as she did.
“Would you marry him?” she asked softly, thinking of Charlotte and Pitt. But Charlotte was different. She had never been the socialite that Tallulah was. Her wit was far too acerbic, her outspokenness seldom-not often-funny. She was not intentionally outrageous; she was a genuine misfit. And to be honest, it was not as if she had had so many other good offers. She rather put people off.
Although in spite of her father’s wealth, if Tallulah continued to behave as she had done this afternoon and the other evening in Chelsea, she might not receive any offers in the future. There were many women whom people found vastly entertaining but did not marry.
Tallulah sighed and looked up at the flowers overhead, her expression a strange mixture of wistfulness and horror, and a kind of desperate laughter at herself.
“If I were to marry him, I would have to live in Whitechapel, wear gray stuff dresses and be happy ladling out soup to the poor. I should have to be polite to the self-righteous women who think laughter is a sin and love is telling people what they ought to do. I would eat the same food every day, answer my own door and always watch what I said, in case it offended anyone. I’d never be able to go to the theater again, or the opera, or dine in restaurants, or ride in the Park.”
“Worse than that,” Emily put in. “You’d have to ride on the omnibus, crammed in with other people, fat, out of breath and smelling of onions. You’d have to do most of your own cooking, and count your money to judge whether you could buy a thing or not, and the answer would usually be not.” She was thinking of Charlotte’s early years, before Pitt’s last promotion. Some of them had been hard. But they had shared so much that Emily now looked back on that time with a kind of envy. She seemed to have shared more with Jack before he had won his seat in Parliament, when there was still so much to work for, and victory was uncertain, and a long way away. He had needed her so much more then.
“It wouldn’t be so bad as that,” Tallulah argued. “Papa would make me an allowance.”
“Even if you married a parish priest, instead of his choice for you?” Emily said skeptically. “Are you sure?”
Tallulah stared at her, her eyes wide and dark brown, nearly black.
“No,” she said quietly. “No, he’d be furious. He’d never forgive me. He’d like me to marry a duke, although an earl or a marquis might do. I don’t think his ambition has any ceiling, to be honest. If I thought about it harder, it would frighten me. Nothing ever stops him, he just finds a way around it. People have tried to stand up to him, but they never win.”
Distant laughter sounded somewhere behind them, and a girl giggling. It really was getting very hot.
“Have you?” Emily asked.
Tallulah shook her head. “I’ve never needed to.”
“Would you, to marry Jago?”
Tallulah turned away. “I don’t know. Perhaps not. But as I said, it doesn’t matter. Jago wouldn’t have me.”
“Perhaps that’s just as well,” Emily said deliberately. “That you don’t have to make up your mind what you really want: to be rich and have pretty gowns, parties, trips to the theater, and marry whoever your father tells you … or marry a man you really love and admire, and trust, and help him in his life’s work-in comparative poverty. I don’t suppose you’d ever actually be hungry, and you’d always have a roof over your head-but it might leak.”
Tallulah swung around on the seat to stare at her in a flash of temper.
“I don’t suppose your roof leaks, Mrs. Radley!” she snapped. “Even if Jack Radley’s would, I’ll lay any odds the late Lord Ashworth’s doesn’t!”
It was a reference to Emily’s first husband and his very considerable wealth. Emily might have resented the gibe, but she knew she had provoked a retaliation, and she accepted it as fair.
“No it doesn’t,” she agreed. “But whether I even took a decision or not is beside the point. The thing is for you to recognize the reality of what your choices are. No one has everything. No relationship does. Look at Jago carefully. Look at whoever else there is, and decide what you want … then fight for it.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“That part of it is.”
“No, it isn’t.” Tallulah sat forward and leaned over, putting her hands up over her cheeks. It was a gesture of deep and troubled thought.
An elderly couple walked by, heads close together in earnest conversation, the woman’s parasol trailing, the man’s hat at a rakish angle. She said something and they both laughed.
“If this wretched business with Finlay doesn’t get solved soon,” Tallulah went on suddenly, her voice low and filled with anger and fear, “and the police don’t stop asking everyone questions about us, then it won’t matter anyway. We’ll all be ruined, and nobody will speak to any of us unless they have to. I’ve known it to happen. A story comes out. It is whispered around, and suddenly no one sees you. You are invisible. You can walk down the street and everyone is looking the other way. You talk to people and they don’t hear you.” Her voice was rising with the fear inside her. “Restaurants where you dine frequently find they are full whenever you call. Dressmakers are too busy to see you. Milliners have nothing to suit you. Your tailors can’t fit you in. You call on people and nobody is ever at home, even if the lights are on and the carriages are lined up outside. It is as if you’d died, without being aware of it. It can happen over cheating at cards or welching on a debt of honor. Think what it would do over being hanged for murder!”
This time Emily did not rush in so quickly. It was much too painful an issue to challenge beliefs, or call it self-examination. She would like to have thought beyond doubt that of course Finlay was innocent; it was only a matter of waiting until Pitt found the proof. But she had known Pitt long enough, and seen sufficient cases of human tragedy and violence, to have any such comfortable illusion. People one loves, people one imagines one knows, can have aspects to their nature which are full of uncontrollable pain or anger, dark needs even they barely understand.
“If they are still investigating him, then they have not yet proof,” she said aloud, weighing her words carefully.
“It means they still think he is guilty, though,” Tallulah responded instantly, her eyes brilliant. “Otherwise they’d leave him alone.”
The heat in the arbor was motionless. Distant laughter sounded yards away, although it was merely around the corner. The clink of glass and china came clearly above the buzz of conversation. But they were both too intent on the matter at hand to think of refreshment.
“Do you know why?” Emily asked quietly.
Tallulah’s mouth tightened. It was obviously something she had thought about and the answer troubled her.
“Yes. There were belongings of his found where this woman was killed, a badge from that ridiculous club he used to belong to, and a cuff link. He told them about it. He said he lost both of them years ago. He hasn’t seen them, and neither has anyone else.” Her face tightened. “Some sordid little policeman came and questioned his valet, but he’s only been with us for a few years, and he’d never seen them at all. Finlay certainly didn’t have them that night.” She stared at Emily, defying her to disbelieve.
“Nothing else?” Emily asked without changing her expression from one of strictly practical enquiry into fact.
“Yes … actually, some prostitute says she saw a man going into the woman’s room, and swears he looked like Finlay. But how can they take her word against his? No jury ever would!” She searched Emily’s eyes. “Would they?”
Emily could feel the fear in Tallulah as powerfully as the heat of the sun or the clinging scent of the flowers. It was more real than the distant chatter or movement of color as a woman in an exquisite gown drifted by. But was it fear of social ruin, fear of being unjustly convicted or fear that perhaps he was not innocent at all?
“I wouldn’t have thought so,” Emily said cautiously. “Where was he that evening?”
“At a party in Beaufort Street. I can’t remember what number, but nearer the river end.”
“Well, can’t he prove it?” Emily said with a rush of hope. “Someone there must remember him. In fact, probably dozens of people do. Surely he’s said so?”
Tallulah looked deeply unhappy.
“Wasn’t he there?” Emily asked.
