Belgrave Square (38 page)

“How very kind of Mrs. Carswell,” she said with an edge to her voice, gazing at him very directly. “Surely the most precious of all virtues, don’t you think?”

Odelia looked at her in amazement. The remark was totally uncalled for and she was confused by the vehemence of it, in fact by the making of it at all.

“Why—er—indeed,” Carswell said uncomfortably. “Yes—to be sure.”

Charlotte realized she had spoken unaccountably, but she had left herself nowhere to retreat.

“Was not Miss Hilliard at the Royal Academy exhibition?” she said apropos of nothing, simply to fill the silence.

“Indeed?” Odelia seized the straw to join in. “We also were there—” Suddenly she realized how the “we” was no longer true in the way it had been then, and her voice died away, thick with unhappiness, her face flushed.

“There were some very fine pictures, don’t you think?” Charlotte was not insensitive to her pain; indeed she felt a pity for it which surprised her with its depth. She merely wanted to cover it for her so it was not added to by being public. “There was one of a bowl of lilies I found especially attractive.”

“I don’t recall it.” Fitz dragged his attention back with an effort.

That was hardly surprising since Charlotte had invented it for something to say. However she now proceeded to describe the mythical picture in detail, and it carried over the time until everyone began to recover themselves and conversation resumed as normal. A few minutes later dinner was announced and they parted to find the person with whom they had been assigned to enter the dining room. It would be unpardonable to go in with the wrong person. It would throw everything out of order and be a social gaffe of the worst sort. There was the strictest etiquette in such things, and Charlotte went in on the arm of Peter Valerius.

At the table Emily had granted Charlotte’s request, and she was seated between Addison Carswell, on her left, and Lord Byam to her right.

The first course was soup; the second fish, a choice of
deviled whitebait or smelts. She picked delicately at it. Ladies were not expected to be able to eat everything served them, and indeed with the stays which were obligatory to attain the required figure, a waist of so many inches according to one’s age, much eating would have been impossible.

Conversation was only slight to begin with, and upon the usual trivialities of style, theater, the weather and other inconsequential matters. Charlotte looked under her lashes first at Carswell, who was still pale. She observed that his hand with the fork raised to his lips shook very slightly. Then she turned her attention to Lord Byam, who was quite composed, at least on the outside. Whatever deep fears were troubling him, he had mastered his demeanor so that a relative stranger like herself could see nothing in his manner to betray it.

The entrées were served: curried eggs, sweetbreads or quenelles of rabbit. The remove course was simply iced asparagus.

With the game course the mood was changed quite suddenly and completely when Aunt Vespasia with casual innocence looked up from her plate and asked of the table in general:

“Does anyone know how poor Horatio Osmar is faring? It seems extraordinary to me, but I believe he is to sue the police for perjury, or something of the sort. Can that really be true?”

Charlotte slid the asparagus across her plate and nearly upset her wine.

Beside her Carswell was absolutely motionless, his fork in the air.

Fitz seemed unaware of any strain. Either that, or he was far more subtle than his manner suggested, or his charming, artless smile.

“Good gracious. I didn’t know you could do such a thing. Wouldn’t that open the door for anyone charged with an offense to suggest the police were lying?” His fair eyebrows rose. “The courts would never settle any charge at all, they would be so busy with claims and counterclaims as to who was telling the truth and who was not.” He looked at Carswell. “You are a magistrate, sir; don’t you agree?”

“I am afraid—” Carswell swallowed hard. “It—it is a
subject upon which it would be improper for me to express an opinion.”

At the far end of the table Drummond apparently did not hear them.

“But your opinion would be most interesting, and surely the most informed,” Fitz protested. He looked around. “After all, who else among us knows about the law in such matters? But you are an expert.”

Fanny Hilliard’s face was very pink. She looked across at Carswell and there was anguish in her eyes, a sort of fierce, protective pain.

“I think what Mr. Carswell means is that it would be profoundly unethical for him to comment,” she said quickly but very distinctly. She avoided Fitz’s eyes.

