Belgrave Square (41 page)

However at the first interval Charlotte remembered her own reason for being here, cast aside self-indulgence and began to observe other people. One of the first she noticed was the Miss Carswell present; she did not know her name as she could not tell one from another. She was no more than seventeen or eighteen, a girl pretty in a usual sort of way, clear complexion, all pink and white, fair hair tending a little towards mouse, and an agreeable, good-tempered face of no particular character. No doubt if one knew her one would find the individuality, the beliefs and emotions which made her unique, the humor, the dreams, the small kindnesses.

She now stood a few yards away from her mother, effectively unchaperoned, and was speaking with some animation to a young man Charlotte could not remember seeing before; but obviously Miss Carswell had. Her face was full of interest, instead of the usual rather simpering response many young women had to a first approach from an eligible and attractive man. And the man was responding with warmth and a total involvement of his attention.

Charlotte smiled. It was a most promising situation, and she imagined it might well progress into a happy relationship, most young girls’ profoundest ambition. So much the better if it could accompany a genuine affection as well, and this looked, from their faces, as if it did. How wise of Regina
Carswell not to interrupt with quite unnecessary affectations of propriety.

Since the Carswells were the only ones present who in Charlotte’s mind could possibly be considered suspects, she determined to engage at least one of them in conversation, as the only way in which she might learn something more than sheer observation would teach, which seemed to be precious little. Accordingly she rose to her feet and made her way between the small groups of people exchanging polite enthusiasm for the pianist, until she reached Regina Carswell.

“Good evening, Mrs. Carswell,” she said with a smile. “How pleasant to see you again. I hope you are well?”

“Quite well, thank you,” Regina replied courteously. “And you, Mrs. Pitt?”

“Oh in the best health, thank you. Isn’t it a lovely summer? I cannot recall the weather being quite so agreeable for a long time. But I daresay it is, and the winter simply makes one forget.”

“Indeed,” Regina agreed. She was about to continue with some pleasant triviality when a rather large lady with diamonds strung across an ample bosom engineered her way past them, lifting her skirts slightly to avoid crushing either her own gown or Regina’s. She gave Regina a strange smile, forcedly bright and rather fixed, then turned away quickly and grasped the arm of the woman next to her.

“Poor soul,” she murmured in a stage whisper perfectly audible to at least the half dozen people closest to her.

“Poor soul?” her companion said curiously. “Why? Is she not in good health? I hear she has three daughters, but I know she is doing quite well with them.”

“Oh I know that,” the large lady said, dismissing the subject. “Poor creature,” she added in a hiss. “So difficult. Especially when everyone knows.”

“Knows what?” Her companion, dressed in a fashionable but particularly repulsive shade of green, was getting irritated by the suspense. “I’ve heard nothing.”

“Oh you will do,” the large lady assured her. “No doubt you will do. Far be it from me—of course—”

Regina looked puzzled and embarrassed, a slight tinge of pink in her cheeks.

Charlotte did not know whether to pretend she had not heard the exchange, although it was quite obvious they both had, or to acknowledge it candidly and say something dismissive. She looked at Regina’s face to try to judge which would be the kindest. She saw only confusion. Perhaps it had to do with the ridiculous Osmar case. Charlotte chose to assume it did.

“It seems Mr. Horatio Osmar is bent on causing trouble everywhere,” she said with an attempt at cheerfulness. “I should put it from your mind, if I were you. A lot of people with little knowledge and even less judgment tend to pass comment. It will all die away as soon as some fresh scandal breaks.”

Regina still looked puzzled.

“I fail to see why they should pity me for the matter,” she said, opening her eyes wide and smiling rather tentatively. “I am sure my husband behaved with judicial correctness. The police must have failed to produce a proper case against him, or he would not have dismissed it from court. And it has little reflection on me.”

“They must be very hard put for scandal to gossip over,” Charlotte agreed. “Silly creatures. Don’t you find that an astoundingly unbecoming shade of green? I cannot recall when I have seen anything quite so displeasing!”

Regina relaxed into a smile at Charlotte’s determination to dismiss the whole episode as meaningless and of no importance whatever.

“Quite horrible,” she agreed warmly. “Were her maid of any use at all she would have advised her not to wear it.”

