with her husband's death. She might ask Aunt Vespasia to inquire further about Barclay Hamilton; perhaps they might learn something of his mother. But it was a very slender thought. Sharper and blacker was the figure of Florence Ivory. The sooner she formed some personal impression of her, Charlotte felt, the better.
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'Walnut Tree Walk, please,' she instructed the coachman, before realizing she should not have said please; after all she was instructing a servant, not requesting a friend. She had forgotten how to behave.
Zenobia Gunne sat in her own carriage with many of the same misgivings as Charlotte had had in Vespasia's. She was not in the least afraid of Mary Carfax, but she did not like her, and she knew the feeling was returned with some fervor. It would take an extraordinary reason to bring Zenobia to call upon her unannounced, and Mary would believe nothing less. The last time they had met, at a ball in 1850, Mary had been an imperious and fragile beauty, betrothed satisfactorily but unromantically to Gerald Carfax. Zenobia was single. They had both fallen in love, in their wildly different ways, with Captain Peter Holland. To Mary he had been comely and dashing, and she had suddenly seen romance leaving her forever as she tied herself to Gerald; to Zenobia he had been a man too poor to afford a wife, but the most immense fun, full of laughter and imagination, his mouth always ready to smile, sensitive to the beautiful, and to the absurd, a brave, tender and funny man she had loved with all her heart. He had been killed in the Crimea, and she had never loved anyone since with the same depth, or without at some moment seeing Peter's face in his and feeling all the old dreams return. And with every other man at all the best, the tenderest times, it was Peter's eyes she saw, Peter's laughter she heard.
It was after that that she had first gone to Africa, scandalizing her family, as well as Mary Carfax. But what did it matter, with Peter dead? Better to be alone than live a pretense with someone else.
Now as the carriage sped through the spring streets towards Kensington she racked her brains for a credible tale. It would be hard enough even for a long-standing friend and confidante to learn anything useful that might throw light on the murder of Vyvyan Etheridge; she would learn nothing at
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all if she did not even get through the door! Did Mary remember that ball? Did she know that Peter had loved Zeno-bia, and that she would have persuaded him that she did not care about money or Society, had he not died on the battlefield of Balaklava? Or did Mary still imagine it might have been she he would have chosen, had he the freedom to choose anyone?
Desperation was the element! She must use as much of the truth as possible. She must find a reason she could lie about convincingly; emotions were far harder to stimulate. She was at her wits' end . . . and she needed to know-that was it! She needed to know the whereabouts of a mutual friend, someone from those far-off days, and her extremity had driven her to seek Mary Carfax. Mary would believe that. But who should she say she was searching for? It must not be someone in such current circulation that Zenobia should have found her for herself. Ah! Beatrice Allenby was just the person. She had married a Belgian cheesemaker and gone to live in Bruges! No one could be expected to know that as a matter of course. And Mary Carfax would enjoy relating that: it was a minor scandal, girls of good family might marry German barons or Italian counts, but not Belgians, and certainly not cheesemakers of any sort!
By the time she alighted in Kensington she was composed in her mind and had her story rehearsed in detail. A small boy with a hoop and a stick ran down the pavement past her, and his governess hurried along, calling after him. Zenobia smiled and ascended the steps. She presented her card to the parlormaid, outstared the rather pert girl, and watched with satisfaction as she departed to take the news to her mistress.
She returned a few moments later and showed Zenobia into the withdrawing room. As she had expected, Mary Carfax's curiosity was too sharp for her to wait.
'How pleasant to see you again, Miss Gunne, after so very long,' she lied with a chill smile. 'Please do take a seat.'' Her concern was polite, but there was also a solicitude
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in it, a reminder that Mary was a fraction younger, which fact she had treasured even in their youth and now found too sweet to let pass. 'Would you care for some refreshment? A tisane?'
Zenobia swallowed the reply that came to her lips and forced the opening she had planned. 'Thank you; most kind.'' She sat on the edge of her chair, as manners dictated, not farther back, as would have been comfortable, and bared her teeth very slightly. 'You look well.'
'I daresay it is the climate,' Lady Mary answered pointedly. 'So good for the complexion.'
Zenobia, burned by the African sun, longed to make some withering reply but remembered her niece and
