Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [61]
Celeste and Angeline stood side by side, both dressed in black bombazine. Celeste’s was stitched with jet beads and had a fall of velvet over the front and caught up in the bustle. It was a fraction tight at the bosom. Angeline’s was draped over the shoulders with heavy black lace fastened with a jet pin set with tiny pearls, a very traditional mourning brooch. The lace was also echoed across the stomach and under the bombazine bustle; only the most discriminating would know it was last year’s arrangement of folds. And it was even tighter around the bosom. Charlotte guessed they had performed the same service at Theophilus’s funeral, and perhaps at the bishop’s as well. A clever dressmaker could do a great deal, and from observation it seemed, like many wealthy people, the Worlingham sisters liked their economies.
Celeste greeted them with deep solemnity, as if she had been a duchess receiving callers, standing stiff-backed, inclining her head a fraction and repeating everyone’s names as though they were of significant importance. Angeline kept a lace-edged handkerchief in her hand and dabbed at her cheek occasionally, echoing the last two words of everything Celeste said.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Pitt.” Celeste moved her hand an inch in recognition of a relative stranger of no discernible rank.
“Mrs. Pitt,” Angeline repeated, smiling uncertainly.
“Gracious of you to come to express your condolences.”
“Gracious.” Angeline chose the first word this time.
“Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould.” Celeste was startled, and for once the fact that she was a bishop’s daughter seemed unimpressive. “How—how generous of you to come. I am sure our late father would have been quite touched.”
“Quite touched,” Angeline added eagerly.
“There would be no reason for him to be,” Vespasia said with a cool smile and very direct stare. “I came entirely on Clemency Shaw’s behalf. She was a very fine woman of both courage and conscience—a rare-enough combination. I am truly grieved that she is gone.”
Celeste was lost for words. She knew nothing of Clemency to warrant such an extraordinary tribute.
“Oh!” Angeline gave a little gasp and clutched the handkerchief more tightly, then dabbed at a tear that started down her pink cheek. “Poor Clemency,” she whispered almost inaudibly.
Vespasia did not linger for any further trivialities that could only be painful, and led the way into the dining room. Somerset Carlisle, immediately behind her, was so used to speaking gently with the inarticulate he had no trouble murmuring something kind but meaningless and following them in.
There were some thirty people there already. Charlotte recognized several from her own previous brief meetings at the Worlinghams’, others she deduced from Pitt’s description as she had done in the church.
She looked at the table, pretending to be engrossed in admiring it, as Caroline and Grandmama came in. Grandmama was scowling and waving her stick in front of her to the considerable peril of anyone within range. She did not particularly want Charlotte with her, but she was furious at being left behind. It lacked the respect due to her.
It was a gracious room, very large, with fine windows all ornately curtained, a dark marble fireplace, an oak sideboard and serving table and a dresser with a Crown Derby tea service set out for display, all reds, blues and golds.
The main table was exquisitely appointed, crystal with a coat of arms engraved on the side of each goblet, silver polished till it reflected every facet of the chandelier, also monogrammed with an ornate Gothic W, and linen embroidered in white with both crest and monogram. The porcelain serving platters were blue-and-gold-rimmed Minton; Charlotte remembered the pattern from the details of such knowledge her mother had taught her, in the days when she attended such functions where information of the sort was required in the would-be bride.
“They never put all this out for her when she was alive,” Shaw said at her elbow. “But then I suppose, God help us, we never had the entire neighborhood in to dine, especially