“That is one of the most restful qualities of women,” he replied. “The ability to see only what is pleasant. It makes them so comfortable to be with. Don’t you think so, Mrs. Pitt?”
“I should think it would make for extreme insecurity,” Charlotte replied with candor. “One would never know whether one was dealing with the truth or not. Personally I should be forever wondering what it was I did not know.”
“And so, like Pandora, you would open the box and let disaster loose upon the world.” He looked over the sherbet at her. He had very fine hands. “How unwise of you. There are so many things it is safer not to know. We all have our secrets.” His eyes flickered round the small group. “Even in Paragon Walk. ‘If any man says he is without sin, he deceives himself.’ You didn’t expect to hear me quote from the Good Book, did you, Lady Ashworth? If you stroll along the Walk, Mrs. Pitt, your naked eye will see perfect houses, stone upon stone, but your spiritual eye, if you have one, will see a row of whited sepulchers. Is that not so, Selena?”
Before Selena could reply, there was a slight clatter as a maid jiggled yet more sherbet on her tray, and they turned to see a most beautiful woman coming across the grass, seeming almost to gloat as the faint, warm air moved the white and water-green silk of her dress. Selena’s face hardened.
“Jessamyn, how charming to see you. I had not expected you to have such fortitude to be about. How I admire you, my dear. Do join us and meet Mrs. Pitt, Emily’s sister from-?” She lifted her eyebrows, but no one answered her. There were brief acknowledgements. “What an attractive gown,” Selena went on, looking at Jessamyn again. “Only you could get away with wearing such a-an anaemic color. On me I swear it would look quite disastrous, so, so washed out!”
Charlotte turned to Jessamyn and observed from her expression that she understood Selena’s meaning perfectly. Her composure was exquisite.
“Don’t be depressed, my dear Selena. We cannot all wear the same things, but I’m sure there must be some colors which will suit you excellently.” She looked at the gorgeous gown Selena was wearing, lavender appliqued with plum-pink lace. “Not that, maybe,” she said slowly. “Had you thought of something a little cooler, perhaps blue? So flattering to the higher complexion in this trying weather.”
Selena was furious. Her eyes spat something that looked as deep as hatred. Charlotte was surprised and a little taken aback to see it.
“We go to too many of the same places,” Selena said between her teeth. “And I should dislike above all things to be thought to ape your tastes-in anything. One should at all costs be original, do you not agree, Mrs. Pitt?” She turned to Charlotte.
Charlotte, acutely conscious of Emily’s made-over dress, full of pins, could not summon a reply. She was still shaken by the hatred she had seen, and Fulbert Nash’s ugly remark about whited sepulchers.
Oddly, it was Fulbert who rescued her.
“Up to a point,” he said casually. “Originality can so easily become outlandish, and one can end up a positive eccentric. Don’t you think so, Miss Lucinda?”
Miss Lucinda snorted and declined to reply.
Emily and Charlotte excused themselves shortly afterward, and, as Emily obviously did not feel like making any further calls, they went home.
“What an extraordinary man Fulbert Nash is,” Charlotte commented as they climbed the stairs. “Whatever did he mean about ‘whited sepulchers’?”
“How should I know?” Emily snapped. “Perhaps he has a guilty conscience.”
“Over what? Fanny?”
“I’ve no idea. He is a thoroughly horrible person. All the Nashes are, except Diggory. Afton is perfectly beastly. And whenever people are horrible themselves, they tend to think everyone else is too.”
Charlotte could not leave well enough alone.
“Do you think he really does know something about all the people in the Walk? Didn’t Miss Lucinda say the Nashes had lived here for generations?”
“She’s a silly old gossip!” Emily crossed the landing and went into her dressing room. She took Charlotte’s old muslin dress off its hanger. “You should have more sense than to listen to her.”
Charlotte began searching for the pins in the plum silk, taking them out slowly.
“But if the Nashes have lived here for years, then maybe Mr. Nash does know a lot about everyone. People do, when they live close to each other, and they remember.”
“Well, he doesn’t know anything about me! Because there isn’t anything to know!”
At last Charlotte was silent. The real fear was out. Of course Mr. Nash did not know anything about Emily, but then no one would suspect Emily of rape and murder. But what did he know about George? George had lived here every summer of his life.
“I wasn’t thinking of you.” She slipped the plum dress to the floor.
“Of course not,” Emily picked it up and passed her the gray muslin. “You were thinking of George! Just because I’m with child, and George is a gentleman and doesn’t have to work like Thomas, you think he’s out gambling and drinking at his club and having affairs, and that he could have taken a fancy to Fanny Nash and refused to be put off!”
“I don’t think anything of the kind!” Charlotte took the muslin and put it on slowly. It was more comfortable than the plum, and she had let her stays out an inch, but it looked inexpressibly drab. “But it seems that you are afraid of it.”
Emily whirled around, her face red.
“Rubbish! I know George, and I believe in him!”
Charlotte did not argue; the fear was too high in Emily’s voice, the sharp corrosive poison of anxiety eating away. In weeks, perhaps days, it would turn to question, doubt, or even actual suspicion. And George was bound to have made some mistakes somewhere, said or done something foolish, something better forgotten.
“Of course,” she said softly. “And hopefully Thomas will soon find whoever did it, and we can begin to forget the whole thing. Thank you for lending me your dress.”
Four
Emily spent a miserable evening. George was at home, but she could think of nothing to say to him. She wanted to ask him all sorts of questions, but they would have betrayed her doubts so openly that she dared not. And she was afraid of his answers, even if he kept his patience with her and was neither hurt nor angry. If he told her the truth, would there be something she would wish with all her heart she had never known?
She had no illusions that George was perfect. She had accepted when she had first determined to marry him that he gambled and occasionally drank more than was good for him. She even accepted that from time to time he would flirt with other women, and normally she regarded it as harmless enough, the same sort of game she indulged in herself, just a sort of practice, a refining of one’s skills, so as not to become too domestic and taken for granted. It had been hard at times, even confusing, but she had accommodated to his manner of life with great skill.
It was only that lately she had been most unlike herself, upset over trivialities and even inclined to weep, which was appalling. She had never had patience with weepy women, or those given to fainting, for that matter-and this last month she had done both.
She excused herself and went to bed early, but although she fell asleep straight away, she awoke several times through the night, and in the morning felt miserably sick for over an hour.
She had been most unfair to Charlotte, and she knew it. Charlotte wanted to learn all she could about the Walk because she wished to protect Emily from the very things that gnawed at the back of her mind now. Part of her loved Charlotte for it, and for a hundred other reasons, but there was a loud, strident voice in her just now that hated her, because even in her old-fashioned, dull gray muslin she was secure and comfortable, with no ugly fears at the back of her mind. She knew perfectly well that Thomas was not out flirting with anyone else. No social behavior of Charlotte’s would ever make him wonder if he had been wise to marry beneath him, or if Charlotte could maintain his social position and be a credit to him. There was no pressure to produce a son to carry on the title.
