Rutland Place (3 page)

“I’m so sorry.” Charlotte meant it; the story of life cut short was suddenly sobering in the midst of all the silly chatter and games of social superiority. “How very painful—for her family, I mean.”

Mina’s slender fingers roamed over her skirt again, laying it even more smoothly over her knees.

“Actually, they have borne it with the greatest fortitude.” Her fine eyebrows rose as if she were still surprised by it. “One cannot but admire them, most especially Ambrosine herself—that is, Mrs. Charrington—she has risen above it so magnificently. If one did not know of it for oneself, one would almost believe it had not happened at all. They never speak of her, you know!”

“No doubt the wound is still there,” Charlotte answered. “One never forgets, no matter how brave one’s face.”

“Oh dear!” Mina crumpled. “I do hope I have not inadvertently said something distressing, my dear Mrs. Pitt? Nothing was further from my mind than to cause you some painful memory.”

Charlotte smiled at her, pushing Sarah from her thoughts and hoping Caroline could do so too.

“I would never imagine that you might,” she said quietly. “I expect everyone has suffered some loss or another. There cannot be a family in the land that has never had death rob them of someone.”

Before Mina could search for a courteous acceptance of this, the withdrawing-room door opened and a very elderly lady came in, her face creased with irritation, a fine lace shawl drawn round her shoulders, and her black boots polished like glass.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Spencer-Brown,” she said curtly. “Didn’t know you were entertaining this afternoon, Caroline. Cook said nothing at luncheon!” She looked at Charlotte, then took a step closer. “Good gracious! It’s Charlotte!” She snorted slightly. “Decided to come back into decent Society, have you?”

“Good afternoon, Grandmama.” Charlotte stood up and offered her the most comfortable chair, which she herself had been occupying until that moment.

The old lady accepted it after rearranging the cushions and dusting the seat. She sat down, and Charlotte found herself a hard-backed chair.

“Better for you anyway.” The old lady nodded. “Get a round back sitting in one of these at your age. Girls always sat up properly when I was young. Knew how to conduct ourselves then. None of this gadding about without chaperones, going to the theater, and the like! And electricity all over the place! It must be unhealthy. Goodness only knows what’s in the air! Gas lamps are quite bad enough. If the good Lord had intended it to be light all night, He would have made the moon as bright as the sun.”

Mina ignored her and turned to Charlotte with excitement.

“Do you go to the theater alone, Mrs. Pitt? How thrilling! Do tell us, do you have adventures?”

Grandmama pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose loudly.

Charlotte hovered on the edge of pretending that she did do such a thing, to annoy her grandmother, then decided the embarrassment it would cause Caroline was too great to balance the pleasure.

“No, no, I never have,” she said with a touch of regret. “Is it adventurous?”

“Good gracious!” Mina looked startled. “I have no idea! One hears stories, of course, but—” Suddenly she giggled. “I should ask Mrs. Denbigh! She is just the sort of person who would have the courage to do it, if she wished.”

“I daresay.” Grandmama glowered at her. “But I have often thought that for all that she is a widow and ought to know her place better, Amaryllis Denbigh is no better than she should be! Caroline! Are we going to have tea this afternoon or sit here till dusk chattering dry?”

Caroline reached out and rang the bell.

“Of course we are, Mama. We were merely waiting until you joined us.” Over the years she had grown accustomed to calling the woman “Mama,” although she was in fact Edward’s mother.

“Indeed,” Grandmama said skeptically. “I hope there is some cake. I can’t bear all that bread cook sends up. The woman has a mania for bread. They used to know how to make a decent cake when I kept servants. Trained them properly—that’s what it all comes down to. Don’t let them get away with so much—then you’ll get cake when you want it!”

“I do get cake when I want it, Mama!” Caroline’s temper was wearing thin. “And keeping a good staff these days is a lot harder than it used to be. Times change!”

“Not for the better!” Grandmama glared at Charlotte. She refrained from saying anything about respectable women who married into the police, of all things! But only because there was an outsider present, who, please God, knew nothing about it. If she did, next thing it would be all over the neighborhood! And then heaven knew what people would say, let alone what they would think!

