Dorchester Terrace tp-27

by Anne Perry

  It was perfectly obvious that Evan Blantyre was important to Pitt. At dinner at the Blantyres’ house, the men had spent the rest of the evening in the dining room with the door closed, and had given instructions to the butler not to interrupt them unless sent for. When they had finally emerged, they had seemed in close agreement about something. Pitt had expressed a gratitude that was far deeper than the thanks one owes for a good dinner and a pleasant evening.

  On the way home he had said nothing, but Charlotte had seen that the tension in him had eased somewhat; certainly that night he had slept better than for over a week.

  Therefore she judged it a good idea to cultivate a friendship with Adriana Blantyre. This was not in the least difficult, since she had liked her instinctively, and found her unusually interesting. Having grown up in Croatia and then northern Italy, Adriana had a different perspective on many things. And she was certainly a very agreeable person, in spite of the anxiety that was often in her face, and the sense Charlotte had that there were secrets within her that she shared with no one. Perhaps that was because those secrets were rooted in experiences an Englishwoman could not even imagine.

  So Charlotte had invited Adriana to visit an exhibition of watercolors with her that afternoon. Adriana had accepted without hesitation.

  They met at two o’clock on the steps of the gallery and went inside together. They laughed a little as they clutched at their hats, the wind picking up even the heavy cloth of winter skirts, whose edges were dampened by rain.

  Adriana was dressed in a warm wine color, which lent a glow to her pale skin. It was a beautifully cut costume with a slightly sporty air, which made one think of a hunting dress. Her hat was narrow-brimmed, tipped well forward, and had a towering crown. It looked vaguely Austrian. Charlotte saw at least a dozen other women glance at Adriana and then look away, their faces filled with disapproval and envy. Everyone else looked dull in comparison, and they knew it.

  Adriana saw, and seemed a little abashed.

  “Too much?” she asked almost under her breath.

  “Not at all,” Charlotte said with amusement. “You may guarantee that at least three of them will go straight to their milliners tomorrow morning and demand something like it. On some it will look wonderful, and on others absurd. Hats are the hardest things to get right, don’t you think?”

  Adriana hesitated a moment to make sure that Charlotte was serious, then her face relaxed into a wide smile. “Yes, I do. But with hair like yours it seems a shame to wear a hat at all. But I suppose you must, at least out in the street-oh, and in church, of course.” She laughed lightly. “I wonder if God had the faintest idea how many hours we would spend in front of the glass rather than on our knees, fussing over what to wear to worship Him.”

  “In what to be seen while worshipping Him,” Charlotte corrected her. “But if He is a man, as everyone says, then He probably did not think of it.” She smiled, and walked side by side with Adriana across the wide entrance hall and into the first display room. “But if He is a woman, or had a wife, then He would certainly know,” she continued softly, so as not to be overheard. “Presumably He invented our hair. He must have at least some idea how long it takes to pin it up!”

  “Every picture I have seen of Eve, she has hair long enough to sit on!” Adriana exclaimed. “To cover her … womanly attributes. I don’t think mine would ever grow so long.”

  “Of course, a number of gentlemen have very little hair at all, especially in their advancing years,” Charlotte replied. “You should feel free to have as wide a skirt and as large a hat as you please.”

  They went around the paintings slowly, looking at each one with care.

  “Oh, look!” Adriana said in sudden excitement. “That is just like a bridge I used to know near where I was born.” She stood transfixed in front of a small, delicate pastoral scene. It was simple: a small river meandering over its bed and disappearing beneath a stone bridge, the light shining in the water beyond. Cows grazed nearby, so perfectly depicted that it seemed as if at any moment they would amble out of the painting.

  Charlotte looked at Adriana and saw a range of emotions in her face. She seemed very close to both laughter and tears.

  “It’s beautiful,” Charlotte said sincerely. “You must find it very different here. I sometimes wish I had grown up in the country, but if I had, I think I would miss it so terribly that I might never reconcile myself to paved streets and houses close to each other-not to mention noise, and smoke in the winter.”

