Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [80]
Samuel was watching her, his face alight with interest, waiting for her to go on.
But that was her youth, a time it was painful to think of. It was another life, another person, when she had been a girl full of hope and an innocence which was unbearable to look back on, knowing what came after. It had not occurred to her until this moment to wonder what secrets too awful to touch lay in other women’s lives, behind their composed outward faces. Maybe none. Maybe she was as alone as she felt. The silence grew heavy. She became aware of outside sounds, beyond the windows, horses in the street. It was Caroline who broke the tension.
“All I know of the reign of William IV was to do with the Irish. Tens of thousands of people left Ireland for America. You will have known some of them, I daresay.”
There was a sharp compassion in his eyes. “Of course. I couldn’t count how many of them fetched up in New York, haggard faced, their clothes hanging off them as if they were made of sticks underneath, their eyes full of weariness, trying to hope, and yet not hope too much, and homesick.”
“Your mother must have felt like that too,” Caroline said gently, and it was clear in her face how vividly she was imagining how that unknown woman felt, trying to put herself in her place and understand.
Samuel must have seen it. His smile was touched with grief.
Mariah tried to imagine it. She knew nothing of Alys, except that she had gone. Edmund had never described her. Mariah did not know if she had been beautiful or homely, fair or dark, slender or buxom. She knew nothing of her personality or tastes.
But Alys had gone. That was the one thing that rose like a mountain in her mind, and it made her as different from Mariah as if she had been of another species. That was why she had hated Alys all these years, and envied her, why it choked in her throat to say she admired her, because it was the truth.
Did she want to know more about her? Did she want to be able to see her in the mind’s eye as a real woman, flesh and blood, laughter and pain, as vulnerable as anyone else? No—because then she would have to stop hating her. She would be forced to think of the differences between them and ask herself why she had stayed.
Samuel was talking about her. Caroline had asked him. Of course—Caroline—it was always Caroline!
“. . . I suppose a little taller than average,” he was saying. “Fair brown hair.” He smiled a little self-consciously. “I know I am prejudiced, but I was far from the only one who thought she was beautiful. There was a grace about her, a kind of inner repose, as if she never doubted what she held dearest, and she’d fight like a tiger to protect it. She could get terribly angry, but I never heard her raise her voice. I think she taught me more than anybody else what it means to be a gentleman.”
There was nothing to say that sounded appropriate, and Caroline held her peace.
Mariah knew the familiar bitterness that rose up inside her. How could Alys have been such a perfect lady? Wasn’t she broken inside as well, broken and crying like a hurt child, alone in the dark? Why was her anger only a fleeting thing, acted upon and then forgotten, so that she kept her temper and behaved with such sublime dignity . . . and was loved? Mariah’s anger was deep, inward, lacerating until there was no dignity left, and she seldom ever tried to keep her temper these days. What had made Alys so golden, so bright and brave? Was she just a better woman? Was it as simple as that? What had given her the courage?
“. . . but I want to know more about all of you,” Samuel was saying, looking earnestly at Caroline, then at Mrs. Ellison.
“It is you I really care about. Where did you live? What happened to you? Where did you go and what did you do? What did you talk about to each other? You are my only link with a father I never knew. Perhaps I need to know more of him