Pentecost Alley

3

EMILY RADLEY, Charlotte’s sister, about whom she had been concerned, was indeed dispirited. It was not a specific problem. She had everything she considered necessary to be happy. Indeed, she had more. Her husband was charming, handsome, and treated her with affection. She was unaware of any serious fault in him.

When they had met he had been well-born, living largely on his value as a lively, delightful companion and guest, his exquisite manners and his ready wit. Emily had been fully aware of the risks entailed in falling in love with him. He might prove shallow, spendthrift, even boring after the first novelty had passed. She had done it just the same. She had spent many hours telling herself how foolish she was, and that there was even a high possibility he sought her primarily for the fortune she had inherited from her first husband, the late Lord Ashworth.

She smiled as she thought of George. Memory was very powerful, a strange mixture of sadness, loss, sweetness for the times that had been good, and a deliberate passing over of those which had not.

All her fears had proved groundless. Far from being shallow, Jack had developed a social conscience and a considerable ambition to effect changes in society. He had campaigned for a seat in Parliament, and after his first defeat had returned to battle, and at the second attempt had won. Now he spent a considerable amount of his time, and his emotions, in political endeavor.

It was Emily herself who seemed a little trivial, a little spendthrift.

Edward, her son and George’s heir, was in the schoolroom with his tutor, and baby Evangeline was upstairs in the nursery, where the maid was caring for her, seeing to the laundry, the feeding, the changing. Emily herself was largely unnecessary.

It was late in the morning and Jack had long since departed to the City to various engagements before the House of Commons met. Watching him fight for his selection, then campaign, lose, and campaign again, she had gained a respect for him which added very greatly to her happiness. He was consolidating his position with skill.

So why was she standing in the sun in the great withdrawing room in her lovely town house, dressed in lace and coffee-colored tussore, and feeling such a sense of frustration?

Edward was in the schoolroom. Evie was upstairs in the nursery. Jack was in the City, no doubt fighting for reform of some law he believed outdated. Cook would be with the butler preparing luncheon; they would not need to serve dinner tonight. Emily and Jack were due to dine out. She had already asked her maid to prepare her clothes for the occasion. She had a new silk gown of dark forest green trimmed with ivory and pale gold flowers, which complemented her fair skin and hair. She would look beautiful.

She had seen the housekeeper. The accounts were attended to. Her correspondence was up to date. There was nothing to say to the butler.

She wondered what Charlotte was doing. Probably something domestic, cooking or sewing. Since Pitt’s promotion she could afford more help, but there was still much she was obliged to attend to herself.

What about Pitt? His world was completely different. He would be investigating a crime, perhaps only theft or forgery, but possibly something much darker. His problems would be urgent, to do with passions, violence, greed. He would be using the skill and imagination he possessed, working until he was exhausted, seeking to unravel the tangle of events and find the truth, to understand the good and the evil, to bring some sort of justice to it, or at least a resolution.

In the past she and Charlotte had helped him. In the pursuit of the Hyde Park Headsman they had contributed a great deal.

She smiled without being aware of it. The sunlight streamed through the long windows onto a bowl of late delphiniums—the second blooming—catching their blue and purple spires. It had taken Jack a little while to forgive her for the risks she had run in that affair. She could hardly blame him. She could have been killed. She had known better than to offer any excuses, just apologies.

If only something would arise in which she and Charlotte could help again. Lately she had hardly even seen Pitt. Since his promotion he seemed to have been involved in cases which concerned more impersonal crimes, crimes whose motives lay outside her world, such as the treason in the Foreign Office just a month or two ago.

“What are we having for luncheon?” a querulous voice demanded from behind her. “You haven’t bothered to tell me. In fact, you don’t tell me anything! I might as well not be here.”

Emily turned around to see the short, black figure of her grandmother standing just inside the doorway from the hall. The old lady had been obliged to move from her own home when Emily’s mother had remarried, and since Charlotte had not room for her, and Emily had abundant room and means, there had been no reasonable alternative. It was not an arrangement either of them cared for, Emily because the old lady was extraordinarily ill-tempered, and the old lady because she had determined that she would not, on principle. It was not her own choice.

“Well?” she demanded.

“I don’t know what is for luncheon,” Emily replied. “I left it to Cook to decide.”

“Seems to me you don’t do anything around here,” the old lady snapped, coming forward into the room, leaning heavily on her cane, banging it down. It was a border-painted wooden floor, and she disapproved of it. Too ornate, she said. Plain wood was quite good enough.

She was dressed entirely in black, a permanent reminder to everyone—in case they should forget—that she was a widow, and should be regarded and sympathized with as such.

