The Hyde Park Headsman - Anne Griffin Perry [39]
Vespasia smiled at him, her eyes gentle and bright. “Of course you are right. But I cannot help it crossing my mind that perhaps Lady Winthrop knows or suspects something that we do not.”
Thelonius’s smile was full of amusement. He braced himself very slightly against the movement as the carriage turned a corner and straightened again.
“She may indeed know something, but I doubt even she could suspect anything that you have not imagined,” he agreed.
Vespasia had the grace to blush, very faintly indeed, but her eyes did not waver.
“Indeed,” she said dryly. “What do you know of the Winthrops’ marriage? I confess, I had not ever heard of them. Who are the Mitchells?”
Charlotte looked from one to the other of them.
“Very ordinary, I believe,” he replied. “Evelyn Winthrop regarded the marriage as less than satisfactory. Wilhelmina had nothing to offer but herself and a small dowry. As for Bartholomew Mitchell, he went out to Africa in the Zulu war of ’79, I believe, and has spent most of the eleven years since then either in Southern Africa or north in Mashonaland or thereabouts. Soldier, of course, to begin with. Something of an adventurer, I suppose.” A shadow of amusement crossed his face. “But none the worse for that. Certainly he did not add to his sister’s value in marriage.”
“Then Captain Winthrop was in love?” Vespasia said with warmth and a flicker of surprise.
He looked at her very steadily. “I wish I could say so, but I think it was more a matter of realism. He was not without pretensions, but they were to naval office and personal power rather than social distinction. The Winthrops are not really …” He stopped, uncertain what word to use without a certain crassness.
“Out of the top drawer?” Charlotte suggested.
“Not even out of the second,” he conceded with humor. “But aren’t they supposed to be related to all sorts of people?”
“My dear, if a distinguished person has a dozen children, one will find, in a generation or two, that half the Home Counties are related to him,” Vespasia pointed out. She turned again to Thelonius. “But you used the term ‘realism.’ Was it a fortunate marriage? Are there children?”
“I believe there are two or three, all daughters. One died young, the other two are recently married.”
“Married!” Charlotte was amazed. “But she looks—so …”
“She was seventeen when she married Oakley, and her daughters also married at about that age.”
“I see.” She pictured a man disappointed without sons, although perhaps the judgment was unjust. Why had the daughters both married so young? Love? Or a desire to grasp the first opportunity that was remotely acceptable? What had that family been like when the doors were closed and the polite faces set aside?
There was no more time for speculation because they had arrived at the house of Lord and Lady Winthrop. They alighted and were welcomed in by servants in full mourning and shown into a large reception room with a table laden with rich food set out on exquisite linen. Silver gleamed discreetly under the chandeliers, fully lit even though the day was bright, because the curtains were half closed and the blinds lowered as a sign of death in the house. The most conspicuous ornamentation in the room were bowls and sheafs of white lilies, and the cloying perfume of them was redolent of the hothouse.
“Good heavens, it looks like an undertaker’s,” Vespasia said under her breath, at the same time smiling as she saw Emily and Jack Radley only a few yards away. “Heaven knows what the funeral must have been like! Hello, Emily, my dear. You look quite charming, and obviously in excellent health. How is Evangeline?”
“Growing, and really quite well behaved,” Emily replied with pride. “She is very pretty.”
“What a surprise!” Vespasia did not try to conceal her humor. “Jack, how is your campaign progressing? How long is it until the by-election?”
Jack gave her his entire attention. He had made his way in