Rutland Place by Anne Perry Page B

around the gatepost and up the steps to her own front door. She was there before the footman had seen them to open it, and was obliged to wait. She shifted from foot to foot, and once actually turned to stare back into the road.
    “Mama, has someone accosted you in the street?” Charlotte asked, touching her arm.
    “No, of course not! It’s just—” She shook herself angrily. “I have the feeling that I am not alone, even when it would appear in every way that I am. There is someone I cannot see but who I am perfectly sure can see me.”
    The door opened and Caroline swept in, with Charlotte behind her.
    “Close the curtains please, Martin,” she said to the footman.
    “All of them, ma’am?” His voice rose in surprise. It was still daylight for another two hours, and perfectly pleasant.
    “Yes, please! In all the rooms that we shall occupy.” Caroline removed her coat and hat and gave them to him; Charlotte did the same.
    In the withdrawing room Grandmama was sitting in front of the fire.
    “Well?” She surveyed them up and down. “Is there any news?”
    “Of what, Mama?” Caroline asked, turning toward the table.
    “Of anything, girl! How can I ask for news of something if I do not know what it is? If I already knew it, it would not be news to me, would it?”
    It was a fallacious argument, but Charlotte had long ago discovered the futility of pointing that out to her.
    “We called upon Mrs. Charrington and Miss Lagarde,” she said. “I found them both quite delightful.”
    “Mrs. Charrington is eccentric.” Grandmama’s voice was tart, as if she had bitten into a green plum.
    “That pleased me.” Charlotte was not going to be bested. “She was very civil, and after all that is the important thing.”
    “And Miss Lagarde—was she civil too? She is far too shy for her own good. The girl seems incapable of flirting with any skill at all!” Grandmama snapped. “She’ll never find herself a husband by wandering around looking fey, however pretty her face. Men don’t marry just a face, you know!”
    “Which is as well for most of us.” Charlotte was equally acerbic, looking at Grandmama’s slightly hooked nose and heavy-lidded eyes.
    The old woman affected not to have understood her. She turned toward Caroline icily. “You had a caller while you were out.”
    “Indeed?” Caroline was not particularly interested. It was quite usual for at least one person to visit during the afternoon, just as she and Charlotte had visited others; it was part of the ritual. “I expect they left a card and Maddock will bring it in presently.”
    “Don’t you even wish to know who it was?” Grandmama sniffed, staring at Caroline’s back.
    “Not especially.”
    “It was that Frenchman with his foreign manners. I forget his name.” She chose not to remember because it was not English. “But he has the best tailor I have seen in thirty years.”
    Caroline stiffened. There was absolute silence in the room, so thick one imagined one could hear carriage wheels two streets away.
    “Indeed?” Caroline said again, her voice unnaturally casual. There was a catch in it as if she were bursting to say more and forcing herself to wait so her words would not fall over each other. “Did he say anything?”
    “Of course he said something! Do you think he stood there like a fool?”
    Caroline kept her back to them. She took one of the daffodils out of the bowl, shortened its stalk, and replaced it.
    “Anything of interest?”
    “Who ever says anything of interest these days?” Grandmama answered miserably. “There aren’t any heroes anymore. General Gordon has been murdered by those savages in Khartoum. Even Mr. Disraeli is dead—not that he was a hero, of course! Or a gentleman either, for that matter. But he was clever. Everyone with any breeding is gone.”
    “Was Monsieur Alaric discourteous?” Charlotte asked in surprise. He had been so perfectly at ease in Paragon Walk, good manners innate in his