Amaryllis laughed, a high, pretty sound that irked Charlotte unreasonably—perhaps because she would have liked to have such a laugh, and knew she did not.
“How philosophical you are!” Amaryllis said brightly. “I warn you, my dear, if you start saying things like that at a soirée, you will become most unpopular. People will not know what to make of you!”
Charlotte gave her mother a sharp nudge on the ankle, and as Caroline bent to touch the place, thinking something had fallen on her, Charlotte pretended to assume she was preparing to leave.
“May I help you, Mama?” she offered, then rose and gave Caroline her arm.
Caroline glanced at her. “I am not yet in need of assistance, Charlotte,” she said crisply. But although the idea of sitting down again, out of contrariness, lingered quite clearly in her eyes, after a moment she excused herself politely, and a few minutes later they were both outside in the street again.
“I dislike Mrs. Denbigh,” Charlotte said with feeling. “Very much!”
“That was obvious.” Caroline pulled her collar up. Then she smiled. “Actually, so do I. It is completely unfair, because I have no idea why, but I find her most irritating.”
“She has set her cap at Tormod Lagarde,” Charlotte remarked by way of partial explanation. “And she is being very bold about it.”
“Do you think so?”
“Of course she is! Don’t tell me you had not noticed!”
“Of course I have noticed!” Caroline shivered. “But I have seen a great many more women set their caps at men than you have, my dear, and I had not thought Amaryllis was particularly clumsy. In fact, I think she is really quite patient.”
“I still do not care for her!”
“That is because you like Eloise and you cannot think what will happen to her if Tormod marries, since Amaryllis obviously is not fond of her. Perhaps Eloise herself will marry, and that will solve the problem.”
“Then it would be a great deal cleverer of Amaryllis to find a suitable young man for Eloise than to sit there disparaging her, wouldn’t it! It should not be hard—she is perfectly charming. What is the matter, Mama? You keep hunching your shoulders as if you were in a draft, but it is quite sheltered here.”
“Is there anyone behind us?”
Charlotte turned. “No. Why? Were you expecting someone?”
“No! No—I—I just have the feeling that someone is watching us. For goodness’ sake, don’t stare like that, Charlotte. You will have people think we are watching them, trying to see in through their curtains!”
“What people?” Charlotte forced herself to smile in an effort to hide her anxiety for Caroline. “There isn’t anyone,” she said reasonably.
“Don’t be silly!” Caroline snapped. “There is always someone—a butler or a maid drawing curtains, or a footman at a door.”
“Then it is hardly anything to matter.” Charlotte dismissed it with words, but in her mind she did not find it so easy. The sensation of being watched—not casually observed by someone about another duty, but deliberately and systematically watched—was extremely unpleasant. Surely Caroline was imagining it? Why should anyone do such a thing? What possible reason would there be?
Caroline had quickened her pace, and now she did so again. They were walking so rapidly Charlotte’s skirts whipped round her ankles, and she was afraid that if she did not look where she was going she would trip over one of the paving stones and fall headlong.
Caroline whirled around the gatepost and up the steps to her own front door. She was there before the footman had seen them to open it, and was obliged to wait. She shifted from foot to foot, and once actually turned to stare back into the road.
“Mama, has someone accosted you in the street?” Charlotte asked, touching her arm.
“No, of course not! It’s just—” She shook herself angrily. “I have the feeling that I am not alone, even when it would appear in every way that I am. There is someone I cannot see but who I am perfectly sure can see me.”
The door opened and Caroline swept in, with Charlotte behind her.
“Close the curtains please, Martin,” she said to the footman.
“All of them, ma’am?” His voice rose in surprise. It was still daylight for another two hours, and perfectly pleasant.
“Yes, please! In all the rooms that we shall occupy.” Caroline removed her coat and hat and gave them to him; Charlotte did the same.
In the withdrawing room Grandmama was sitting in front of the fire.
“Well?” She surveyed them up and down. “Is there any news?”
“Of what, Mama?” Caroline asked, turning toward the table.
“Of anything, girl! How can I ask for news of something if I do not know what it is? If I already knew it, it would not be news to me, would it?”
It was a fallacious argument, but Charlotte had long ago discovered the futility of pointing that out to her.
“We called upon Mrs. Charrington and Miss Lagarde,” she said. “I found them both quite delightful.”
“Mrs. Charrington is eccentric.” Grandmama’s voice was tart, as if she had bitten into a green plum.
“That pleased me.” Charlotte was not going to be bested. “She was very civil, and after all that is the important thing.”
“And Miss Lagarde—was she civil too? She is far too shy for her own good. The girl seems incapable of flirting with any skill at all!” Grandmama snapped. “She’ll never find herself a husband by wandering around looking fey, however pretty her face. Men don’t marry just a face, you know!”
“Which is as well for most of us.” Charlotte was equally acerbic, looking at Grandmama’s slightly hooked nose and heavy-lidded eyes.
The old woman affected not to have understood her. She turned toward Caroline icily. “You had a caller while you were out.”
“Indeed?” Caroline was not particularly interested. It was quite usual for at least one person to visit during the afternoon, just as she and Charlotte had visited others; it was part of the ritual. “I expect they left a card and Maddock will bring it in presently.”
“Don’t you even wish to know who it was?” Grandmama sniffed, staring at Caroline’s back.
“Not especially.”
“It was that Frenchman with his foreign manners. I forget his name.” She chose not to remember because it was not English. “But he has the best tailor I have seen in thirty years.”
Caroline stiffened. There was absolute silence in the room, so thick one imagined one could hear carriage wheels two streets away.
“Indeed?” Caroline said again, her voice unnaturally casual. There was a catch in it as if she were bursting to say more and forcing herself to wait so her words would not fall over each other. “Did he say anything?”
“Of course he said something! Do you think he stood there like a fool?”
Caroline kept her back to them. She took one of the daffodils out of the bowl, shortened its stalk, and replaced it.
“Anything of interest?”
“Who ever says anything of interest these days?” Grandmama answered miserably. “There aren’t any heroes anymore. General Gordon has been murdered by those savages in Khartoum. Even Mr. Disraeli is dead—not that he was a hero, of course! Or a gentleman either, for that matter. But he was clever. Everyone with any breeding is gone.”
“Was Monsieur Alaric discourteous?” Charlotte asked in surprise. He had been so perfectly at ease in Paragon Walk, good manners innate in his nature, even if she had frequently seen humor disconcertingly close beneath.
“No,” Grandmama admitted grudgingly. “He was civil enough, but he is a foreigner. He cannot afford not to be civil. If he’d been born forty years earlier, I daresay he would have made something of himself in spite of that. There isn’t even a decent war now where a man could go and prove his worth. At least there was the Crimea in Edward’s time—not that he went!”