Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [32]
Afterward they all went out to the graveyard for the interment. The air was hot and heavy, as if it had already been breathed, and tasted faintly stale. The soil was dry from long weeks without rain, and the gravediggers had had to hack at it to break it. The only damp spot anywhere was under the yew trees, settling lower and lower to the earth, and it smelled old and sour, as if the roots had fed on too many bodies.
“Ridiculous things, funerals,” Aunt Vespasia whispered sharply from beside her. “Greatest fit of self-indulgence in society; it’s worse than Ascot. Everyone seeing who can mourn the most conspicuously. Some women look very well in black and know it, and you’ll see them at all the fashionable funerals, whether they were acquainted with the deceased or not. Maria Clerkenwell was always doing that. Met her first husband at the funeral of his cousin. He was the chief mourner because he inherited the title. Maria had never heard of the dead man before she read it in the society pages and decided to go.”
Secretly Charlotte admired her enterprise; it was something Emily might have done. She stared across the open grave past the pallbearers, red-faced and glistening with sweat, to Jessamyn Nash standing erect and pale at the far side. The man closest to her was less then handsome, but there was something pleasing in his face, a readiness to smile.
“Is that her husband?” Charlotte asked softly.
Vespasia followed her eye.
“Diggory,” she agreed. “Bit of a rake, but always was the best of the Nashes. Not that that is granting him much.”
From what Charlotte had heard of Afton and seen of Fulbert, she could not disagree. She continued to stare, trusting to her veil to disguise the fact. Really, veils were of very practical convenience. She had never tried one before, but she must remember it for the future. Diggory and Jessamyn were standing a little apart; he made no effort to touch her or support her. In fact his attention seemed to be turned rather toward Afton’s wife Phoebe, who looked perfectly awful. Her hair seemed to have slipped to one side and her hat to the other, and although she made one or two feeble gestures to readjust it, each time she made it worse. Like everyone else, she was in black, but on her it seemed dusty, the black of the sweep, rather than the glossy, raven’s-wing black of Jessamyn’s gown. Afton stood to attention by her side, his face expressionless. Whatever he felt, it was beneath his dignity to display it here.
The vicar held up his hand for attention. The faint whisperings stopped. He intoned the familiar words. Charlotte wondered why they intoned. It always sounded so much less sincere than to speak in a normal voice. She had never heard people who were really emotionally moved speak in such a fashion. They were too much consumed in the content to take such pains with the manner. Surely God was the last person to be swayed by dressing up and affecting airs.
She looked up through her veil and wondered if anyone else was thinking the same things, or were they all properly impressed? Jessamyn had her head down; she was stiff, pale and beautiful as a lily, a little rigid, but very appropriate. Phoebe was weeping. Selena Montague was becomingly pale, although to judge from her lips she had not altogether left nature unaided, and her eyes were as bright as fever. She was standing beside the most singularly elegant man Charlotte had ever seen. He was tall and slender, but there was a litheness to him as if his body were hard, far from the foppish, rather feminine grace of so many fashionable people. He was bareheaded, as were all the other men, and his black hair was thick and smooth. She could see when he turned how perfectly it grew in the nape of his neck. She did not need to ask Vespasia who he was. With a little tingle of excitement she knew—that was the beautiful Frenchman—the one Selena and Jessamyn were fighting over!
She could not tell who