“I promise.” She giggled a little wildly. “Although it would be awfully difficult to explain, wouldn’t it? What on earth should I say I was doing in their conservatory dressed in a hideous gown and a black wig, screaming my head off, when I was supposed to be upstairs with the vapors?”
“I should have to say you’d taken leave of your wits,” he agreed with a very twisted grin. “But better that than dead—and whoever it is has already killed three times.”
Her laughter suddenly stopped, becoming tight in her throat. Bitter tears sprang to her eyes.
“It will be four, with Thomas,” she said.
She made her assignations by letter, using as few words as possible, and leaving them unsigned. She had no idea what Cerise’s handwriting looked like, nor what her real name was. She used expensive notepaper, wrote only the time and place, and instead of sealing the letters in an envelope, she tied each one with a broad piece of ribbon in a vivid, almost painful magenta. It was the best she could do.
Emily had written to her banker and provided money so Charlotte could purchase the dress and the wig, and Jack had taken them to Hanover Close, posing as a coalman this time and carrying coke inside to the kitchen for them. How he arranged it Charlotte never knew, and she was too preoccupied with her own preparations to ask.
That evening she dressed in a very simple smoke gray and white gown of Emily’s, judiciously let out by Emily’s maid. It was not nearly as flattering on Charlotte with her darker complexion and mahogany hair as it had been on Emily’s apple-blossom fairness, but it had the one merit Charlotte was looking for now: it was very easy to get in and out of. She dressed her hair with the minimum of fuss, so it could be squashed flat under a wig without removing a hundred pins first. The result did not make her look her most attractive, but it could not be helped. Jack was tactful enough to refrain from commenting, although his face registered slight surprise, quickly replaced by a smile and a wink.
They arrived at Hanover Close a few minutes late, as was the acceptable thing to do, and were handed down from the carriage onto the icy pavement. Charlotte took Jack’s arm up the steps and into the lighted hall. As the door was closed behind them she felt a moment’s panic, then forced herself to think of Pitt, and said rather too effusively, “Good evening, Mrs. York, how kind of you to invite us.”
“Good evening, Miss Barnaby,” Loretta replied with far less enthusiasm. “I hope you are well? Our city winter is not disagreeing with you?”
Only just in time Charlotte remembered that she was going to be taken ill after dinner. She chose her words carefully. “I do find it—a trifle different. There is a very little pleasure walking in the streets here, and the snow seems to get dirty so quickly.”
Loretta’s eyebrows rose in faint surprise. “Indeed? I have never considered walking.”
“It is very good for the health.” Charlotte managed to sound agreeable without actually smiling.
In the withdrawing room Veronica was standing by the hearth in a very fine gown of black and white, looking considerably more composed than the last time they had met. She welcomed Charlotte with what seemed like genuine pleasure, especially when she saw her very indifferent gray gown.
The usual greetings followed and Charlotte was relieved to see that everyone the plan required was present: Harriet looking pale; Aunt Adeline in an unfortunate dress of vivid brown, which made her eyes the more startling; Loretta in salmon pink, her bodice stitched with pearls at once individual and utterly feminine. But far more important, the men were there: Julian Danver, smiling with candid directness; Garrard Danver, elegant, more elusive than his son, quick of wit, and she thought perhaps more original. Piers York was there as well, welcoming her with the sincerity that is a mixture of long practice and genuine awareness of privilege and its responsibilities. Good manners were as natural to him as rising early, or eating all the food on his plate. He had been taught them in the nursery and now they were ineradicable.
With Jack’s help, Charlotte devoted her mind to the usual trivial conversation that preceded dinner. Dinner itself was quite ordinary; the talk meandered from one unimportant topic to another. It was an uneven party in that there were four unmarried women present and only three unmarried men, one of them being Garrard Danver, who could have no possible romantic interest in his daughter or his sister, and presumably not in Veronica, who was shortly to become his daughter-in-law. Since he was twenty-five years Charlotte’s senior, she would have been most unlikely to have been paired with him in anyone’s mind, even supposing he had any desire to remarry. And of course Jack was assumed to be her first cousin and therefore unsuitable.
Nevertheless Loretta was a skilled hostess. Tonight she seemed to be using all her very considerable charm and poise to strike a perfect balance between dominating the company and making everyone else feel at their best. If she tried a little harder than usual, or if her hand gripped the stem of her wineglass so her knuckles were momentarily bloodless, perhaps it was her daughter-in-law who had given her very real cause for anxiety. She could not be blamed if she was nervous in case, even at this point, Veronica should show some trace of the hysteria, the willfulness, or the latent jealousy so ugly to any man, and which had come through her fragile exterior so very lately in the imagined privacy of her bedroom.
Since it was such a small company and the hour was a little later than usual for the end of dinner, Jack rather boldly suggested that they not separate but all retire to the withdrawing room together. He did not even glance at Charlotte: he was playing his part to perfection.
It was time Charlotte took her cue. Everyone was rising to leave, the table was littered with half empty dishes and crumpled napkins. The gas in the chandeliers was hissing gently and the flowers underneath them looked waxy white, artificial; they must have come from the conservatory.
Charlotte felt ridiculous now that the time had come. There had to be a better way. It would never work—they would see right through her, and there would be nothing for Jack to do except say she was mad. Nursing the sick aunt had turned her wits!
“Miss Barnaby, are you all right?” It was Julian Danver’s voice coming to her out of a mist.
“I—I beg your pardon?” she stammered.
“Elisabeth, are you ill?” Veronica came back to her, her face full of concern.
Charlotte wanted to laugh—she had created the desired effect without even trying. She heard her own voice answering automatically. “I do feel a little faint. If I might go upstairs for half an hour, I’m sure I shall recover. I just need to rest for a short while. It’s really nothing.”
“Are you sure? Shall I come with you?” Veronica offered.
“No, please—I should feel most guilty dragging you from your party. Perhaps your maid ...” Was she being too obvious? They were all staring at her—perhaps the whole charade was perfectly transparent. Did anybody really behave like this?
“Of course,” Veronica agreed and the words were such a relief Charlotte could feel the blood rush back into her face and she felt like laughing. They would put her down as a hysteric! For goodness sake, she must get out of the room and upstairs.
“I’ll call Amelia,” Veronica said quickly, going to the bell. “If you are quite sure?”
“Oh yes!” Charlotte said too loudly. “Quite!”
Five minutes later Charlotte was upstairs in Emily’s small, cold attic bedroom. She looked at Emily, and pulling a face, she slipped out of the gray and white dress. Emily presented her with the glowing dress of almost violent cerise.
“Oh Lord!” Charlotte closed her eyes.
“Come on,” Emily urged. “Get into it. You’ve already made up your mind; don’t waver now.”