Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [40]
Was that cowardice?
She was quite certain Cecily Antrim would think so and would despise her for it, though that hardly mattered. It was what Joshua thought that would hurt. Would he also find a gulf opening up between them, between the brave of heart and mind, those strong enough to look at everything life had to offer and those like Caroline, who wanted to stay where it was safe, where ugly things could be hidden away and denied?
Samuel was still talking, but he was looking mostly at Caroline. Mrs. Ellison sat straight-backed, her black eyes fixed, her face set in lines so rigid one might have thought she was battling some kind of pain.
For the first time Caroline wondered how much the old lady had known of the first Mrs. Ellison. She must have been aware that she had had a predecessor. There would have been legal necessities, and perhaps religious ones also. What kind of a woman was Samuel’s mother that she had bolted from Edmund Ellison, from England altogether, and gone across the Atlantic by herself ?
Socially a disaster. In England in 1828 it had been a crime for a woman to leave her husband, whatever he had done or failed to do, whatever she had wished. The law, had he chosen to invoke it, could have brought her back to him by force. Presumably he had not wished that. Perhaps he had even been glad to be relieved of her, though from all that Samuel had said, she had been an excellent mother, and his love for her shone in his face every time he spoke of her. Perhaps he knew nothing of the circumstances? Or perhaps whatever she had told him had been the facts as she saw them, but less than the truth?
He was watching Caroline now as he spoke of his journey in the steamship across the Atlantic and of his docking in Liverpool, and later his first sight of London. His eyes were dancing with it, and she could not help smiling in return.
His company was remarkably pleasant. He was most interesting to listen to; he had seen so much and recounted it vividly and with a generous spirit. Yet she did not feel threatened as she had yesterday in Cecily Antrim’s dressing room. She was sufficiently experienced in the difference between good manners and friendship to be certain that he liked her, and it was a most pleasing feeling. There was admiration in his eyes as he regarded her, and it was like warmth after a sense of deep chill. He would not find her boring or conventional in her ideas. She did not feel left behind by more daring minds, quicker and more agile and—she said the word to herself at last—younger.
Was that at the core of it, not just sophistication and physical beauty, but age? She was seventeen years older than Joshua. It was like poking at an unhealed wound just to say it to herself. Perhaps the old woman, with her vindictive, all-seeing eyes, was right, and she had been a fool to marry a man she was absurdly in love with, who made her laugh and cry, but who in the end would not be able to protect himself from finding her boring.
That would be the ultimate pain—loyalty through pity.
“. . . and of course at the theatre my host told me of his acquaintance with Mrs. Fielding,” Samuel was saying. “And that she had been Mrs. Ellison until her recent marriage. You can imagine how delighted I was! Well . . . no, you can’t,” he amended. “I feel as if in a sense I have come back to my beginnings, a homecoming.”
“I am glad you find London so entertaining,” Mariah said rather curtly. “I am sure your new friends will wish to show you all manner of things: the Tower, the parks, riding in Rotten Row, perhaps Kew Gardens? There are all sorts of sights to see, not to mention society to meet. I am afraid we no longer know anyone.” She gave a sideways look at Caroline, then back to Samuel. It was a dismissal, and so phrased as to make it clear he need not look to return in the near future. Duty had been satisfied.
Caroline was furious and unreasonably disappointed. Damn Mrs. Ellison. She turned a radiant smile on Samuel as he rose to his feet.
“Thank you so much for