The Hyde Park Headsman - Anne Griffin Perry [5]
Then George Ashworth had died, leaving Emily a very rich widow, and later she had married Jack Radley, charming, handsome and virtually penniless. She seemed totally happy, and that was all that mattered. Her seven-year-old son, Edward, now Lord Ashworth, had a baby sister, Evangeline, known as Evie, and Jack was again attempting to gain a seat in Parliament. Under Emily’s cajoling, flattering and persuasion he had found a social conscience and determined to forge himself a career. His first attempt had ended in failure, although, both Emily and Charlotte conceded willingly, a moral victory.
“Excuse me, ma’am …” Charlotte’s thoughts were interrupted by the voice of her maid, Gracie, a tiny waif of a girl who had been with her ever since her move to Bloomsbury. Now she was an intelligent and determined eighteen-year-old who had beyond question found her place in life as the confidante and, as of the last case, the assistant to the wife of a detective. The change in her from the child she had been was miraculous. She bristled confidence and appetite for adventure. She was still as thin as a ninepenny rabbit. All the clothes she was given were too long for her and had to be taken up, but her cheeks had color, and she was more than a match for the most impertinent delivery boy or the most uppity servant of anyone else. After all, she had adventures. All they ever did was housework.
“Yes, Gracie?” Charlotte said absently.
“The dustman’s ’ere ’oo said as ’e’d take them broken tiles and get the linoleum up from the kitchen that’s all scuffed and frayed at the edges,” Gracie said busily. “ ’E said that it’d only cost one and sixpence, an’ ’e’d take the rubbish out o’ the back yard too.”
“A shilling,” Charlotte said automatically. “And he can have the broken lamp brackets as well, if he’ll take them down.”
“Yes ma’am.” Gracie whisked out to return less than a moment later with Emily at her heels. Charlotte’s sister came in in a whirl of rose-pink skirts, marvelous sleeves and a fashionably slender waist, not quite as it was before Evie, but still most becoming. Her fair hair sat in an aureole of curls around her face, and her expression was one of amazement.
“Oh Charlotte!” She gazed around and swallowed hard.
Charlotte glared at her.
“It could be … beautiful,” Emily added, then burst into giggles, sinking in a heap of skirts into the old sofa pushed over towards the front windows.
Charlotte opened her mouth to say something furious, then realized how absurd that would be. The room was bare and drab. Old wallpaper hung in ribbons from broken plaster, the windows were dirty and one was cracked, the lamp brackets broken. The old sofa was covered in a dust sheet like a solitary ghost. The rest of the house was no better. The only way to cope was to laugh.
“It will be all right,” she said at length when they had recovered themselves.
“It will have to be replastered, then repapered,” Emily pointed out, “before you can begin to choose new fixtures and fittings.”
“I know that.” Charlotte sniffed, wiped the tears away with her hand. “That will be half the pleasure. I will have reclaimed a disaster and made it into something fine.”
“How very feminine of you, my dear,” Emily said with a broad smile. “So many women I know spend their lives trying to do that—and not only with houses: mostly with husbands. But the trouble with that is you cannot move if it doesn’t work!” She stood up again, absently straightening her skirts. “Show me the rest of this catastrophe. I promise I will try to see what a noble thing it may become. By the way, there has been a fearful murder in Hyde Park, did you know?”
“No, when?” Charlotte led the way to what would become the dining room. “How do you know? Was it in the morning newspapers?”
“No.” Emily shook her head. “I gather the