Half Moon Street - Anne Perry [98]
“I could have tried!” The words were angry, grating.
“And made it worse for yourself,” Caroline pointed out. “To go was brave—but to stay and make the best of it you could for your children, that was brave too.”
A tiny spark lit in the old lady’s black eyes, a flare of hope.
They had cordially disliked each other for years, living under the same roof, circling around each other with chill, occasionally open, hostility. Now all that seemed unimportant. This was a consuming reality which overrode all the past. The moment was now, in a new light, with new knowledge.
“No, it wasn’t. I was afraid to go.” The old lady said the words carefully, looking at Caroline all the time.
Caroline spoke honestly. It was not difficult, which surprised her.
“Perhaps Alys was afraid to stay?”
The old lady hesitated. It was obvious she had not thought of that. In her mind Alys had always been the one who was brave, the one who did the right thing. This was hope from a quarter she had never expected.
Caroline smiled very faintly, just an instant. “It takes strength to endure and tell no one, never to run away, simply give up. Did you ever allow Edward or Suzannah to know?”
The old lady stiffened. “Of course not! What a monstrous question.”
“You hid it from them for yourself . . . but for them also.”
“I . . . I hid it . . .” The struggle for honesty was so plain it was painful. “I don’t know. I hid it for myself. . . . I couldn’t bear my children to know I had . . . I had been . . . to see me like . . .” At last the tears spilled over onto her cheeks and she began to shudder uncontrollably.
Caroline was horrified. For a moment she was paralyzed. Then pity swept away everything else. She could not like the old woman—there was too much cruelty, too many years of criticism and complaint to forget—but she could feel the wrenching sorrow inside her, the guilt and the self-loathing, the unbearable loneliness. She leaned forward and put her arms around the old woman’s shoulders and held her gently.
They stayed like that, motionless, neither one of them speaking, until Caroline felt a kind of peace settle over them, perhaps no more than a temporary emotional exhaustion. Then she let go, and sat back in her own chair for a moment.
Was there something else she should say of comfort, or honesty, something which if left silent now could not be recaught later? Should they agree on some story to tell Joshua? He had to know.
For a moment she was cold, frightened.
She looked at the old woman in front of her, head still bent, face hidden. How could she explain the letter? It had to have been someone in the house using her name. She and Samuel had never been seen together in public, except at the theatre the night they met. No woman in Samuel’s life, presuming there was one, could be jealous enough to do such a thing. Caroline was his brother’s widow. Who more natural for him to call on in a strange city?
But she must explain yesterday to Joshua. That was insistent, at the front of her mind.
She looked at the old lady, and pity ground hard with a unique pain, but she had brought that upon herself; her own actions had made it inevitable. Caroline was not going to wound Joshua, and herself, to save Mariah Ellison. She could not believe Alys could have told her son something so terrible. But even if he knew, Samuel had not behaved towards them as if he knew. Joshua would remain. What should she say?
Her own decision was made. She rose to her feet and went quietly out of the room, closing the door. In the hall she saw the maid.
“Mrs. Ellison would like a little time alone,” she said to the girl. “Please see that she is not disturbed for a while, half an hour at least. Unless, of course, she rings for you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Caroline went upstairs deep in thought. It would be