Cardington Crescent Read online

  “Come in,” she said hazily. George was still in the dressing room; there was no need to think of privacy. “Come in, Millie.”

  The door opened and Millicent swept in, balancing the tray on one hand while closing the door behind her. She then carried the tray to the dresser and put it down.

  “What a mess there is in that there upstairs pantry, m’lady,” she said, pouring the tea carefully. “Never seen anything like it. One moment everybody’s there; the next, kettle’s filling the ’ole place wi’ steam and not a soul to take it off. Such a fuss, all ’cause ’is lordship likes coffee instead o’ tea—although I don’t know ’ow ’e can drink it first thing. Anyhow, Albert took it to ’im quarter of an hour since an’ saw ’e ’d got that little dog of Mrs. March’s lying up there, too. Taken a proper fancy to ’is lordship, it ’as. Makes the old lady ever so cross.” She came over and held out the cup.

  Emily sat up, took it, and began to sip. It tasted hot and clean. Already the day felt promising.

  “What’d you fancy to wear this morning, m’lady?” Millicent drew the curtains briskly. “’Ow about the apricot muslin? Right pretty shade, that is. And not everyone as can get away with it. Makes some look sallow.”

  Emily smiled. Millicent had obviously made up her mind.

  “Good idea,” she agreed. “Is it warm outside?”

  “It will be, m’lady. And if you’re going calling this afternoon, what about the lavender?” Millicent was full of ideas. “And the white wi’ the black velvet trim this evening. Very fashionable, that is, and ever such a good swish to it when you walk.”

  Emily conceded, finished the tea, and got up to begin her morning toilette. Today everything had an air of victory about it.

  When she was ready and Millicent had gone, she went to the dressing room door and knocked. There was no answer. She hesitated, on the point of knocking again, but suddenly becoming self-conscious. What was there to say except good morning? She should not behave like a simpering bride! She would only embarrass George and make herself ridiculous. Far better to be natural. Anyway, he had not answered; no doubt he was already downstairs.

  But there was no sign of him in the breakfast room. Eustace was as usual, moon-faced and beaming with good health. He had thrown the windows open, as was his habit, regardless of the fact that the room faced west and was decidedly chilly. His plate was piled high in front of him with sausages, eggs, deviled kidneys, and potato. His napkin was tucked in his waistcoat, and round him on the table were a rack of crisp toast, a dish of butter, the silver cruet of condiments, and the milk, sugar, and silver Queen Anne coffeepot.

  Old Mrs. March was taking breakfast in bed, as usual. Other than that, everyone was present except George—and Sybilla.

  Emily’s heart sank and all her happiness was cut off like a candle flame someone has pinched. Her hand felt numb on the back of the chair as she pulled it out, and when she went to lift the device for slicing the top off the boiled egg the parlormaid placed in front of her, she fumbled and had to steady herself. She had not dreamed it—George had quarreled with Sybilla. The nightmare was over. Of course, things would not be repaired between them instantly. It would take a little while, maybe even two or three weeks. But she could manage that—easily.

  “Good morning, my dear,” Eustace said in exactly the same tone he used every day. “I trust you are well?” It was not a question, merely an acknowledgment of her arrival. He did not wish to hear about women’s indispositions; they were both uninteresting and indelicate—especially in the morning, when one wished to eat.

  “Very,” Emily said aggressively. “I hope you are also?” The question was totally unnecessary in view of the abundance upon his plate.

  “Most certainly I am.” His eyes widened under his short, rounded eyebrows. He let his breath out through his nose with a slight sound, and his glance flickered over the rest of the table: Vespasia eating a boiled egg delicately and silently; Tassie looking as pale as her freckles and flaming hair would allow, shadows under her eyes; Jack Radley staring at Emily, brow furrowed, two spots of color on his cheeks; and William, his whole body tight, his face pinched, and his hands gripping his fork as if it were a life belt someone might jerk away from him. “I am in excellent health,” Eustace reiterated with a note of accusation.

  “I’m so glad.” Emily was determined to have the last word. She could not fight Sybilla and she did not want to fight George. Eustace would serve very well.