Fitz heard the sharpness in her voice and he did not understand it. A shadow crossed his face but he continued with a light, easy voice, looking at Carswell.

“Oh is it? Are you involved with the case?”

Carswell at last put his fork down. He was very pale.

“Yes—yes I am. It was I who first heard the case.”

“Good gracious,” Vespasia said mildly, her eyebrows arched very high. “Will you be called to give an opinion as to whether the police were lying or not?”

“I have no way of knowing, Lady Cumming-Gould.” He was beginning to regain his composure at last. “It would be quite pointless to ask me.”

“I don’t see how anyone can know, except the police themselves, and Osmar,” Peter Valerius said with a twisted smile on his lips. “And they all have very considerable vested interests in the matter. What I don’t understand is why he chose to contest it at all. Why didn’t he just admit that he was behaving like a fool, and get it over with quietly, pay a small fine, which he would well afford, and be a bit more discreet in future?”

“It is a matter of reputation,” Carswell said sharply. “The man has been charged publicly with indecency. It is not something most men would care to have said about them, surely you can understand that, sir? He is defending his reputation, which any Englishman has a right to do.”

“I beg to disagree, sir.” Valerius said it politely, but his face held none of the mildness of his words; his eyes were
bright and the muscles of his jaw hard. “Immeasurably more people will hear of it now that he has chosen to contest it than ever would have had he merely paid the fine, and I don’t believe that his taking up battle over it will change anyone’s mind at all.” He leaned forward a little. “Those who thought the police corrupt will have their beliefs confirmed, and those who thought the judiciary corrupt or inefficient in the face of privilege will retain that opinion.”

His smile was full of sharp-edged humor. “The whole issue will be not whether Horatio Osmar was being vulgar on a park bench with a woman no one had ever heard of, or cares about except in principle, but whether our police and our judiciary are honest and efficient or not. And that, I think, is a question it were better not to raise.”

“Sir!” Carswell exploded, his face bright pink. “You go too far!”

Peter Valerius’s face barely changed expression. Only his eyebrows rose a little, and his voice remained perfectly level.

“Because it will cause a number of fears which are quite unfounded,” he continued, “but for which we have no effective proof that will calm those doubts once they have been disturbed.” A shadow of a smile crossed his face again and his eyes met Carswell’s.

Carswell could not justifiably sustain his anger. He had leaped to a hasty and mistaken conclusion, but the offense was still hot and hard inside him. Charlotte wondered briefly and with a mixture of pity and resentment whether it was some guilt of his own that made him defend where there had been no attack.

She glanced at Peter Valerius again, found his clever eyes watching her, and knew he had seen the reflection of a new thought across her mind.

She turned to Carswell.

“Do you think Mr. Osmar will succeed in his suit against the police?” she asked with interest.

Carswell composed himself with an effort and turned to her with all the politeness he could manage.

“I have no idea, Mrs. Pitt. It is something at which I could make no guess of value.”

“He has powerful friends.” Vespasia regained the conversation
with a stiff face reflecting her disapproval. “They may exert influence on his behalf.”

Byam turned to her with slight surprise. “Surely that is natural, Lady Cumming-Gould? Would not anyone in such a position seek all the assistance available?”

“I do not know.” The ghost of a smile crossed her silvergray eyes. “I have never known anyone else in such a position. It seems both indiscreet to ask one’s friends to defend one in such a matter, and unjust to attempt to malign the integrity of those who enforce the law, and have more than enough difficulty as it is.”

“A novel view,” Byam said thoughtfully, not exactly in criticism, but certainly not in agreement.

Valerius looked at her with new and sharpened regard. It was obvious in his face that quite suddenly she had assumed a different role; one to be taken seriously, even admired.

Carswell was still uncertain. He glanced at Byam, then at Vespasia, and ended by saying nothing.

“I hope, for the sake of the rest of us, that your view prevails,” Charlotte said clearly, looking at Vespasia. “If the police are blackened in public esteem any further, it will destroy confidence in them to a degree where their efficiency, perhaps even their existence, will be jeopardized.”

