Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [35]
“Hello, Emily,” Selena said brightly. “I must compliment you. It must be a most trying experience, and looking at you one could hardly tell. I do admire your fortitude.” She was a smaller woman than Charlotte had realized, fully eight or ten inches shorter than George. She looked up at him through her eyelashes.
George passed some trivial remark. There was a faint flush on the bones of his cheeks.
Charlotte glanced at Emily and saw her face tighten. For once Emily seemed to think of nothing to say.
“We must also admire you,” Charlotte stared at Selena pointedly. “You carry it so well. Indeed, if I did not know you must naturally be distressed, I would swear you were positively gay!”
There was a sharp intake of breath from Emily, but Charlotte ignored her. George shifted from one foot to the other.
Color rushed up Selena’s face, but she chose her words carefully.
“Oh, Mrs. Pitt, if you knew me better, you could not imagine me callous. I am a most warmhearted person! Am I not, George?” again she looked at him with her enormous eyes. “Please do not let Mrs. Pitt think I am cold. You know it is not so!”
“I—I am sure she does not believe it,” George was palpably uncomfortable. “She only meant that—er—that you comport yourself admirably.”
Selena smiled at Emily, who stood frozen.
“I should not care for anyone to think I was unfeeling,” she added the last little touch.
Charlotte moved closer to Emily, wanting to protect her, guessing vividly what the threat was, feeling it in Selena’s dazzling eyes.
“I am flattered you care so much what I should think of you,” Charlotte said coolly. She would like to have forced a smile, but she had never been good at acting. “I promise you I shall not make any hasty judgments. I am sure you are capable of great—” She looked directly at Selena, allowing her to see she picked the word intentionally with all its shades of meaning. “—generosity!”
“I see your husband is not with you!” Selena’s reply was vicious and unhesitating.
Charlotte was able to smile this time. She was proud of what Thomas was doing, even though she knew they would have held it in contempt.
“No, he is otherwise engaged. He has a great deal to do.”
“How unfortunate,” Selena murmured, but without conviction. The satisfaction was gone out of her.
It was not long after that that Charlotte got her opportunity to meet Algernon Burnon. She was introduced by Phoebe Nash, whose hat was now straight, though her hair still looked uncomfortable. Charlotte knew the sensation all too well: a pin or two in the wrong place, and it could feel as if all the weight of one’s hair were attached to one’s head with nails.
Algernon bowed very slightly, a courteous gesture Charlotte found a little discomposing. He seemed more concerned for her comfort than his own. She had prepared herself for grief, and he was asking her about her health, and if she found the heat trying.
She swallowed the sympathy she had had on the edge of her tongue and made as sensible a reply as she could. Perhaps he found it all too painful to dwell on and was glad of the chance to speak to someone who had not known Fanny. How little one could really tell from faces.
She was floundering, too conscious that he had been close to Fanny and too busy with her own confusion, wondering whether he had loved her, or if it had been a very much arranged affair, or if perhaps he even was relieved to be free of it. She hardly noticed his conversation, though part of her brain was telling her it was both literate and easy.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized. She had no idea what he had just said.
“Perhaps Mrs. Pitt finds our baked meats a little diverse—as I do?”
Charlotte turned sharply to find the Frenchman only a few feet away from her, his fine, intelligent eyes carefully hiding a smile.
She was not quite sure what he meant. He could not possibly have known the wanderings of her mind—or was he thinking