Chandeliers full of tinkling facets filled the ceilings; violin strings scraped briefly, then found the full, rich tone; footmen moved with elegance while balancing glasses of champagne and fruit punch.
All she had intended was to scratch the veneer of Christina’s temper, and perhaps to learn in a moment of carelessness a little of what she knew about the society women who might have frequented Max’s brothel. The last thing Emily wanted was to cause a real and permanent injury. Please heaven Charlotte knew what she was doing!
Her thoughts were interrupted by the necessities of polite conversation. She attended with only half her mind, making some silly observations about who might or might not win a horse race in the summer-she was not even sure if it was the Derby or the Oaks. Certainly the Prince of Wales’ name was mentioned.
It was some thirty minutes or so before the subject exhausted itself, and Alan Ross asked Emily if she would honor him with the next dance. It was an odd exercise, to be so close to a person, sharing a movement, at times touching each other, and yet hardly speaking at all; they came together and swirled apart so briefly that any exchange of meaning was impossible.
She watched his face. He was not as handsome as George, but there was a sensitivity about him that became more and more attractive as she knew him better. The events in Callander Square flashed back into her memory and she wondered how deeply he had been hurt. It had been no secret that he had loved Helena Doran. Was that wound still raw? Was that the pain inside him that honed fine his cheeks and the lines of his mouth?
That could be a very good reason for Christina’s sharpness, for her apparent need to hurt Charlotte. Charlotte would remember about Helena, and was now overstepping the lines of accepted flirtation with the general by making a friend of him. It was understandable, if a little crude, to entertain a relationship simply on the fullness of a bosom or the curve of a hip. But to engage the mind, the compassion, and the imagination was beyond the rules.
What rules did Christina observe? What did she even know?
Emily glanced around the room as she turned in Alan Ross’s arms and, over his shoulder, saw Christina clinging close to a cavalry officer in resplendent uniform. She was laughing up into his eyes and she looked brilliantly alive. The officer was obviously enthralled.
Emily looked back at Alan Ross. He must have seen it; he had faced that way only the moment before, but there was no change in his expression. Either he was so used to it that he had learned to mask his emotions, or else he no longer cared.
The thought after that was obvious, and yet it was so unpleasant that for an instant Emily lost her footing and was clumsy. At another time she would have been mortified, but consumed as she was by the new thought, the triviality of mere physical gaucheness seemed quite banal.
Was Christina herself one of Max’s women? Alan Ross was neither old nor in the slightest way boring. But perhaps his very charm, the unattainability of the inner man, was a far sharper goad to other conquests, no matter how shallow, than any boredom could be?
Suddenly Emily’s animosity toward Christina turned to pity. She still could not like her, but she was forced to care. She was dancing close to Alan Ross; she could feel the cloth of his coat under her glove, and she was moving in perfect time with his body. Although they were barely touching, there was a union. Did he know about Christina, or guess? Was it his outraged vanity, suppressed for so long, that had finally murdered and mutilated Max?
It was ridiculous! Here she was, dressed in pale green silk, dancing to violins under all these lights, in and out of the arms of a man she spoke to as a friend, and her mind was following him down filthy alleys to a confrontation with a footman turned whoremonger, to commit a murder of hatred and obscene revenge for the degradation of his wife.
How could two such disparate worlds exist so closely side-by-side-or even within each other? How far away was the Devil’s Acre-three miles, five miles? How far away was it in thought?
How many of these men here, with their spotless white shirts and precise manners, went on the nights it suited them, to drink and fumble and copulate in the beds of some laughing whore in a house like Max’s?
The dance came to an end. She spoke some formal words to Alan Ross, and wondered if he had had even the faintest idea what she was thinking. Or if his own mind had been as far from her as hers was from this twinkling ballroom.
Lady Augusta was talking to a young man with blond whiskers. Charlotte had been dancing with Brandy Balantyne, but now the general stepped forward and offered her his arm, not to dance but to accompany him away somewhere in the direction of the enormous conservatory. His broad shoulders were very straight, but his head was bent toward her, full of attention, and he was talking. Damn Charlotte! Sometimes she was so intensely stupid Emily could have slapped her! Could she not see the man was falling in love? He was fifty, lonely, intelligent, emotionally inarticulate-and idiotically, desperately vulnerable.
But Emily could hardly stride after Charlotte now and pry her loose and kick some sense into her. And, worst of all, when she realized what she had done she would be filled with pain-because she really had not the faintest idea! She simply liked the man enormously, and was unsophisticated enough to show it in the way that was natural to her-the giving of friendship.
George was at Emily’s side, saying something to her.
“I beg your pardon?” she said absently.
“Balantyne,” he repeated. “Really quite odd, for a man of his breeding.”
Emily might have her own private opinions about Charlotte, and at the moment they were a good deal less than charitable. But she was not about to accept criticism of her from anyone else, even George.
“I cannot imagine what you are talking about,” she said stiffly. “But if you choose to apologize, I shall accept.”
He was nonplussed. “I thought you were interested in social reform?” he said with a little shake of his head. “It was you who brought up the whole subject in the first place-and Charlotte, of course.”
Now she was confused. She stared back at him impatiently; he did not seem to be making any sense.
“What is the matter with you-do you feel faint?” he said at last. Then a flash of suspicion crossed his face. “Emily! What are you doing?”
It was very seldom that George questioned her affairs, but she had always contrived to provide herself with satisfactory answers beforehand. And if they were less than the truth, she was usually positive beyond any doubt that he would never discover it. This was too short notice to invent a successful lie. Evasion was all that was left.
“I’m sorry,” she said demurely. “I was watching Charlotte and General Balantyne. I fear she is not aware of quite what she is doing. I thought you were speaking of that. Now, of course, I realize you were not.”
“I thought that was what you intended,” he said sincerely. “You gave her the dress. You might have foreseen she would look well in it.”
It was too close to the truth for comfort, and Emily felt guilt sweep over her again. She had planned it, even if it had now gone beyond her control.
“I did not intend her to flirt like a fool!” she snapped at him.
“I think she does it rather well.” He sounded surprised himself. He had known Charlotte since the days before she married Pitt. She had been her mother’s despair then, because she simply would not conduct herself with the required charm and the mixture of frankness and deceit, excitement and humor that make for a successful flirtation. But time and confidence had effected a considerable change in her. And she was not flirting in the usual sense; the invitation she extended tacitly to Balantyne was not for a little game of dalliance, but for a very real friendship, where pain and pleasure last, and something of the inner self is given away.
Emily had a sudden feeling that she was going to need George. “What were you saying about social reform?” she inquired.
Maybe he sensed her unhappiness, or possibly he was only exercising good manners. “Brandy Balantyne was talking about social reform,” he answered agreeably. “These disgusting events in the Devil’s Acre seem to have affected him quite surprisingly. I think he really intends to do something about it!”
She spoke spontaneously. “George, what kind of men go to the Devil’s Acre, to houses like Max’s?”
“Really, Emily … I hardly think …” To her astonishment, he looked awkward, as though in spite of his more rational self, he still found the subject embarrassing in front of her.
She gave him a wide stare. “Do you go, George?”
“No, I do not!” He was genuinely shocked. “If I were going to do anything of that sort, I should at least go to
