Death in the Devil's Acre (17 page)

“But extremely wealthy,” Christina pointed out. “And with any decency at all, he will the before another ten years are past.”

“Oh!” Emily rolled her eyes heavenward. “But what can she possibly do for another ten years?”

A small smile flickered across Christina’s face. “She is not without imagination—”

“And that is her misfortune!” Augusta interrupted sharply. “She would be much better off if she had none at all. And whatever your fancy begets, Christina, it would be more discreet if you were not to speak of it. We do not wish to be the prognosticators of other people’s misdeeds.”

Christina took a deep breath. That was obviously precisely what she had wished to be, but curiously she did not argue. In fact, Charlotte thought she saw a momentary pallor, a tightening of her face, but whether it was pity or temper she could not judge.

“I suppose she might occupy herself in some charitable work,” George suggested hopefully. “Emily frequently tells me how much there is to be done.”

“And that is it!” Christina was suddenly savage. “When a gentleman is bored, he may gamble at his club at dice or cards, go to the races, or drive his own pair if he wishes! He may go shooting or play billiards, or go to theaters—and worse places—but if a lady is bored she is expected to occupy herself with charitable works—going round and visiting the hungry or the dirty, muttering soothing words at them and encouraging them to be virtuous!”

There was too much truth in her outburst for Charlotte to argue, and yet she found herself unable even to begin to tell Christina Ross of the sense of purpose and satisfaction she herself found from working to bring about parliamentary reform. There was a reality about it, an urgency to life, that would have made games, or even sports, seem divorced from the world and unbearably trivial.

She leaned forward, searching for a way to express her feelings. Everyone was staring at her, but nothing adequate came to her mind.

“If you are about to expound on the delights of Papa’s military histories, Miss Ellison, please do not bother,” Christina said freezingly. “I do not wish to know about cholera in Sebastopol, or how many wretched souls died in the charge of the Light Brigade. The whole thing seems to me to be an idiot game played by men who should be locked away in Bedlam where they can harm no one but themselves ... and perhaps each other!”

For the only time in her life to that moment, Charlotte felt a rush of sympathy for Christina. “Can you think of a way in which we might enforce that in law, Mrs. Ross?” she said enthusiastically. “Think of all the young men who might not the, if we did!”

Christina looked at her with a curious little frown. She had not expected agreement from anyone, least of all from Charlotte. She had begun by intending only to be rude. “You surprise me, ”she said candidly. “I thought you were a great admirer of the military.”

“I hate blind vanity,” Charlotte answered. “And I deplore stupidity. The fact that they occur in the army more dangerously than anywhere else, except perhaps in Parliament, does not make my respect for courage of the soldier any less.”

“In Parliament?” Augusta was incredulous. “Really, my dear Miss Ellison! Whatever can you mean?”

“A fool in Parliament can oppress millions,” Balantyne offered. “And God knows there are enough of them! And vain ones, too.” He looked at Charlotte with complete frankness, as if he had temporarily forgotten she was a woman. “I have not heard so much sense put so succinctly in years,” he added with a slight drawing together of his brows. “I had a feeling you were about to say something else when Christina brought back the subject of the army. Please tell me what it was?”

“I—” Charlotte was acutely conscious of his eyes upon her. They were a brighter, clearer blue than she had remembered. And she was increasingly aware of his power, the will that had enabled him to command men in danger and fear of death. She abandoned the effort to phrase her feelings politely.

“I was going to say that when I have time to spare, I involve myself in an attempt to have some of the laws upon child prostitution reformed, so that they would be a great deal more rigid than at present, and it would be a very grave offense either to use children oneself or to traffic in the use of them, whether they are boys or girls.”

Alan Ross turned to face her, his eyes keen.

“Really?” Augusta’s expression was one of complete incomprehension. “I would not have imagined one could have any success in such a venture without considerable knowledge upon the subject, Miss Ellison.”

“Of course not.” Charlotte accepted the challenge and stared back at her unflinchingly. “It is necessary to acquire it, or one can have no influence at all.”

“How extremely distasteful,” Augusta said, closing the subject.

