Long Spoon Lane - Anne Perry [23]
Vespasia bade Cordelia good-bye yet again, then accepted Landsborough’s arm. Together they went out of the front door and down the steps towards the waiting carriage.
“Thank you for coming,” he said quietly. “It was good of you, especially in the circumstances.”
She was uncertain if he were referring to their past association or the way in which Magnus had died, and what might yet emerge about it. There might be storms of public blame or outrage to come.
“I grieve for your loss,” she said candidly. “No doubt we shall have to face other things later, but just at the moment they all seem irrelevant.”
He smiled very slightly. His face looked old, his skin papery thin, but his eyes were as she had always known them. “It will come soon enough,” he agreed. “Magnus was always too much of an enthusiast. He espoused causes because he cared about injustice. He did not always look closely enough at them, or realize that sometimes bad people can preach a good crusade. I should have taught him more patience, and much greater wisdom.”
“You cannot teach people what they do not wish to learn,” she told him gently. “I seem to remember I was somewhat revolutionary when I was in my thirties. My only wisdom was that I did not pursue it in my own country. But I made Rome too hot to hold me. Fortunately I had England to return to.”
He looked at her with an old tenderness she remembered with pleasure and guilt. “You never told me about it,” he said. “Except for the heat, and the food. You always liked Italian food.”
“One day, perhaps,” she replied, knowing that she would not. That summer of 1848 was an island of time that could not be brought into the rest of her life, and she did not wish to share it, even with Sheridan Landsborough. But quite apart from that, it might hurt him, remind him of youth and fierceness of idealism and love that had slipped away from him now, but perhaps was reminiscent of the son he was mourning.
The carriage was waiting. She looked at him steadily and saw memory in his eyes, loneliness, and perhaps guilt as well. He might have been a revolutionary in his youth. He had cared about injustice and change, and had the courage to say so. That might have been the reason he had never held high office in government. How much might he have known about what Magnus was doing? Might he even have sympathized in the beginning, and be prepared to defend his memory now?
“Good-bye,” she said, and accepted his arm to step into her carriage.
She rode home still turning the questions over in her mind, and even through the afternoon her thoughts kept going back to the conversation between Cordelia and Denoon, and Enid’s arguments against them. There had been a heat of emotion in her face, which was more than idealistic, and a pain so close to the surface it was almost beyond her control.
In the early evening Vespasia could no longer weigh the matter on her own, and she sent for her carriage to take her to Keppel Street.
Charlotte was delighted to see her. She was no longer embarrassed by the modesty of her home. She had several years ago realized that Vespasia felt at ease in the kitchen in a way she never would have in her own, where she was mistress, servants answered her only when spoken to, and the gulf between them was unpassable. Vespasia lived in a house full of people, but she was in many ways alone. It had been so since her husband had died, and possibly before that. Children offered a different kind of love, not necessarily the kind that includes companionship.
“Aunt Vespasia!” Charlotte greeted her with unfeigned delight. “Please come in. Would you like to sit in the parlor?”
“Not in the least,” Vespasia said candidly. “Is there something wrong with the kitchen?”
Charlotte smiled.
“Not more than usual. The laundry is dry, the cats are asleep in the wood basket, and Gracie is putting away the last of the dishes. But I can quite easily do that, and she can fold the clean clothes upstairs.” She took Vespasia’s cape and the silver-topped cane she carried, but never really