“Cook rules your kitchen, housekeeper runs your servants,” she said critically. “Butler runs your pantry and cellar. Ladies’ maid decides what you’ll wear. Tutor teaches your son, nursemaid looks after your daughter. All that done for you, and you still cannot find time to come and talk to me. You are thoroughly spoilt, Emily. Comes of marrying above your station first, and beneath it next. I don’t know what the world’s coming to.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” Emily agreed. “You never did know much about it. You assumed one half and ignored the other.”

The old lady was aghast. She drew herself to her full, but negligible, height.

“What did you say?” Her voice was shrill with indignation.

“If you wish to know what is for luncheon, Grandmama, ring down to the kitchen and ask. If you would care for something different, I expect they can accommodate you.”

“Extravagance!” The old lady clicked her teeth disapprovingly. “Eat what’s put in front of you, in my day. It’s a sin to waste good food.” And with that parting shot she turned and stumped out of the room. Her heavy feet echoed on the polished parquet of the hallway. At least this way they had avoided discussing Caroline’s latest whereabouts, and the general selfishness of her having remarried and thrown everyone’s lives into consequent disarray. Nor had there been another diatribe about actors in general, or Jewish actors in particular, and how they were, if such a thing were possible, socially even more of a disaster than policemen. The only thing good about it, in the old lady’s vociferous opinion, was that at least at Caroline’s age there would be no children.

No doubt at least one, if not all, of these subjects would arise over the luncheon table.

Emily spent the afternoon writing letters, more for something to do than any necessity, and then went upstairs to spend a little time in the nursery with Evie, and then with Edward. She heard from him of his latest lessons and his elaborate plans to build a model castle like the one the Knights Templar had built in the Holy Land during the Crusades.

Jack came home a little after five. He had been in the City all day, but there was still a spring in his step when he came into the withdrawing room, leaving the door swinging behind him.

“Excellent day,” he said enthusiastically, bending to kiss her brow and touch her hair gently. “I think I might really have got old Fothergill on my side. I had luncheon with him today. I took him to that new restaurant in the Strand. More expensive than it was worth, but the decor is gorgeous, and he was suitably impressed.” He sat sideways on the arm of one of the chairs, letting his leg swing.

“The thing is,” he went on, “he actually listened to me. I was explaining about the importance of non-fee-paying education for the whole population as an investment in the industrial base….”

Jack had been fighting to obtain better education for the poor ever since his entry into Parliament. Emily had watched its future wax and wane.

“I’m very pleased.” She was pleased, but she found it hard to invest her smile with as much delight as she should have. “Maybe he’ll make a difference.”

She dressed for the evening with great care, as a matter of self-esteem, and at half past eight was seated at an enormous dinner table between a large military gentleman with very forthright opinions on India, and a merchant banker who firmly believed that women were totally uninterested in anything except fashion, gossip and the theater, so confined his conversation accordingly.

Opposite her was a man of about thirty whose sole preoccupation was the breeding of fine bloodstock, but next to him was a most unusual-looking young woman whose nose was a trifle too long, her mouth a little wide and her expression one of such humor and vitality that Emily found herself staring at her often enough to catch her eye and let her know that they had exactly the same thoughts of exasperation and boredom at the same moment.

Jack was nearer the head of the table, as a matter of political duty, wooing people of influence who might be of further assistance with the education bill. It was important to Emily also, but the only part she could play here was to be decorative and charming, and the idea of doing that indefinitely was wearing very thin.

The dining room was sumptuously decorated in French blue and gold. The long windows were curtained in velvet, displayed in rich folds skirted out over the floor in the approved fashion, to show a wealth of fabric. The table glittered with silver and crystal. So many facets gleamed and glinted, it dazzled the eyes. One could barely see the faces of the people at the farther end for the reflected lights. Diamonds sparked fire around white throats and the luster of pearls shone softly.

Silver on porcelain clicked discreetly beneath the buzz of conversation. Footmen refilled glasses. Course after course came and went: entrées, soup, fish, removes, pudding, dessert, fruits. And then finally the hostess rose and invited the ladies to retire and leave the gentlemen to their port and the more serious discussions of the evening. It was, of course, the purpose for which they had come.

Obediently Emily rose and followed the ladies out in a rustle and swirl of gorgeous colored skirts. On the way she managed to fall in step with the young woman who had sat opposite her at the table.

She glanced sideways and caught her eye as they crossed the hallway and entered the ornate withdrawing room, decorated with portraits of family ancestors posed against unreal rural scenery.

“Isn’t it ghastly?” the young woman whispered, raising her fan so her words were concealed from the ladies to their left.

