by Anna Elliott
Her aunt was separated from her by half the room—she could just make out the top of Aunt Ruth’s purple-turbaned head amidst the plumage of the other ladies. Susanna leaned back against the pillar and let herself draw a slow breath, her eyes sliding momentarily closed.
“Brooke, you are a fool.”
The words, low and passionately spoken, sounded almost in Susanna’s ear, and made her jump. Looking round, she saw that the speaker was standing directly behind her own column.
There were two people: a man and a woman, and it was the woman who had spoken.
She was dark-haired, with dark eyes and strong, handsome features. She wore a dress of a deep turquoise material, and above it her face was white and angry.
“If I find you’ve been gambling again . . .”
Her companion took an involuntary step back. He was fair-haired and handsome, though slightly run to seed, as from years of indulgence and high living. There were marks of dissipation in his face, and there was something weak about the line of his mouth and chin.
Now he quailed before the blazing fury of her glare, but he stood his ground.
“And what then?” There was a hint of bravado in his voice. “It’s my own money, I suppose?”
The woman gave a scornful laugh. “Your own money? Yes—after you married me. You wouldn’t have had a penny if it hadn’t been for my father’s fortune.”
The weak, handsome face blanched, but the man still spoke with the same defiant bluster. “And what of it? A wife’s possessions belong to her husband. And I’m still your husband, whatever you may do.”
“Yes.” The woman turned away in a whirl of peacock-colored skirts, so that Susanna barely caught the next words. “Yes, you’re still my husband. For now.”
The man tried to catch hold of her arm, but she twisted away, and Susanna, not wanting to be seen, drew back behind the pillar. It was a common enough story, however unjust.
A wife was not legally entitled to any property. All she earned, inherited, or possessed belonged to her husband, to save or squander as he chose—or, as here, to gamble away at the gaming tables. Nor, short of her husband’s death, could a woman escape such a marriage. Only an Act of Parliament could grant a divorce, and then almost never to a woman.
“Susanna. There you are, my dear.” Her Aunt Ruth’s voice cut in on her thoughts, making her turn round with a start.
“The crush is terrible, isn’t it?” Ruth straightened her turban, knocked slightly askew by the jostling crowds. “Tell me, have you managed to learn anything of your young man?”
Susanna shook her head. Having found James already, her heart had not been in making any more enquiries. But she could not face explaining that to Aunt Ruth just yet.
Ruth went on, “I have mentioned his name to a few people, but no one seems to know him. It is rather difficult to question anyone—they are all so eager to tell you the latest gossip. At the moment, the place is in a positive uproar over the appearance on the premises of a Mrs. Charlotte Careme.”
“And she is . . .”
“Decidedly of the demimonde. No one can think how she even gained admittance to Almack’s. Not that she is quite openly a kept woman, but”—Ruth lifted her shoulders—“she keeps a very expensive establishment in town with no visible means of support. And she has a number of very wealthy gentleman friends.”
“I see.” Susanna’s excuse of a headache was actually becoming true; her temples had started to throb. But she tried to attend to what her aunt was saying.
“Her current protector is actually a retired navy man—an Admiral Tremain. It’s said he means to marry her,” Ruth went on. “I suppose that’s how she came to be at an affair like this one. The Admiral is a very respected man—his family is one of the oldest in Cornwall. Though why,” she added meditatively, “that should entitle anyone to respect, I do not know. I am sure a good many of the characters on these ancient family trees behaved themselves far worse than a common laborer off the street.”
She broke off abruptly and pointed. “There she is. That’s Mrs. Careme there.”
Susanna looked over—and then froze, sudden recognition jolting through her.
Mrs. Charlotte Careme stood just a few paces away from them. And her appearance was certainly striking. She was a tall, statuesque woman, nearing thirty, with curling auburn-colored hair piled high on her head and interwoven with a band of gold.
She also wore a dress of some filmy white material that clung to the curves of her figure and displayed to best advantage her snow-white shoulders and the graceful arch of her neck. And her toenails—set on display by the delicate Grecian-style sandals she wore—were painted gold.
