London Calling by Anna Elliott

invitation, but she turned to her niece. “I should be delighted,” she said slowly. “Susanna, we have no other plans, have we?”
    Susanna was studying again the hard, handsome face of Mrs. Careme, eyes now wide and innocent, lips stretched in a bland smile.
    She had come here hoping to gain information. Which would, of necessity, take time‌—‌since she could hardly march up to Charlotte Careme and demand to be told whether James had made her acquaintance under another name.
    Especially since, even on first sight, she instinctively trusted Mrs. Careme approximately as far as she would be able to throw her.
    “We have no other dinner engagements at all.” Susanna smiled brightly in Mrs. Careme’s direction. “Thank you so much for inviting us.”
    Mrs. Careme nodded slightly in reply. The Admiral rubbed his hands together.
    “Capital, capital. We’ll have a regular party. I didn’t mention it before, but I have a surprise for all of you.” He looked round the room. “I’ve invited a pair of guests to stay here with us for a few days. A Major Haliday. Major Haliday and his wife, Helen.”
    There was a brief, electric silence. Though why it should have been electric, Susanna could not see. The announcement, on the face of it, had been ordinary enough. But someone in the room‌—‌though she could not even tell who‌—‌had been surprised‌—‌no, more than that, shocked and dismayed by the news.
    She looked round at the other three for some sign in one of their faces, but could find none. Marianne looked merely sullen, while Miss Fanny’s face held nothing more than a mild, faintly anxious frown. Mrs. Careme’s look was as smooth and glassily poised as ever, lips faintly curved, lids lowered to veil her eyes.
    And yet from someone in the room she had caught the sound of a sharply indrawn breath, and felt the sudden quiver of tension.
    Miss Fanny was the first to break the silence. “Two more guests? Staying here? Really, Charles, I do think you might have told me. It makes for a good deal of extra work and . . .”
    “Don’t fuss, Fanny,” Admiral Tremain cut in tolerantly. “There’s no need for you to do anything. We’ve extra bedrooms‌—‌may as well use them, that’s what I say.”
    “That’s all very well for you to say.” Miss Fanny’s voice was fretful. “But the servants . . .”
    “Oh, bother the servants.” All at once, the Admiral was impatient. “The servants will have to lump it, that’s all. What do I pay them for, I’d like to know?”
    “When did you say the Halidays will be arriving?” Mrs. Careme’s voice was quiet, but Susanna looked at her sharply. Her eyes were still hidden, but there was something a little rigid about her‌—‌a fixed, frozen quality to her graceful pose that had not been present before‌—‌and the long, slim fingers clenched around the stem of her glass as she waited for Admiral Tremain’s response.
    The Admiral, though, noticed nothing amiss. “They should be coming any minute now. I said sometime this morning. Why—” He broke off, as a bell pealed in some distant part of the house. “Why, that must be them, now.”
    Again there was that brief, electric silence, charged with a tension Susanna didn’t understand. The next moment, the door opened, and a powdered footman stepped in.
    “Major and Mrs. Brooke Haliday.”
    A couple entered, and paused in the doorway, the man fair-haired and handsome, with a weak, dissipated face and slightly petulant mouth, the woman dark, statuesque, and intense. They stood there, and, with a jolt of shock, Susanna recognized the couple from the night before whose bitter quarrel behind the pillar she had inadvertently overheard.

Chapter 7
    “A handsome couple, wouldn’t you say?” Susanna jumped. She had, without meaning to, been staring across the room at the Halidays, and now Mrs. Careme’s voice at her shoulder made her turn.
    It was evening. Susanna and Aunt Ruth had