upstairs to spend a little time in the nursery with Evie, and then with Edward. She heard from him of his latest lessons and his elaborate plans to build a model castle like the one the Knights Templar had built in the Holy Land during the Crusades.
Jack came home a little after five. He had been in the City all day, but there was still a spring in his step when he came into the withdrawing room, leaving the door swinging behind him.
“Excellent day,” he said enthusiastically, bending to kiss her brow and touch her hair gently. “I think I might really have got old Fothergill on my side. I had luncheon with him today. I took him to that new restaurant in the Strand. More expensive than it was worth, but the decor is gorgeous, and he was suitably impressed.” He sat sideways on the arm of one of the chairs, letting his leg swing.
“The thing is,” he went on, “he actually listened to me. I was explaining about the importance of non-fee- paying education for the whole population as an investment in the industrial base….”
Jack had been fighting to obtain better education for the poor ever since his entry into Parliament. Emily had watched its future wax and wane.
“I’m very pleased.” She was pleased, but she found it hard to invest her smile with as much delight as she should have. “Maybe he’ll make a difference.”
She dressed for the evening with great care, as a matter of self-esteem, and at half past eight was seated at an enormous dinner table between a large military gentleman with very forthright opinions on India, and a merchant banker who firmly believed that women were totally uninterested in anything except fashion, gossip and the theater, so confined his conversation accordingly.
Opposite her was a man of about thirty whose sole preoccupation was the breeding of fine bloodstock, but next to him was a most unusual-looking young woman whose nose was a trifle too long, her mouth a little wide and her expression one of such humor and vitality that Emily found herself staring at her often enough to catch her eye and let her know that they had exactly the same thoughts of exasperation and boredom at the same moment.
Jack was nearer the head of the table, as a matter of political duty, wooing people of influence who might be of further assistance with the education bill. It was important to Emily also, but the only part she could play here was to be decorative and charming, and the idea of doing that indefinitely was wearing very thin.
The dining room was sumptuously decorated in French blue and gold. The long windows were curtained in velvet, displayed in rich folds skirted out over the floor in the approved fashion, to show a wealth of fabric. The table glittered with silver and crystal. So many facets gleamed and glinted, it dazzled the eyes. One could barely see the faces of the people at the farther end for the reflected lights. Diamonds sparked fire around white throats and the luster of pearls shone softly.
Silver on porcelain clicked discreetly beneath the buzz of conversation. Footmen refilled glasses. Course after course came and went: entrees, soup, fish, removes, pudding, dessert, fruits. And then finally the hostess rose and invited the ladies to retire and leave the gentlemen to their port and the more serious discussions of the evening. It was, of course, the purpose for which they had come.
Obediently Emily rose and followed the ladies out in a rustle and swirl of gorgeous colored skirts. On the way she managed to fall in step with the young woman who had sat opposite her at the table.
She glanced sideways and caught her eye as they crossed the hallway and entered the ornate withdrawing room, decorated with portraits of family ancestors posed against unreal rural scenery.
“Isn’t it ghastly?” the young woman whispered, raising her fan so her words were concealed from the ladies to their left.
“Fearful!” Emily whispered back. “I have never been more bored in my life. I feel as if I know what everyone is going to say before they say it.”
“That is because it is exactly what they said last time!” the young woman replied with a smile. “Oscar Wilde says it is the artist’s duty always to be surprising.”
“Then it must be the politician’s duty always to say and do precisely what is expected of him,” Emily returned. “That way no one is ever caught off guard.”
“And nothing is ever interesting, or funny! My name is Tallulah FitzJames. I know we haven’t been introduced, but we obviously know each other in spirit.”
“Emily Radley,” Emily replied.
“Oh, is Jack Radley your husband?” There was a spark of appreciation in her eye.
“Yes,” Emily acknowledged with satisfaction, then added honestly, “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
They walked over to a sofa just large enough for the two of them to sit side by side and be perfectly polite in including no one else.
“I can’t think why I’m here!” Tallulah sighed. “I am with my cousin, Gerald Allenby, because he wanted me to, so he could pay court to Miss … I forget the name. Her father’s got a huge place up in Yorkshire or somewhere. Glorious in the summer, and like the North Pole in winter.”
“I’m here to be decorative and smile at the right people,” Emily said ruefully.
Tallulah’s eyes brightened. “Are you allowed to glare and make faces at the wrong people?” she said hopefully.
Emily laughed. “Possibly, if I could only be sure who they were. The trouble is one day’s wrong people are another day’s right ones. And you can’t take back a glare.”
“No, you can’t, can you.” Tallulah was suddenly serious. “In fact, you can’t take back anything much. People remember, even if you don’t.”
Emily caught the note of pain underneath the light voice. Without warning, there was reality in the emotion. The rest of the room fell away from Emily’s consciousness, the polite chatter, the tinkle of appropriate laughter.
“Some people forget,” she said quietly. “It’s an art. If you want to go on loving someone, you have to learn it.”
“I don’t want to go on,” Tallulah said with a tight little smile of self-mockery. “I’d give a great deal to know how to stop.”
Emily asked the next and obvious question. “Is he married?”
That seemed to Tallulah to be funny, in a bitter way.
Emily did not want to pry, but she sensed that the other woman had a need to share something which obviously hurt her and which perhaps she could not speak of to her family. They might not know … or if they did, maybe they disapproved. If he were married, they could hardly do anything else.
“No, he’s not married,” Tallulah answered. “At least he wasn’t the last time I saw him. I don’t imagine he’ll ever marry. And if he does, it will be someone earnest and beautiful, with innocent eyes and hair which curls naturally, and a permanently sweet disposition.”
Emily thought about it for a moment. She did not want to make a clumsy remark, and it was not easy to read through the flippant words the true nature of Tallulah’s pain. She did not know whether to be witty in return, or to be noncommittal, or to show that she saw the depth if not the totality of the wound.
Over on the far side of the room a large woman with fair hair and magnolia skin tilted her head back and laughed daintily. The gaslight shone in a riot of beautiful colors, silk skirts spread out like poppy petals, oranges and plums and shot lavenders, a glory of gleam and shade. Beyond the windows the summer evening was barely dark, an afterglow still shooting shreds of apricot between the branches of the trees above the garden wall.
“I don’t think I should like to be married to someone with a permanently sweet disposition,” Emily said candidly. “I should feel intensely inferior. And I should also never be quite sure if they meant what they said.”
Tallulah stared at her long, slender hands resting on her skirt.
“Jago wouldn’t feel inferior,” she replied. “He’s the best man I’ve ever met.”
Emily was at a loss to answer that. Jago, whoever he was, sounded like a bore, and more than a little unreal. Or perhaps that was unjust? It could be only the way Tallulah saw him. But looking sideways at Tallulah’s unhappy face, it was hard to believe she would find someone she saw as so good of the slightest interest, except as a curiosity. Even deep in thought, her own face was full of vitality and daring. Her mouth was too wide, full of humor, her nose too strong and yet utterly feminine. Her eyes were lovely, wide and intelligent. It was the face of a rebel, unpredictable, far from wise, perhaps self-indulgent, but always brave.
“Best at what?” Emily asked before she thought clearly of her words.
Tallulah smiled in spite of herself.
“Best at honor, and caring for people, real people,” she answered. “And at working all the hours there are, at