“Are you all right, my dear?” Aunt Ruth put a concerned hand on Susanna’s arm. “Perhaps we ought to go home. You’re looking terribly pale.”
“I—yes, Aunt Ruth. I mean, I am perfectly well.” Susanna was still staring at Mrs. Careme.
It had to be she whom Sophia claimed to have seen with James. Her aunt’s description had not been very exact. But there could not be so many women in the rarified and exclusive Almack’s who would dare to copy the courtesan’s fashion of painted toes.
James must have—for some reason—been cultivating an acquaintance with Mrs. Careme.
Susanna felt the memory of her final sight of James walking away stab through her.
Did she even care whether James’s current mission somehow involved the woman before her now? She had no idea whether she would ever see James again.
Still, before she even realized she had come to any conclusion, Susanna heard herself say, “Aunt Ruth? I think that I should like to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Charlotte Careme.”
Chapter 5
The day was warm with the rich, golden sun of early autumn, and Susanna and her aunt stood on the step of Admiral Tremain’s London residence, listening to the echo of the bell chime on the other side of the door. It was a handsome house, located in the fashionable Mayfair district, built of yellow stucco and set back a little from the road in its own fenced-in garden.
“You’ll notice I have been very discreet, my dear. I have not asked you a word about the purpose of this visit.”
Susanna forced herself to smile at her aunt. And to ignore the fact that she was not entirely sure of the visit’s purpose herself. “I am grateful, Aunt Ruth. Truly I am.”
Ruth had responded to Susanna’s request the night before with a puzzled look. But she had said that nothing could be easier than to engineer a meeting with Mrs. Careme.
“The Admiral is an old acquaintance of mine. His late wife Anne and I were at school together. I have not seen him in years—not since Anne’s death. But I understand that his residence in London is just a few streets away from our house. We can easily call there tomorrow. Mrs. Careme is actually staying under his roof until their marriage. And,” Ruth had added with a wry smile, “you can imagine what the gossips have to say about that.”
And now they stood at the Admiral’s door.
“Thank you, Aunt Ruth,” Susanna said again. “I will tell you everything as soon as I am able. I promise you.”
The door was opened by a footman in powdered wig and green satin livery, who looked them over and asked their business in frostily accented tones.
He warmed slightly at the mention of Aunt Ruth’s name, and soon they were being shown into the morning room, where, the man informed them, the family was at home.
The morning room was a handsome, slightly old-fashioned apartment, with heavy mahogany furniture upholstered in gold and dark maroon hangings at the windows. Several of what Susanna took to be family portraits hung from the walls: men in crimson doublets and hose, ladies in blue satin panniered dresses.
A big, grey-haired man was seated before the fire, and he rose and came forward as they entered, hands outstretched.
“Ruth. This is a delightful surprise.”
&n
bsp; Admiral Tremain bowed low over their hands while Ruth performed the introductions.
As Susanna made her curtsy and murmured the proper rejoinders to his greetings, she studied him curiously from under her lashes.
He was a large, well-muscled man, tall, with broad shoulders and an air of vigorous energy, as though more suited to action than reflection or thought. His hair was close-cropped and curling, and beneath it his face was bluff and weather-beaten with years of ocean living. His eyes were dark, and his nose classically Roman, and Susanna thought there was something a little pugnacious in the set of his jaw, and the line of his thin, hard mouth. Not a man to cross, the Admiral, or a man to readily admit himself wrong.
“And may I present my daughter? Miss Marianne Tremain. Marianne? Come here and greet our guests.”
He turned, slightly impatiently, to the girl who still sat in a chair by the window, head bent over a book. Susanna might have imagined it, but she fancied there was something deliberately slow in the way the girl shut her volume, and, with the same lingering deliberation, put it to one side and rose from her seat.
