Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [125]
The old lady looked interested. “Are they? I thought the queen in Hamlet was his mother. She’s hardly the heroine, is she!”
“Joshua likes older women. I thought you had appreciated that,” Caroline said dryly.
Mrs. Ellison smiled in spite of herself. “And you are jealous of her.” It was a statement, but for once there was no edge of unkindness to it, rather something that could even have been sympathy.
Caroline decided to tell the truth. “Yes—a little. She seems to be so certain of herself . . . of everything she believes in.”
“Believes in? I thought she was an actress!” Mariah hitched herself a little higher in the bed. “What can she believe in?”
“All sorts of things!” Caroline pictured in her mind Cecily’s passionate face, her vivid eyes and the fire in her voice. “The absolute evil of censorship, the freedom of the mind and will, the values of art. . . . She makes me feel terribly old-fashioned . . . and . . . dull.”
“Poppycock!” Mrs. Ellison said vehemently. “Stand up for yourself. Don’t you know what you believe in anymore?”
“Yes, I think so—”
“Don’t be such a milksop! There must be something you are sure of. You can’t live to your age without having at least one certainty. What is it?”
Caroline smiled. “That I don’t know as much as I thought I did. I gather facts and make judgments about people and things, and so often there is one thing more that I didn’t know, and if I had it I would have changed everything.” She was thinking of the old lady and Edmund Ellison . . . but there were other things too, stretching back over the years: issues, decisions, stories only half known.
Mrs. Ellison grunted, but some of the anger had drained out of her.
“Then you are wiser than this woman, who imagines she knows so much,” she said grudgingly. “Go and tell her so.”
Caroline did not ask again if the old lady would come. They both knew she would not, and to have made the offer again would have broken the fragile thread of honesty between them.
She stood up and went to the door. Her hand was on it when the old lady spoke again.
“Caroline!”
“Yes.”
“Enjoy yourself.”
“Thank you.” She turned away.
“Caroline!”
“Yes?”
“Wear the red dress. It becomes you.”
She did not look back and spoil the moment by making too much of it. “Thank you,” she accepted. “Good night.”
Caroline dressed very carefully for the first night of Hamlet. She hesitated some time before having her maid put out the red dress the old lady had mentioned. It was actually a rich wine color, very warm, but definitely dramatic. She was uncertain about being so conspicuous. She sat in the chair in front of her looking glass and stared at her own face while her maid dressed her hair. She was still slender—she had not lost her shape at all—but she knew all the signs of aging that were there, the differences between her skin now and how it had been a few years ago, the slight blurring of the smooth line of her jaw, the fine lines on her neck, not to mention her face.
She had not Cecily Antrim’s glowing vitality, the confidence inside which gave her such grace. That was not only youth, it was part of her character. She would always command attention, admiration, a kind of awe, because she carried part of the magic of life in her mind.
Caroline still felt dull compared with her, sort of brown . . . compared with gold.
She thought of what Vespasia had said, and Mariah Ellison. But it was the thought of Mariah’s despair which finally made her sit up with a straight back, almost jerking the pins out of the maid’s hands.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, wincing.
“Did I hurt you, ma’am?”
“My own fault. I shall sit still.”
She was as good as her word, but her thoughts still raced, wondering how she should conduct herself, what she should say to be honest, generous and yet not gushing. She cringed inwardly at the