Paragon Walk - Anne Perry [63]
Now she was a little frightened. What had she done? He was staring at her, his brown eyes very wide. She wanted to apologize, but her mouth was dry and her voice would not come. She took a very deep breath.
“Perhaps you had better go upstairs and lie down,” he said after a moment. He spoke quite quietly. “You’ve had a very heavy day. Parties like that are exhausting. Maybe in this heat it was too much for you.”
“I’m not sick!” she said furiously. Then to her horror the tears started to run down her face, and she found herself crying like a silly child.
There was a second of pain in George’s face, then suddenly the solution washed over him with a wave of relief. Of course, it was her condition. She saw it in him as clearly as if he had spoken it. It was not true! But she could not explain. She allowed him to help her to her feet and gently out into the hallway and up the stairs. She was still boiling, words falling over themselves inside her, and dying before she could make them into sentences. But she could not control the tears, and it was warm to feel his arm around her, and so much better not to have to make all the effort herself.
But when Charlotte called the next morning, largely to inquire how she was after the soiree, Emily was in an unusually sharp temper. She had not slept well and, lying awake in her bed, had thought she had heard George moving around in the next room. More than once she considered getting up and going to him, to ask him why he was pacing, what worried him so much.
But she did not yet feel she knew him well enough to take the rather forward action of going into his room at two o’clock in the morning. She knew he would consider it ingenuous, even immodest. And she was not even sure she wanted to know. Perhaps most of all she was afraid he would lie to her, and she would see through the lies and be haunted by truths she only guessed at.
So when Charlotte appeared looking slender and fresh, her hair shining, unbearably cool, although she was wearing only wash-cotton, Emily was in no mood to receive her graciously.
“I suppose Thomas still knows nothing?” she said acidly.
Charlotte looked surprised, and Emily knew what she was doing, but still could not hold her tongue.
“He hasn’t found Fulbert,” Charlotte answered, “if that’s what you mean?”
“I don’t really care whether he finds Fulbert or not,” Emily snapped. “If he’s dead, I can’t see that it matters a lot where he is.”
Charlotte kept her patience, which only irritated Emily the more. Charlotte holding her tongue really was the last straw.
“We don’t know that he is dead,” Charlotte pointed out. “Or, if he is, that he did not take his own life.”
“And then hide his body afterward?” Emily said with withering contempt.
“Thomas says that many bodies in the river are never found.” Charlotte was still being reasonable. “Or, if they are, they are unrecognizable.”
Emily’s imagination conjured revolting pictures, bloated corpses with their faces eaten away, staring up through murky water. It made her feel sick.
“You are perfectly disgusting!” She glared at Charlotte. “You and Thomas may find such conversation acceptable over the tea table, but I do not!”
“You have not offered me any tea,” Charlotte said with a ghost of a smile.
“If you imagine I shall, after that, you are mistaken!” Emily snapped.
“You had better have something yourself, and try something sweet with it—”
“If one more person makes another polite reference to my condition, I shall swear!” Emily said fiercely. “I do not want to sit down, or take a refreshing drink, or anything else!”
Charlotte was beginning at last to become a little acid herself.
“What you want and what you need are not always the same thing,” she said smartly. “And losing your temper will not help anything. In fact, you will say things you will wish afterward you had not. And if anyone should know the folly of that, I should! You were always the one who could think before you spoke. For goodness’ sake, don’t lose that now when you need it the most.”
Emily stared at her, coldness in the pit of her stomach.