The Admiral’s jaw tightened angrily. He would be used to wielding the same authority in the family that he had done on his ship. No doubt he expected his family to leap to obey him with the same alacrity as his fighting men. And small doubt, either, but that this girl would bitterly resent it, and do everything she could to defy his authority.
Marianne Tremain was, Susanna judged, about eighteen, tall, but appearing younger than her years, with blue eyes, a square, determined chin, and skin that would flush readily in moments of emotion—as it was doing now. In a few years’ time, perhaps, she might grow into a handsome woman, but now she had a slightly coltish air of clumsiness about her height, and she peered from under an unbecoming fringe of untidy wheat-colored hair.
Standing there, cheeks burning, head thrown back a little defiantly, she looked very young and somehow appealing, and Susanna felt a sudden sympathy for her. It could not be easy for her—suddenly asked to share her home with a stepmother closer in age to a sister than a parent.
“Come here and meet our visitors,” her father said again, and again Susanna saw the quick, angry flush of color sweep up from the girl’s neck to the roots of the fair hair.
Awkwardly, with a self-conscious, stumbling motion, she came forward to stand beside her father as he performed the introductions. After the first look, she kept her gaze riveted on the floor, and muttered her greetings in a sullen, surly voice, lips tight, jaw set.
The Admiral, too, looked angry, but he evidently decided against further rebukes. Instead, he turned back to Ruth.
“And may I also present my sister-in-law? Miss Fanny Steele, my late wife’s sister.”
He gestured, and Susanna realized with surprise that there was a third person in the room. The back of the high armchair in which she sat had partially concealed her from view, but now Miss Fanny Steele started and looked up from an enormous screen of tapestry work that had covered her lap.
She was a thin, faded woman in a gown of unbecoming grey, with a stringy neck and slightly protruding blue eyes, and a quantity of wispy brown hair untidily tucked under a spinster’s cap. Her eyes had a worried, peering expression, and she carried her head slightly forward, like a turtle poking out from its shell.
“Oh, dear. Oh, yes. Yes, indeed. Just let me . . .” she fumbled with the balls of wool she’d been working with, contriving to upset the lot and send several rolling onto the floor, unwinding as they went.
She gave a little cry of dismay. “Oh, dear. So careless of me. I’ll just . . .” She dived down and began to scuttle about, picking up balls of wool and murmuring distractedly.
“Never mind all that, Fanny.” Admiral Tremain’s voice held a note of impatience. “Come and meet Mrs. Maryvale and her niece.”
“Oh. Oh, yes. Oh, dear. So sorry.” Still twittering apologies, Miss Fanny came forward to shake hands. She had long, bony fingers, and an unexpectedly hard clasp, though she released Susanna’s hand almost at once.
“Do you think, Charles, dear . . . That is, ought we perhaps to offer some refreshment?” She looked anxiously up at her brother-in-law.
“By all means.” The irritation was gone from Admiral Tremain’s voice, and it now held merely amused tolerance. “Why don’t you ring the bell, Fanny?”
If Miss Fanny resented her brother-in-law’s tone, she gave no sign. In all likelihood she was used to such treatment.
“I? Oh, yes. Yes, right away.”
She fluttered off, and soon a servant appeared, bearing a tray of macaroons and some sort of richly red cordial, carried in a cut-glass decanter. When, with many anxious murmurings and distracted exclamations, Miss Lucy had served them all, she seated herself next to Ruth. Once begun, the words poured forth from her in a steady trickle of complaints, apologies, and grievances: the quality of the wine, the scandalous price of sugar, the difficulties in getting the cook to prepare what was wanted.
Susanna saw her aunt trying to hide a look of amusement, and heard her say, “I’m sorry our visit should have put you to so much trouble.”
Miss Fanny was quite oblivious to the irony in Ruth’s voice.
“Not at all. Not at all,” she said fretfully. “I was speaking of the difficulties in general. Whether or not we have company makes no difference.”
Susanna had seated herself on the sofa, beside Marianne. The girl had retrieved her book, and was studying it intently, with something a little mutinous in the pointed air with which she pored over its pages, ignoring the others around her.
