and tears.
“It’s beautiful,” Charlotte said sincerely. “You must find it very different here. I sometimes wish I had grown up in the country, but if I had, I think I would miss it so terribly that I might never reconcile myself to paved streets and houses close to each other-not to mention noise, and smoke in the winter.”
“Oh, there’s mud in the country,” Adriana assured her. “And cold. And in the winter it can be unbearably tedious, believe me. And so much darkness everywhere! It closes in on you in every direction, almost without relief. You would miss the theater, and parties, and gossip about famous people, rather than just the talk of your neighbors: Mrs. This about her grandchildren; Mr. That about his gout; Miss So-and-so about her aunt, and how bad the cook is.”
Charlotte looked at her closely, trying to see how much she meant what she was saying, and how much she was very lightly mocking. After several seconds, she was still uncertain. That was invigorating. It was a bore to always be able to read people.
“Perhaps one should have a city home for the winter to go to the theater and operas and parties,” she said with an answering half-seriousness, “and a country home for the summer, to go for rides and walks, to dine in the garden, and … whatever else one chooses to do.”
“But you are English.” Adriana was close to laughter now. “So you spend the summer in town and go to your country estate for the winter, where you gallop around the fields behind a pack of dogs, and apparently enjoy yourself enormously.”
Charlotte laughed with her, and they moved to the next painting. Charlotte only barely noticed Adriana glance back once at the gentle bridge in the sun, with the cows grazing nearby. She must have loved Blantyre very much to have left behind the country she clearly adored and come to England.
“Have you traveled to many places in Europe?” she asked aloud. “I have never been to Italy, for instance, but from the pictures I have seen, it is very beautiful indeed.”
“It is,” Adriana agreed. “But I have found that it isn’t really places that matter; it all comes down to people, in the end.” She turned to look at Charlotte. “Don’t you agree?” There was complete honesty in her eyes, and almost a challenge.
“Yes. I suppose I like London because the best things that have happened to me have happened here,” Charlotte agreed. “Yes, of course it is all to do with people; in the end, it comes down to being with those you love. Beauty is exciting, and thrilling; you never entirely forget it, but you still need to share it with someone.”
Adriana blinked and turned away. “I don’t think I really want to go back to Croatia. It wouldn’t ever be the same. My family is gone …” She stopped abruptly, as if she regretted having begun. She straightened her back and shoulders, and moved to another painting, depicting a girl of about sixteen sitting on the grass in the shade of a tree. She was wearing a pale muslin dress, and the dappled light made her seem extraordinarily fragile, as if not altogether real. She had dark hair, like Adriana. In fact, the resemblance was remarkable.
Adriana stared at her. “It was another world, wasn’t it? Sixteen?” she said at last.
“Yes,” Charlotte agreed, thinking back to being with Sarah and Emily in the garden at Cater Street every summer when they were young.
Adriana moved a little closer to her. “She looks so delicate,” she said, facing the painting. “She probably isn’t. I was ill a lot as a child, but I have been well for years now. Evan doesn’t always believe it. He treats me as if I need watching all the time: extra blankets, another scarf, gloves on, don’t step in the puddles or you’ll get your feet wet. You’ll catch a cold.” She pulled her lips into a strange, rueful half-smile. “Actually I hardly ever get colds. It must be your bracing climate here. I have become English, and tough.”
This time it was Charlotte who laughed. “We get colds,” she admitted. “Some people seem to always be coughing and sniffling. But I’m very glad to hear that you have outgrown your ill health. If you are strong now, that’s all that counts.”
Adriana turned away quickly, tears slipping down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry!” Charlotte said instantly, wondering what she had said. Had Adriana lost someone to a simple illness? Perhaps a child? How tragic and painful, if that was the case.
Adriana shook her head. “Please don’t be. One cannot go backward. There are always losses. I don’t think there is anyone in the world I ever loved as I cared for my father. I wish he could know that I am well and strong here, and that I …” She waved her hand impatiently. “I apologize. I shouldn’t even allow the memories to come to my mind. We all lose people.” She looked back at Charlotte. “You are very patient, and gentle.”
“I had two sisters. I lost one of them,” Charlotte said quietly. “Sometimes I think of her and wonder what it would be like if she were still alive. If we would be better friends than we were then.” She forced her memory back to those dreadful days when the family, the whole neighborhood, looked at each other with fear, when she had realized how little she knew of what the people closest to her really believed in, loved, or dreamed of.
She blushed now, when she wondered if Sarah had known that Charlotte had been in love with Dominic, Sarah’s husband. That was something she preferred not to recall. Everyone had embarrassing moments in their past, pieces they would like to live over again, to create a better outcome.
She linked her arm in Adriana’s. “Come on, let’s go and get a hot cup of tea, and maybe some cake, or crumpets. You mentioned where you first met Mr. Blantyre the other evening. It sounded far more romantic than London. I first met Mr. Pitt when he was investigating a fearful crime near where I lived, and we were all suspect, at least of having seen something and lying about it, in order to protect those we loved. It was all grim and awful. You have to have a better tale to tell than that.”
Adriana looked at her with interest, and then, as their eyes met for longer, with understanding. “Certainly,” she said cheerfully. “Tea and crumpets, then I’ll tell you how Mr. Blantyre and I met, and more about some of the really wonderful places I’ve been. The blue and green lakes in the mountains in Croatia. You’ve never even imagined such colors! They lie like a necklace dropped carelessly by some great goddess of the sky. And I wish I could really describe for you the forests of Illyria,” she went on. “They are all deciduous trees, and in the spring, when the young leaves are just out, it is as if the whole world were newly made.”
Charlotte tried to imagine it. Perhaps it was something like a beech forest in England, but she did not want to put words to it, or try to compare.
“And we have the Dinaric Alps,” Adriana went on. “And caves, dozens of them, seven or eight hundred feet deep.”
“Really?” Charlotte was amazed, but mostly she was moved by the depth of emotion in Adriana’s voice, the passion behind her words. “Have you been in some of them?”
Adriana shivered. “Only once. My father took me, and held my hand. There is nothing on earth darker than a cave. It makes the night sky, even with clouds, seem full of light. But you should see Istria, and the islands. There are over a thousand of them strung all along the coast. Those in the farthest south are almost tropical, you know.”
“You must miss such beauty, here.”
“I do.” Adriana gave her a sudden smile of great warmth; then she changed the subject abruptly, as if the memories of her own country were too overwhelming to continue discussing. “Vienna is marvelous,” she said cheerfully. “You have never really danced till you have heard a Viennese orchestra play for Mr. Strauss. And the clothes! Every woman should have a dress to waltz in, once in her life. Come!”
Charlotte obeyed, falling into step with her.
The following day Charlotte was in the parlor giving serious consideration to the matter of whether to buy new curtains, possibly in a different color, when she heard Daniel shouting angrily. He must have turned at the bottom of the stairs to go along the passage to the kitchen, because his feet were loud on the linoleum.
The next moment Jemima came after him.
“I told you you’d break it!” she shouted. “Now look what you’ve done!”
“I wouldn’t have if you hadn’t left it there, stupid!” Daniel shouted back.
“How was I to know you’d go banging around like a carthorse?” Jemima was at the bottom of the stairs now.
Charlotte came out of the parlor. “Jemima!”
Jemima stopped in the passage and swung around, her face flushed with anger. “He broke it!” she said, holding up the remnants of a delicate ornamental box. She was close to tears from fury and disappointment.
Charlotte looked at it and knew it was beyond mending. She met Jemima’s eyes, so much like her own.
