“No, but we know who is standing for the Tories,” Emily replied with a frown. “Nigel Uttley. Highly respected and very powerful. I’m not sure just how much of a chance Jack has, realistically. Of course I don’t tell Jack that.” She smiled ruefully. “Especially after last time.”
Charlotte said nothing. Last time had been so fraught with other pains and tragedies that political failure had seemed almost incidental. Jack had withdrawn, refusing to be compromised or to join the secret society known as the Inner Circle, which would have ensured his acceptance as candidate and the support of a vast hidden network of men with influence, money and an unbreakable bond. But there was also the covenant of secrecy, the preferments offered to members at the expense of outsiders, the promises of protection, lies to conceal, and ostracism and punishment for transgressors. Above all what appalled Jack and frightened Pitt was the secrecy—the doubt, suspicion and fear sown by not knowing who were members, whose loyalties were already spoken for in a dark covenant, which consciences were in bondage even before the choices were framed.
“I assume this is going to be your room?” Emily asked, gazing around the large bedroom with its wide window over the garden. “I like this. Is this the biggest room, or is the front one a trifle wider?”
“I think it is, but it doesn’t matter. I’d sacrifice size for that window,” Charlotte replied without hesitation. “And that room”—she indicated the door to her left—“as a dressing room for Thomas. The front one will do well for a nursery for Daniel and Jemima, and they can have the smaller ones for bedrooms.”
“What color?” Emily looked at the walls, by now totally ignoring the stains and tears.
“I’m not sure. Maybe blue, maybe green,” Charlotte said thoughtfully.
“Blue will be cold,” Emily answered. “Actually, so will green.”
“I like it anyway.”
“What direction are we facing?”
“Southwest,” Charlotte replied. “The afternoon sun comes in the French doors below us in the dining room.”
“Then I daresay it’ll be all right. Charlotte …”
“Yes?”
Emily stood in the middle of the floor, her face puckered. “I know I was rather hard on you when I came back from the country, in fact possibly even unfair …”
“About Mama? You certainly were,” Charlotte agreed. “I don’t know what you expected me to do!”
“I wasn’t there,” Emily said reasonably. “I don’t know what could have been done, but surely something. For heaven’s sake, Charlotte, the man’s not only an actor—and a Jew—but he’s seventeen years younger than Mama!”
“She knows that,” Charlotte agreed. “He’s also charming, intelligent, funny, kind, loyal to his friends, and he seems to care for her very much.”
“I expect all that’s true,” Emily conceded. “But to what end? She can’t possibly marry him! Even supposing he asked her.”
“I know that!”
“She’ll ruin her reputation if she hasn’t done so already,” Emily went on. “Papa will be turning over in his grave.” She swiveled around very slowly. “You could have blue in here if you didn’t have dark furniture.” She looked back at Charlotte. “What are we going to do about her now? Grandmama is beside herself.”
“She’s been in a rage for months,” Charlotte said without concern. “If not years. She enjoys it. If it wasn’t this, it would be something else.”
“But this is different,” Emily protested, her face puckered with concern. “This time she’s right! What Mama is doing is absurd and dangerous. She could find herself quite outside society when it’s all over. Have you even thought about that?”
“Yes, of course I have. And I’ve told her till I’m blue in the face—but it doesn’t make a ha’p’orth of difference. She knows it all, and she considers it worth the price.”
“Then she isn’t thinking clearly,” Emily said tartly, hunching her shoulders a little. “She can’t mean it.”
“I think I would.” Charlotte spoke not so much to Emily as to the view beyond the window. “I think I would rather have a brief time of real happiness, and take the chance, than an age of gray respectability.”
“Respectability isn’t gray!” Emily retorted. Then suddenly her face crumpled into a giggle. “It’s—brown.”
Charlotte shot her a look of swift appreciation.
“All the same,” Emily went on, her eyes steady in spite of her laughter. “The lack of respectability can be very unpleasant, especially when you are older. It can be very lonely to be shut out, whatever color the inside is.”
Charlotte knew it was true, and why Emily had said it. Perhaps in her mother’s place she too would have opted for a brief, painful and glorious romance, but she was not unaware of the bitter price.
“I know,” she said quietly. “And Grandmama will never let her forget it, even if everyone else does.”
Emily gazed around the room thoughtfully.
Charlotte read her thought.
“Oh no!” she said decidedly. “Not here! We haven’t room!”
“No, I suppose not,” Emily agreed reluctantly, then suddenly she smiled again. “Were you thinking of Mama or Grand-mama?”
“Grandmama, of course,” Charlotte responded. “Mama would remain in Cater Street, naturally. It is her house. I’m not sure which would be worse, living with Grandmama goading and complaining all the time, or all by yourself with no one to talk to at all. Sitting every day wondering if anyone will call, and if you dare call on someone else, or if they will all send polite messages to the door that they are not at home, even when you can see the carriages in
