Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [101]
“Only if our enemies happen also to be his,” Cornwallis said dryly. “He’s a man to remember an offense and forget a service. Not that our conduct of the case was in any sense intended to be a service to him!” he added quickly. “If Pitt had proved his son guilty, I’d have had him arrested as soon as Costigan, or anyone else.”
Micah Drummond smiled.
“I’m sure you would. I’m still delighted it didn’t prove necessary.” He glanced at Pitt, and then back again at Cornwallis. “There is nothing we can do if tragedy strikes one of the prominent families, but it’s a most wretched thing to have to deal with.”
Pitt’s mind flew back to the tragedy which had affected Eleanor Byam, who was now Drummond’s second wife. The tension and the pain of that experience, the ultimate terrible outcome, and Pitt’s understanding of Drummond’s own emotions, had forged a bond between them which was still absent from his respect for Cornwallis.
Drummond swung around to exchange a few words with Charlotte and compliment Caroline on Joshua’s performance, then he excused himself and left.
Pitt turned to Cornwallis and was about to resume their conversation when there was another brief tap on the door and Vespasia sailed in with her head high. She looked marvelous. She had chosen to make a great occasion of the event, and was dressed in lavender and steel-gray silk. On anyone else it might have been cold, but with her silver hair and the diamonds at her ears and throat, it was magnificent.
Pitt and Cornwallis automatically rose to their feet.
“Quite fascinating, my dear,” Vespasia said to Caroline. “What an entrancing man. Such a presence.”
Caroline blushed, realized she was doing it, and blushed the more.
“Thank you,” she said almost hesitantly. “I think he is doing it rather well.”
“He is doing it superbly,” Vespasia admonished. “The part could have been written for him. I daresay it was! Good evening, Charlotte. Good evening, Thomas. No doubt you are pleased with yourself? Good evening, John.”
“Good evening, Lady Vespasia.” He bowed very slightly to her. He looked at once pleased and uncomfortable. Pitt glanced at him, and saw from his expression that he was already aware that Vespasia was in some distant way related at least to Charlotte. He was not surprised to see her, as he must otherwise have been.
“Quite extraordinary,” Vespasia went on, with a very slight lift of one shoulder and without offering any explanation of what she was referring to. She turned back to Caroline with a charming smile. “I’m so glad I came. Please don’t consider it in the slightest way a reflection on the fact that the alternative was the opera, which was something Wagnerian and fearfully portentous, to do with gods and destiny. I prefer my doomed love affairs in Italian, and to do with human frailty, which I understand, rather than fate, which I do not, and predestination, which I do not believe in. I refuse to. It negates all that humanity is, if it is to be worth anything whatever.”
Caroline opened her mouth to say something polite and changed her mind. It was not necessary, and no one, least of all Vespasia, expected it.
“And I could not abide to sit and watch Augustus FitzJames preen himself,” Vespasia continued. “I don’t know whether he is really fond of Wagner or only considers it the correct mark of good taste, but he attends every one, and always on the first night, with his wife wearing half a South African diamond mine ’round her neck. The sight of his face would be worse than sitting in a box listening to Brünnhilde screaming for four hours, or Sieglinde, or Isolde, or whoever it is. But it would be interesting to look around the audience and see if anyone is in a particularly filthy mood.”
“Would it?”