“No, Mrs. Pitt,” he said. “I wish I could. But one does not take a dose of medicine that has not been prescribed for one, nor drink from an unlabeled bottle, unless one is very foolish, and Mrs. Spencer-Brown was not foolish in the least. She was an extremely practical woman. Do you not think so, Mrs. Ellison?” He turned toward Caroline and his face softened into a smile.
The color rose up Caroline’s cheeks. “Yes, yes, indeed I do. In fact, I cannot recall ever knowing of Mina doing anything—ill-considered.”
Charlotte was surprised; she had not received the impression that Mina was especially intelligent. Indeed, the conversation they had had, as she recalled it, had been mostly trivial, concerned with things of the utmost unimportance.
“Really?” she said with rather more skepticism than she had intended. She did not wish to be rude. “Perhaps I did not know her well enough. But I would have thought it quite possible her mind could have been occupied with some other concern, and she might have made an error.”
“You are confusing intelligence with common sense, Charlotte,” Caroline said spiritedly. “Mina was not fond of study, nor did she concern herself with some of the very odd affairs that you do.” She was too discreet to name them, but a slight lowering of her eyelids and a sidelong glance made Charlotte decide that she was referring to her political convictions with regard to Reform Bills in Parliament, Poor Laws and the like. “But she was well aware of her own skills,” Caroline continued, “and how best to use them. And she had far too much native wit to make mistakes—of any sort. Do you not think so, Monsieur Alaric?”
He glanced down the street over their shoulders into some distance they could not see before turning to face Charlotte.
“We are looking for a genteel way of saying that Mrs. Spencer-Brown had a very fine instinct for survival, Mrs. Pitt,” he replied. “She knew the rules, she knew what could be said and what could not—what could be done. She was never careless, never moved by passion before sense. She did appear trivial on occasion, because that is the socially acceptable way. To talk intelligently of serious subjects is not considered attractive in a woman.” He smiled fleetingly; Caroline could not know they had talked before. “At least not by most men. But underneath the prattle Mina was a skilled and prudent woman, who knew precisely what she wanted and what she could have.”
Charlotte stared at him, trying to control her thoughts.
“You make that sound a little sinister,” she said slowly. “Calculating?”
Caroline took her arm. “Nonsense. One has to use some sense in order to survive! Monsieur Alaric means only that she was not flighty, the sort of silly creature who does not take any care what she is doing. Is that not so?” She looked at him, her face glowing in the cool air, her eyes bright. Charlotte was surprised— and jarringly afraid—to see how lovely she still was. The color, the brilliance, the blood under the skin had nothing to do with the March wind; it was the presence of this man, with his dark head and strong, straight back, standing in the road talking gently about death, and his pity for the tragedy around it.
“Then I fear it may have been suicide!” Charlotte said suddenly and rather loudly. “Perhaps the poor woman got herself into an affaire of the heart, became involved with someone other than her husband, and the situation was unbearable to her. I can see very easily how that could happen.” She did not have the boldness to look at either of them, and there was absolute silence in the street, not even the sound of a bird or of distant hooves.
“Such adventures very often end in disaster,” she continued after a harsh breath. “Of one sort or another. Maybe she preferred death to the scandal that might have accompanied such a thing becoming public!”
Caroline stood frozen.
“Do you think either she, or any man, would allow such a matter to become public?” Alaric asked with an expression Charlotte could not fathom.
“I have no idea,” she said with defiance she instantly regretted, but she plunged on. He had always had the ability to make her speak incautiously. “Perhaps an indiscreet letter, or a love token? People who are infatuated are often very foolish, even normally sensible people!”
Caroline was so rigid Charlotte could feel her behind her shoulder like a column of ice.
“You are right,” Caroline said in a low voice. “But death seems a terrible price to pay for such a folly.”
“It is!” For the first time Charlotte looked fully at her; then she turned to Alaric and found his eyes dark and bright, and unreadable, but understanding her as clearly as if they could see inside her head.
“But then when we embark on such affaires,” Charlotte continued with a tightening of her throat, “we seldom see the price at the end until it is time to pay.” She swallowed and suddenly tried to sound light, as if it were all just speculation, and nothing to do with anything real. “At least so I have observed.” Surely he must also be remembering Paragon Walk and their first meeting? Did he still live there now?
His face relaxed fractionally and his lips moved in the smallest smile. “Let us hope we are wrong and there is some less desperate explanation. I would not care to think of anyone suffering so.”
She recalled herself. All that was long past. “Nor I. And I am sure you would not either, Mama.” She closed her hand over Caroline’s. “We had better be returning home, now that we have paid our duty calls. Papa will be expecting us for tea.”
Caroline opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it again; but even so Charlotte had to pull her.
“Good day, Monsieur Alaric,” Charlotte said briskly. “I am delighted to have made your acquaintance.”
He bowed and raised his hat.
“And I yours, Mrs. Pitt. Good afternoon, Mrs. Ellison.”
“Good afternoon, Monsieur Alaric.”
They walked a few paces, Charlotte still pulling Caroline uncomfortably by the arm.
“Charlotte, I despair of you sometimes!” Caroline shut her eyes to block out the scene.
“Do you!” Charlotte said tartly without relaxing her pace. “Mama, there is no need for a great deal of words between us that will only hurt. We understand each other. And you do not need to tell me that Papa is not at home either. I know that.”
Caroline did not reply. The wind was sharper and she tucked her head down into her collar.
Charlotte knew she had been abrupt, even cruel, but she was very badly frightened. Paul Alaric was not some light affaire, a man full of pretty phrases and little gestures to please, a taste of romance to brighten the monotony of a thirty-year marriage. He was hard and real; there was power in him and emotion, a suggestion of things beyond reach, exciting and perhaps infinitely beautiful. Charlotte herself was still tingling from the meeting.
Chapter Five
CHARLOTTE DID NOT tell Pitt of her feelings regarding Paul Alaric and Caroline, or indeed that he was someone she had known previously; in fact, she could not have put it into words had she desired to. The encounter had left her more confused than ever. She remembered the heat of emotion and the jealousies he had engendered in Paragon Walk, the disquiet he had awoken even in her. She could understand Caroline’s infatuation easily. Alaric was far more than merely charming, a handsome face upon which to build a dream; he had a power to surprise, to disturb, and to remain in the memory long after parting. It would be blind to dismiss him as a flirtation that would wear itself out.
She could not explain it to Pitt, and she did not wish to have to try.
But of course she had to tell him that Tormod and Eloise Lagarde planned to leave Rutland Place the following day, so that if he wished to speak to them about Mina’s death, he would have to do so immediately.
Since they had been the last people he knew of to see Mina alive, there was a great deal Pitt wished to ask them, although he had not yet formed in his mind any satisfactory way of wording his thoughts, which were still confused, conscious only of unexplained tragedy. But chance allowed him no time to juggle with polite sympathies and suggestions. At quarter past nine, the earliest time at which it would be remotely civil to call, he was on the icy doorstep facing a startled footman, whose tie sat askew and whose polished boots were marred with mud.