Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [100]
She turned away, sick with the taste of fear, but not before she knew he had seen the understanding in her eyes. No wonder poor Phoebe had never even considered him the rapist. And now Charlotte knew, too, and that was something for which he would have no forgiveness this side of the grave.
She moved away, unseeing, consumed with her knowledge. Silks hung limp in the still air. Flawless skins were blackspotted with minuscule thunder flies, and it was getting hotter all the time. Conversation flittered past her, and she heard its sound but not its words.
“You let it upset you too much. It’s foolish, and I dare say ugly, but it need not touch you, or your sister.”
It was Paul Alaric, holding out a glass of lemonade for her, his eyes concerned, but with the same inward gleam of humor as always.
She remembered the garden room.
“It has nothing to do with that,” she shook her head. “I was thinking of something else, something real.”
He offered her the lemonade and, with his other hand, brushed a thunder fly away from her cheek.
She took the glass, glad of it, and as she turned slightly, her eye caught Jessamyn Nash with a look of malevolence on her face. This time she knew almost beforehand what it was—nothing complex, just ordinary jealousy, because Paul Alaric had touched her, because his concern was for her, and she knew it was real.
Overwhelmingly, Charlotte wanted to escape from it all, the politeness masking the envies, the airless garden, the silly conversations and the hatreds underneath.
“Where is Hallam Cayley buried?” she asked suddenly.
Alaric’s eyes widened in surprise.
“In the same graveyard as Fulbert and Fanny, about a mile away. Or to be accurate, just outside it—unhallowed ground for a suicide.”
“I think I’ll go and visit it. Do you suppose anyone will notice if I pick a few flowers from the front as I go?”
“I doubt it. But do you care?”
“Not at all.” She smiled at him, grateful for his not saying the expected, and not criticizing her.
She broke off some daisies, some sweet William, and a few long heads of lupines, already seeding a little at the bottom but still bright, and set out along the Walk toward the road at the end and the church. It was not as far as she had expected, but the heat was getting more oppressive all the time. The clouds overhead were heavier, and the flies were everywhere.
There was no one else in the graveyard, and she passed unnoticed through the lych-gate and down the path, past the graves with their carved angels and their memories, and beyond the yews to the small plot kept for those without the blessing of the church. Hallam’s grave was very new, the ground still bearing the scars of disturbance.
She stood looking at it for several minutes before she laid the flowers down. She had not thought to bring any kind of container, and there was nothing already here. Maybe they thought no one would want to bring flowers for such a person.
She stared down at the clay, still dry and hard, and thought about the Walk, all the stupidity and the unnecessary pain, and the loneliness.
She was still thinking when she heard another step and looked up. Jessamyn Nash was coming out of the shade of the yew trees, carrying lilies. When she recognized Charlotte, she hesitated, her face pinched and hard, her eyes almost black.
“What did you come here for?” she said very quietly, coming toward Charlotte now. She held the lilies and their leaves upright, and there was a silver gleam of scissors in her hand.
Without knowing why, Charlotte was afraid, as if the thunder and the electricity in the air had ripped through her. Jessamyn was standing opposite her, the grave between them.
Charlotte looked down at the flowers.
“Just—just to put these here.”
Jessamyn stared at them, then slowly raised her foot and trod on them, grinding them with the weight of her body, till they were crushed and smeared on the stone-hard clay. She lifted her head and faced Charlotte, then calmly dropped her own lilies on the same