There was absolute silence in the room. The maid was too frightened to let go of the trolley.
With a tremendous effort Caroline took a deep breath, and then another.
“I beg your pardon, Monsieur Alaric,” she said in a shaking voice. “I appear to have interrupted you. Do excuse me.” She stepped backward past the maid and out the door.
Charlotte glanced for a moment at Paul Alaric and saw his face as white and appalled as she knew hers must be, mirroring the same realization and guilt that she felt. Then she ran across the room, pushed the maid aside, and swung the door open.
“Mama!”
Caroline was in the hallway and could not have failed to hear her, but she did not turn her head.
“Mama!”
The footman opened the front door and Caroline walked out into the sun. Charlotte went after her. Snatching her cloak from the footman as she passed, she clattered down the steps and out onto the street.
She caught up with Caroline and took her arm. It was stiff, and Caroline shook her off sharply. She kept her face straight ahead.
“How could you?” she said very quietly. “My own daughter! Is your vanity so much that you would do this to me?”
Charlotte reached for her arm again.
“Don’t speak to me.” Caroline jerked away roughly. “Don’t speak to me, please. Not ever again. I don’t wish to know you.”
“You’re being stupid!” Charlotte said as fiercely as she could without raising her voice for the whole street to hear. “I went there to find out if he knew how Theodora von Schenck got her money!”
“Don’t lie to me, Charlotte. I’m perfectly capable of seeing for myself what is going on!”
“Are you?” Charlotte demanded, angry with her mother not for misjudging her but for being so vulnerable, for allowing herself to be swept away by a dream till the awakening threatened everything that really mattered. “Are you, Mama? I think if you could see anything at all, you would know as well as I do that he doesn’t love you in the least.” She saw the tears in Caroline’s eyes, but she had to go on. “It isn’t anything to do with me, or any other woman! He is simply unaware that your feeling for him is anything more than pleasant—a little relief from boredom—a courtesy! You have built up a whole romantic vision around him that has nothing to do with the kind of person he is underneath. You don’t even know him really! All you see is what you want to!” She held on to Caroline’s arm, this time too hard for her to snatch it away.
“I know exactly how you feel!” she went on, keeping up with her. “I did the same with Dominic. I pinned all my romantic ideals onto him, put them over him like a suit of armor, till I had no idea what he was like underneath them. It isn’t fair! We haven’t the right to dress anyone else in our dreams and expect them to wear them for us! That isn’t love! It’s infatuation, and it’s childish—and dangerous! Just think how unbearably lonely it must be! Would you like to live with someone who didn’t even look at or listen to you, but only used you as a figure of fantasy? Someone to pretend about, someone to make responsible for all your emotions so that they are to blame if you are happy or unhappy? You have no right to do that to anyone else.”
Caroline stopped and stared at her, tears running down her face.
“Those are terrible things to say, Charlotte,” she whispered, her voice difficult and hoarse. “Terrible.”
“No, they aren’t.” Charlotte shook her head hard. “It is just the truth, and when you’ve looked at it a bit longer you’ll find you like it!” Please God that could be true!
“Like it! You tell me I have made a ridiculous fool of myself over a man who doesn’t care for me at all, and that even the feeling I had was an illusion, and selfish, nothing to do with love—and I shall come to like that!”
Charlotte threw her arms around her because she wanted to be close to her, share in her pain and comfort her. Besides, looking at her face right now would be an intrusion into privacy too deep to allow forgetting afterward.
“Maybe ‘like it’ was a silly phrase, but when you see it is true, you will find the lies something you don’t even want to remember. But believe me, everyone who was ever capable of passion has made a fool of themselves at least once. We all fall in love with a vision sometime. The thing is to be able to wake up and still love.”
For a long time neither of them said anything more, but stood in the footpath with their arms around each other. Then very slowly Caroline began to relax, her body lost its stiffness, and the pain changed from anger to simple weeping.
“I’m so ashamed of myself,” she said softly. “So terribly ashamed!”
Charlotte’s arms tightened. There was not anything else to say. Time would ease it away, but words could not.
In the distance there was the sound of hooves, someone else making an early visit.
Caroline straightened up and sniffed hard. For a moment her hand lingered on Charlotte’s; then she withdrew it and fished in her reticule for a handkerchief.
“I don’t think I shall make any more calls this afternoon,” she said calmly. “Perhaps you would like to come home for tea?”
“Thank you,” Charlotte said. They began to walk again, slowly. “You know, Mina was quite wrong about Theodora. Her money doesn’t come from a brothel at all, or blackmail—she has a business for selling bathroom furniture!”
Caroline was stunned. Her eyebrows shot up.
“You mean—”
“Yes, water closets!”
