Midnight at Marble Arch (2 page)

“What on earth was that all about?” a dark-haired woman near them asked confusedly.

The elderly man with her shook his head. “Young ladies tend to be rather excitable, my dear. I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s just some misunderstanding, no doubt.”

“Who is she, anyway?” the woman asked him, glancing at Charlotte also, in case she could shed light on it.

“Angeles Castelbranco. Pretty young thing,” the elderly man remarked, not really to anyone. “Going to be a beautiful woman.”

“That’s hardly relevant, James!” his wife snapped. “She doesn’t know how to behave! Imagine her doing that at a dinner party!”

“Quite bad enough here, thank you,” another woman joined in. The brilliance of her diamonds and the sheen on her lush green silks could not disguise the bitterness of her expression.

Charlotte was stung to the girl’s defense. “I’m sure you are right,” she said, meeting the woman’s eyes boldly. “You must know far more about it than we do. All we saw was what appeared to be a rather self-assured young man quite clearly embarrassing a foreign ambassador’s daughter. I have no idea what preceded it, or how it might more kindly have been handled.”

Charlotte felt Vespasia’s hand fall very lightly on her arm again, but she ignored it. She kept the fixed, inquiring smile on her face and did not lower her gaze.

The woman in green colored angrily. “You give me too much credit, Mrs …. I’m afraid I do not know your name …” She left the denial hanging in the air, not so much a question as a dismissal. “But of course I am well acquainted with Sir Pelham Forsbrook, and therefore his son, Neville, who has been kind enough to show a very flattering interest in my youngest daughter.”

Pitt now rejoined them with a glance at Vespasia, but Charlotte did not introduce either him or herself to the woman in green. “Let us hope it is more graciously expressed than his unflattering interest in Miss Castelbranco,” she continued in a tone so sweet as to be sickly. “But of course you will make sure of that. You are not in a foreign country and uncertain how to deal with ambiguous remarks from young men directed toward your daughter.”

“I do not know any young men who make ambiguous remarks!” the woman snapped back, her eyebrows arched high.

“How pleasant for you,” Charlotte murmured.

The elderly man coughed, and raised his handkerchief to conceal his mouth, his eyes dancing.

Pitt turned his head away as if he had heard some sudden noise to
attract his attention, and accidentally pulled Charlotte with him, although in truth she was perfectly ready to leave. That had been her parting shot. From here on it could only get worse. She gave a dazzling smile to Vespasia, and saw an answering sparkle in her eyes.

“What on earth are you doing?” Pitt demanded softly as soon as they were out of earshot.

“Telling her she’s a fool,” Charlotte replied. She had thought her meaning was obvious.

“I know that!” he retorted. “And so does she. You have just made an enemy.”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “That may be unfortunate, but being her friend would have been even more so. She’s a social climber of the worst sort.”

“How do you know? Who is she?” he asked.

“I know because I’ve just seen how she acts. And I have no idea who she is, nor do I care.” She knew she might regret saying that, but just at the moment she was too angry to curb her temper. “I am going to speak to Senhora Castelbranco and make sure her daughter is all right.”

“Charlotte …”

She broke free, turned for a moment and gave him the same dazzling smile she had offered Vespasia, then moved into the crowd toward where she had last seen the Portuguese ambassador’s wife.

It took her ten minutes more to find her. Senhora Castelbranco was standing near one of the doorways, her daughter with her. The girl was the same height as her mother, and even prettier than she had appeared at a distance. Her eyes were dazzling, and her skin softly honey-colored with a faint flush across her cheeks. She watched Charlotte approach them with an alarm that she could not hide, even though she was clearly trying to.

Charlotte smiled at her briefly, then turned to her mother. “I’m so sorry that wretched young man was rude. It must be impossibly difficult for you to do anything, in your diplomatic position. It really was inexcusable of him.” She turned to the girl, then realized she was uncertain how fluent her English might be. “I hope you are all right?” she
said a little awkwardly. “I apologize. We should have made sure you were not placed in such an ugly situation.”

Angeles smiled, but her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, I am quite all right, madam, I assure you. I … I am not hurt. I …” She gulped. “I just did not know how to answer him.”

