would not need to have any brains to cause me harm! Merely to open the locket and see the picture would be enough! One can be as mad as a bedlamite, and still be able to open a locket and see that the picture inside it is not of your father.''
Charlotte sat silent a moment, trying to collect her thoughts. There must be a great deal more to it that Caroline had not said. The picture must be more than some dim, romantic memory. Either the dream was still sharp, the event still capable of causing pain, or else the picture was of some man she knew now, here in Rutland Place!
'Who is it in the picture, Mama?' she asked.
'A friend.' Caroline was not looking at her. 'A gentleman of my acquaintance. There is no more to it than a- regard, but it could easily be misunderstood.'
A flirtation. Charlotte was only momentarily surprised. She had learned a lot since her total innocence at the beginning of the Cater Street murders. Few people are immune to flattery, a little romance to flesh out the ordinariness of every day. Edward had not been, so why should Caroline?
And she had kept a picture in a locket. Foolish, but very human. People kept pressed flowers, theater or dance programs, old letters. A wise husband or wife allowed a little privacy for such things, and did not inquire or dig up old dreams to look for answers.
She smiled, trying to be gentler.
'Don't worry about it, Mama. Everyone has something private.' She deliberately phrased it evasively. 'I daresay that if you do not make much of it, other people won't. In fact, I don't suppose they will wish to. Quite apart from liking you, they probably have lockets themselves, or letters they would prefer not to lose.'
Caroline smiled bleakly. 'You have a charitable view, my dear. You have been out of Society too long. You see it from a distance, and lose the detail.'
Charlotte took her arm and squeezed it for a moment.
'Above all things, Society is practical, Mama. It knows what it can afford. Now who is it you wish us to visit? Tell me something about them, so I don't say anything tactless and embarrass you.'
'Good gracious! What a hope!' Caroline put her hand over Charlotte's in a little gesture of thanks. 'First we are going to the Charringtons', to see Ambrosine. I told you about her before. Then I think on to Eloise Lagarde. I don't think I.said anything about her.'
'No, but was that not a name Mrs. Spencer-Brown mentioned?'
'I don't recall. Anyway, Eloise is a charming person, but quite retiring. She has led a very sheltered life, so please, Charlotte, do give some thought to what you say.'
From Charlotte's now wider viewpoint, everyone in Rutland Place had led a very sheltered life, including Caroline herself, but she forbore saying so. Pitt's broader, teeming world, with its vigor and squalor, farce and tragedy, would only be confusing and frightening to Caroline. In Pitt's world, realities were not softened by evasion and genteel words. Its raw life and death would horrify the inhabitants of Rutland Place, just as the myriad icebound rules of Society would appall a stranger to it.
'Is Eloise in delicate health, Mama?' Charlotte asked.
'I have never heard of any actual illness, but there are many things a person of taste does not discuss. It has occurred to me that she might be consumptive. She seems a little delicate, and I have noticed her faint once or twice. But it is so hard to tell with these fashions whether a girl is robust or not. I confess that when Mary does her best with my whalebone and laces to give me back the twenty-inch waist I used to have, I sometimes feel like fainting myself!' She smiled ruefully, and Charlotte felt another twinge of anxiety. Fashion was all very well, but at Caroline's age she should not care so much.
'I have not seen a great deal of Eloise lately,' Caroline continued. 'I think perhaps this inclement weather does not agree with her. That would not be hard to understand. It has been distressingly cold. She is quite lovely- she has the whitest skin and the darkest eyes you ever saw, and she moves marvelously. She reminds me of Lord Byron's poem-'She walks in beauty like the night.' ' She smiled. 'As fragile and as tender as the moon.'
'Did he say that, about the moon?'
'No, I did. Anyway, you will meet her and judge for yourself. Her parents both died when she was very young-no more than eight or nine-and she and her brother were cared for by an aunt. Now that the aunt is dead also, the two of them live here most of the time, and only go back to the country house for a few weeks at a time, or perhaps a month.'
'Mrs. Spencer-Brown described her as a child,' Charlotte said.
Caroline dismissed it. 'Oh, that's just Mina's turn of phrase. Eloise must be twenty-two or more, and Tormod her brother, is three or four years older at least.' She reached for the bell and rang it for the maid to bring her coat. 'I think it's about time we should leave. I would like you to meet Ambrosine before there are a number of callers.'
Charlotte was afraid the matter of the locket was going to be raised again, but she did not argue. She pulled her own coat closed and followed obediently.
It was a very short walk, and Ambrosine Charrington wel shy;comed them with an enthusiasm that startled Charlotte. She was a striking woman, with fine features under a smooth skin only faintly wrinkled around the corners of the mouth and eyes. Her cheekbones were high and swept wide to wings of dark hair.,She surveyed Charlotte with interest and gradual approval as her instinct recognized another highly individual woman.
'How do you do, Mrs. Pitt,' she said with a charming smile. 'I'm delighted you have come at last. Your mother has spoken of you so often.'
Charlotte was surprised; she had not realized Caroline would be willing to talk about her socially at all, let alone often! It gave her an unexpected feeling of pleasure, even pride, and she found herself smiling more than the occasion called for.
The room was large and the furnishings a little austere com shy;pared to the ornate and bulging interiors that were currently popular. There were none of the usual stuffed animals in glass cases or arrangements of dried flowers, no embroidered samplers, or elaborate antimacassars across the backs of chairs. By compari shy;son with most withdrawing rooms it seemed airy, almost bare. Charlotte found it rather pleasing, except for the phalanxes of photographs on the farthest wall, covering the top of the grand piano, and spread along the mantelshelf. They all appeared to include rather elderly people, and had been taken years before, to judge from the fashions. Obviously they were not of Ambrosine and her children, but rather of a generation earlier. Charlotte presumed the man who appeared in them so frequently was her husband-a vain man, she decided from the number of his pictures.
There were some half-dozen highly exotic weapons displayed above the fireplace.
Ambrosine caught Charlotte's glance. 'Horrible, aren't they?' she said. 'But my husband insists. His younger brother was killed in the first Afghan War, forty-five years ago, and he's set them up there as a sort of memorial. The maids are always complaining that they are the perfect devil to clean. Collect dust like mad, above the fire.'
Charlotte looked up at the knives in their ornamental sheaths and scabbards, and had nothing but sympathy for the maids.
'Quite!' Ambrosine said fervently, observing her expression. 'And they are in excellent condition. Bronwen swears someone will wind up with their throat cut one of these days. Although of course it is not her task to clean them. Heathen weapons, she calls them, and I suppose they are.'
'Bronwen?' Caroline was at a loss.
'My maid.' Ambrosine invited them all to be seated with a gesture of her arm. 'The excellent one with the reddish hair.'
'I thought her name was Louisa,' Caroline said.
'I daresay it is.' Ambrosine arranged herself gracefully on the chaise longue. 'But the best maid I ever had was called Bronwen, and I don't believe in changing a good thing. I always call my personal maids Bronwen now. Also it saves confusion. There are dozens of Lilies and Roses and Marys.'
There was no argument to this, and Charlotte was obliged to turn and look out of the window in order to hide her amusement.
'Finding a really good maid is quite an achievement,' Caro shy;line said, pursuing the subject. 'So often those who are compe shy;tent are less than honest, and those whom one can really trust are not as efficient as one would like.'
'My dear, you sound most despondent,' Ambrosine said with sympathy. 'A current misfortune?'