“Not for the better,” she said again. “Women working in offices like clerks when they ought to be in good domestic service. Whoever heard of such a thing? Who looks after their morals, I should like to know? There aren’t any butlers in offices. Not that there are many women, thank heaven! Women’s place is in a house—either their own or, if they haven’t one, somebody else’s!”

Charlotte thought of several answers and held her tongue on all of them. The conversation degenerated into pleasantries about fashion and the weather, with only occasional references to other residents of Rutland Place, and Grandmama’s dour comments upon them. They were almost finished when Edward came in, rubbing his hands a little from the cold.

“Why, Charlotte, my dear!” His face lit up with pleasure and surprise. “I had no idea you were calling or I would have come home sooner.” She stood up and he gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “You look extremely well.”

“I am, thank you, Papa.” She stepped back and he noticed Mina for the first time, her pale lace almost blending into the brocade of the sofa and its cushions.

“Mrs. Spencer-Brown, how pleasant to see you.” He bowed.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Ellison,” she answered brightly, her eyes moving from Edward back to Charlotte, interested that he had not been expecting her. “You seem cold,” she observed. “Do you care to sit next to the fire?” She moved her skirt to allow him more room on the sofa beside her.

He could not decline without discourtesy, and anyway he considered the spot nearest the fire to be his right. He sat down gingerly.

“Thank you. It does appear that the weather has changed. In fact, I fear it might rain.”

“We can hardly expect better at this time of the year,” Mina replied.

Caroline met Charlotte’s eyes over the low table in a glance of helplessness, then reached for the bell to send for a fresh pot of tea for Edward, and some more cakes.

Edward received them with obvious appetite, and they all engaged in only the barest conversation for several minutes.

“Did you find that brooch you lost, my dear?” he said presently, head toward Caroline but his attention still on the cake.

Caroline colored very slightly. “Not yet, but I daresay it will turn up.”

“Didn’t know you’d lost anything!” Grandmama exclaimed. “You didn’t tell me!”

“No reason why I should, Mama,” Caroline replied, avoiding her eyes. “I’m quite sure if you had found it you would have mentioned it to me without my asking.”

“What was it?” Grandmama was not going to let go so easily.

“How unfortunate!” Mina joined in. “I hope it was not valuable?”

“I’ve no doubt it will turn up!” Caroline replied with a note of increasing sharpness in her voice. Charlotte, glancing down, saw her hands twined in the handkerchief again, white where the tightness of the linen bit into her flesh.

“I expect you have mislaid it,” she said with a smile she hoped did not look as artificial as it was. “It may be pinned to some garment you had forgotten you had worn.”

“I do hope so,” Mina said, shaking her head. Her dark blue eyes were enormous in her fragile face. “It is most distressing to have to say so, but, my dear, there have been a number of things—taken—in the Place recently!” She stopped and looked from one to another of them.

“Taken?” Edward said incredulously. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Taken,” Mina repeated. “I hate to use a worse word.”

“You mean stolen?” Grandmama demanded. “I told you! If you don’t train your servants properly and run a house as it ought to be run, then this is the sort of thing you can expect! Sow a wind, and reap a whirlwind! I’ve always said so.”

“It wasn’t you who said that, Grandmama,” Charlotte said tartly. “It’s from the Book of Hosea, in the Bible.”

“Don’t be impertinent!” Grandmama snapped.

Edward seemed quite unaware of Caroline’s distress or of Charlotte’s attempt to close the subject.

“Did you say there have been other thefts?” he asked Mina.

“I’m afraid so. It’s perfectly dreadful! Poor Ambrosine lost a most excellent gold chain, from her very own dressing table.”

“Servants!” Grandmama snorted. “Whole class of servants is going down. I’ve said so for years! Nothing’s been the same since Prince Albert died in ’61. He was a man with standards! No wonder the poor Queen is in perpetual mourning—so should I be if my son behaved like the Prince of Wales.” She snorted in outrage. “The whole country’s heard of his goings-on!”

“And my husband lost an ornamental snuffbox with a crystal lid from our mantelshelf,” Mina continued, ignoring her completely. “And poor Eloise Lagarde lost a silver buttonhook from her reticule, unfortunate child.” She looked at the old lady candidly. “I cannot imagine any servant who had opportunity to take all those articles. I mean, how would someone else’s servant be in my house?”