  “Oh, there’s mud in the country,” Adriana assured her. “And cold. And in the winter it can be unbearably tedious, believe me. And so much darkness everywhere! It closes in on you in every direction, almost without relief. You would miss the theater, and parties, and gossip about famous people, rather than just the talk of your neighbors: Mrs. This about her grandchildren; Mr. That about his gout; Miss So-and-so about her aunt, and how bad the cook is.”

  Charlotte looked at her closely, trying to see how much she meant what she was saying, and how much she was very lightly mocking. After several seconds, she was still uncertain. That was invigorating. It was a bore to always be able to read people.

  “Perhaps one should have a city home for the winter to go to the theater and operas and parties,” she said with an answering half-seriousness, “and a country home for the summer, to go for rides and walks, to dine in the garden, and … whatever else one chooses to do.”

  “But you are English.” Adriana was close to laughter now. “So you spend the summer in town and go to your country estate for the winter, where you gallop around the fields behind a pack of dogs, and apparently enjoy yourself enormously.”

  Charlotte laughed with her, and they moved to the next painting. Charlotte only barely noticed Adriana glance back once at the gentle bridge in the sun, with the cows grazing nearby. She must have loved Blantyre very much to have left behind the country she clearly adored and come to England.

  “Have you traveled to many places in Europe?” she asked aloud. “I have never been to Italy, for instance, but from the pictures I have seen, it is very beautiful indeed.”

  “It is,” Adriana agreed. “But I have found that it isn’t really places that matter; it all comes down to people, in the end.” She turned to look at Charlotte. “Don’t you agree?” There was complete honesty in her eyes, and almost a challenge.

  “Yes. I suppose I like London because the best things that have happened to me have happened here,” Charlotte agreed. “Yes, of course it is all to do with people; in the end, it comes down to being with those you love. Beauty is exciting, and thrilling; you never entirely forget it, but you still need to share it with someone.”

  Adriana blinked and turned away. “I don’t think I really want to go back to Croatia. It wouldn’t ever be the same. My family is gone …” She stopped abruptly, as if she regretted having begun. She straightened her back and shoulders, and moved to another painting, depicting a girl of about sixteen sitting on the grass in the shade of a tree. She was wearing a pale muslin dress, and the dappled light made her seem extraordinarily fragile, as if not altogether real. She had dark hair, like Adriana. In fact, the resemblance was remarkable.

  Adriana stared at her. “It was another world, wasn’t it? Sixteen?” she said at last.

  “Yes,” Charlotte agreed, thinking back to being with Sarah and Emily in the garden at Cater Street every summer when they were young.

  Adriana moved a little closer to her. “She looks so delicate,” she said, facing the painting. “She probably isn’t. I was ill a lot as a child, but I have been well for years now. Evan doesn’t always believe it. He treats me as if I need watching all the time: extra blankets, another scarf, gloves on, don’t step in the puddles or you’ll get your feet wet. You’ll catch a cold.” She pulled her lips into a strange, rueful half-smile. “Actually I hardly ever get colds. It must be your bracing climate here. I have become English, and tough.”

  This time it was Charlo
tte who laughed. “We get colds,” she admitted. “Some people seem to always be coughing and sniffling. But I’m very glad to hear that you have outgrown your ill health. If you are strong now, that’s all that counts.”

  Adriana turned away quickly, tears slipping down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry!” Charlotte said instantly, wondering what she had said. Had Adriana lost someone to a simple illness? Perhaps a child? How tragic and painful, if that was the case.

  Adriana shook her head. “Please don’t be. One cannot go backward. There are always losses. I don’t think there is anyone in the world I ever loved as I cared for my father. I wish he could know that I am well and strong here, and that I …” She waved her hand impatiently. “I apologize. I shouldn’t even allow the memories to come to my mind. We all lose people.” She looked back at Charlotte. “You are very patient, and gentle.”

