Resurrection Row - Anne Perry [59]
“How do you do, Mrs. Pitt?” Alicia replied, and Charlotte knew instantly that Dominic had not told her; there was no curiosity in her face. Alicia took a step away, saw Dominic, and stood perfectly still for a moment. Then she turned to Gwendoline Cantlay and complimented her on her gown.
Charlotte was still considering her own instinctive understanding of the moment when she realized she was being spoken to.
“I understand you are an ally of Lady Cumming-Gould?”
She looked round at the speaker. He was lean, with winged eyebrows and teeth that were a little crooked when he smiled.
Charlotte scrambled to think what he could mean. “Ally?” It must have something to do with the bill Aunt Vespasia was concerned with, to get children out of workhouses and into some sort of school. He would be the man who had driven Dominic to the street in Seven Dials and shown him the workhouse that had upset him so profoundly. She looked at him with more interest. She could understand Thomas’s care for such things; his daily life brought him the results of its tragedies, every sort of victim. But why did this man care?
“Only in spirit,” she said with a smile. Now she knew who he was, she felt assured; perhaps in all the room he was the one who discomfited her least. “A supporter; nothing so useful as an ally.”
“I think you underrate yourself, Mrs. Pitt,” he replied.
It stung her to be patronized. The cause was too real for trivia and meaningless flattery. She found herself resenting it, as if he did not consider her worthy of the truth.
“You do me no favor by pretending,” she said rather sharply. “I am not an ally. I have not the means.”
His smile widened. “I stand rebuked, Mrs. Pitt, and I apologize. Perhaps I was precipitate, making the wish the fact.”
It would be churlish of her not to accept his apology. “If you can make it a fact, I shall be delighted,” she said more gently. “It is a cause worthy of anyone’s effort.”
Before he could reply, they were introduced to more people. Lord and Lady St. Jermyn came in, and Charlotte found herself presented. Her first impressions of people were frequently wrong: most often the people she afterwards came to like, she felt nothing toward at first; but she could not imagine ever being anything but uncomfortable in the presence of Lord St. Jermyn. There was something about his mouth that repelled her. He was in no way ugly, rather the opposite, but there was a way his lips met that stirred half a memory, half imagination in her that was unpleasant. She heard her voice replying some inanity and felt Carlisle’s eyes on her. He had every right to reproach her with the very dishonesty for which she had just criticized him.
A little later Alicia joined them, with Dominic at her elbow. Charlotte watched them and thought how well they looked together, a perfect complement. Odd how that thought would have hurt and bewildered her a few years ago, and now it gave her no feeling at all except anxiety, in case the picture broke and there was nothing behind its perfection strong enough to stand an injury to the balance, an assault.
The conversation turned back to the bill. St. Jermyn was talking to Dominic.
“I hear from Somerset that you are a friend of young Fleetwood? With him on our side we would have an excellent chance. He has considerable influence, you know.”
“I don’t know him very well.” Dominic was nervous, beginning to disclaim. Charlotte had seen him twist a glass stem like that in Cater Street; she realized now how many times. She had never been conscious of it before.
“Well enough,” St. Jermyn said with a smile. “You are a good horseman, and an even better judge of an animal. That’s all it takes.”
“I believe you have a fine stable yourself, sir.” Dominic was still trying not to be pushed.
“Racing.” St. Jermyn waved