Cardington Crescent

always about such things.” He reached for the toast and buttered a pile absently. “But you have other duties as well-to your guests, for a start. You must make them feel welcome. Of course, your home is primarily an island of peace and morality where the shadows of the world do not penetrate. But it should also be a place of comfortable entertainment, seemly laughter, and uplifting conversation.” He disregarded Tassie’s growing discomfort as if he were totally unaware of it, as indeed perhaps he was. Emily loathed him for his sheer blindness.

“I think you should take Mr. Radley for a carriage ride,” he went on, as if the idea had suddenly occurred to him. “It is excellent weather for such a thing. I am sure your grandmother Vespasia will be happy to accompany you.”

“You are nothing of the kind!” Vespasia snapped. “I have my own calls to make this afternoon. Tassie is welcome to come with me, if she likes, but I shall not go with her. No doubt she would find Mr. Carlisle of interest- as would Mr. Radley, if he cares to come as well.”

Eustace frowned. “Mr. Carlisle? Is he not that most unsuitable person who occupies himself in political agitations?”

Tassie’s head came up in immediate interest. “Oh?”

Eustace glared at her.

Vespasia did not quibble over the description, but her cool, dove gray eyes met Emily’s for an instant with a flash of memory, images of excitement, of appalling poverty and murder, and Emily found herself blushing hotly as the much closer thought of yesterday evening in the conservatory returned. She had begun by telling Jack Radley of precisely that same affair in which she had met Somerset Carlisle.¹

“Most unsuitable,” Eustace said irritably. “There are better ways of serving the unfortunate than making an exhibition of oneself trying to undermine government and alter the whole foundation of society. The man is quite irresponsible, and you should know better than to involve yourself with him, Mama-in-law.”

“Sounds fascinating.” Jack Radley looked away from Emily for the first time and towards Vespasia. “Which particular foundation is he working on at the moment, Lady Cumming-Gould?”

“Suffrage for women,” Vespasia replied immediately.

“Ridiculous!” Eustace snorted. “Dangerous, time-wasting nonsense! Give women the vote and heaven only knows what kind of Parliament we’d have. Full of hotheads, and revolutionaries, I shouldn’t wonder-and incompetents. The man is a threat to all that makes England decent, all that has created the Empire. We raise great men precisely because our women preserve the sanctity of the home and the family.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” Vespasia said smartly. “If women are as decent as you suppose them, they will vote for members who will uphold exactly what you value so much.”

Eustace was thoroughly angry. He controlled himself with a visible effort. “My dear, good woman,” he said between his teeth, “it is not your decency that is in question, it is your sense.” He took a deep breath. “The fairer sex are designed by God to be wives and mothers; to comfort, to nurture and uplift. It is a high and noble calling. But they do not have the minds or the fortitude of temperament to govern, and to imagine they have is to fly against nature.”

“Eustace, I told Olivia when she married you that you were a fool,” Vespasia replied. “And over the years you have given me less and less reason to revise my opinion.” She dabbed her lips delicately with her napkin and stood up. “If you think I am an unsuitable chaperone for Tassie, why don’t you ask Sybilla to accompany her. Presuming she gets out of her bed in time.” And without even glancing behind her she swept from the room, the parlormaid opening the doors and closing them behind her.

Eustace’s face was scarlet. He had been insulted in his own domain, the one place in the world where he was the absolute authority and should have been inviolable.

“Anastasia! Either your sister-in-law or your grandmother March will accompany you.” He swung round. “You, Emily, will not. You are scarcely better than your great-aunt. Such of your past behavior that I know of has been deplorable, but that is George’s problem. I will not have you misguiding Tassie.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Emily snapped back with a blinding smile. “I’m sure Sybilla is much better suited to be an example to Tassie as to how a decent and modest woman should behave than I could ever be.”

Tassie choked into her handkerchief; Jack Radley tried frantically to find something to occupy himself with looking at, and failed. William, white to the lips, rose awkwardly, dropping his napkin and rattling his cup in its saucer.

“I’m going to work,” he said brusquely, “while the light is so good.” Without waiting for comment he left.

Emily was sorry: by allowing her temper to reveal her own pain she had also hurt William. He must be feeling somewhat the same as she was; confused, rejected, terribly alone, and above all, humiliated. But to seek him out and apologize now would only make it worse. There was nothing to do but pretend not to have noticed.

She forced down enough of her breakfast to make it appear she was quite normal. Then she excused herself and went determinedly upstairs to find George and demand he exercise at least discretion, even if he could not or would not exercise morality.

She knocked briskly on the dressing room door and waited. There was no answer. She knocked again, then when nothing happened, turned the handle and went in.

The curtains were open and the room full of sunlight. George was still in bed, the sheets rumpled, the morning coffee tray sitting on the table, obviously used. In fact, there was an empty saucer on the floor near the foot of the bed where he must have shared his coffee with the old lady’s spaniel.

“George!” Emily said angrily. She did not even wish to think what he had been doing all night that he was still asleep at nearly ten in the morning. “George?” She was standing beside the bed now, staring down at him. He looked very white, and his eyes were sunken as though he had slept badly, if at all. In fact he looked ill.

“George?” Now she was undeniably frightened. She put out her hand and touched him.

He did not move. There was not even a flutter of the eyelids.

“George!” She was shouting, which was ridiculous. He must be able to hear her; she was shaking him roughly enough to waken anyone.

But he was motionless. Even his chest did not seem to rise and fall.

Appalled, her mind already guessing at the impossible and terrified of it, she ran to the door, wanting to cry out for someone-but whom?

Aunt Vespasia! Of course. Aunt Vespasia was the only one she could trust, the only one who cared for her. She flew down the stairs and across the hall, almost pitching into a startled housemaid, and threw open the morning room door. Vespasia was writing letters.

“Aunt Vespasia!” Her voice was shaking, and was far louder than she had intended. “Aunt Vespasia, George is ill! I can’t wake him! I think-” She took a choking breath. She could not form the words that would make it real.

Vespasia turned from the rosewood desk where her paper and envelopes were spread, her face grave.

“Perhaps we had better go and see,” she said quietly, laying the pen down and rising from the chair. “Come, my dear.”

Heart pounding, scarcely able to swallow for dread of what she would find this time, Emily followed her back up the stairs to the landing with its peony-patterned curtains and bamboo jardiniere full of ferns. Vespasia tapped smartly on the dressing room door and, without waiting, opened it and walked over to the bed.

George was exactly as Emily had left him, except that now she saw the white stiffness of his face more clearly and wondered how she could ever have deceived herself into imagining he was alive.

Vespasia touched his neck gently with the backs of her fingers. After a moment she turned to Emily, her face weary, her eyes brimming with sorrow.

“There is nothing we can do, my dear. I think, from my very little knowledge, it was his heart. I daresay he felt little beyond a moment. You had better go to my room, and I will send my maid to help you while Millicent gets you a stiff brandy. I must go and tell the household.”

Emily said nothing. She knew George was dead, and yet she could not grasp it-it was too big. She had experienced death before; her own sister had been murdered by the Cater Street Hangman.² Everyone was used to loss: smallpox, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, all were commonplace, and too frequently bringers of death-as was childbirth. But it was always someone else. There had been no warning of this-George had been so alive!

“Come.” Vespasia put her arm round Emily’s shoulder and without Emily’s realizing it she was walking along