“Of course it is distasteful.” Alan Ross refused to be silenced. “I think that is what Brandy was saying the other evening—you remember Brandy, Miss Ellison? But then if those of us who are able to reach the ears of Parliament do not care about such ills, who will effect any change?”

“The church,” Augusta said finally. “And I am quite sure they will do a better job of it than we will by indulging in wild and unprofitable speculation over the dinner table. Brandon, will you be so good as to pass me the mustard? Christina, you had better have a word with your cook—this sauce is totally insipid. It is no better than cotton wool! Do you not think so, Miss Ellison?”

“It is mild,” Charlotte replied with a slight smile. “But I do not find it disagreeable.”

“How odd.” Augusta turned over her fork. “I would have expected mustard to be much more to your taste!”

After the meal was finished, the butler brought in the port. Augusta, Christina, Emily, and Charlotte excused themselves to the withdrawing room to leave the gentlemen to drink, and to smoke if they wished. It was the part of the evening Charlotte had looked forward to least. She was sharply aware of Christina’s dislike, and now also of Augusta’s disapproval. And above either of these unpleasant feelings, she felt acutely nervous about what Emily might do. She had come for the sole purpose of pursuing the names and characteristics of Christina’s less reputable friends, with a view to discovering if any of them might have been seduced by Max. Please heaven she was at least subtle about it—if one could conceivably be subtle about such a thing.

Emily gave her a warning look before they sat down. “You know, I do so agree with you,” she said to Christina with an air of conspiracy. “I long to do something a little more adventurous than calling upon people one already knows positively everything about—and making polite and tedious conversation. Or else doing ‘good works.’ I am sure they are very worthy, and I admire those who can enjoy them. But I confess I do not.”

“If you attend church occasionally, and look after the families of your servants, that is all that is required of you,” Augusta pointed out. “Other good works of visiting, and so on, are only necessary for single ladies who have nothing else to do. It keeps them occupied and makes them feel useful. Heaven knows there are enough of them—one must not usurp their function!”

They all seemed for the moment to have forgotten that, as far as they knew, Charlotte fell into that category.

“I think perhaps I shall take to riding in the park,” Emily mused. “One might meet all manner of interesting people there—or so I have heard.”

“Indeed,” Christina said. “I know exactly what you mean. But believe me, there are things which one may do that have far more spirit of adventure, and are a great deal more entertaining, than writing letters or making social calls upon people who are inexpressibly dull. It is not really improper, if one does not go alone, for one to visit—”

“Do you paint, Miss Ellison?” Augusta cut across Christina in a loud, penetrating voice. “Or play the pianoforte? Or perhaps you sing?”

“I paint,” Charlotte replied immediately.

“How pleasant for you.” Christina’s opinion of painting was implicit in her tone. Single women who could think of nothing more exciting to do than sit about with brushes and bits of wet paper were too pathetic to waste emotion upon. She turned back to Emily. “I have quite decided that I shall ride in the Row every morning that the wish takes me and the weather is agreeable! I am sure that with a spirited animal one might have a great deal of pleasure.”

“With a spirited animal, my girl, one may very well land flat on one’s face in the mud!” Augusta snapped. “And I would have you remember it, and not behave as if taking a fall were a light thing!”

Christina’s face drained of all color. She stared straight ahead, looking neither at Augusta nor at Emily. If she had any rebuttal, it was stillborn inside her.

Charlotte tried desperately to think of something to say to cover the silence, but everything trivial and polite seemed grotesque after the sudden reality of emotion, even though she did not understand it or its cause. If Christina had injured herself, perhaps in some recklessness on horseback, it was a most indelicate subject to refer to. It did flicker wildly into her mind that perhaps that was the reason she appeared as yet to have no family. The uprush of pity was painful; she did not wish to feel anything for Christina but dislike.

“Emily plays the piano,” Charlotte said emptily, merely to change the subject and dismiss her thoughts.

“I beg your pardon?” Augusta swallowed. There were very fine lines on her throat that Charlotte had not noticed before.

“Emily plays the piano,” Charlotte repeated with increasing embarrassment. Now she felt ridiculous.

