Pentecost Alley - Anne Perry [47]
Below them the dining room door opened again and Finlay came out, walking quickly and a little angrily towards the front door.
“Jarvis!” he shouted. “Where’s my hat and my stick? I left them in the stand last night. Who’s moved them?”
A footman materialized, duly deferential.
“Your stick is there, sir, and I took the hat to brush it.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Finlay reached for the stick. “Well, fetch the hat, Jarvis. Why did you take it anyway? I don’t need a hat brushed every time I wear it.”
“A bird unfortunately …” Jarvis began.
Tallulah smiled in spite of herself and took Emily by the arm to guide her back to the room to make the necessary arrangements to have her own dress packed so she could take it with her on her return home.
Emily made her farewells, then rode home in the FitzJameses’ second carriage, Augustus having taken the first. Her thoughts were engaged in Tallulah’s problems. Was it possible that Finlay was guilty?
Why would he do such a thing? What was there about him that his father knew, or suspected, which made him so cold, so uncertain, and yet unhesitant to defend him?
Or had she misread the emotions in his face? She had been an onlooker at one meal. Perhaps she was being foolish, absurdly overrating her own judgment.
She wondered idly what Jago was like that he could have captured Tallulah’s dreams so completely. Apparently he was the opposite of everything she treasured in her present life. Perhaps that was it? Not reality at all, simply an enchantment with the idea of the different. Whatever it was, she liked Tallulah, liked her vividness, her ability to care, and the fact that she was teetering on the edge of dreams for which she would have to pay for the rest of her life. She was worthy of all the help Emily could give her. There was no decision to be made about that.
When she arrived she thanked the FitzJameses’ coachman, alighted and went up her own front steps. The butler opened the door to her without raising his eyebrows.
“Good morning, Jenkins,” she said calmly, walking in.
“Good morning, ma’am,” he replied, closing the door behind her. “Mr. Radley is in the study, ma’am.”
“Thank you.” She passed him the package containing her dinner gown with instructions to give it to her ladies’ maid. Then, feeling a trifle odd in Tallulah’s muslin morning dress, she walked, head high, to the study to explain herself to Jack.
“Good morning,” he said coolly when she opened the door. He was sitting at the desk with a pile of papers, a pen in his hand, his expression unsmiling. “I received your message. Rather incomplete. Where were you?”
She took a deep breath. She found herself resenting the need to account, but she had known it would be unavoidable.
“I accepted a ride to another party, and did not realize how late I had stayed. They were interesting people, and I met someone …” She still had not made up her mind whether to pass it off as help to a friend in trouble or enquiring into Pitt’s current case. Looking at Jack’s displeased face did not assist her. Whatever she said, it had better be something she could substantiate.
“Yes?” he prompted, his eyes chilly.
She must decide immediately, or it would look like a lie. He was not as easy to mislead as she sometimes wished. She had once assumed that his attention could be diverted by a smile, and she had been wrong.
“I’m waiting, Emily….”
“I met a young woman I liked very much, and she was in great distress because her brother has been accused of murder…. Thomas is investigating the case. I couldn’t leave it, Jack! I had to find out all I could about it … for her sake, and Thomas’s … and for the truth itself!”
“Indeed …” He sat back in his chair, regarding her skeptically. “So you stayed the night in her home. What did you learn in this generous