Seven Dials - Anne Perry [79]
“Well, we gotta try,” Gracie urged. “An’ I can’t think o’ no one better than Lady Vespasia. We don’t know nob’dy else, unless Mrs. Radley knows ’em?”
“Emily isn’t of much help,” Charlotte replied, stepping off onto the pavement. “She has not really been around long enough. I will be back when I can do no more. Good-bye.” And she set off with determination, now intent upon getting a hansom rather than saving money and losing time by taking a series of omnibuses. If she did the latter she would have to get off some considerable distance from Vespasia’s house. One could hardly arrive to call on Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould having alighted from a public omnibus.
However, when she arrived, Vespasia’s maid, who knew her well, told her with much regret that Lady Vespasia had decided in such clement weather to take the carriage to the park and go for a walk.
Charlotte was surprised how sharply disappointed she was. London was full of parks, but when society referred to “the Park” it only ever meant Hyde Park, so there was nothing to do but find another hansom and direct the driver to take her there.
Earlier in the year, during the season, she might have found a hundred carriages in or near the park, and looking for an individual would have been a waste of time, but now in the sharper autumn sunshine of late September, with a very decided chill in the breeze, there were not more than a dozen carriages at the nearer end of Rotten Row, and perhaps the same at the farther. Footmen and coachmen stood around gossiping with each other in the dappled shade, and keeping a weather eye open not to be caught by a returning master or mistress. Horses stood idly, moving only now and then with a clink of harness, brasses gleaming in the sun.
Charlotte was perfectly prepared to find Vespasia and join her, even if it meant interrupting almost anyone, short of the Princess of Wales. But since the Princess was seriously deaf, it was most unlikely Vespasia would be engaged in conversation with her, although they were friends, and had been so for years. If Vespasia was speaking with a duchess or countess, Charlotte would be unlikely to recognize the fact. She realized with a sharp intake of breath that she had better behave with the utmost circumspection, even if the lady in question should turn out to be of no social consequence whatever. Vespasia was perfectly capable of talking to an actress or a courtesan, if the person interested her.
It was nearly half an hour of walking at a breathless pace, moving from one group to another and wearing a blister on her left heel, before Charlotte finally caught up with Vespasia. She was actually walking alone, her head high, her steel-gray hat with its sweeping brim adorned with a magnificent silver ostrich plume. Her gown was a paler shade of gray, and there was a white ruffle at her throat of such superb lace as to look as if it were breaking foam in the sunlight.
She turned as she heard Charlotte’s footsteps crunch on the grit behind her. “You look out of breath, my dear,” she said, her eyebrows raised. “No doubt it is something of the utmost importance to bring you in such haste.” She looked down at Charlotte’s dusty hem and the slightly lopsided way she was standing, due to the blister. “Would you care to sit down for a little while?” She could already see from Charlotte’s face that it was not a matter of emotional distress.
“Thank you,” Charlotte accepted, suddenly feeling the blister even more profoundly. She did her best to walk more or less uprightly until they reached the next seat, then sank into it with gratitude. In a moment or two she would unbutton the boot and see what could be done to ease the pain.
Vespasia looked at her with wry amusement. “I am consumed with curiosity,” she said with a smile. “What has brought you out to an unaccustomed place, alone, and in what appears to be some difficulty?”
“The need to know,” Charlotte answered, wincing as she moved her foot experimentally. She smoothed her skirt and sat a little more upright, aware that