The Man from St. Petersburg by Ken Follett

Charlotte. “Walk forward, using your right hand to loop the train over your left arm as you go.”
    “It works.” Charlotte smiled. When she smiled, you could feel the glow. She used to be like this all the time, Lydia thought. When she was little, I always knew what was going on in her mind. Growing up is learning to deceive.
    Charlotte said: “Who taught you all these things, Mama?”
    “Your uncle George’s first wife, Belinda’s mother, coached me before I was presented.” She wanted to say: These things are easy to teach, but the hard lessons you must learn on your own.
    Charlotte’s governess, Marya, came into the room. She was an efficient, unsentimental woman in an iron-gray dress, the only servant Lydia had brought from St. Petersburg. Her appearance had not changed in nineteen years. Lydia had no idea how old she was: Fifty? Sixty?
    Marya said: “Prince Orlov has arrived, my lady. Why, Charlotte, you look magnificent!”
    It was almost time for Marya to begin calling her “Lady Charlotte,” Lydia thought. She said, “Come down as soon as you’ve changed, Charlotte.” Charlotte immediately began to unfasten the shoulder straps which held her train. Lydia went out.
    She found Stephen in the drawing room, sipping sherry. He touched her bare arm and said: “I love to see you in summer dresses.”
    She smiled. “Thank you.” He looked rather fine himself, she thought, in his gray coat and silver tie. There was more gray and silver in his beard. We might have been so happy, you and I … Suddenly she wanted to kiss his cheek. She glanced around the room: there was a footman at the sideboard pouring sherry. She had to restrain the impulse. She sat down and accepted a glass from the footman. “How is Aleks?”
    “Much the same as always,” Stephen replied. “You’ll see—he’ll be down in a minute. What about Charlotte’s dress?”
    “The gown is lovely. It’s her attitude that disturbs me. She’s unwilling to take anything at face value these days. I should hate her to become cynical .”
    Stephen refused to worry about that. “You wait until some handsome Guards officer starts paying attention to her—she’ll soon change her mind.”
    The remark irritated Lydia, implying as it did that all girls were the slaves of their romantic natures. It was the kind of thing Stephen said when he did not want to think about a subject. It made him sound like a hearty, empty-headed country squire, which he was not. But he was convinced that Charlotte was no different from any other eighteen-year-old girl, and he would not hear otherwise. Lydia knew that Charlotte had in her makeup a streak of something wild and un-English which had to be suppressed.
    Irrationally, Lydia felt hostile toward Aleks on account of Charlotte. It was not his fault, but he represented the St. Petersburg factor, the danger of the past. She shifted restlessly in her chair, and caught Stephen observing her with a shrewd eye. He said: “You can’t possibly be nervous about meeting little Aleks.”
    She shrugged. “Russians are so unpredictable.”
    “He’s not very Russian.”
    She smiled at her husband, but their moment of intimacy had passed, and now there was just the usual qualified affection in her heart.
    The door opened. Be calm, Lydia told herself.
    Aleks came in. “Aunt Lydia!” he said, and bowed over her hand.
    “How do you do, Aleksey Andreyevich,” she said formally. Then she softened her tone and added: “Why, you still look eighteen.”
    “I wish I were,” he said, and his eyes twinkled.
    She asked him about his trip. As he replied, she found herself wondering why he was still unmarried. He had a title which on its own was enough to knock many girls—not to mention their mothers—off their feet; and on top of that he was strikingly good-looking and enormously rich. I’m sure he’s broken a few hearts, she thought.
    “Your brother and your sister send their love,” Aleks was saying, “and ask for your