“These yellow-greens are most trying, especially to a sallow complexion,” Charlotte went on. “I cannot imagine who makes such a gown in the first place. I would have suggested a soft blue, I think. She is something of a plain woman to begin with.”

Regina touched her arm gently with her hand. “My dear Mrs. Pitt, it was the large lady who was the real offender. I think it is she we should be picking apart!”

“You are right,” Charlotte agreed with enthusiasm. “Where shall we begin? She should never wear diamonds on so large a bosom. All that glitter only draws attention to what is only too obvious anyway.”

“Crystals,” Regina said with a slight giggle. “They are not diamonds, you know.”

“Of course,” Charlotte amended. “Crystals. Some muted color, a little darker, would have been best—” She was about to continue when out of the corner of her eye she noticed another woman looking at Regina with a softness that verged on pity, and as soon as she met Charlotte’s glance, she looked away quickly, her face pink, as though she had been caught staring at someone improperly dressed, an intrusive and embarrassing thing to do.

Charlotte lost her place in what she had been going to say.

“What is it?” Regina asked, quick to sense her discomfort, however momentary.

“Nothing,” Charlotte lied instantly, then, knowing the lie pointless, said, “I saw someone with whom I had a mildly unpleasant altercation. But I had forgotten.” She dismissed the second lie as of no matter. And then she rushed on with some other topic of total triviality, a piece of gossip she had picked up from Emily.

She returned to her seat again for the second long piece upon the piano, and enjoyed it rather less. It was a composer she was unfamiliar with, and the work seemed to lack emotion, or perhaps she was simply unable to concentrate. In the interval that followed she made her way to Emily, who had been talking to Fitz.

“You look concerned,” Emily said hastily. “Have you found something?”

“I don’t think so. What do you know of Horatio Osmar? Is he politically important?” Charlotte whispered back.

Emily’s face puckered. “I don’t think he matters in the slightest. Why?”

“People seem to be speaking of him.”

“What on earth do you mean, ‘seem to be’? Are they or not?”

“I don’t know. I have seen people giving Mrs. Carswell the oddest looks, and I wondered if it were to do with Horatio Osmar.”

“You are talking nonsense,” Emily said sharply. “What has Regina Carswell to do with Horatio Osmar?”

“It was Addison Carswell who threw out the case,” Charlotte
said impatiently. “Thomas seems to think it was quite a corrupt thing to do. It was a perfectly good case.”

Emily frowned. “Who was looking at Regina Carswell oddly?”

“I don’t know—a fat woman with crystals all over her bosom.”

“Lady Arnforth—that’s absurd. She doesn’t know anything about justice, and cares still less. It must be gossip, probably about love or immorality—or both.”

“And Regina Carswell?” Charlotte said dubiously.

“I don’t know. Maybe you misunderstood?”

At that point they were rejoined by Fitz, who had stepped aside for a moment to pursue some courtesy with a man known to have considerable political influence. A few moments before the man had been deep in conversation with Jack. Fitz had been attempting to catch up. Now he looked rueful, as if aware he had not succeeded. Only half his attention was on Emily, the rest still dwelt with far more emotion on Fanny Hilliard a few yards away, her face flushed, her eyes bright, her lovely hair piled high and wound with a spray of silk flowers.

A tall young man with bright blue eyes and a receding chin came by gracefully, bowed to Emily and Charlotte with rather more flair than was called for by the occasion, and put his hand on Fitz’s shoulder.

“How are you, old fellow?” he said cheerfully. “Going to be our next member of Parliament, are you? Have to be civil to you, what?” He followed the line Fitz had been looking at the moment before, and saw Fanny Hilliard. “Pretty, eh?” he said with admiration. “None of that sort of thing for you, my lad. Not if you are to become a member of Her Majesty’s government, in time. Have to be very careful, don’t you know. Above suspicion, and all that, what.”

Fitz stiffened and a flicker of anger crossed his normally good-natured, almost indolent face.

“Be careful of your tongue, Ferdy. Miss Hilliard’s reputation is above question.”

Ferdy’s face reflected comic disbelief.

“Oh come on, old fellow! She looks quite the lady, I’ll grant you. Anyone would be taken in—but she’s old Carswell’s mistress, and no better than she should be. Adventuress,
what. Keeps her in some room somewhere to the south of the river. Fool of a man. You’d think he’d be more discreet—magistrate and all that.”