“Indeed? And you did not learn?”

‘No. I preferred to paint, and Papa did not insist.”

“How wise of him. It is a waste of time to force a child who has no talent.”

There was no civil answer to that. Charlotte suddenly ceased to feel guilty about the softness she had seen in the general’s face, or the quick honesty in his eyes when he had forgotten the niceties of the table and simply spoken to her as a friend with whom he might speak of things that mattered, things of the mind and the emotions.

Indeed, when the gentlemen rejoined them shortly afterward, she was perfectly happy to find herself almost immediately engaged in a long discussion with him about the retreat from Moscow. She did not need to make the least pretense to follow his every word and share his fascination with the wide sweep of history as the tide of Europe turned, or the wound of pity for the solitary deaths of men in the bitter snows of Russia.

When they rose to leave, it was the general’s face that was in her mind, not Christina’s. It was only afterward, when Emily spoke to her on the way home, that any sense of guilt returned.

“Really, Charlotte, I asked you to engage the general’s sympathy so that we might learn something of use to us—not enchant the man out of his wits!” she said acidly. “I really do think you might learn to control yourself. That apricot gown has gone to your head!”

Charlotte blushed in the darkness, but fortunately neither Emily nor George could see her. “Well, there was little point in my trying to pursue Christina’s more flighty acquaintances!” she said sharply. “You all had me marked as a poor little creature who sits at home painting when I am not going out doing good works among the unfortunates!”

“I quite understand your disliking Christina.” Emily changed tactics and assumed elaborate patience instead. “I do myself—and she was certainly very rude to you. But that is not the point! We were there to pursue the investigation, not to enjoy ourselves!”

Charlotte had no answer for that. She had learned nothing whatsoever, and, if she were even remotely honest, she had enjoyed herself indecently much. At least she had at times; there were moments that had been perfectly ghastly. She had forgotten how very crushing Society could be.

“Did you learn anything?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” Emily replied in the darkness. “Perhaps.”

E
MILY HAD THOUGHT ABOUT ALL
the murders and the many different tragedies that might lie behind them. She was perfectly aware that a great many marriages were made quite as much for practical reasons as for romantic ones, attempts either to improve positions in Society or to maintain ones that were endangered. Sometimes such alliances worked out quite as well as those embarked upon in the heat of infatuation, but where the difference of age or temperament was too great, they became prisonlike.

She also knew the morally numbing effect of boredom. That she did not suffer from it herself was due to her periodic adventures into the stimulating, frightening, and turbulent world of criminal tragedy. But the long, arid intervals of social trivia in the meantime were the more pronounced because of the contrast. It was a world enclosed upon itself, where the most superficial flirtations assumed the proportions of great love, mere insults in etiquette or precedence became wounds, and matters of dress—the cut, the color, the trimming—were noticed and discussed as if they were of immense importance.

As Christina Ross had said, idle men might occupy themselves with all manner of sport, healthy or otherwise, even finding excitement in risking money or broken limbs. Industrious or morally minded men might seek power in Parliament or trade, or might travel abroad upon missions to benighted nations somewhere, or join the army, or follow the White Nile to discover its source in the heart of the Dark Continent!

But a woman had only the outlet of charitable works. Her home was cared for by servants, her children by a nursery maid, a nanny, and then a governess. For those who were neither artistic nor gifted with any particular intelligence, there was little else but to entertain and be entertained. Small wonder that spirited young women, like some of Christina’s set, trapped in marriages without passion, laughter, or even companionship, could be lured away by someone as raw and dangerous as Max Burton.

And of course Emily had never hidden from herself the other side of the argument, the fact that a number of men do not find all their appetites satisfied at home. Many abstained for one reason or another, but of course there were those who did not. One did not discuss “houses of pleasure”—or the “fallen doves” who occupied them. God!—that was a euphemism she hated! And only with the most intimate friends did one speak of the various affairs that were conducted at country houses over long shooting weekends, in croquet games on summer lawns, at great balls in the hunting season, or any other of a dozen times and places. None of which was to excuse it, but to understand it.