Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [36]
Tallulah stared at her long, slender hands resting on her skirt.
“Jago wouldn’t feel inferior,” she replied. “He’s the best man I’ve ever met.”
Emily was at a loss to answer that. Jago, whoever he was, sounded like a bore, and more than a little unreal. Or perhaps that was unjust? It could be only the way Tallulah saw him. But looking sideways at Tallulah’s unhappy face, it was hard to believe she would find someone she saw as so good of the slightest interest, except as a curiosity. Even deep in thought, her own face was full of vitality and daring. Her mouth was too wide, full of humor, her nose too strong and yet utterly feminine. Her eyes were lovely, wide and intelligent. It was the face of a rebel, unpredictable, far from wise, perhaps self-indulgent, but always brave.
“Best at what?” Emily asked before she thought clearly of her words.
Tallulah smiled in spite of herself.
“Best at honor, and caring for people, real people,” she answered. “And at working all the hours there are, at giving away his goods to feed the poor, at giving his whole life in service. If he sounds boring, or unlikely, that’s only because you don’t know him.”
“Are you sure you do?”
Tallulah looked up. “Oh, yes. He’s a parish priest in Whitechapel. I haven’t been there, of course. It’s the most fearful place. They say even the smell is enough to turn your stomach. Open middens everywhere. You can taste them in the air. All the people are dirty, and thin, and terribly poor.”
Emily thought of her own experiences with poverty, the times she had helped Charlotte or Pitt and seen the reality of hunger: people crowded ten or twelve to a room, sleeping on the floor, always cold, without privacy even for the most intimate functions. She knew far better than Tallulah what they were speaking of. Perhaps this Jago really was good.
“How do you know him?” she said aloud. “He’s not exactly your circle. I can’t see him at something like this.” Her eye strayed to the giggling women, their corseted waists, their flowing skirts, their gleaming white shoulders and necks colored with gems. If anyone here had gone hungry, it would be for vanity’s sake. But to be fair, at least in the unmarried ones among them, beauty was survival.
“He used to be,” Tallulah responded. She looked at Emily frankly. “You think I’m seeing him through a romantic haze, don’t you? That I have no idea what the real person is like … that I only see his calling and his professional self.” She shook her head. “That’s not true. He’s the same age as my brother, Finlay, and they used to be friends. Finlay’s older than I am. Eight years. But I can remember Jago coming to the house often when I was about sixteen, just before I came out into society. He used to be awfully sweet to me then.”
“But he isn’t now?”
Tallulah looked at her with bitterness.
“Of course not. He’d be polite if we chanced to meet, naturally. He’s polite to everyone. But I can see the contempt in his eyes. The very fact that he speaks at me, through a glass wall of good manners, as if I’m not a real person to him at all, says just how he despises me.”
“Why should he despise you? Isn’t that pretty intolerant?”
Tallulah’s face set into misery again, losing all its brightness and courage.
“Not really. Perhaps ‘despise’ is too strong a word. He just has no time for me. I spend my life indulging myself. I go from one party to another. I eat wonderful food which I don’t work to buy; I don’t even cook it myself.” She lifted one elegant shoulder. “To be frank, I don’t even know where it comes from. I simply order it from the kitchen and it arrives, on the plate ready for me to eat. And when it’s finished someone removes it and does whatever they do. Wash it, put it away, I suppose.”
She smoothed her hands over the silk of her skirt, her fingertips caressing the soft, bright fabric.
“And I wear gorgeous dresses, which I don’t make, and I wouldn’t begin to know how to care for,” she went on. “I even have a maid to help me put them on