“I am hosting a little soiree next week, if you recall.”
“Ah yes. One of the many that all your little set are holding to fill in the dead time between Christmas and New Year.”
“It’s hardly a dead time. It’s an endless whirl of engagements and I for one am quite looking forward to January when I might have a rest.”
Adelia laughed. “You’ll be bored of resting within two days.”
“Perhaps. Anyway, how would you feel about an invitation going out to Octavia? I mean, under the current situation with her, it would be tricky. But there are only a few people coming here, just a select handful of the best of the Bohemian lot, and it would be relatively easy to add her without much scandal if I don’t make a thing of it. It’s not a public sort of thing and it’s only friends that I trust and I’ll ask them to be quiet about it. There will be talk but nothing too harmful. I didn’t invite her previously as she’d be on her own without a chaperone and therefore feeling awkward. It seemed unfair. Obviously, her presence might upset some sorts of people, but Lady Purfleet is not coming and the people that are coming are rather, um, broad-minded, and I don’t expect they will be surprised or shocked by her presence. If you and I set an example, she would be tolerated, perhaps? What do you think? You have been so very keen to advise me to take care of my reputation, and then you sent me to see the fallen woman myself, so I hardly know now which way is correct.”
“Oh. Oh. I don’t really know. Your other guests might be comfortable but word would get out and still attach itself to you negatively.”
“It was all right for me to visit her, but not for her to come here?”
“Well, as you yourself have said, your reputation is going to be increasingly tarnished. One visit to her is fine and I don’t think it did any harm. Bringing her here while there are other guests here ... that is another matter.”
Charlotte sighed. “I don’t feel as if I can win.”
Theodore tapped a knife on his glass and broke the deadlock. “Well, I think that it’s a fine idea. You ladies worry too much. Just invite her. It’s a small private meal. I am sure you’ll weather the storm. Surely everyone is busy enough right now to not pay too much attention to this.”
“Theodore,” Adelia said. “I don’t think you quite appreciate the risk...”
“That they end up ostracised from the artistic circles they run in?”
“Wait...” said Charlotte. “No, Papa...”
Theodore smiled and suddenly Adelia got his meaning. So did Charlotte and Robert.
But it was decided. The invitation would be sent.
BY UNSPOKEN MUTUAL agreement, talk turned to polite and mundane matters for the rest of the meal. No one seemed to want to delve into potentially argumentative discussions. They all retired to the drawing room for a peaceful hour before getting ready to walk as a family group to the local church for Midnight Mass.
It was not snowing, as it never did at this time of year, but it was bitterly cold and they all bundled up in many layers of clothing. They walked through the streets, holding their unlit candles with the wreaths of holly, and oranges studded with cloves on ribbons dangling from their wrists. It was busy. For many people this was the one time of year they attended church at all.
Charlotte fell into step alongside Adelia.
“There’s another thing I should have mentioned earlier, mama, but we all got distracted.”
“Can it wait until after the service?”
“It can.”
Adelia managed to stifle her curiosity for four minutes before bursting out, “Go on, just tell me now, or I shall not be able to concentrate on my devotions.”
“When I visited Octavia, she was talking about the exhibition at Marshall’s.”
“Oh, the one next week where this mysterious Lord H is to be revealing his marvellous paintings? The exclusive opening with the last-minute announcement?”
“Yes. She has an invitation, of course, which was sent to her before all this blew up. She said she knows she ought to now stay away but she has decided she will go, anyway. She was somewhat brazen about it. I was a little shocked. I do think she ought to be allowed back into society, mama, in spite of what I might have said. If she is not a murderer, then she doesn’t deserve to be shut out forever. It’s just that she ought to give it a few months to settle down before easing herself back into things. People will have a new scandal to discuss soon enough, like papa said. There is always something. She just needs to be patient and let herself become old news.”
“Did you advise her of this?”
“I did but she wouldn’t listen. She seemed almost obsessed with the idea of the exhibition, as if it was something important to her, and it made me curious about it.”
“What do you think?” Adelia said. “It is one thing coming to a private dinner party – about which I’m still uncertain but I think it will be all right – but a public event like the gallery is quite another matter. People will see her.”
“I don’t know what to think. I think that I agree with you. The dinner party here is not so bad. I am not worried about that, really. But the exhibition is, as you say, too public. Surely she knows she will be snubbed, even ridiculed? No one will speak to her. Why would she want to put herself through it all again?”
“I say!” cried Adelia, drawing Robert and Theodore’s attention. “I have it! She must be the celebrated Lord H! Don’t you think?”
Robert laughed and Charlotte shook her head. “Oh, mama.”
“No?”
“No. Though wouldn’t that be a jape?”
They were nearly at the church. A choir was already
