He could think of no argument. What she said was perfectly true. Everything worldly he could offer her would be reduced by her very acceptance. And he would never have married her if by doing so he would have ruined her.
Very slowly he rose to his feet, a little stiffly, even though it had been only a short time.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, her voice husky.
For a moment he thought of going to her and taking her in his arms. But it would be intrusive, unfair, and it would change nothing. He had no idea what to say. To take leave formally now, as if he had only called for tea, would be ridiculous. He met her gaze, and knew that his face betrayed all his emotions. For a moment he stood still, then he turned and went out, passing the ladies’ maid in the hallway. The tea tray was sitting on the table. She was a discreet woman, and had understood more than he gave her credit for. She opened the door for him, then hesitated a moment.
“I hope you will call again, sir.”
He looked at her and saw in her set, tense expression that the words were not idle, not simply a very customary way of bidding farewell.
“Oh yes,” he said very firmly. “I shall certainly call again.”
Pitt had also found little satisfaction in the day. He had spent some considerable time further pursuing the relationship of Juniper Stafford and Adolphus Pryce, learning what he could about how it had deepened from a social acquaintance brought about by Pryce’s professional contact with Judge Stafford. It had been extremely difficult to do without at any time suggesting to those who did not know that it was now an immoral liaison and could have led to murder. The people he spoke to were agog for gossip and innuendo. Had they not been, they would have been of little use in his quest for facts, but their very sensitivity meant he had to be the more careful. As a result the picture he had gained was unclear, full of shadows and implications of passion, but without substance.
He came home tired and dispirited, feeling that he was pursuing something whose reality he would never know beyond doubt, and certainly never prove.
Charlotte had an excellent dinner ready: rich mutton stewed with potatoes and sweet white turnip, and flavored with rosemary. He ate slowly and with more satisfaction than he had felt all day. He had finished and was sitting in the parlor by the fire with his feet on the fender, sinking slowly farther and farther down in his chair, before he realized that she was preoccupied and looked now and then a little worried.
“What is it?” he asked reluctantly, wishing it would be nothing, some domestic triviality he would not have to bother with.
She bit her lip and turned from the work box where she had been sorting threads.
“The relationship between Mama and Joshua Fielding.”
“Is she going to be very upset if he is implicated in the Farriers” Lane murder?” he asked. He liked his mother-in-law, although he was more than a little in awe of her, and he certainly would not wish her to be hurt. However, being disappointed now and then was part of caring, and the only way to avoid it was to care about no one, which was a kind of death. “I don’t see why he should be,” he went on. “Everything I have found out indicates it was Aaron Godman, just as the original trial decided.”
She pulled a face. “I almost wish he were involved.”
“You aren’t making sense.” He was confused.
Her face screwed up even farther, and she closed her eyes. “Thomas, I think she is really in love with him. I know that’s absurd—but—but I think it’s true.”
“It is absurd,” he said, eager to dismiss it. He slid lower in the chair till his ankles were on the fender and his feet so close to the fire the soles of his slippers were hot. “She is a very respectable society widow, Charlotte. He is an actor, a Jew, and twenty years younger than she. You are exaggerating out of all proportion. She is probably bored, as Emily is half the time, and looking for something to become involved in. This is more colorful, and more dramatic, than tea parties and fashion. She will forget it once she has seen him cleared.”
“Do you think so?” Charlotte looked hopeful, her eyes wide and very dark.
Her expression, far from cheering him, suddenly made him consider the matter properly. He recalled Caroline’s face as she had looked at Joshua Fielding, the heightened color, the altered tone in her voice, the frequency with which she mentioned his name. And Charlotte was much more sensitive to such delicate changes than he was. Women understood other women in a way a man never could.
“You don’t, do you?” Charlotte challenged, almost as if she read his thoughts.
He hesitated, on the edge of denying it, then the honesty between them won.
“I don’t know—perhaps not. It seems absurd, but then I suppose love very often is. I thought I was absurd falling in love with you.”
Suddenly her face was radiant, as if the sun had illuminated it.
“Oh, you were,” she said happily. “Quite ridiculous. So was I.”
And for a while Caroline was forgotten, and her pain or her foolishness put aside.
However, to Mrs. Ellison senior, it was the most urgent matter in the world, and excluded everything else: the weekly edition of the London Illustrated News, the latest escapades of the Prince of Wales and his various lady friends, the opinions of the Queen, such as were known or guessed, the sins of the government, the vagaries of the weather, the general inadequacies of the domestic servants, the decline of good manners and morals, even her own various illnesses and their symptoms. Nothing was as important, or as potentially disastrous, as Caroline’s infatuation with this wretched actor person. An actor. Of all the absurdities. How grossly unsuitable. In fact unsuitable was far too mild a word for it—it was unacceptable—that is what it was. And as for his age … He was twenty years her junior—or fifteen at least, in a good light. And that was more than bad taste: it was disgusting.
She must tell her so. It was her duty as her erstwhile mother-in-law.
“Thank heaven poor Edward is dead and in his grave,” she said purposefully, as soon as Caroline arrived at the dinner table. The dining room table once had Caroline, Edward, their three daughters and their son-in-law, Dominic Corde, around it, as well as Grandmama. It was now set merely for the two of them, and they were marooned at either end of it, staring down the long oaken expanse at one another. They each required a cruets set; it was too far to pass them.
“I beg your pardon?” Caroline forced her attention to this extraordinary remark.
“I said, thank heaven Edward is dead and in his grave,” the old lady repeated loudly. “Are you losing your hearing, Caroline? It can happen as one gets older, you know. I have noticed your sight is not as good as it used to be. You squint at things nowadays. It is unbecoming. It causes wrinkles where one does not wish them. Not, I suppose, that there is anywhere one does. But it cannot be helped at our age.”
“I am not your age,” Caroline said tartly. “I am nowhere near it.”
“Rudeness will not help,” Grandmama said with a sickly smile. The conversation was well in her command. “You are moving towards it. Nothing stays the hand of time, my dear. The young often imagine it will somehow be different for them, but it never is, believe me.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about,” Caroline said tersely, putting salt into her soup, and discovering it did not require it. “I am not young, nor am I your age. You are my mother-in-law, and Edward was several years older than I.”
“An excellent arrangement,” Grandmama said, nodding her head. “A man should be a little older than his wife. It makes for responsibility and domestic accord.”
“What absolute balderdash.” Caroline peppered the soup and found it did not need that either. “If a man is irresponsible, marrying a younger woman will do nothing to cure him. In fact more probably the opposite. If she has no sense either, then they will both be in debt.”