Bluegate Fields (13 page)

The women were all expensively dressed, and seemed full of self-assurance. They moved easily from group to group, and flirted with a skill that Charlotte both envied and deplored. She could no more have achieved it than grown wings to fly. Even the plainest ones seemed peculiarly gifted in this particular skill, exhibiting wit and a certain panache.

The men were every bit as fashionable: coats exquisitely cut, cravats gorgeous, hair exaggeratedly long and with waves many a woman would have been proud of. For once, Dominic seemed unremarkable. His chiseled features were discreet, his clothes sober by comparison—and she discovered she greatly preferred them.

One lean young man with beautiful hands and a passionately sensitive face stood alone at a table, his dark gray eyes on the pianist gently rippling a Chopin nocturne on the grand piano. She wondered for a moment if he felt as misplaced here as she did. There was an unhappiness in his face, a sense of underlying grief that he sought to distract, and failed. Could he be Esmond Vanderley?

She turned to find Dominic. “Who is he?” she whispered.

“Lord Frederick Turner,” he replied, his face shadowing with an emotion she did not understand. It was a mixture of dislike and something else, indefinable. “I don’t see Vanderley, yet.” He took her firmly by the elbow and pushed her forward. “Let us go through the next room. He may be there.” Short of pulling herself free by force, she had no choice but to move as he directed.

A few people drifted up and spoke with Dominic, and he introduced Charlotte as his sister-in-law Miss Ellison. The conversation was trivial and bright; she gave it little of her attention. A striking woman with very black hair addressed them and skillfully led Dominic off, grasping his arm in an easy, intimate gesture, and Charlotte found herself suddenly alone.

A violinist was playing something that seemed to have neither beginning nor end. Within moments, she was approached by a Byronically handsome man with bold eyes, full of candid humor.

“The music is inexpressibly tedious, is it not?” he remarked conversationally. “I cannot imagine why they bother!”

“Perhaps to give those who desire it some easy subject with which to open a conversation?” she suggested coolly. She had not been introduced, and he was taking something of a liberty.

It seemed to amuse him, and he regarded her quite openly, looking at her shoulders and throat with admiration. She was furious to realize from the heat she felt in her skin that she was blushing. It was the very last thing she wished!

“You have not been here before,” he observed.

“You must come very regularly to know that.” She allowed considerable acid into her tone. “I am surprised, if you find it so uninteresting.”

“Only the music.” He shook his head a little. “And I am an optimist. I come in permanent hope of some delightful adventure. Who could have foretold that I should meet you here?”

“You have not met me!” She tried to freeze him with an icy glance, but he was impervious; in fact, it appeared to entertain him the more. “You have scraped an acquaintance, which I do not intend to continue!” she added.

He laughed aloud, a pleasant sound of true enjoyment.

“You know, my dear, you are quite individual! I believe I shall have a delicious evening with you, and you will find I am neither ungenerous nor overly demanding.”

Suddenly it all became abominably clear to her—this was a place of assignation! Many of these women were courtesans, and this appalling man had taken her for one of them! Her face flamed with confusion for her own obtuseness, and rage with herself because at least half of her was flattered! It was mortifying!

“I do not care in the slightest what you are!” she said with a choking breath. She added, quite unfairly, “And I shall have most unpleasant words with my brother-in-law for bringing me to this place. His sense of humor is in the poorest possible taste!” With a flounce of her skirts, she swept away from him, leaving him surprised but delighted, with an excellent story to recount to his friends.

“Serves you right,” Dominic said with some satisfaction when she found him. He half turned and moved his hand toward a man of casually elegant appearance, dressed in the height of fashion but managing to make it all seem uncontrived. His bones were good, his wavy, fair hair not especially long. “May I present Mr. Esmond Vanderley, my sister-in-law Miss Ellison!”

Charlotte was ill-prepared for it; her wits were still scattered from the last encounter.

“How do you do, Mr. Vanderley,” she said with far less composure than she had intended. “Dominic has spoken of you. I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”

“He was less kind to me,” Vanderley answered with an easy smile. “He has kept you a total secret, which I consider perhaps wise, but most selfish of him.”