  “I had two sisters. I lost one of them,” Charlotte said quietly. “Sometimes I think of her and wonder what it would be like if she were still alive. If we would be better friends than we were then.” She forced her memory back to those dreadful days when the family, the whole neighborhood, looked at each other with fear, when she had realized how little she knew of what the people closest to her really believed in, loved, or dreamed of.

  She blushed now, when she wondered if Sarah had known that Charlotte had been in love with Dominic, Sarah’s husband. That was something she preferred not to recall. Everyone had embarrassing moments in their past, pieces they would like to live over again, to create a better outcome.

  She linked her arm in Adriana’s. “Come on, let’s go and get a hot cup of tea, and maybe some cake, or crumpets. You mentioned where you first met Mr. Blantyre the other evening. It sounded far more romantic than London. I first met Mr. Pitt when he was investigating a fearful crime near where I lived, and we were all suspect, at least of having seen something and lying about it, in order to protect those we loved. It was all grim and awful. You have to have a better tale to tell than that.”

  Adriana looked at her with interest, and then, as their eyes met for longer, with understanding. “Certainly,” she said cheerfully. “Tea and crumpets, then I’ll tell you how Mr. Blantyre and I met, and more about some of the really wonderful places I’ve been. The blue and green lakes in the mountains in Croatia. You’ve never even imagined such colors! They lie like a necklace dropped carelessly by some great goddess of the sky. And I wish I could really describe for you the forests of Illyria,” she went on. “They are all deciduous trees, and in the spring, when the young leaves are just out, it is as if the whole world were newly made.”

  Charlotte tried to imagine it. Perhaps it was something like a beech forest in England, but she did not want to put words to it, or try to compare.

  “And we have the Dinaric Alps,” Adriana went on. “And caves, dozens of them, seven or eight hundred feet deep.”

  “Really?” Charlotte was amazed, but mostly she was moved by the depth of emotion in Adriana’s voice, the passion behind her words. “Have you been in some of them?”

  Adriana shivered. “Only once. My father took me, and held my hand. There is nothing on earth darker than a cave. It makes the night sky, even with clouds, seem full of light. But you should see Istria, and the islands. There are over a thousand of them strung all along the coast. Those in the farthest south are almost tropical, you know.”

  “You must miss such beauty, here.”

  “I do.” Adriana gave her a sudden smile of great warmth; then she changed the subject abruptly, as if the memories of her own country were too overwhelming to continue discussing. “Vienna is marvelous,” she said cheerfully. “You have never really danced till you have heard a Viennese orchestra play for Mr. Strauss. And the clothes! Every woman should have a dress to waltz in, once in her life. Come!”

  Charlotte obeyed, falling into step with her.

  The following day Charlotte was in the parlor giving serious consideration to the matter of whether to buy new curtains, possibly in a different color, when she heard Daniel shouting angrily. He must have turned at the bottom of the stairs to go along the passage to the kitchen, because his feet were loud on the linoleum.

  The next moment Jemima came after him.

  “I told you you’d break it!” she shouted. “Now look what you’ve done!”

  “I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t left it there, stupid!” Daniel shouted back.

  “How was I to know you’d go banging around like a carthorse?” Jemima was at the bottom of the stairs now.

  Charlotte came out of the parlor. “Jemima!”

  Jemima stopped in the passage and swung around, her face flushed with anger. “He broke it!” she said, holding up the remnants of a delicate ornamental box. She was close to tears from fury and disappointment.

  Charlotte looked at it and knew it was beyond mending. She met Jemima’s eyes, so much like her own.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t think there’s anything we can do with that. I don’t suppose he meant to.”

  “He didn’t care!” Jemima retorted. “I told him to be careful.”

  Charlotte looked at her, and imagined how tactful Jemima’s warning had likely been. “Yes,” she said calmly. “You’d better put it in the wastebasket, under the lid so you don’t keep looking at it. I’ll go and speak to him.”