Grandmama’s eyebrows went up and her nostrils flared. “Then obviously we must have more than one dishonest servant in Rutland Place! The whole world is degenerating at a disastrous speed. Heaven only knows where it will all end.”

“It will probably end with everyone finding what they have misplaced!” Charlotte said, standing up. “It has been most delightful meeting you, Mrs. Spencer-Brown. I do hope we shall have the opportunity to speak again, but since the afternoon is turning somewhat unpleasant, and it does indeed look like rain, I’m sure you will excuse me if I seek to return to my home before I am drenched.” Without waiting for a reply, she bent and gave her grandmother a peck on the cheek, her father a swift touch, and extended her arm to Caroline as if inviting her to accompany her at least as far as the door.

After rather startled murmurs of goodbye, Caroline took advantage of the opportunity. She was almost on Charlotte’s heels as they came into the hall, and she shut the withdrawing-room door behind them.

“Maddock!” Caroline called sharply. “Maddock!”

He appeared. “Yes, ma’am. Shall I call the carriage for Miss Charlotte?”

“Yes, please. And, Maddock, have Polly close the curtains, please.”

“It is still two hours at least until dark, ma’am,” he said with slight surprise.

“Don’t argue with me, Maddock!” Caroline took a breath and steadied herself. “The wind is rising and it will rain quite shortly. I prefer not to watch it. Please do as you are asked!”

“Yes, ma’am.” He withdrew obediently, stiff-shouldered in correct and spotless black.

Charlotte turned to her. “Mama, why does this locket matter so much? And why do you want the curtains drawn at four o’clock in the afternoon?”

Caroline stared at her as if frozen.

Charlotte put out her hands and touched her mother gently. Caroline’s body was stiff under the fine material of her dress.

She let out her breath slowly and stared past Charlotte toward the light coming through the hall windows.

“I’m not really sure—it sounds so hysterical—but I feel as if there were someone watching me—and—waiting!”

Charlotte did not know what to say. Caroline was right; it did sound hysterical.

“I know it’s foolish,” Caroline went on, hunching her shoulders and shivering a little although the hall was perfectly warm, “but I can’t get rid of the sensation. I’ve told myself not to be so fanciful, that everyone else has far too much to do to be interested in my comings and goings. But it’s still there—the feeling that there are eyes, and a mind—a mind that knows—and waits!”

The idea was horrible.    

“Waits for what?” Charlotte asked, trying to bring some rationality into it.

“I don’t know! A mistake? Waits for me to make a mistake.”

Charlotte felt a chill of real fear. This was unhealthy, even morbid. It carried a faint whiff of madness. If her mother was as overwrought as this, why on earth had Edward not noticed and called both her and Emily to do something? Even called a doctor! Certainly Grandmama was always watching and criticizing, but then she had done that for as long as Charlotte could remember, and no one had ever really minded before. She did it to everyone: to know better than anybody else was part of her satisfaction in living on when so many of her friends were dead.

Caroline shook herself. “I believe you’ll get home before the rain. In fact, I don’t think it’s going to rain after all.”

It was of total indifference to Charlotte whether it rained or even snowed.

“Do you know who took the locket and the other things, Mama?”

“No, of course not! What on earth makes you ask such a thing? I should hardly have asked you to help me in the matter if I already knew!”

“Why not? You might have wished to get it back without bringing in the police if it were a friend, or even a good servant of someone else.”

“Well, I told you, Charlotte, I have no idea!”

Suddenly Charlotte had a glimpse of the obvious, and wondered why she had been so blind as not to have seen it before.

“What is in the locket, Mama?”

“In”—Caroline swallowed—“in the locket?”

“Yes, Mama, what is in it?” She almost wished she had not asked. Caroline’s face was white, and she stood perfectly still for several seconds. Outside, the carriage wheels rattled on the road and a horse snorted.

“A photograph,” Caroline said at last.

Charlotte looked at her. She heard her own voice almost against her will, sounding disembodied and remote.

“Of whom?”

“A—friend. Just a friend. But I would rather it was not found by anyone else. They might misunderstand my feelings and cause me embarrassment, and even—” She stopped, and her eyes came up to meet Charlotte’s at last.