Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [25]
“She must be from the country, poor creature.”
“Must she?” the young man said with surprise. “Do you know her?” He made a move as if to approach Charlotte, his face alight with anticipation.
The woman’s eyes widened dramatically. “Of course not. Really, Gerald! How would I know such a person? I merely remarked that she must have come up from the country because of her unfortunate coloring.” She grasped Gerald’s arm firmly, restraining him.
“I thought it was rather pleasing.” He stopped short. “Sort of like well-polished mahogany.”
“Not her hair. Her complexion. Obviously she cannot be a milkmaid, or she would not be here, but she looks as if she could have been. I daresay it is riding to hounds, or some such thing.” She wrinkled her nose very slightly. “She looks positively robust. Most unbecoming. But I daresay she is unaware of it, poor creature. Just as well.”
Gerald pulled his mouth down at the corner. “How typical of you to feel such compassion for her, my dear. That is one of your most charming traits, your sensitivity to the feelings of others.”
She glanced at him very quickly, some inkling in the back of her mind that there was an element in him she had missed, then chose to ignore it and swept forward to speak to a viscountess she knew.
Gerald shot a look of undisguised admiration at Charlotte, then followed obediently.
Charlotte smiled to herself and went to look for Pitt.
She glimpsed Great-Aunt Vespasia across the room, looking quite magnificent in a gown of steel-gray satin, her heavy-lidded silver eyes brilliant, her white hair a more gracious ornament to her head than many of the tiaras glistening around her.
As Charlotte looked at her, Vespasia quite slowly and deliberately winked, then resumed her conversation.
It took Charlotte several minutes to find Pitt. He had moved from the main reception room with its blazing chandeliers up a shallow flight of steps into a quieter room where he was deep in conversation with the man who resembled Linus Chancellor, and the extraordinary woman who was with him.
Charlotte hesitated, uncertain whether if she approached, she might be interrupting, but the woman glanced up and their eyes met with a jolt of interest that was almost a familiarity.
The man followed her line of sight, and Pitt also turned.
Charlotte went forward and was introduced.
“Mr. Jeremiah Thorne of the Colonial Office,” Pitt said quietly. “And Mrs. Thorne. May I present my wife.”
“How do you do, Mrs. Pitt,” Mrs. Thorne said immediately. “Are you interested in Africa? I do hope not. I am bored to weeping with it. Please come and talk to me about something else. Almost anything would do, except India, which from this distance is much the same.”
“Christabel …” Thorne said with alarm, but Charlotte could see that it was largely assumed, and he was possibly quite used to her manner, and in no way truly disturbed.
“Yes my dear,” she said absently. “I am going to speak with Mrs. Pitt. We shall find something to entertain us, either something profoundly serious and worthy, like saving souls or bodies; or else totally trivial, like criticizing the fashions of everyone else we can see, and speculating on which respectable lady of uncertain years is seeking which wretched young man to marry her daughter.”
Thorne smiled and groaned at the same time, but there was quite obviously profound affection in it; then he turned back to Pitt.
Charlotte followed Christabel Thorne with considerable interest; the conversation promised to be different and lively.
“If you come to these sort of things as often as I do, you must find them desperately tedious by now,” Christabel said with a smile. Her large eyes were very penetrating, and Charlotte could imagine she would paralyze many a timid soul into silence, or stuttering and incoherent sentences.
“I have never been to one before.” Charlotte decided to be just as frank. It was the only defense against pretentiousness, and being caught