  Jemima did not move.

  “Go on,” Charlotte repeated. “Do you want to make it better, or worse? If I talk to him about it in front of you, it will definitely make it worse, that I can promise you.”

  Reluctantly Jemima turned around and climbed slowly back up the stairs.

  Charlotte watched her until she had disappeared up the next flight as well, to her own bedroom, then she went along to the kitchen.

  Minnie Maude was peeling potatoes at the sink. Daniel was sitting on one of the chairs at the kitchen table, swinging his feet and looking miserable and angry. He glared at Charlotte as she came in, ready to defend himself from Jemima if she was immediately behind.

  “Did you break it?” Charlotte asked.

  “It was her fault,” he responded. “She left it in the way!”

  “Did you mean to?”

  “Of course I didn’t!”

  “Daniel, are you sure?”

  “Yes! That’s not fair! I didn’t see it.”

  “That’s what I thought. So what are you going to do about it?”

  He looked at her resentfully. “I can’t put it together again,” he protested.

  “No, I don’t think anybody can,” she agreed. “I think you’ll have to find her another one.”

  His eyes widened. “I can’t! Where would I get it?”

  “You won’t get one just like it, but if you save up your pocket money, you might find one nearly as nice.”

  “She shouldn’t have left it there!” He drew in a deep breath. “It’ll be all my money for weeks! Maybe months!”

  “What if she puts in half?” Charlotte suggested. “Her half for leaving the box in the way, your half for not looking where you were going and breaking it?”

  Reluctantly he agreed, watching to see if she was pleased.

  “Good.” She smiled at him. “Now Minnie Maude will get you a piece of cake, then you will go upstairs and tell Jemima you are sorry, and offer to share pocket money with her to find another box.”

  “What if she says no?” he asked.

  “If you ask nicely, and she refuses, then you are excused.”

  He was happy. He turned to Minnie Maude and waited for the promised cake.

  “I’m going out for a little while,” Charlotte told them both. “I may be an hour or two, or even longer. Minnie Maude, please tell Mr. Pitt, if he comes home before I do, that I’ve gone to visit my sister.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Minnie Maude agreed, reaching for the cake.

  Charlotte did not bother to change. She took her coat, hat, and gloves and left immediately, before she could lose the conviction within herself that she mus
t go to Emily and make peace with her.

  She walked briskly along Keppel Street to Russell Square, where she caught a hansom. During the ride, she composed in her mind, over and over, what she would say, how she would vary her answers according to Emily’s responses, and how best to keep both of their tempers in check.

  The weather was getting milder. She passed several carriages bowling along briskly with ladies out visiting, or simply taking the air. Another month and it would be a pleasure to go to the botanical gardens. Trees and shrubs would begin to show green leaves, even flower buds. There would be daffodils in bloom.

  She arrived at Emily’s spacious, handsome house and alighted. She paid the driver, then walked up to the front door and pulled the bell.

  She waited only a few moments before the door was opened and a footman greeted her with apologies.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Pitt, but neither Mr. nor Mrs. Radley is at home. You are welcome to come in and take a little refreshment, if you would care to?” He held the door wide and stepped back to allow her to pass.

  Charlotte felt ridiculously disappointed. It had never occurred to her that Emily would be out at this hour, but of course that was perfectly reasonable. All her screwing up of courage, her swallowing of pride, was to no avail.

  “Thank you,” she accepted, going into the warmth of the hallway. It was windy outside. Already the light was fading from the sky, and dusk was in the air. “That would be very pleasant. Perhaps I may leave a message for Mrs. Radley?”

  “Certainly, ma’am. I shall bring you a pen and paper, unless you would prefer to use Mrs. Radley’s desk in the morning room?”

  “That would be a very good idea. Thank you.”

  “I’ll have your tea served here when you return. Would you care for hot crumpets and butter as well?”

  She smiled at him, liking his thoughtfulness. “Yes, please.”

  She found the paper in Emily’s desk and wrote: