability of the inner man, was a far sharper goad to other conquests, no matter how shallow, than any boredom could be?
Suddenly Emily’s animosity toward Christina turned to pity. She still could not like her, but she was forced to care. She was dancing close to Alan Ross; she could feel the cloth of his coat under her glove, and she was moving in perfect time with his body. Although they were barely touching, there was a union. Did he know about Christina, or guess? Was it his outraged