Redditch unless I have to. Now show me to the door, and no one will notice your being here.”
“Yes sir. Thank you sir. I . . .” She hesitated a moment, as if she would say more, then changed her mind and bobbed a brief curtsy before leading him out across the large hall and opening the front door.
A moment later he was outside in the silent close, ice crackling under his boots. Who was this woman in cerise, who apparently had never called again after Robert York’s murder, and why had no one else spoken of her?
Perhaps she did not matter; she might be a friend of Veronica’s, a relative with eccentric or unacceptable behavior. Or she might be just what the Foreign Office was concealing and hoping he could not trace—a spy. He would have to speak to Dulcie again, when he knew a little more.
4
EMILY RETURNED HOME the day after Boxing Day. The Ashworth town house was large and extremely gracious. George had had much of it redecorated to please Emily’s taste the first year after they were married, and he had been characteristically generous. Nothing that added charm or personality had been denied, and yet the overall effect was not ostentatious in the least. There were no ornate French pieces, no gilt or curlicues; the furniture was Regency and Georgian, in keeping with the architecture of the house itself. Emily had argued with George at the time about his parents’ love of tassels and fringes and had banished most of the indifferent family portraits to unused guest rooms. The result had both surprised and pleased George, who had compared it with satisfaction to the crowded houses of their friends.
Now, as Emily stood in the hallway while the servants obeyed her instructions, carrying in cases, preparing luncheon for Edward and herself, she felt a void of loneliness close round her as if the house were alien. She drew in her breath, wanting to tell them to stop, that she would be returning to Charlotte’s much smaller house. It was positively cramped by comparison, with secondhand furnishings, and located in a narrow, unfashionable street. But Emily had been happy there; for a few days she had entirely forgotten about her new state of widowhood. Physical differences had been irrelevant, they had all been together, and if she woke once or twice in the night in her bed alone and thought of Charlotte lying in a warm bed with Thomas just beyond the wall, those were short moments, quickly banished by returning sleep.
Now the contrast was like a newly whetted blade, making the spacious air of this house, of which she was sole mistress, feel chilly, as if cold water were touching her skin.
It was ridiculous! The servants had fires burning in every grate, and there were the sounds of quick, busy feet in the passage, the clink of silver in the dining room and the chatter of maids on the landing, and the green baize door swung with a faint bump as a footman came through.
She walked quickly up the stairs, undoing her coat as she went. Her lady’s maid appeared and took it from her, along with her hat; she would unpack the cases, sort out what needed laundering, and hang up the gowns. The nurserymaid would do the same for Edward.
Downstairs again, the cook knocked on the boudoir door and inquired for instructions about dinner, and whatever Emily might care for on the menu over the next few days. There was nothing Emily had to do herself but make decisions about things that hardly mattered. That was the trouble. Day after day stretched before her, empty of any necessary or interesting occupation: all the bleak January days she might fill with needlework, writing letters, playing the piano to an empty room, or messing around with brushes and paints and failing to create what she envisioned.
Whatever she did, she did not want to do it alone.
But most of the people she knew were merely acquaintances; to consider them friends would be to devalue the word. Their company would disturb the silence without giving her a sense of companionship, and she was not yet so desperate that she craved any presence at all, regardless of its quality.
In the sensible part of her mind was the realization that company of any value meant relationships, and Emily was not sure what relationship she was prepared for, outside of her family. Although her mother was also fairly recently widowed, Emily felt she had little in common with her. Caroline Ellison had been married a long time, and had been comfortable enough by everyday standards. But she had discovered an aloneness in widowhood that was not at all unmixed with exhilaration. For the first time in her life she answered to no one, neither her autocratic father, her ambitious mother, nor her agreeable but essentially opinionated husband. Even her mother-in-law was not the dictatorial old matriarch she had been while her son was alive. At last Caroline was free to express her own ideas. On more than one occasion she had startled the old lady into a paroxysm of rage by telling her to mind her own business, something she would never have dared do when Emily’s father was alive. It would simply not have been worth the ensuing unpleasantness, nor the impossibility of explanation.
But then Emily’s father had died peacefully after a short illness, and he had been sixty-five. George had been murdered while scarcely in his prime, and Emily had never really lacked the freedom to do things as she wished anyway. The restrictions placed upon her were those of Society, and she was more tightly bound by them now George was dead than she had been while he was alive. Her hollow feeling of loneliness frightened her; it would probably only get worse, and she might be driven to fill her life with pointless activities and silly conversation with people who cared nothing for her.
The alternative seemed remarkably attractive: to pursue her friendship with Jack Radley. At the moment she did not feel it would be too hard to force out of her mind the sort of questions her more rational self would ask: Was there more to him than charm, humor, the ability to make even quite ordinary pastimes seem fun and to understand her so well that explanations were seldom necessary, and justification never?
Liking was fine, for friends. But Emily knew that in a man one was to marry there must also be trust, the knowledge that the important values were shared, that if she were ill or in distress, if she were maligned by others he would support her. And if he were unfaithful—the thought hurt with almost physical sharpness, as the wounds George had dealt were not completely healed—if he were unfaithful it would be meaningless, and he would be discreet enough that she would never know about it, and above all neither would her friends.
And there must be respect. What could she possibly share with someone who did not possess the courage to fight for what he believed, or the largeness of heart to be moved to pity? She would quickly grow to despise a man whose imagination never went beyond his own concerns.
She caught herself with a start of horror and embarrassment. What on earth was she thinking? Marriage? She must be mad! Jack needed to marry into money; she knew that from his presence at Cardington Crescent. That was why Uncle Eustace had originally invited him: as a suitable husband for Tassie, he was to provide the family connections, and she the money. But of course Emily herself was many times wealthier than Tassie March, now she had inherited George’s estate. And that ugly thought must be forgotten. She was a wealthy widow. The fortune hunters would begin to come, circling like vultures round the dying, waiting their turn: not too soon, or they would appear unseemly and spoil their chances, not too late, or they would be beaten to the prize.