Now that she was faced with him, how on earth could she bring up the subject of Arthur Waybourne or anything to do with Jerome? The whole idea of meeting Vanderley in this place had been ridiculous. Emily would have managed it with far more aplomb—how thoughtless of her to be absent just when she was needed! She should have been here in London to hunt murderers, not galloping about in the Leicestershire mud after some wretched fox!

She lowered her eyes for a moment, then raised them with a frank smile, a little shy. “Perhaps he thought with your recent bereavement you would find being bothered with new acquaintances tiresome. We have had such an experience in our own family, and know that it can take one in most unexpected ways.”

She hoped the smile, the sense of sympathy, extended to her eyes, and that he understood it as such. Dear heaven! She could not bear to be misunderstood again! She plunged on, “One moment one wishes only to be left alone; the next, one desires more than anything else to be among as many people as possible, none of whom have the faintest idea of your affairs.” She was proud of that—it was an embroidery of truth worthy of Emily at her best.

Vanderley looked startled.

“Good gracious! How perceptive of you, Miss Ellison. I had no idea you were even aware of it. Dominic apparently was not. Did you read it in the newspapers?”

“Oh, no!” she lied instantly. She had not yet forgotten that ladies of good society would not do such a thing. Reading the newspaper overheated the blood; it was considered bad for the health to excite the mind too much, not to mention bad for the morals. The pages of social events might be read, perhaps, but certainly not murders! A far better answer occurred to her. “I have a friend who also has had dealings with Mr. Jerome.”

“Oh, God, yes!” he said wearily. “Poor devil!”

Charlotte was confused. Could he possibly mean Jerome? Surely whatever sympathy he felt could only be for Arthur Waybourne.

“Tragic,” she agreed, lowering her voice suitably. “And so very young. The destruction of innocence is always terrible.” It sounded sententious, but she was concerned with drawing him out and perhaps learning something, not with creating a good impression upon him herself.

His wide mouth twisted very slightly.

“Would you consider the very discourteous to disagree with you, Miss Ellison? I find total innocence the most unutterable bore, and it is inevitably lost at one point or another, unless one abdicates from life altogether and withdraws to a convent. I daresay even there the same eternal jealousies and malice still intrude. The thing to desire is that innocence should be replaced with humor and a little style. Fortunately, Arthur possessed both of those.” He raised his eyebrows slightly. “Jerome, on the other hand, has neither. And of course Arthur was charming, whereas Jerome is a complete ass, poor sod. He has neither lightness of touch nor even the most basic sense of social survival.”

Dominic glared at him, but obviously could find no satisfactory words to answer such frankness.

“Oh.” Vanderley smiled at Charlotte with candid charm. “I beg your pardon. My language is inexcusable. I have only just learned that the wretched man also forced his attentions upon my younger nephew and a cousin’s boy. Arthur was dreadful enough, but that he should have involved himself with Godfrey and Titus I still find staggering. Put my appalling manners down to shock, if you will be so generous?”

“Of course,” she said quickly, not out of courtesy but because she truly meant it. “He must be a totally depraved man, and to discover that he has been teaching one’s family for years is enough to horrify anybody out of all thought of polite conversation. It was clumsy of me to have mentioned it at all.” She hoped he would not take her at her word and let the subject fall. Was she being too discreet? “Let us hope that the whole matter will be proved beyond question, and the man hanged,” she added, watching his face closely.

The long eyelids lowered in a movement that seemed to reflect pain and a need for privacy. Perhaps she should not have spoken of hanging. It was the last thing she wished herself—for Jerome, or anyone else.

“What I mean,” she hastened on, “is that the trial should be brief, and there be no question left in anyone’s conscience that he is guilty!”

Vanderley regarded her with a flash of honesty that was oddly out of place in this room of games and masquerades. His eyes were very clear.

“A clean kill, Miss Ellison? Yes, I hope so, too. Far better to bury all the squalid little details. Who needs to strip naked the pain? We use the excuse of the love for truth to inquire into a labyrinth of things that are none of our affair. Arthur is dead anyway. Let the wretched tutor be convicted without all his lesser sins paraded for a prurient public to feed its self-righteousness on.”

