Bedford Square by Anne Perry

mouth softening. “I am glad.” For an instant, almost too short to be certain she saw it, there was passionate regret in his eyes. Then he took a breath. “I gather that you like him?”
    “Yes, I do, and Mama is very happy, although she has changed a good deal. She has the acquaintance now of people she would never have imagined knowing a few years ago. And I am afraid some of her earlier friends no longer call, and even turn the other way if they encounter her in the street.”
    A flicker of amusement touched his mouth. “I can imagine it.”
    The door opened and Lady Augusta Balantyne stood in the entrance. She looked magnificent, her dark hair piled in a great swirl on her head, the silver streaks making it look even more dramatic. She was dressed in lilac and gray in the height of fashion and wore a very fine amethyst necklace and earrings. She regarded Charlotte with cold distaste.
    “Good morning, Mrs. Pitt. I assume I am addressing you correctly?” This was a sarcastic reminder that when Charlotte had first entered their house it had been ostensibly to assist the General with some clerical work on his memoirs, and she had used her maiden name to disguise her connection with Pitt and the police.
    Again Charlotte felt the blush warm her cheeks. “Good morning, Lady Augusta. How are you?”
    “I am perfectly well, thank you,” Augusta replied, coming farther into the room. “I presume it is not mere civility which brings you here to enquire after our well-being?”
    This was an icy impasse. There was nothing to do but brazen it out. There was little room to make it any worse.
    Charlotte smiled brightly. “Yes, it is.” Everyone would know that was a lie, but no one could call it so. “It was only yesterday I realized that we were near neighbors.”
    “Ah … the newspapers,” Augusta said with immeasurable contempt. Ladies of breeding or gentility did not read the newspapers except for the society pages and the advertisements. And Charlotte might once have had an element of breeding, but she had married a policeman, and that had disposed of any pretensions to gentility now.
    Charlotte raised her eyebrows very high. “Was your address in the newspapers?” she said innocently.
    “Of course it was!” Augusta said. “As you know perfectly well, some unfortunate wretch was murdered on our doorstep. Don’t be disingenuous, Mrs. Pitt. It ill becomes you.”
    Balantyne flushed hotly. Like most men, he loathed emotional confrontations, and those between women most of all. But he had never flinched from his duty.
    “Augusta! Mrs. Pitt came to express her sympathy for our misfortune in that issue,” he said critically. “I assume she knew of it from Superintendent Pitt, not from the newspapers.”
    “Do you!” Augusta retorted with equal chill towards him. “Then you are very naive, Brandon. But that is your own affair. I am going to call upon Lady Evesham.” She turned to Charlotte. “I am sure you will be gone when I return, so I shall wish you good day, Mrs. Pitt.” And she turned with a swirl of skirts and went out of the door, leaving it open behind her.
    Balantyne went over and closed it with a sharp snap, to the obvious surprise of the footman standing in the foyer and holding Augusta’s cape.
    “I’m sorry,” Balantyne said with profound embarrassment. He did not offer any explanation or attempt to make better of it. Any candor between them would be shattered by such a denial of the truth. “It was …”
    “Probably well deserved,” she finished for him ruefully. “It was rather clumsy of me to have come at all, and I had no idea what I was going to say, except that I feel for you, and I hope you will consider me as your friend, regardless of what should transpire.”
    He looked thoroughly taken aback by such frankness, and acutely pleased. “Thank you … of course I shall.” He seemed about to add something more, then changed his mind. He was still deeply troubled, and there was