Isaura put a protective arm around her daughter’s shoulder. “She is well, of course. Just a little embarrassed. In our own language she would’ve known what to say.” She gave a little shrug. “In English one is not always sure if one is being amusing, or perhaps insulting. It is better not to speak than risk saying something one cannot later withdraw.”

“Of course,” Charlotte said, although she felt uneasy. It seemed like Angeles had actually been far more distressed than they were admitting. “The more awkward the situation, the harder it is to find the words in another language,” she agreed. “That is why he should have known better than to behave as he did. I am so sorry.”

Isaura smiled at her, her dark eyes unreadable. “You are very kind, but I assure you there is no harm done beyond a few moments’ unpleasantness. That is unavoidable in life. It happens to all of us at some time or another. The Season is full of events. I hope we will meet again.”

It was gracious, but it was also a dismissal, as if they wished to be left alone for a while, perhaps even to leave.

“I hope so too,” Charlotte agreed, and excused herself. Her feeling of unease was, if anything, greater.

As she returned to where she had left Pitt, she passed several groups of people talking. One of half a dozen included the woman in green, of whom she had undoubtedly made an enemy.

“Very excitable temperament,” she was saying. “Unreliable, I’m afraid. But we have no choice except to deal with them, I suppose.”

“No choice at all, so my husband informs me,” another assured her. “It seems we have a treaty with Portugal that is over five hundred years old, and for some reason or another, we consider it important.”

“One of the great colonial powers, I’m told,” a third woman said with a lift of her fair eyebrows, as if the fact was scarcely credible. “I
thought it was just a rather agreeable little country off the west side of Spain.” She gave a tinkling laugh.

Charlotte was unreasonably irritated, given that she knew very little more of Portuguese colonial history than the woman who had spoken.

“Frankly, my dear, I think she had possibly taken rather too much wine and was the worse for it,” the woman in green said confidentially. “When I was sixteen we never drank more than lemonade.”

The second woman leaned forward conspiratorially. “And too young to be engaged, don’t you think?”

“She is engaged? Good heavens, yes.” Her voice was emphatic. “Should wait another year, at the very least. She is far too immature, as she has just most unfortunately demonstrated. To whom is she engaged?”

“That’s the thing,” the third woman said, shrugging elegantly. “Very good marriage, I believe. Tiago de Freitas. Excellent family. Enormous amount of money, I think from Brazil. Could it be Brazil?”

“Well, there’s gold there, and Brazil is Portuguese,” a fourth woman told them, smoothing the silk of her skirt. “So it could well be so. And Angola in the southwest of Africa is Portuguese, and so is Mozambique in southeast Africa, and they say there’s gold there too.”

“Then how did we come to let the Portuguese have it?” the woman in green asked irritably. “Somebody wasn’t paying attention!”

“Perhaps they’ve quarreled?” one of them suggested.

“Who? The Portuguese?” the woman in green demanded. “Or do you mean the Africans?”

“I meant Angeles Castelbranco and Tiago de Freitas,” came the impatient reply. “That would account for her being a bit hysterical.”

“It doesn’t excuse bad manners,” the woman in green said sharply, lifting her rather pronounced chin, and thereby making more of the diamonds at her throat. “If one is indisposed, one should say so and remain at home.”

At that rate, you should never set foot out of the door
, Charlotte thought bitterly.
And we should all be the happier for it
. But she could not say so. She was an eavesdropper, not part of the conversation. She
moved on quickly before they became aware that she had been standing in the same spot for several moments, for no apparent reason except to overhear.

She found Pitt speaking with a group of people she didn’t know. In case it might be important, she did not interrupt. When there was a break in the discussion, he excused himself temporarily and came over to her.

“Did you find the ambassador’s wife?” he asked, his brow slightly furrowed with concern.

“Yes,” she said quietly. “Thomas, I’m afraid she’s still very upset. It was a miserable thing to do to a young girl from a foreign country. At the very least, he made public fun of her. She’s only sixteen, just two years older than Jemima.” In the moment of saying her own daughter’s name she felt a tug of fear, conscious of how terribly vulnerable Jemima was. She was partway between child and woman, her body seeming to change every week, to leave behind the comfort of girlhood but not yet gain the grace and confidence of an adult.