She felt suddenly guilty, a raging hypocrite. She was trying to do precisely what he condemned and by silence she was agreeing with: the turning over of every private weakness in an endless search for truth. Did she really believe Jerome was innocent, or was she merely being inquisitive, like the rest?

She shut her eyes for a moment. That was immaterial! Thomas did not believe it—at least he had desperate doubts. Prurient or not, Jerome deserved an honest hearing!

“If he is guilty,” she said quietly.

“You think he is not?” Vanderley was looking at her narrowly now, unhappiness in his eyes. Perhaps he feared another sordid and drawn-out ordeal for his family.

She had trapped herself; the moment of candor was over.

“Oh—I have no idea!” She opened her eyes wide. “I hope the police do not often make mistakes.”

Dominic had had enough.

“I should think it very unlikely,” he said with some asperity. “Either way, it is a most unpleasant subject, Charlotte. I am sure you will be pleased to hear that Alicia Fitzroy-Hammond married that extraordinary American—what was his name? Virgil Smith! And she is to have a child. She has retired somewhat from public functions already. You do remember them, don’t you?”

Charlotte was delighted. Alicia had had such a miserable time when her first husband died, just before the murders in Resurrection Row.

“Oh, I’m so glad!” she said sincerely. “Do you think she would recall me if I wrote to her?”

Dominic made a face. “I cannot conceive of her forgetting!” he said dryly. “The circumstances were hardly commonplace! One is not littered with corpses every week!”

A woman in hot pink buttonholed Vanderley and led him away. He glanced over his shoulder at them once, reluctantly, but his habitual good manners overcame his desire to avoid the new involvement, and he went gracefully.

“I hope you are satisfied now?” Dominic said waspishly. “Because if you are not, you are going to leave here unhappy. I refuse to stay any longer!”

She thought of arguing, as a matter of principle. But in truth, she was just as pleased to retreat as he was.

“Yes, thank you, Dominic,” she said demurely. “You have been very patient.”

He gave her a suspicious look, but decided not to question what seemed to be a compliment, and to accept his good fortune. They walked out into the autumn evening, each with a considerable sense of relief, for their separate reasons, and took the carriage home again. Charlotte had a profound desire to change out of this extraordinary gown before any necessity arose to explain it to Pitt—a feat that would be virtually impossible!

And Dominic had little wish for such a confrontation either, much as his regard had developed for Pitt—or perhaps because of it. He was beginning to grow suspicious that Pitt had not countenanced a meeting with Vanderley at all!

S
EVERAL DAYS PASSED
in fruitless search for any further evidence. Landladies and landlords were questioned, but there were too many to make anything but a cursory attempt, in the hope that for a little reward someone would come forward. Three did. The first was a brothelkeeper from Whitechapel, rubbing his hands, eyes gleaming in anticipation of a little future leniency from the police in recompense for his assistance. Gillivray’s delight was short-lived when the man proved unable to describe either Jerome or Arthur Waybourne with any accuracy. Pitt had never expected that he would, and was therefore left with a sense of superiority to soothe his irritation.

The second was a nervous little woman who let rooms in Seven Dials. Very respectable, she insisted—only let to gentlemen of the best moral character! She feared her good nature and innocence of the viler aspects of human nature had suffered her to be deceived in a most tragic manner. She moved her muff from one hand to the other, and beseeched Pitt to be assured of her total ignorance of the true purpose for which her house had been used; and was it not simply quite dreadful what the world was coming to these days?

Pitt agreed with her that it was, but probably no worse than always. She roundly disagreed with him on that—it had never been like that in her mother’s day, or that good woman, may her soul rest in peace, would have warned her not to let rooms to strangers.

However, she not only identified Jerome from a photograph shown her, but also three other people who were photographed for the purpose of just such identity quests—all of them policemen. By the time she got to the picture of Arthur—obtained from Waybourne—she was so confused she was quite sure the whole of London was seething with all manner of sin, and would be consumed like Sodom and Gomorrah before Christmas.