  Eustace turned to Tassie. “And what do you intend to do with the day, my dear?” Before she could reply, he continued. “Compassion is most desirable in a young woman. Indeed, your dear mother, may the Lord rest her, was always about such things.” He reached for the toast and buttered a pile absently. “But you have other duties as well—to your guests, for a start. You must make them feel welcome. Of course, your home is primarily an island of peace and morality where the shadows of the world do not penetrate. But it should also be a place of comfortable entertainment, seemly laughter, and uplifting conversation.” He disregarded Tassie’s growing discomfort as if he were totally unaware of it, as indeed perhaps he was. Emily loathed him for his sheer blindness.

  “I think you should take Mr. Radley for a carriage ride,” he went on, as if the idea had suddenly occurred to him. “It is excellent weather for such a thing. I am sure your grandmother Vespasia will be happy to accompany you.”

  “You are nothing of the kind!” Vespasia snapped. “I have my own calls to make this afternoon. Tassie is welcome to come with me, if she likes, but I shall not go with her. No doubt she would find Mr. Carlisle of interest—as would Mr. Radley, if he cares to come as well.”

  Eustace frowned. “Mr. Carlisle? Is he not that most unsuitable person who occupies himself in political agitations?”

  Tassie’s head came up in immediate interest. “Oh?”

  Eustace glared at her.

  Vespasia did not quibble over the description, but her cool, dove gray eyes met Emily’s for an instant with a flash of memory, images of excitement, of appalling poverty and murder, and Emily found herself blushing hotly as the much closer thought of yesterday evening in the conservatory returned. She had begun by telling Jack Radley of precisely that same affair in which she had met Somerset Carlisle.1

  “Most unsuitable,” Eustace said irritably. “There are better ways of serving the unfortunate than making an exhibition of oneself trying to undermine government and alter the whole foundation of society. The man is quite irresponsible, and you should know better than to involve yourself with him, Mama-in-law.”

  “Sounds fascinating.” Jack Radley looked away from Emily for the first time and towards Vespasia. “Which particular foundation is he working on at the moment, Lady Cumming-Gould?”

  “Suffrage for women,” Vespasia replied immediately.

  “Ridiculous!” Eustace snorted. “Dangerous, time-wasting nonsense! Give women the vote and heaven only knows what kind of Parliament we’d have. Full of hotheads, and revolutionaries, I shouldn’t wonder—and incompetents. The man is a threat to all that makes England decent, all that has created the Empire. We raise great men precisely because our women preserve the sanctity of the home and the family.”

  “Stuff and nonsense,” Vespasia said smartly. “If women are as decent as you suppose them, they will vote for members who will uphold exactly what you value so much.”

  Eustace was thoroughly angry. He controlled himself with a visible effort. “My dear, good woman,” he said between his teeth, “it is not your decency that is in question, it is your sense.” He took a deep breath. “The fairer sex are designed by God to be wives and mothers; to comfort, to nurture and uplift. It is a high and noble calling. But they do not have the minds or the fortitude of temperament to govern, and to imagine they have is to fly against nature.”

  “Eustace, I told Olivia when she married you that you were a fool,” Vespasia replied. “And over the years you have given me less and less reason to revise my op
inion.” She dabbed her lips delicately with her napkin and stood up. “If you think I am an unsuitable chaperone for Tassie, why don’t you ask Sybilla to accompany her. Presuming she gets out of her bed in time.” And without even glancing behind her she swept from the room, the parlormaid opening the doors and closing them behind her.

  Eustace’s face was scarlet. He had been insulted in his own domain, the one place in the world where he was the absolute authority and should have been inviolable.

  “Anastasia! Either your sister-in-law or your grandmother March will accompany you.” He swung round. “You, Emily, will not. You are scarcely better than your great-aunt. Such of your past behavior that I know of has been deplorable, but that is George’s problem. I will not have you misguiding Tassie.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Emily snapped back with a blinding smile. “I’m sure Sybilla is much better suited to be an example to Tassie as to how a decent and modest woman should behave than I could ever be.”