“You are fond of reading, then?” Susanna asked her.
Marianne looked up at the question with a start. “Yes.” Again, there was a touch of defiance in her voice and she lifted her chin. “I suppose you think that’s absurd.”
“Why should I think that?”
A sullen look settled over the girl’s features. “My father does. He doesn’t think women are fit for study. He says I ought to be thinking of dresses and balls and dancing and finding a husband.”
“And you do not care for any of those things?”
“I loathe balls. No one ever asks me to dance—and I’m rotten at it, anyway. And as for dresses, I couldn’t look nice no matter what I wore, so why bother?” The girl’s face was suddenly bleak, and Susanna felt another pang of pity. On impulse, she leaned forward and touched Marianne’s hand.
“Don’t say that. I am sure you could look very handsome, if you chose.”
But, to her surprise, Marianne jerked away, and her mouth twisted bitterly. “Accentuate my assets, you mean?” She finished scornfully. “That’s what Charlotte—Mrs. Careme—is always telling me. ‘Marianne, you must learn to take a little trouble.’”
She spoke in a high, mocking voice. “‘A woman’s looks are her greatest advantage. You must learn to play up what you have.’ And my father says Charlotte is right.” Marianne’s hands clenched, and her voice tightened with venom. “He says it will do me a world of good to have her for a stepmother. And he’s anxious for me to marry—to get me out of the house so that they can be alone. Well, I won’t be married off. And I won’t be pushed out of my own home. If only I could get some money of my own . . .”
She broke off abruptly, for at that moment, the door swung open, and the object of this diatribe entered the room.
Mrs. Charlotte Careme wore a dress of deep maroon satin, with a little ruff of white lace about the neck and a demi-train that swept the ground. She gave the footman who had opened the door a dazzling smile—apparently it was not for her to pass up any source of masculine admiration—and came forward, moving with a graceful, swaying walk.
Marianne, watching, shut her mouth and looked quickly away. But not before Susanna had seen the flash of hostility, and the naked hatred in her blue eyes.
Chapter 6
Mrs. Careme paused a moment, well aware of the effect she was creating, then c
ame forward, lips parted in a smile, hands outstretched.
“Why, Charles. You ought to have sent for me. I didn’t know we had visitors.” Introductions were performed, and Susanna found herself shaking hands with Mrs. Charlotte Careme. Seen up close, she appeared older than Susanna had at first supposed, looking nearer thirty-five than thirty. For the second time Susanna judged her somehow more compelling than a conventional beauty. Her face had the slightly hard look of a woman no longer young, and, though Susanna thought the color in her lips owed more to art than to nature, her face showed both character and determination. Her mouth was wide and purposeful, and her eyes were green and slightly tilted at the edges; cat’s eyes, Susanna thought. Their gaze met Susanna’s in a look that was both hard and shrewd, with a sharp edge of appraisal.
“Pleased to meet you, Miss Ward,” was all she said, though, in a low, throaty voice that held the faintest trace of some foreign accent. And then her lashes dropped, and she stepped away to take her place behind the refreshment table.
It was impossible to guess at her thoughts. Her face, for all its sensuous intensity, had a closed, shuttered look that gave nothing away. She had moved serenely into the place of hostess, apparently sparing not a thought for the glance of dislike Miss Fanny shot her at this usurpation of power.
Susanna glanced involuntarily at Admiral Tremain, wondering whether he would notice the sudden tension in the room, or the evident resentment of his sister-in-law and daughter. She found him gazing at Mrs. Careme with a look of naked devotion, half fond pride, half worshipful adoration. No, he was far too much enraptured to spare a thought for his other womenfolk, or wonder how they would feel at this sudden addition to their household.
Marianne was seated a little apart from the rest in sullen silence, while Miss Fanny, after hovering uncertainly for a moment, had seated herself beside Ruth and resumed talking, in slightly too loud a voice, of the difficulties in running a large household.
