Southampton Row - Anne Perry [6]
He blushed hot at one or two memories. He forbore from drawing any similarities between the public’s attitude to women and parents’ towards children. He did not want to quarrel with her. He knew why she spoke as she did. He felt the same anger and disappointment choking inside himself, and there were better ways of showing it than temper.
“You’re right!” he said unequivocally.
Her eyes opened wide for a moment in surprise, then in spite of herself she started to laugh. She put her arms around his neck and he took hold of her, drawing her body to his, caressing her shoulder, the soft line of her neck, and then kissing her.
Pitt went to the station with Charlotte, Gracie and the children. It was a huge, echoing place crowded with people hurrying in all directions. It was the terminus for the London and South Western line, and the air was loud with the hiss of escaping steam, clanging doors, feet on the platform walking, running, shuffling, wheels of luggage trolleys, shouts of greeting and farewell, an excitement of adventure. It was full of beginnings and endings.
Daniel jiggled up and down with impatience. Edward, fair-haired like Emily, tried to remember the dignity of being Lord Ashworth, and succeeded for a full five minutes before racing along the platform to see the fires roaring as a stoker poked more coal into the bottom of a vast engine. The stoker looked up, smiling at the boy before wiping his hand across his brow and beginning again.
“Boys!” Jemima muttered under her breath with a glance at Charlotte.
Gracie, still not much larger than when she had entered their employ as a thirteen-year-old, was dressed up for traveling. It was the second time she had been away from London on holiday, and she was managing to look very experienced and calm, except for the brilliance of her eyes and the flush in her cheeks—and the fact that she clung on to her soft-sided bag as if it were a life preserver.
Pitt knew they must go. It was for their safety, and he wanted to be free of anxiety and certain he could face Voisey with the knowledge they were where he could never find them. But he still felt an ache of sadness inside himself as he called a porter over and instructed him to put their luggage into the van, giving him threepence for his trouble.
The porter tipped his cap and piled the cases onto his trolley. He whistled as he pushed it away, but the sound was lost in the roar of a belch of steam, the sliding of coal off the shovels into the furnaces, the guard’s shrill whistle blast as an engine jolted forward and began to pick up speed, pulling out.
Daniel and Edward raced each other along the platform, looking for the least occupied compartment, and came back waving their arms and whooping with triumph.
They put their hand baggage inside, then came to the door to say good-bye.
“Look after each other,” Pitt told them after he had hugged them all, including Gracie, to her surprise and pleasure. “And enjoy yourselves. Have every bit of fun you can.”
Another door clanged shut and there was a jolt. “Time to go,” Pitt said, and with a wave he stepped back as the carriage lurched and juddered, the couplings locked, and it moved forward.
He stood watching, seeing them leaning out of the window, Charlotte holding them back, her face suddenly bleak with loneliness as she was pulled away. Clouds of steam billowed upwards and drifted towards the vast, many-arched roof. There were smuts in the air and the smell of soot and iron and fire.
He waved until they were out of sight as the train curved around the track, then he walked as fast as he could back along the platform and out into the street. At the cab rank he climbed into the first hansom and told the driver