a lot where he is.”
Charlotte kept her patience, which only irritated Emily the more. Charlotte holding her tongue really was the last straw.
“We don’t know that he is dead,” Charlotte pointed out. “Or, if he is, that he did not take his own life.”
“And then hide his body afterward?” Emily said with withering contempt.
“Thomas says that many bodies in the river are never found.” Charlotte was still being reasonable. “Or, if they are, they are unrecognizable.”
Emily’s imagination conjured revolting pictures, bloated corpses with their faces eaten away, staring up through murky water. It made her feel sick.
“You are perfectly disgusting!” She glared at Charlotte. “You and Thomas may find such conversation acceptable over the tea table, but I do not!”
“You have not offered me any tea,” Charlotte said with a ghost of a smile.
“If you imagine I shall, after that, you are mistaken!” Emily snapped.
“You had better have something yourself, and try something sweet with it-”
“If one more person makes another polite reference to my condition, I shall swear!” Emily said fiercely. “I do not want to sit down, or take a refreshing drink, or anything else!”
Charlotte was beginning at last to become a little acid herself.
“What you want and what you need are not always the same thing,” she said smartly. “And losing your temper will not help anything. In fact, you will say things you will wish afterward you had not. And if anyone should know the folly of that, I should! You were always the one who could think before you spoke. For goodness’ sake, don’t lose that now when you need it the most.”
Emily stared at her, coldness in the pit of her stomach.
“What do you mean?” she demanded. “Explain what you mean!”
Charlotte stood perfectly still.
“I mean that, if you let your fears drive you into suspicion now, or allow George to think you do not trust him, you will never be able to replace what you have destroyed, no matter how much you may regret it afterward, or how trivial it may all seem when you know the truth. And you will have to prepare yourself that we may never know who killed her. Not all crimes are solved.”
Emily sat down sharply. It was appalling to think they might never know, that they might spend the rest of their lives looking at each other and wondering. Every affection, every quiet evening, every simple conversation, offer of company or help, would be marred by the dark stain of uncertainty, the sudden thought-could it have been he who killed Fanny, or she who knew about it?
“They’ll have to find out!” she insisted, refusing to accept it. “Someone will know, if he is really one of us. Some wife, some brother, some friend will find a clue!”
“Not necessarily.” Charlotte looked at her with a little shake of her head. “If he has been secret so long, why not forever? Perhaps someone does know. But they do not have to say so, maybe not even to themselves. We do not always recognize things, when we do not wish to.”
“Rape?” Emily breathed the word incredulously. “Why in the name of heaven would any woman protect a man who had-”
Charlotte’s face tightened.
“All kinds of reasons,” she replied. “Who wants to believe their husband, or brother, is a rapist, or a murderer? You can prevent yourself from seeing that forever, if you want to badly enough. Or convince yourself that it will never happen again, and it was not really his fault. You’ve seen for yourself, half the people in the Walk have already made up their minds that Fanny was a loose woman, that she invited her own fate, somehow she deserved it-”
“Stop it!” Emily hauled herself up and faced Charlotte angrily. “You’re not the only one who can tell the truth about anything, you know! You’re so smug, sometimes you make me sick! We’re not all hypocrites here in the Walk, just because we have time and money and dress well, any more than all of you are in your grubbly little street, just because you work all day! You have your lies and your conveniences as well!”
Charlotte was very pale, and instantly Emily regretted it. She wanted to put her hands out, put her arms around Charlotte, but she did not dare. She stared at her, frightened. Charlotte was the only person she could talk to, whose love was unquestioned, with whom she could share the secret fears and wants in every woman’s heart.
“Charlotte?”
Charlotte stood still.
“Charlotte?” she tried again. “Charlotte, I’m sorry!”
“I know,” Charlotte said very quietly. “You want to know the truth about George, and you’re afraid of it.”
Time stopped. For motionless seconds Emily hesitated. Then she asked the question she had to ask.
“Do you know? Did Thomas tell you?”
Charlotte had never been any good at lying. Even though she was the elder, she had never been able to dupe Emily, whose sharp, practiced eye had always seen the reluctance, the indecision before the lie.
“You do.” Emily answered her own question. “Tell me.”
Charlotte frowned.
“It’s all over.”
“Tell me,” Emily repeated.
“Wouldn’t it be better-”
Emily just waited. They both knew that truth, whatever it was, was better than the exhaustion of sweeping from hope to fear, the elaborate effort to deceive oneself, the indulging in awful imagination.
“Was it Selena?” she asked.
“Yes.”
Now that she knew, it was not so bad. Perhaps she had known before, but simply refused to say so to herself. Was that really all George was afraid of? How silly. How very silly. She would put a stop to it, of course. She would take that smug look off Selena’s face and replace it with something far less satisfied. She was not sure how yet, or even if she would allow George to know that she knew about it. She played with the idea of letting him go on worrying, allowing the fear to eat into him sufficiently so that he would not in a hurry forget how it hurt. Perhaps she would never tell him that she knew?
Charlotte was looking at her, her eyes anxious, watching for her reaction. She turned back to the moment, smiling.
“Thank you,” she said composedly, almost cheerfully. “Now I know what to do.”
“Emily-”
“Don’t worry.” She put her hand out and touched Charlotte, quite softly. “I shan’t have a quarrel. In fact, I don’t think I shall do anything at all, just yet.”
Pitt continued his questioning in Paragon Walk. Forbes had dug up some surprizing information about Diggory Nash. Yet he should not have been surprized, and he was angry with himself, for having allowed his prejudice to form his opinions for him. He had looked at the outward grace, the comfort, and the money in the Walk and assumed that, because they all lived in the same manner, came to London for the Season, frequented the same clubs and parties, that they were all the same underneath their uniformly fashionable clothes, and behind their uniformly mannered behavior.
Diggory Nash was a gambler with wealth he had not earned, and a flirt, almost by habit, with any woman who was pleasant and available. But he was also generous. Pitt was startled and ashamed of his own facile judgment when Forbes told him that Diggory subsidized a house that gave shelter to homeless women. God knew how many pregnant service girls were thrown out of sober and upright employment every year, to wander the streets and end up in sweatshops, workhouses or brothels. How unforeseen that Diggory Nash, of all people, should have given a meager protection to a few of them. An old wound of conscience speaking, perhaps? Or a simple pity?
Either way, it was with a feeling embarrassment that Pitt waited in the morning room for Jessamyn. She could not know what his assumptions had been, but he knew himself, and that was enough to tie his usually easy tongue and to give him a rare self-consciousness. It was no salve to his mind that it was perfectly possible Jessamyn had no idea of Diggory’s actions.
