Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [55]
“Please tell us more of your own country.” Caroline poured more tea and offered the sandwiches again. She seemed oblivious to decency. “How far west did you go? Did you really see Indians?”
A sadness came into his face. “Indeed I did. How far west? All the way to California and the Barbary Coast. I met men who panned for gold in the Rush of ’49, men who saw the great buffalo herds that darkened the plains and made the earth tremble when they stampeded.” His eyes were very far away, his face marked with deep emotion. “I know men who made the desert blossom, and men who murdered the old inhabitants and tore up what was wild and beautiful and can’t ever be replaced. Sometimes it was done in ignorance, and sometimes it was done in greed. I watched the white man strengthen and the red man die.”
Caroline drew breath to say something, then changed her mind. She sat silently, watching him, knowing it was not a time to intrude.
He turned and smiled at her.
The understanding between them was tangible in the quiet room.
“Caroline, will you pour me more tea!” Mariah demanded. How could she make him leave? If she claimed a headache she would have to retire, and he might well be gauche enough to remain even so— alone with Caroline. And she was stupid enough to let him. Couldn’t see a foot beyond the end of her own nose. Ever since poor Edward died it had been one disaster after another.
“Of course,” Caroline said willingly, reaching for the pot and obeying. “Samuel, would you care for another sandwich?”
He accepted, although he was doing far more talking than eating or drinking. He was showing off, and enjoying it thoroughly. Could Caroline not see that? He probably did the same to every woman who was fool enough to listen. And there was Caroline, simpering and hanging on his every word as if he were courting her. Joshua would be disgusted—and then she would lose even what little she had, which now she had let the world know about it by marrying him, was at least better than nothing. Then where would she be? A disgraced woman! Put out for immorality—at her age—with no means and no reputation.
Caroline was looking at Samuel again.
“The way you speak of it makes me feel as if there is much tragedy attached. I had always heard of it as brave and exciting, filled with hardship and sacrifice, but not dishonor.” She sensed in him a real wound, and she wished to understand, even to share a fraction of it. There was an emotion driving her she did not realize, but there was a need for reassurance, to find her own balance and certainties, and she was drawn to Samuel’s pain. If one could not gain comfort, one could at least give it. And she could not remember when she had liked anyone so quickly and easily before, except perhaps Joshua, and that was not something she wished to think about just at the moment.
She watched his face for an answer, avoiding Mariah’s eyes. The old lady was in a strange frame of mind, even for her. If Caroline did not know such a thing was impossible, she would have said she was afraid. Certainly she was angry, but then Caroline had never known her when there was not an underlying emotion in her which she realized now was a kind of fury. She had always been quick to find fault, to criticize, to strike out, as if hurting another person released something within her.
But today was different. Was it loneliness, the grief she referred to every so often because she had been a widow so long? Did she really mourn Edmund still? Was she angry at the world because they went on with their own lives regardless of the fact that Edmund Ellison was dead?
Caroline had loved her own husband, but when he died her grief was not inconsolable. Time had not robbed her of the need for affection. Occasionally she still missed him. But shock had certainly healed, as had the momentary numbing loneliness without him.
Now, of course, there was Joshua, and that was a whole new world: exciting—sometimes too much so—exhilarating and threatening, full of laughter deeper than any she had known before, and disturbing new ideas—perhaps not