The conversation turned back to the bill. St. Jermyn was talking to Dominic.
“I hear from Somerset that you are a friend of young Fleetwood? With him on our side we would have an excellent chance. He has considerable influence, you know.”
“I don’t know him very well.” Dominic was nervous, beginning to disclaim. Charlotte had seen him twist a glass stem like that in Cater Street; she realized now how many times. She had never been conscious of it before.
“Well enough,” St. Jermyn said with a smile. “You are a good horseman, and an even better judge of an animal. That’s all it takes.”
“I believe you have a fine stable yourself, sir.” Dominic was still trying not to be pushed.
“Racing.” St. Jermyn waved his hand. “Fleetwood prefers a good carriage pair; likes to drive himself, and that’s where you excel. Heard you even beat him once.” He smiled, curling his long mouth down at the corners. “Don’t make a habit of it! He won’t like it more than the occasional time.”
“I was driving to win, not to please Lord Fleetwood,” Dominic said a little tartly. His eyes flickered over to Charlotte, almost as if he were aware of her thoughts and of what she herself would have said.
“That is a luxury we cannot afford.” St. Jermyn was not pleased, but he ironed it out of his face the moment after Charlotte had seen it, and a second later there was no trace at all. She judged that Dominic had not even noticed. “If we want Fleetwood’s help, it would not be clever to beat him too often,” St. Jermyn finished.
Dominic drew breath to retort, but Charlotte spoke before he did. He was not quick to anger, in fact, most agreeable; he seldom took a hard position on any issue, but on the rare occasions that he did, she could not recall his ever having changed it. It would be easy for him to commit himself now and then be unable to move when he regretted it.
“I don’t believe Mr. Corde will do that,” she said, forcing herself to smile across at St. Jermyn. “But surely Lord Fleetwood will take more notice of a man who has beaten him at least once? To come second to him hardly marks one from the crowd, or earns his interest.”
Dominic flashed her one of his beautiful smiles, and for an instant she remembered how she used to feel about him; then the present returned, and she was staring at St. Jermyn.
“Quite,” Dominic agreed. “I would like him to see the workhouse in Seven Dials, as I did. It would not be a sight he would forget in a hurry.”
Alicia was looking puzzled, a slight frown on her face. “What is so dreadful about the workhouse?” she asked. “You said there was poverty, but no legislation is going to get rid of that. Workhouses at least provide people with food and shelter. There have always been rich and poor, and even if you were to alter it with some miracle, in a few years, or less, it would all be the same again—wouldn’t it? If you give a poor man money, it does not make him a rich man for long—”
“You are more perceptive than perhaps you intend,” Carlisle said with a lifting of his brows. “But if you feed the children and keep them clean from disease and despair, so they survive into adulthood without stealing to live, and give them some sort of education, then the next generation is not quite so poor.”
Alicia looked at him, absorbing the idea, realizing that he was very serious.
“God! If you’d seen it!” Dominic said sharply. “You wouldn’t be standing here discussing academic niceties; you would want to get out there and do something!” He looked across at Charlotte. “Wouldn’t they?”
A look of pain shot cross Alicia’s face, and she moved almost imperceptibly away from him. Charlotte saw it and knew exactly what she felt, the sudden sense of alienation, of being shut out of something important to him.
Charlotte looked at him hard, making her voice clear and light. “I should imagine they would. It has certainly affected you that way. You are totally changed. But I hardly think it is a suitable place to take Lady Fitzroy-Hammond, from what I have heard. My husband would not permit me to go there.”
But Dominic would not be told, nor read her hint.
“He doesn’t need to take you,” he said heatedly. “You already know about such places and the people in them, and you care. I can remember you telling me about it years ago; but I didn’t really understand what you meant then.”
“I don’t think you were listening to me!” she said quite honestly. “It has taken you a long time to believe. You must permit others a little time as well.”
“There isn’t time!”
“Indeed, there isn’t, Mrs. Pitt,” St. Jermyn said, raising his glass. “My bill comes up in a few days. If we are to get it through, we will have to have our support then. There isn’t any time to waste. Corde, I’d be most obliged if you’d tackle Fleetwood tomorrow, or the day after at the latest?”
“Of course,” Dominic said firmly. “Tomorrow.”
“Good.” St. Jermyn patted him on the shoulder, then drained his glass. “Come on, Carlisle, we’d better go and talk to our hostess; she knows simply everyone, and we need that.”
A flicker of distaste crossed Carlisle’s face for an instant and was gone almost before Charlotte was sure of it, and he moved to keep up with St. Jermyn. They walked together past the Misses Rodney and Major Rodney, holding a glass in his hand and looking anxiously over their heads as if searching for someone, or possibly fearing someone.
There was an uncomfortable silence; then Virgil Smith appeared. He looked a little doubtfully at Charlotte; then his face softened and he spoke to Alicia. It was only some common remark, quite trivial, but there was a gentleness in his voice that jarred Charlotte away from thoughts of poverty or parliamentary bills, and even suspicions of murder. It was sad, and perhaps unnoticed by anyone else, but she was quite sharply aware that Virgil Smith was in love with Alicia. Probably she had eyes only for Dominic and was not in the least conscious of it, and perhaps he would know its futility and never tell her. In those few seconds Charlotte became one person with Alicia in her mind and memory, reliving her own infatuation with Dominic, finding again the miseries and wild hopes, the silly self-deceptions, all the virtues she read into him, and how little she really knew him. She had done them both a disservice with her dreams, saddling him with virtues he had never claimed to possess.
She would not have seen Virgil Smith either, with his unsculpted face and his impossible manners, and certainly never known or wanted to know that he loved her. It would have embarrassed her. But perhaps she would have been the loser for it.
She excused herself and went to talk to Vespasia and Gwendoline Cantlay and saw more than once a look of unease pass over Gwendoline’s face as she recognized Charlotte vaguely, struggling to place her and failing. She was not sure if she knew her socially, and whether she ought to acknowledge it. With a faint malice, Charlotte allowed her to search; the satisfaction of telling her would not be as great and might possibly embarrass Aunt Vespasia. She might not care in the least if they all knew she kept company with policemen’s wives—but, on the other hand, she might prefer to select whom she told, and how!
It was late, with one or two guests departed and the gray afternoon already beginning to close in, when Charlotte found herself comparatively alone, near the entrance to the conservatory, and saw Alicia coming toward her. She had been expecting this moment; in fact, if Alicia had not chosen it, she would have contrived it herself.
Alicia had obviously been rehearsing in her mind just how she could begin; Charlotte knew it, because it was what she would have done.