  Tassie choked into her handkerchief; Jack Radley tried frantically to find something to occupy himself with looking at, and failed. William, white to the lips, rose awkwardly, dropping his napkin and rattling his cup in its saucer.

  “I’m going to work,” he said brusquely, “while the light is so good.” Without waiting for comment he left.

  Emily was sorry: by allowing her temper to reveal her own pain she had also hurt William. He must be feeling somewhat the same as she was; confused, rejected, terribly alone, and above all, humiliated. But to seek him out and apologize now would only make it worse. There was nothing to do but pretend not to have noticed.

  She forced down enough of her breakfast to make it appear she was quite normal. Then she excused herself and went determinedly upstairs to find George and demand he exercise at least discretion, even if he could not or would not exercise morality.

  She knocked briskly on the dressing room door and waited. There was no answer. She knocked again, then when nothing happened, turned the handle and went in.

  The curtains were open and the room full of sunlight. George was still in bed, the sheets rumpled, the morning coffee tray sitting on the table, obviously used. In fact, there was an empty saucer on the floor near the foot of the bed where he must have shared his coffee with the old lady’s spaniel.

  “George!” Emily said angrily. She did not even wish to think what he had been doing all night that he was still asleep at nearly ten in the morning. “George?” She was standing beside the bed now, staring down at him. He looked very white, and his eyes were sunken as though he had slept badly, if at all. In fact he looked ill.

  “George?” Now she was undeniably frightened. She put out her hand and touched him.

  He did not move. There was not even a flutter of the eyelids.

  “George!” She was shouting, which was ridiculous. He must be able to hear her; she was shaking him roughly enough to waken anyone.

  But he was motionless. Even his chest did not seem to rise and fall.

  Appalled, her mind already guessing at the impossible and terrified of it, she ran to the door, wanting to cry out for someone—but whom?

  Aunt Vespasia! Of course. Aunt Vespasia was the only one she could trust, the only one who cared for her. She flew down the stairs and across the hall, almost pitching into a startled housemaid, and threw open the morning room door. Vespasia was writing letters.

  “Aunt Vespasia!” Her voice was shaking, and was far louder than she had intended. “Aunt Vespasia, George is ill! I can’t wake him! I think—” She took a choking breath. She could not form the words that would make it real.

  Vespasia turned from the rosewood desk where her paper and envelopes were spread, her face grave.

  “Perhaps we had better go and see,” she said quietly, laying the pen down and rising from the chair. “Come, my dear.”

  Heart pounding, scarcely able to swallow for dread of what she would find this time, Emily followed her back up the stairs to the landing with its peony-patterned curtains and bamboo jardinière full of ferns. Vespasia tapped smartly on the dressing room door and, without waiting, opened it and walked over to the bed.

  George was exactly as Emily had left him, except that now she saw the white stiffness of his face more clearly and wondered how she could ever have deceived herself into imagining he was alive.

  Vespasia touched his neck gently with the backs of her fingers. After a moment she turned to Emily, her face weary, her eyes brimming with sorrow.

  “There is nothing we can do, my dear. I think, from my very little knowledge, it was his heart. I daresay he felt little beyond a moment. You had better go to my room, and I will send my maid to help you while Millicent gets you a stiff brandy. I must go and tell the household.”

  Emily said nothing. She knew George was dead, and yet she could not grasp it—it was too big. She had experienced death before; her own sister had been murdered by the Cater Street Hangman.2 Everyone was used to loss: smallpox, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, all were commonplace, and too frequently bringers of death—as was childbirth. But it was always someone else. There had been no warning of this—George had been so alive!

  “Come.” Vespasia put her arm round Emily’s shoulder and without Emily’s realizing it she was walking along the landing again past the ferns and into Vespasia’s room, where her lady’s maid was making the bed.

  “Lord Ashworth is dead,” Vespasia said frankly. “He appears to have had a heart attack. Will you stay with Lady Ashworth, please, Digby. I will send someone up with a stiff brandy, and inform the household.”

