She looked at him for only an instant before being perfectly certain he had no sense of loss whatever, and was still enjoying the conversation. It would be an overstatement to say he was flirting, but he was quite at ease with women, and obviously found their company pleasing.
“Perhaps there isn’t any appreciable difference between secondhand and thirdhand,” she responded as they made their way past a group of men in earnest conversation. “And it will be only a matter of description to me, because I shall never know if you are right or not. So please tell me, and make it very vivid, even if you have to invent it. And full of facts, of course,” she plunged on. “Tell me about Zambezia, and gold and diamonds, and Doctor Livingstone and Mr. Stanley, and the Germans.”
“Good heavens,” he said in much alarm. “All of them?”
“As many as you can,” she returned.
A footman offered them a silver tray with glasses of champagne.
“Well to begin with, the diamonds we know about are all in South Africa,” Aylmer answered, taking a glass and giving it to her, then one for himself. “But there is a possibility of enormous amounts of gold in Zambezia. There are massive ruins of a civilization, a city called Zimbabwe, and we are only beginning to estimate the fortune that could be there. Which, quite naturally, is also what the Germans are interested in. And possibly everyone else as well.” He was watching her face with wide brown eyes, and she had no idea how serious he was, or whether it was at least partially invention, to amuse her.
“Does Britain own it now?” she asked, taking a sip from her glass.
“No,” Aylmer replied, moving a step away from the footman. “Not yet.”
“But we will?”
“Ah-that is a very important question, to which I do not have the answer.” He led the way on up the steps.
“And if you did, no doubt it would be highly secret,” she added.
“But of course.” He smiled and went on to tell her about Cecil Rhodes and his adventures and exploits in South Africa, the Rand and Johannesburg, and the discovery of the Kimberley diamond mine, until they were interrupted by a young man with a long nose and a hearty manner who swept Aylmer away with apologies, and obviously to his annoyance. Charlotte was left momentarily alone.
She looked around her to see whom she might recognize from photographs in the
Linus Chancellor was talking to a man superficially not unlike himself, but without the ambition in his face, or the mercurial temperament. They were deep in conversation, almost as if oblivious of the whirl of silks and glitter of lights, or the buzz of chatter all around them. Beside the second man, but facing the other way, apparently waiting for him, was a most unusual woman. She was of arresting appearance because of her supreme confidence and the intelligence which seemed to radiate from her. But she was also quite unusually plain. Her nose was so high at the bridge, in profile it was almost a continuation of the line of her forehead. Her chin was a little too short, and her eyes were wide set, tilted down at the corners, and too large. It was an extraordinary face, compelling and even a trifle frightening. She was dressed extremely well, but one was so startled by her countenance it was of no importance whatever.
Charlotte exchanged a few polite and meaningless words with a couple who made it their duty to speak to everyone. A man with light auburn hair addressed her with effusive admiration, then once again she found herself alone. She did not mind in the least. She knew Pitt was here to pursue a specific case.
A delicately pale woman of about her own age was standing a few yards away, her fair hair elaborately coiffed, her pastel gown stitched with pearls and beads. She glanced discreetly at Charlotte over her fan and turned to the good-looking young man next to her.
“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 at it. “Since my marriage I have been out socially only on certain specific occasions that have called for …” She stopped. To have admitted they were when she was involving herself in Pitt’s investigations was perhaps a little too candid even for this occasion.
Christabel’s high eyebrows rose even higher, her face full of interest. “Yes?”
Charlotte still hesitated.
