Charlotte smiled charmingly; her warmth was quite truly felt. “Indeed, I was only thinking, as you were, that too much magic or coincidence spoils one’s belief in the story, and therefore one’s emotional rapport with the characters. It was quite a trivial remark.” She plunged on. “Mrs. York has been kind enough to invite me to go and view the winter exhibition at the Royal Academy with her. Have any of you been yet?”
“I went,” Sonia Asherson said mildly. “But I can’t say that I recall anything in particular.”
“Any portraits?” Aunt Adeline inquired. “I love faces.”
“So do I,” Charlotte agreed. “As long as they are not idealized so that all the flaws are removed. I often think the true character lies in those lines and proportions that depart from the classic—where the individuality is revealed, and the marks of experience.”
“How perceptive of you,” Aunt Adeline said with sudden pleasure, and for the first time she looked with interest directly at Charlotte. Charlotte realized at once what a vivid creature lived inside the thin, rather quaint exterior. How shallow to judge from smooth, conventional looks, like Sonia Asherson’s. Instinctively her eyes went to Felix. How trivial of him to have preferred a bland creature like Sonia rather than someone unconventional but full of feeling, like Harriet.
But perhaps he didn’t. She had no right to assume he was happy; anything might lie behind Felix’s polished manners and elusive face. This was another line of thought altogether, Charlotte reminded herself, and nothing to do with Veronica York, or Robert’s death.
“It was so kind of Mrs. York to invite me to accompany her,” Charlotte repeated a little abruptly. She must keep the conversation to the point. “Do you know, does she paint? I like portraits, but I love those delicate watercolor pictures some travelers make so clearly and with such sensitivity that you can imagine yourself there. I recall some wonderful pictures of Africa; I could almost feel the heat on the stones, so well was it drawn.” They were all looking at her now; right round the table their faces were turned towards her. Sonia Asherson was clearly surprised at her sudden garrulity, while Felix seemed amused; Harriet was looking but not listening, her thoughts elsewhere; Garrard gazed at Charlotte politely. Only Aunt Adeline had a brightness in her eyes that followed her sentiment. Jack was uncharacteristically silent. Apparently he was going to leave the field to her.
It was Julian who answered.
“I don’t think she does paint. We’ve never spoken of it.”
“Have you known her long?” Charlotte asked, trying to be artless, and wondered immediately if she had been too blunt. “I imagine in the diplomatic service you must have traveled?”
“Not to Africa,” he said with a smile. “But it is something I should like to do.”
“Far too hot!” Felix said with a grimace.
“I can understand you’d rather not,” Aunt Adeline said with a sharp glance at him, “but it might be an excellent thing all the same!”
Harriet caught her breath. Her fingers round the stem of her wineglass were so tight the knuckles paled. In that instant a dozen memories flooded back to Charlotte of how she had felt before she had met Thomas, when she was still in love with Dominic, her eldest sister’s husband. She remembered the agonizing fear, the hopelessness of being left out, the wild moments of imagined intimacy, a glance, an accidental touch, the singing heart when he seemed to take extra care speaking to her, the tenderness she thought she saw, and underneath it all the cold, sane despair. But she would not have dreamed of marrying anyone else, no matter what efforts her mother made. Was this not what she was seeing now in Harriet’s lowered eyes, pale lips, and hot cheeks?
“He did not say he would rather not, Aunt Addie,” Julian corrected. “He said it was far too hot. I presume he meant for Veronica to accompany me.”
Aunt Adeline dismissed the idea with scorn. “Nonsense! Some Englishwoman, I forget her name, went up the Congo all by herself. I’d love to do that!”
“What an excellent idea,” Garrard said waspishly. “Shall you go in the summer or the winter?”
She looked at him with bright eyes of disgust. “It is on the Equator, my dear, so it hardly matters. Don’t they teach you anything in the Foreign Office?”
“Not how to row up the Congo in a canoe,” he retorted. “It doesn’t seem to serve any purpose. We leave it to spinster ladies, who, according to you, have a taste for it.”
“Good!” she snapped. “You had better leave us something!”
Jack came to the rescue. He turned to Julian. “I knew Mrs. York several years ago, before her marriage to Robert, but I can’t remember whether she was interested in travel, and of course one may change. I daresay marrying into the Foreign Office will have broadened her knowledge, and perhaps her ambitions.”
Charlotte silently blessed him, and composed her face into an expression of great interest. “Was Mr. York a traveler?”
There was a moment’s silence. A knife clinked on someone’s plate. Out in the hall a servant’s footsteps sounded quite clearly.
“No,” Julian replied. “No, I don’t believe he was, although I did not know him well. I came to the department in the Foreign Office only a couple of months before his death. Felix knew him better.”
“He liked Paris,” Sonia Asherson said suddenly. “I remember him saying so. I wasn’t at all surprised; he was such a charming man, elegant and witty. Paris would be bound to please him.” She looked at her husband. “I wish we could go abroad sometimes, to somewhere sophisticated like that. Africa would be terrible, and India only marginally better.”
Charlotte looked at Harriet, and this time she was almost sure her guess was right. The dark, hollow look in her eyes, the aura of loss surrounding her was exactly what Charlotte herself had once felt when Sarah and Dominic had talked quite lightly of moving away. Yes, Harriet was in love with Felix Asherson. Did he know it? Dominic had never had the faintest idea of the turmoil he had caused in his sister-in-law, the agony, the embarrassment or the idiotic dreams.
She looked at Felix Asherson, but he was staring at the white damask cloth in front of him.
“I shouldn’t anticipate anything,” he answered her irritably. “I can’t imagine any circumstance in which I should be sent to any part of Europe, except perhaps Germany. All the interest in my department is with the empire, particularly Africa and who colonizes where. And if I went there it would be on business. I should be there and back in weeks, and most of the time would be spent on the voyage.”
Harriet was still too absorbed in trying to hide her feelings from the company to say anything. Garrard was leaning backwards in his chair, admiring the sparkle of the wine in his glass as the light from the chandelier caught it. A little self-consciously elegant, Charlotte decided, although she felt there was more emotion behind that highly individual face than she had first imagined—deeper lines round the mouth, a sharper curve to the lips, gestures that told of control mastering an inner restlessness. He was not as unlike Adeline as he had seemed at first.
“I must ask Mrs. York about Paris,” she said, smiling dazzlingly at no one in particular. “I have never traveled, and I daresay I will not have the opportunity, but I love to hear about other people’s experiences.”
“Mostly experiences of barbarous food and plumbing that doesn’t work.” Garrard looked at her with irony. “A much overrated occupation, I assure you, Miss Barnaby. You will usually be too hot or too cold, someone will mislay your baggage, the Channel crossing on the steamer will make you ill, and once you reach Calais you will not understand a word anyone says.”