The Cater Street Hangman - Anne Perry [99]
“And Mama?” Charlotte said bitterly. “Will she pull herself together and get over it as well?”
“There is nothing to get over!” Grandmama snapped. “I’m surprised that you should be so foolish, and so gullible as to believe Sarah. Can’t you see she is upset?”
“Of course she’s upset! So am I. If you are not upset by it, I can only presume that your moral standards are different from mine!”
That was really too much! Grandmama felt outrage rise inside her till she found it hard to catch her breath. Charlotte’s insolence was beyond any bounds she could tolerate.
“Certainly my standards are different from yours!” she said acidly. “I did not fall in love with my sister’s husband!”
“I’m perfectly sure you never fell in love at all,” Charlotte said icily.
“I never lost control of myself,” Grandmama said viciously, “if that is what you mean by ‘falling in love.’ I do not consider an emotional excess any excuse for immoral behaviour. And if you had been properly brought up, neither would you!”
That was the chance Charlotte had been waiting for. Her face lit with fierce triumph. “You are hoist with your own petard, Grandmama. If upbringing is to blame, what happened to Papa? How is it that you did not explain to him that one does not betray one’s wife and children by keeping a mistress for twenty-five years!”
Grandmama felt the blood rush to her face. She was dizzy with outrage, fear—and the fact that her stays were extremely tight.
“How dare you repeat such malicious and irresponsible lies! Go to your room! If it would not be both embarrassing and hurtful to your father, I should demand that you apologize to him.”
“I’m sure it would be embarrassing, to both of you,” Charlotte said with a cynical smile. “You would see from his face that he is guilty, and then you would be obliged to retract your words, and a good many of your ideas.”
“Nonsense!” Grandmama said icily. She would not have Edward criticized by this insolent child. How dare Sarah have spread this slander everywhere? It was unforgivable. “I dare say your father may have indulged in certain tastes—gentlemen do—but nothing dishonest, or dishonourable, as you suggest. To talk of betrayal is ridiculous!”
Charlotte’s lip curled with disgust. “I admired Dominic, although I never did anything about it, never even spoke, and I am immoral; yet Papa keeps a mistress for twenty-five years, buys her a house and supports her, and he is only behaving as gentlemen do; there is nothing dishonourable in it! You hyprocrite! I know there is one standard for men and another for women, but even you cannot stretch it as far as that! Why should it be unpardonable sin for a woman to betray a man, but a mere peccadillo, nothing to raise the eyebrows, if a man betrays a woman? Surely a sin is a sin, whoever commits it; only some may be extended forgiveness because of ignorance or greater weakness? Is that man’s plea, greater weakness? They are always saying it is we who are the weaker ones, or is that only physical? Are we supposed to be morally stronger?”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Charlotte!” But the sting had gone out of her reply. She was remembering Caroline’s face at breakfast. Unless she was very much mistaken, there had been the marks of tears, carefully powdered over, but Grandmama’s eyes were still perfectly good enough to see through that.
Caroline believed it.
Was it possible? Had Edward kept another woman all these years? And what kind of a woman was she?
She looked at Charlotte’s hard, hurt face.
Charlotte saw her waver, saw the doubt. Contempt flickered in her eyes.
Grandmama felt the chill of disillusion trickle through her mind, leaving her with the bleak acceptance that there must be at least some truth in this story. She had always loved Edward, clung to the image of his father in him, and in some way her own youth and the things that had been good in it. She had seen in Edward the epitome of all that is fine and admirable in a man: the best of his father, without the worst.
Now she was obliged to face the fact