Pitt looked startled. Clearly he had not even imagined Jemima in a ball gown with her hair coiled up on her head and young men seeing so much more than the child she was.

Charlotte smiled at him. “You should look more carefully, Thomas. Jemima’s still a little self-conscious, but she has curves, and more than one young man has looked at her a second and third time—including her dance teacher and the rector’s son.”

Pitt stiffened.

She put her hand on his arm, gently. “There’s no need to be alarmed. I’m watching. She’s still two years younger than Angeles Castelbranco, and at this age two years is a lot. But she’s full of moods. One minute she’s so happy she can’t stop singing, an hour later she’s in tears or has lost her temper. She quarrels with poor Daniel, who doesn’t know what’s the matter with her, and then she’s so reticent she doesn’t want to come out of her bedroom.”

“I had noticed,” Pitt said drily. “Are you sure it’s normal?”

“Consider yourself lucky,” she replied with a slight grimace. “My
father had three daughters. As soon as Sarah was all right, I started, and then when I was more or less sane again, it was Emily’s turn.”

“I suppose I should be grateful Daniel’s a boy,” he said ruefully.

She gave a little laugh. “He’ll have his own set of problems,” she replied. “It’s just that you’ll understand them better—and I won’t.”

He looked at her with sudden, intense gentleness. “She’ll be all right, won’t she?”

“Jemima? Of course.” She refused to think otherwise.

He put his hand over hers and held it. “And Angeles Castelbranco?”

“I expect so, although she looked terribly fragile to me just now. But I expect it’s all the same thing. Sixteen is so very young. I shudder when I remember myself at that age. I thought I knew so much, which shows how desperately little I really did know.”

“I wouldn’t tell Jemima that, if I were you,” he advised.

She gave him a wry look. “I hadn’t planned on it, Thomas.”

T
WO HOURS LATER THE
idea had crossed Pitt’s mind a few times that he and Charlotte could finally excuse themselves and go home, satisfied that duty had been fulfilled. He caught sight of her at the far side of the room, talking to Vespasia. Watching them, he could not help smiling. Charlotte’s dark, chestnut-colored hair was almost untouched by gray; Vespasia’s was totally silver. To him, Charlotte was increasingly lovely, and he never tired of looking at her. He knew she did not have the staggering beauty that was still there in Vespasia’s face—the grace of her bones, the delicacy—but he could see so much of each in Charlotte’s poise and vitality. Standing together now, they spoke as if they were oblivious to the rest of the room.

He became aware of someone near him, and turned to see Victor Narraway a few feet over, looking in the same direction. His face was unreadable, his eyes so dark they seemed black, his thick hair heavily streaked with silver. Less than a year ago he had been Pitt’s superior in Special Branch, a man with access to a host of secrets and the iron will
to use them as need and conscience dictated. He also had a steadiness of nerve Pitt thought he himself might never achieve.

Betrayal from within the department had cost Narraway his position and Pitt had been set in his place, his enemies sure he would not have the steel in his soul to succeed. They had been wrong, at least so far. But Victor Narraway had remained out of office, removed to the House of Lords, where his abilities were wasted. There were always committees, and political intrigues of one sort or another, but nothing that offered the immense power he had once wielded. That in itself might not matter to him, but to be unable to use his extraordinary talents was a loss he surely found hard to bear.

“Looking for the cue to go home?” Narraway asked with a slight smile, reading Pitt as easily as he always had.

“It’s not far off midnight. I don’t think we really need to stay much longer,” Pitt agreed, returning the slightly rueful smile. “It’ll probably take half an hour to make all the appropriate goodbyes.”

“And Charlotte, another half hour after that,” Narraway added, glancing across the room toward Charlotte and Vespasia.

Pitt shrugged, not needing to answer. The remark was made with affection—or probably more than that, as he well knew.

Before his train of thought could go any further, they were joined by a slender man well into his forties. His dark hair was threaded with gray at the temples but there was a youthful energy in his unusual face. He was not exactly handsome—his nose was not straight and his mouth was a little generous—but the vitality in him commanded not only attention but an instinctive liking.