“You’re a liar,” Fitz said from between gritted teeth, his skin suddenly white. “And if this were not too public a place, and someone else’s house, I’d make you eat those words right here!”

“Steady, old man.” Ferdy was taken aback. “Sorry if you fancy the gel, but I’m quite definitely right. Got it from an impeccable source; my uncle, Lord Bergholt, what. Quite definitely Carswell’s mistress. It’s poor Mrs. Carswell I feel sorry for. The old ass should have been more discreet about it. Doesn’t matter what you do if you are discreet, but it’s damn bad form to embarrass the wife, don’t you know. Damn bad.” And without waiting for any further reaction from Fitz he moved away, still shaking his head.

Fitz looked stunned, and indeed Charlotte herself felt as if she had been hit in the face by someone she had entirely trusted.

“I don’t believe it,” Emily gasped. For once she too was at a loss. “What a wicked thing to say.” She swung around, about to speak, then saw Charlotte’s face.

“Charlotte?”

Charlotte’s mind was racing. Pitt had said he had followed Carswell to the south side of the river, and seen him meet with a young woman. He had not said it was Fanny Hilliard. But then why would he? He had not known at that time that she had ever heard of Fanny, let alone knew her.

“Charlotte,” Emily said more sharply. “What is it?”

Charlotte collected herself with difficulty, her mind full of anger for the deception, and fury and pain for Fitz.

“Perhaps it is a matter of mistake,” Charlotte said feebly, fishing for any excuse. “People do sometimes repeat the most witless things and get them wrong.”

But before they could attempt to continue with such hopes, their attention was drawn to the group a few yards away where Fanny herself was standing, almost next to Odelia Morden. Fanny’s cheeks were scarlet, burning with misery and humiliation, but in the terrible silence she made no denial, she said absolutely nothing at all.

“Miss Hilliard?” Odelia said quietly. There was no triumph
in her, rather a strange bewilderment, as though already she knew her victory would be bitter.

Fanny’s eyes lifted slowly and she stared at Fitz, as though everyone else’s opinions were trifling things, pinpricks compared with the single great wound of his.

He was stunned, not perhaps by the revelation, the curious and appalled crowd in its glittering dress, but by Fanny’s own silence. Her face was agonized, everyone saw it; but she made no denial, no excuse.

For a moment he stood as if he would go to her. The silence prickled so long it seemed the lights wavered; one could hear the crackle of taffeta as women breathed in and out in tight bodices. Far away a maid’s hard heels tapped on an uncarpeted passageway.

Then Fanny turned and walked away through the other guests and out into the hall.

Emily took a step forward.

“I’ll go,” Charlotte said instantly, and before Emily could protest, she pushed past her, almost bumped into the large woman with the crystals, trod on Ferdy’s foot as he opened his mouth to say something, and made her way into the hall just in time to see the footman hold Fanny’s cloak for her. James Hilliard, white-faced and wretched, stood shifting from one foot to the other a few yards away, obviously shocked and totally at a loss.

Charlotte had no idea what she could possibly say that would redeem any part of the situation, but emotion rather than reason had impelled her out. She went straight to Fanny.

Fanny turned to face her, her cheeks were white and a blinding misery showed in her eyes.

“I apologize,” she said in a husky whisper. “I have abused your hospitality.”

“I didn’t come for an apology,” Charlotte said, brushing it aside. “I don’t understand, but I can see that you are totally wretched, and I wished to find some way to help …”

“You can’t! No one can. Please—just let me go, before anyone else comes out here—especially …” She could not bring herself to say Fitz’s name, but Charlotte knew whom she meant.

“Of course,” she conceded. “But please agree to meet me somewhere else, where we can speak alone.”

“There is nothing you can do.” Fanny’s voice rose in desperation, afraid that any moment Fitz might come, or (what would be every bit as bad) Odelia.

“Tomorrow,” Charlotte insisted. “Meet me—in the park near Rotten Row.”

“I haven’t a horse.”

“Neither have I. Just be there.”

“There is no purpose. There is nothing you can do!”

“Be there. At nine o’clock,” Charlotte insisted. “Or I shall come and find you, and I do know where to find you.” It was not actually true; she would have to ask Pitt where he had followed Carswell over the river.