  The maid was an elderly North Country woman, bright of face, broad of hip. In a lifetime of service she had seen many bereavements and suffered a few of her own. She made only the briefest of replies before taking Emily gently by the arm, sitting her on the chaise longue with her feet up, and patting her hand in a fashion which at any other time would have annoyed her profoundly. Now it was human contact and absurdly reassuring, a memory of safety more real than the sunlight in the room, the elaborate Japanese silk screen with its cherry blossom, the lacquer table.

  Vespasia left the room and went downstairs slowly. She was filled with grief—most of all for Emily, of whom she was deeply fond, but also for herself. She had known George since he was born. She had watched him through childhood and youth, and she knew both his virtues and his faults. She did not condone all he did by any means, but he was generous, tolerant, quick to praise others, and within his own parameters, honest. The obsession with Sybilla was an aberration, a piece of stupid self-indulgence which she did not forgive.

  But none of that altered the fact that she had loved him, and she felt a profound sorrow that he should have been robbed of life so young, barely yet half her own age.

  She opened the breakfast room door. Eustace was still at the table with Jack Radley.

  “Eustace, I must speak with you immediately.”

  “Indeed.” He was still nursing his affront and his face was cold. He made no move to stand up.

  Vespasia fixed Jack Radley with a glance, and he saw that there was something deeply wrong. He rose, excused himself, and left, closing the door behind him.

  “I would be obliged, Mama-in-law, if you would be more courteous to Mr. Radley,” Eustace said with ice in his voice. “It is very possible he may marry Anastasia—”

  “That is extremely unlikely,” Vespasia cut him off. “But that is far from important at the moment. I am afraid George is dead.”

  Eustace swung round, his face blank. “I beg your pardon?”

  “George is dead,” she repeated. “He appears to have had a heart attack. I have left Emily in my room with my maid. I think you had better call the doctor.”

  He drew breath to say something, but found it inadequate. The normally ruddy color had vanished from his face.

  Vespasia rang the bell, and as soon as the butler appeared she spoke to him, disregarding Eustace.

  “Lord Ashworth has had a he
art attack in the night, Martin, and he is dead. Lady Ashworth is in my room. Will you send someone up with a stiff brandy. And call the doctor—discreetly, of course. There is no need to put the house into an uproar. I myself will inform the family.”

  “Yes, my lady,” he said gravely. “May I say how extremely sorry I am, and I am sure the rest of the staff will wish me to say the same on their behalf.”

  “Thank you, Martin.”

  He bowed his head and left.

  Eustace stood up awkwardly, as if he were suddenly rheumatic.

  “I will tell Mama. It will come as a terrible shock to her. I don’t suppose there’s anything that can be done for Emily, poor creature?”

  “I expect I shall send for Charlotte,” Vespasia answered. “I admit, I feel most distressed myself.”

  “Of course you do.” Eustace softened a fraction. After all, she was well over seventy. But there was another thought uppermost in his mind. “I really don’t think we need to send for her sister. I gather she is a rather unfortunate creature, whose presence would be anything but helpful. Why not send for her mother? Or better yet, take her back to her mother, as soon as she feels well enough to travel. Surely that would be the kindest thing to do.”

  “Possibly,” Vespasia said very dryly. “But Caroline is on the Continent, so for the time being I shall send for Charlotte.” She fixed him with such a glare the protest died on his lips. “I shall dispatch my carriage for her this afternoon.”

  Vespasia left the room and went back upstairs. There was one more duty to perform, which was bound to be arduous. And because, in spite of the young woman’s inexcusable behavior over the last few weeks, she was fond of Sybilla, she wanted to tell her herself rather than let her hear from the servants—or worst still, from Eustace.

  She knocked on the bedroom door and opened it without waiting for a reply. The breakfast tray, finished with, sat on the side table. Sybilla was propped up in the large bed, lace-edged shawl thrown carelessly round her, peach satin nightgown sliding a little off one pale shoulder, and her black hair coiled at the nape of her neck and falling over her shoulder and down her bosom. Even at a moment such as this, Vespasia was struck by what a beautiful woman she was. It was a little overpowering.