“I am sure your fears are unfounded, Mrs. Pitt,” Carswell said stiffly. “I beg you, do not disturb yourself.”

And from there the conversation became more general. The sweet course was served, and then the ices.

Finally after the fruit—pineapples, cherries, apricots and melons—the ladies excused themselves and retired to the withdrawing room to sit and discuss polite trivialities and exchange purely frivolous gossip. The men remained around the table to pass the port and smoke, and speak of the subjects that were too contentious or intellectual to be aired while the ladies were present.

When the gentlemen rejoined them again Charlotte found herself listening to Peter Valerius. They had begun to speak of usury, with Carswell still in their company. Charlotte had hoped it might produce some emotional response which she could judge, but Carswell had left them and the conversation had somehow turned to international finance.

“It is still usury,” Valerius said with an intensity that held
her attention in spite of her lack of interest in the subject. “A powerful industry invests in a small, backward country, a part of the empire, for example in Africa.” He leaned towards her, his face sharp with the strength of his emotion. “The people begin to prosper, as there is work for many of them. They are able to sell their goods and in exchange buy imported luxuries, for which they soon develop not only a taste, but a dependence. Perhaps it even includes the raw materials or the machinery necessary for their new industry.”

She could see no connection to the wretchedness of personal usury, and he must have observed it in her face. He resumed with greater urgency, his voice demanding her attention.

“The parent company expands the business, promising even better trade. The small country accepts. Suddenly life is better than they have ever known it. They have luxuries undreamed of before.”

“Is that not good?” She sought to understand, but the cause of his anger eluded her.

“And the country is utterly dependent on the industry, and those who govern it,” he continued, now oblivious of the rest of the room. Even Odelia’s skirt brushing his elbow and thigh as she passed behind his back made no impression on him at all. She apologized and he did not hear her. He leaned closer to Charlotte. “Suddenly the price is altered. They pay less for the goods the country produces, they charge more for the materials they supply. The rate of interest on the money borrowed is increased. The small country is in difficulties. Profits disappear. They need more money to service their needs and keep the industry surviving. The loans are increasingly expensive. Perhaps they cease altogether, and then they have to turn to venture capital.”

He must have seen from Charlotte’s expression that she had no idea what that was.

“Instead of simply lending money at a rate of twenty percent, or so,” he explained, his voice hard-edged, his face pale, “the rate of interest is higher, much higher, and the lender also demands one-third ownership in the business itself—forever.”

“But that’s monstrous,” she protested. “It’s … usury!”

A bitter smile lit his face.

“Of course it is!” he agreed. “Not man to man, but industry to nation. A few score profit, and tens of thousands suffer.”

She nearly asked why people allowed such a thing to happen, but the answer was already in what he had told her. She sat for several minutes digesting in her mind what he had said, and he sat in front of her, watching her face, knowing he had no need to add anything further.

While Charlotte was absorbed with Peter Valerius, Micah Drummond was standing apart, next to the enormous curtains that hung swathed across the windows at the entrance to the balcony and the steps down to the garden. He found the chatter almost impossible to concentrate on and the small snatches of gossip and opinion were insufferable when so much clamored in his mind: doubts so ugly they stifled everything else that entered his thoughts; doubts about himself, his actions and judgments of the past, his motives of the present; his own honesty; and dark, crowding fear for the future.

The room was full of lights. The chandeliers glittered pendant from the ceiling, their crystal facets winking in the barest movement of air. Lights burned from all the gas brackets on the walls. Diamonds sparkled around throats, on arms and in hair, even on slender wrists, waved to emphasize a remark. Reflected light glanced from polished tables and on silver and in glass.

The soft buzz of voices was interrupted by laughter, the chink of goblets. It all looked so gay and unshadowed. But he longed to go outside to the solitude and the concealing darkness of the summer garden, where his face would not be read, no one else saw or remembered who spoke to whom, and where at least for a while he could be alone.