Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [36]
“You are overdressed,” the old lady remarked critically. “He will think he has come to dinner. It is barely three o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Well, if he looks at you, he will expect baked meats,” Caroline retorted. “You seem to be dressed for a funeral.”
The old lady straightened to total rigidity. “I am a widow. As are you, or you were—until you went off and married that actor! I would have thought in deference to the fact that this man is apparently a member of our family, and his brother is dead, you might have worn something more in keeping with the occasion.” She sat down solidly in the best chair.
Caroline looked at her closely. “You never told us that Papa-in-law had been married previously.”
The old lady avoided her eyes. “It was not your concern,” she said coldly. “She was a woman of . . .” For once she was uncertain. Dark memories brushed the edge of her mind, and she refused to allow them closer. “She ran away.” Her voice grew sharper. “She abandoned him. Went off with some worthless adventurer . . .” That was a lie, but it was easier to believe and to understand. “Naturally we did not speak of it. No one would.” That was true.
“Edward might have wished to know he had a half brother,” Caroline said quite gently.
“No one knew,” the old lady replied, her voice steadier. That also was true. She had had no idea whatever that Alys had been with child. Edmund would not have let her go so easily if he had known. To lose a son would be altogether a different matter.
Mariah deliberately unclenched her hands. They were cold and a little clammy with tension. Memories long forgotten were stirring in her mind, shapeless pain, things denied so long they were only darkness now, no sharp edges, just the ache. Why didn’t someone arrive so she did not have to work so hard at not thinking?
There it was. A carriage outside. The footsteps across the hall, the murmur of voices. Thank heaven.
The door opened and the butler announced Mr. Samuel Ellison. He was tall, well built, and dressed in the latest cut of waistcoat and jacket, but all this was nothing to Mariah. Her breath almost stopped in her throat as she saw his face. He was so like her own son a wave of loss overtook her like a physical pain. It was not that she and Edward had been friends, or shared ideas or confidences, it was the bond of years of knowledge, of memories of childhood intimacy, the very fact that he had been part of her. And here was this man of whose existence she had been unaware until this morning, and he had the same eyes, the same shape of head, the same manner of moving.
Caroline was welcoming him in and, before Mariah was ready for it, presenting him to her.
He bowed, smiling at her, his expression full of interest as he looked at her face.
“How do you do, Mrs. Ellison. It is charming of you to receive me with almost no notice at all. But after so long, hoping to meet my English family, I simply could not wait another day.”
“How do you do, Mr. Ellison,” she replied. It was difficult to say the name, her own name, to a stranger. “I hope your stay in England will be a pleasant one.”
“It already is,” he assured her with a smile. “And becoming better all the time.”
She forced herself to make a civil reply, and they all sat down to exchange small talk of the usual innocuous and meaningless kind. However, almost immediately it took another turn. Caroline had made some trivial enquiry about Samuel’s youth, and he replied with a vivid description of New York, where apparently his mother had landed from the ship which had taken her across the Atlantic.
“Alone?” Mariah said in amazement. “However did she manage?” Perhaps it was an intrusive question. The answer may not have been one he was willing to give and it was made in disbelief as much as sympathy.
“Oh, there were many in the same circumstances,” he replied easily. “They helped one another, as I was telling Mrs. Fielding yesterday evening.” He glanced at her with a smile. “And my mother was a woman of remarkable courage, and never afraid to work hard.”
Mariah barely heard the