“Oh.” She caught her breath. Of course it would be impossible to refuse. “Yes, please—ask him to come in. I am sure Miss Lagarde would wish it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The girl withdrew, and after a moment Paul Alaric appeared, soberly dressed, his face grave.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Pitt.” He showed no surprise, so he must have been forewarned of her presence. “I hope you are well?”
“Quite, thank you, Monsieur. Miss Lagarde is upstairs with the doctor, as I imagine you already know.”
“Yes, indeed. How is she?”
“Most terribly distressed,” she answered frankly. “I cannot remember having seen anyone look so shocked. I wish there was something we could say or do to comfort—it is frightening to be so helpless.”
She had been afraid, almost angry in anticipation of it, that he might say something trite, but he did not.
“I know.” His voice was very quiet, his mind seeking to understand the pain. “I really don’t feel I can be of any use, but not to call seems so indifferent, as if I did not care.”
“Are you a great friend of Mr. Lagarde’s?” she inquired with surprise. She had not considered a realm of his life where he might find company with a man as much younger and as relatively slight in his pursuits as Tormod Lagarde. “Please do sit down,” she offered as composedly as she could. “I daresay they will be a little while as yet.”
“Thank you,” he said, moving the skirts of his coat so he did not sit on them. “No, I cannot say that I found much in common with him. But then tragedies of this sort override all trivial differences, don’t they?”
She looked up to find his eyes on her, curious and quite devoid of the impersonal glaze she was accustomed to in social conversation. She smiled slightly to show she was calm and grave and composed; then, as an afterthought, she smiled again, to show that she agreed with him.
“I see it has not kept you away,” he continued. “It would have been quite excusable for you to have found other business and avoided what can only be painful. You do not know the Lagardes well, I believe? And yet you felt a desire to come?”
“I fear to little enough good,” she said with sudden unhappiness. “Except perhaps that Mama and Emily removed Mrs. Denbigh.”
He smiled, and the irony inside him went all the way to his eyes.
“Ah, Amaryllis! Yes, I imagine that was something of a kindness in itself. I don’t know why, but there seems to be little love lost between her and Eloise. It would have been a source of considerable pain had they become sisters-in-law.”
“You don’t know why?” Charlotte was surprised. Surely he could not be so blind! Amaryllis was intensely possessive and her feeling for Tormod was almost devouring in its heat. The thought of living in a household with Eloise would be unbearable to her. When two women shared a house, there was always one who became superior; that it should be Eloise was unlikely, and for Amaryllis intolerable, but if Eloise were driven, however subtly, into a subordinate position, then Tormod would feel a sense of obligation, even of pity, toward her, and that might be worse. No, if Paul Alaric could not see why Amaryllis felt as she did, he was disappointingly lacking in imagination.
Then she looked at his face and realized he had not understood that Eloise would remain with them. But Tormod could hardly leave her alone! She was young and desperately vulnerable—even if it would be socially acceptable, which it was not.
“I had formed the impression that Mrs. Denbigh was extremely fond of Mr. Lagarde,” she began. What a ridiculously inadequate use of words for the violence of feeling she had seen in Amaryllis, the appetite of mind and body that boiled so close below the surface.
Slowly he smiled, without pleasure. He had seen it too.
“Perhaps I have too little insight, but a wife and a sister do not seem mutually exclusive.”
“Really, Monsieur.” Suddenly she was impatient with him. “If you were totally in love with someone, if you can conceive of such a feeling”—the acid of her rage for Caroline dripped through her voice—“would you care to share your daily life with somebody who knew that person infinitely better than you did? Who had a lifetime of memories in common, all the laughter and secrets, the friends, the childhood echoes—”
“All right. Charlotte—I understand.” Suddenly he reverted to the moment of friendship they had shared in those terrible days in Paragon Walk when other jealousies and hatreds had seethed into murder. “I have been insensitive, even stupid. I can see that to someone like Amaryllis it would be unendurable. However, if Tormod is as badly injured as I have heard, then the question of marriage will never arise.”
It was a statement of a truth that must have been obvious, yet the words fell like ice into the room. They were still silent, each wrapped in his own conception of its enormity, when Eloise returned.
She regarded Alaric without interest, as if she did not recognize him except as a shape, another figure that required acknowledgment.
“Good afternoon, Monsieur Alaric. It is kind of you to call.”
The sight of her face, stiff, eyes sunken with shock, affected him more than anything Charlotte could have said. He forgot his manners, a lifetime of polite expressions. There was nothing in him but untutored emotion.
He put out his hand and grasped hers, his other hand touching her arm gently, as if her skin might bruise.
“Eloise, I’m so sorry. Don’t give up hope, my dear. One cannot know what may be possible, with time.”
She stood quite still, not moving away from him, although it was not plain whether she was comforted by his closeness or simply oblivious to it.
“I don’t know what to hope for,” she said simply. “Perhaps that is very wrong of me?”
“No, not wrong,” Charlotte said quickly. “You would have to be omniscient to know what is best. You cannot blame yourself, and please do not even think of it.”
