week ago. Vespasia took it with a tiny smile.
“There is no point in speaking to Sybilla,” Vespasia said dryly as they went down. “If she had meant to say anything she would have done so last night. There is a great deal about Sybilla that I do not understand.”
Charlotte let her uppermost thought find words. “I wish we could prevent Emily from finding out. I could strangle Jack Radley myself, cheerfully. He is so abysmally-cheap!”
“I admit I am disappointed,” Vespasia agreed with an unhappy little shake of her head. “I had grown rather to like him. This, as you say, is quite remarkably shabby.”
Breakfast was extraordinary for Eustace’s absence. Not only were all the windows still closed and the silver dishes on the sideboard untouched, but he had sent for a tray in his room. Neither was Jack Radley present; probably too ashamed to face them, Charlotte presumed. Nevertheless she was annoyed. She had wished to make him aware of her contempt.
It was after eleven when she went into the morning room to fetch some more notepaper and found Eustace sitting at the desk, silver inkwell open and a pen in his hand, but the sheet in front of him virgin white. He turned round at the sound of her step, and she saw with incredulity that his right eye was swollen and darkened with an immense bruise and there was a graze on the side of his face. She was too amazed to think what to say.
“Ah, oh …” He looked awkward. “Good morning, Mrs. Pitt. I-er, I had a slight, accident. Fell.”
“Oh dear,” she said foolishly. “I hope you are not seriously hurt. Have you sent for the doctor?”
“Not necessary! Perfectly all right.” He closed the inkwell and stood up, wincing as his weight came onto his left leg. He let out his breath sharply.
“Are you sure?” she said with more concern than she felt. Her overriding emotion was curiosity. When had this extraordinary accident occurred? To sustain such injuries he must have fallen downstairs, at the very least. “I’m so sorry,” she added hastily.
“Very kind of you,” he answered, his eyes resting on her with appreciation for a moment. Then, as though recollecting some more pressing thought, he limped over to the door and out into the hall.
And at luncheon a totally new dimension appeared, startling Charlotte and obliging her to think far better of Eustace than she wished. Jack Radley came to the table nursing a painful right hand, and with a split and swollen lip. However, he offered no explanation at all, and no one asked him for any.
Charlotte was forced to conclude that Eustace had seen him early in the morning and thrashed him over the disgraceful affair in Sybilla’s room. And, for once, she admired him for it.
Remarkably, Sybilla herself spoke to Jack Radley perfectly civilly, even agreeably, although she looked very tense. Her shoulders were tight, stiff under the thin fabric of her dress, and the very few remarks she made were distracted, her mind obviously elsewhere. Perhaps she had a share of guilt. Had she implied, however obliquely, that he might be welcome?
Charlotte tried to behave as normally as possible, mainly because she did not want Emily to know what had happened-at least, not yet. Time enough for that kind of disillusion when she was home and would not see Jack Radley again.
For now let her believe in accidents.
Emily knew nothing about the extraordinary episode in the night, and the first she observed was early in the afternoon when she came downstairs and sat in the withdrawing room staring at the sunlight on the leaves in the conservatory. She saw William briefly as he came through to his studio. He looked at her with a hollow pain she took for pity but did not speak.
Tassie had gone off on good works again with the curate, visiting the sick or some such thing. Her grandmother said it was unnecessary; in the circumstances she might be excused. But Tassie had insisted. There were certain tasks she would not forgo; apparently she had given an undertaking, and she ignored argument. Eustace had not been present to lend his weight, and for once the old lady lost the contest, retiring to her boudoir to sulk.
Charlotte was with Aunt Vespasia, leaving Emily alone to while away the afternoon. She could not be bothered to occupy herself with any of the usually acceptable feminine tasks-painting, embroidery, music. She had written all the letters that were required of her, and visiting so soon after a family death was out of the question.
Therefore she was doing nothing at all when Eustace came in, limping noticeably. But it was not until he turned to speak to her that she saw the richly purpling bruise round his eye, now almost closed and looking acutely painful.
“Oh!” She drew in her breath sharply. “Whatever happened to you? Are you all right?” Emily stood up without thinking, as if in some way he might actually need her physical assistance.
He smiled awkwardly. “Ah, I tripped,” he said without meeting her eyes. “In the dark. Nothing for you to worry about. I suppose William’s in there”-he waved towards the conservatory-“fiddling about with his damn paints again. He can’t seem to leave them alone for five minutes. God knows, you’d think with all this distress in the family he’d be some use, wouldn’t you? But William always did run away from everything.” He swiveled round, winced with pain as his injured leg took his weight, and then moved towards the conservatory doors, leaving Emily with her answer unspoken on her lips.
She sat down again, feeling even more conscious of her loneliness.
It was several minutes before she became aware of voices, fragmented by the distance, the vines and leaves, and the heavy swags of curtain between the doors. But there was no mistaking the anger in them, the sharp cutting edge of old hatred.
“If you’d damn … where you should, then you’d have known!” It was Eustace’s voice. William’s reply was indistinguishable.
“… thought you’d have been used to it!” Eustace shouted back.
“… imagination … never needed to … your mother!” Eustace’s retaliation was disjointed, blurred by the tangle of plants.
“… mother … for God’s sake!” William shouted in an explosion of violence.
Emily stood up, unable to bear the intrusion she was unwittingly making into what was obviously a highly intimate matter. She hesitated between leaving by way of the dining room and fleeing to some other part of the house, or having the courage and the effrontery to interrupt the quarrel and end it, at least temporarily. She turned to the conservatory, then back to the dining room, and was startled to see Sybilla in the doorway. For the first time since she had come to Cardington Crescent the look of anguish in Sybilla’s face overrode all Emily’s old hatred of her and prompted a sympathy she could not have imagined even a day before.
“… dare you! I won’t …” William’s voice rose again, thick with emotion.
Sybilla almost ran across the floor, catching her skirts on the back of a chair and tearing at them impatiently, and disappeared into the conservatory, knocking against flowers and stepping off the path into the damp loam in her haste. A moment later the voices from beyond the leaves froze and there was utter silence.
Emily took a deep breath, her stomach tight, unclenching her hands deliberately, and walked towards the dining room door. She did not wish to be here when any of them returned. She would pretend complete ignorance; it was the only possible thing.
In the main hallway she met Jack Radley. His lip was swollen and there was a line of dried blood on it, and he carried his right hand awkwardly. He smiled at her, and drew in his breath in pain as the lip cracked.
“I suppose you tripped in the dark as well?” she said icily before she could stop herself, then wished she had simply ignored him.
He licked the lip and put his hand to it tenderly, but there was still that same gentleness in his eyes.
“Is that what he said?” he mumbled. “Not at all. I had a row with Eustace and hit him-and he hit me.”
“Obviously,” Emily replied without quite the contempt she had intended. “I am surprised you are still here.” She moved past him to go up the stairs, but he sidestepped and remained in front of her.
“If you expect me to explain myself, you’ll wait in vain. It is none of your business,” he said with an edge to his voice. “I don’t break confidences, even for you. But I admit I expected you of all people not to jump to conclusions.”
She felt a stab of shame. “I’m sorry,” she said very quietly. “I’ve surely wished I could hit Eustace a few times myself. It looks as if you got rather the better of it.”
