Page 15 of A Ruse of Shadows
Miss Charlotte had yet to change out of her disguise, so it was a portly, redheaded young man who stood in the middle of the parlor, two slips of paper in his hands.
Mrs. Watson, still wearing her own traveling dress, as she’d returned from Manchester only a quarter hour ago, knew exactly what the cables said.
Miss B won’t eat eggs anymore.
Lord Bancroft sends his regards.
Even before she had opened the cables, a chill had pooled in the soles of Mrs. Watson’s feet. Mr. Mears, her butler, was highly competent. Had anything less than catastrophic taken place in Paris, he would not have sent a telegram, let alone two.
Her hands had clutched so tightly around those slips of paper that Penelope had had to pry them loose from her grip. And then she’d brought Mrs. Watson a large draught of whisky, which Mrs. Watson had tossed back as if it were so much room-temperature tea.
Miss Charlotte exhibited no such signs of agitation. From whereMrs. Watson sat, she could see the girl reflected in two different gold-framed mirrors. Every iteration of her was perfectly still, her expression, under the proliferation of false facial hair, as tranquil and bland as it had ever been. Yet something rippled and burned in the air. Mrs. Watson shivered.
Anger. She’d known Miss Charlotte an entire year and she had never once seen the girl angry.
Penelope glanced at Mrs. Watson. Had she felt the same tidal surge of wrath?
“I was just at Ravensmere, and Lord Bancroft did not meet with me. I guess he knew that until I learned about Bernadine, there was no point in seeing me, as I would not have agreed to anything he proposed.”
This made Mrs. Watson seethe.
“You missed dinner, Miss Charlotte,” said Penelope. “Are you hungry?”
“I wasn’t earlier,” answered Miss Charlotte slowly, “but now that I have some idea what Lord Bancroft wants, I believe I can have a nibble or two.”
She sat down, dropped the telegrams on an occasion table, and unwrapped the two hand-raised pies she’d bought at that little railway station as they inquired into the Christmas Eve Murder.
How long ago that seemed—and how utterly immaterial.
Miss Charlotte sliced open a cylindrical curry pie and ate one half methodically. She then did the same to a three-inch-across fruit tart, and similarly consumed one half, her motions smooth, her face serene.
It was not easy to read the young woman’s expression, but usually at mealtimes it was possible to detect a glow of pleasure upon Miss Charlotte’s countenance, especially when dessert courses were brought around.
Tonight that glow was absent.
Mrs. Watson’s heart pinched.
Miss Charlotte finished her supper, drained her travel canteen, and said quietly, “I must go back to Paris and take stock of the situation.”
She was no longer incensed. Not in the sense that she had leashed her anger but as if for her, anger was not a dark vine that hooked its barbed tentacles into the heart and refused to ever let go but as much of a soap-bubble emotion as surprise, something that existed only in the moment of reaction.
“We’ll come with you,” Mrs. Watson said immediately.
Her staff, too, were in that house.
Penelope leaped up. “I already checked. If we leave by the late train from Charing Cross, we should make Folkestone Harbour in time to take the first tidal boat across the Channel. We could be in Paris before ten in the morning.”
After Penelope left to secure tickets, Mrs. Watson said to Miss Charlotte, “My dear, I don’t question your decision at all—in fact, I think it’s the only right and proper thing to do. But surely Lord Bancroft, by his barbarous act, means for you to go to him this instant. Are you not worried that he might make things more difficult for you later on if you choose to make him wait?”
“I went to see him tonight, and he chose to make me wait,” countered Miss Charlotte.
But Lord Bancroft held the upper hand and could afford to antagonize them; the reverse was not true.
The mother hen in Mrs. Watson wanted desperately to explain that to Miss Charlotte. She had to remind herself that the girl, with her extraordinarily capacious mind, would have already considered the point before making her choice.
Instead, she murmured, “Can I just say how glad I am that you refused that man not once but twice?”
Miss Charlotte had been obliged to consider his second offer, which came after her exile from Society, with utmost seriousness. Marriage would have restored some of her former respectability, and that would have helped her family, especially her sister Miss Olivia.