“Fearful!” Emily whispered back. “I have never been more bored in my life. I feel as if I know what everyone is going to say before they say it.”

“That is because it is exactly what they said last time!” the young woman replied with a smile. “Oscar Wilde says it is the artist’s duty always to be surprising.”

“Then it must be the politician’s duty always to say and do precisely what is expected of him,” Emily returned. “That way no one is ever caught off guard.”

“And nothing is ever interesting, or funny! My name is Tallulah FitzJames. I know we haven’t been introduced, but we obviously know each other in spirit.”

“Emily Radley,” Emily replied.

“Oh, is Jack Radley your husband?” There was a spark of appreciation in her eye.

“Yes,” Emily acknowledged with satisfaction, then added honestly, “I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

They walked over to a sofa just large enough for the two of them to sit side by side and be perfectly polite in including no one else.

“I can’t think why I’m here!” Tallulah sighed. “I am with my cousin, Gerald Allenby, because he wanted me to, so he could pay court to Miss … I forget the name. Her father’s got a huge place up in Yorkshire or somewhere. Glorious in the summer, and like the North Pole in winter.”

“I’m here to be decorative and smile at the right people,” Emily said ruefully.

Tallulah’s eyes brightened. “Are you allowed to glare and make faces at the wrong people?” she said hopefully.

Emily laughed. “Possibly, if I could only be sure who they were. The trouble is one day’s wrong people are another day’s right ones. And you can’t take back a glare.”

“No, you can’t, can you.” Tallulah was suddenly serious. “In fact, you can’t take back anything much. People remember, even if you don’t.”

Emily caught the note of pain underneath the light voice. Without warning, there was reality in the emotion. The rest of the room fell away from Emily’s consciousness, the polite chatter, the tinkle of appropriate laughter.

“Some people forget,” she said quietly. “It’s an art. If you want to go on loving someone, you have to learn it.”

“I don’t want to go on,” Tallulah said with a tight little smile of self-mockery. “I’d give a great deal to know how to stop.”

Emily asked the next and obvious question. “Is he married?”

That seemed to Tallulah to be funny, in a bitter way.

Emily did not want to pry, but she sensed that the other woman had a need to share something which obviously hurt her and which perhaps she could not speak of to her family. They might not know … or if they did, maybe they disapproved. If he were married, they could hardly do anything else.

“No, he’s not married,” Tallulah answered. “At least he wasn’t the last time I saw him. I don’t imagine he’ll ever marry. And if he does, it will be someone earnest and beautiful, with innocent eyes and hair which curls naturally, and a permanently sweet disposition.”

Emily thought about it for a moment. She did not want to make a clumsy remark, and it was not easy to read through the flippant words the true nature of Tallulah’s pain. She did not know whether to be witty in return, or to be noncommittal, or to show that she saw the depth if not the totality of the wound.

Over on the far side of the room a large woman with fair hair and magnolia skin tilted her head back and laughed daintily. The gaslight shone in a riot of beautiful colors, silk skirts spread out like poppy petals, oranges and plums and shot lavenders, a glory of gleam and shade. Beyond the windows the summer evening was barely dark, an afterglow still shooting shreds of apricot between the branches of the trees above the garden wall.

“I don’t think I should like to be married to someone with a permanently sweet disposition,” Emily said candidly. “I should feel intensely inferior. And I should also never be quite sure if they meant what they said.”

Tallulah stared at her long, slender hands resting on her skirt.

“Jago wouldn’t feel inferior,” she replied. “He’s the best man I’ve ever met.”

Emily was at a loss to answer that. Jago, whoever he was, sounded like a bore, and more than a little unreal. Or perhaps that was unjust? It could be only the way Tallulah saw him. But looking sideways at Tallulah’s unhappy face, it was hard to believe she would find someone she saw as so good of the slightest interest, except as a curiosity. Even deep in thought, her own face was full of vitality and daring. Her mouth was too wide, full of humor, her nose too strong and yet utterly feminine. Her eyes were lovely, wide and intelligent. It was the face of a rebel, unpredictable, far from wise, perhaps self-indulgent, but always brave.

“Best at what?” Emily asked before she thought clearly of her words.

Tallulah smiled in spite of herself.

“Best at honor, and caring for people, real people,” she answered. “And at working all the hours there are, at giving away his goods to feed the poor, at giving his whole life in service. If he sounds boring, or unlikely, that’s only because you don’t know him.”

“Are you sure you do?”

Tallulah looked up. “Oh, yes. He’s a parish priest in Whitechapel. I haven’t been there, of course. It’s the most fearful place. They say even the smell is enough to turn your stomach. Open middens everywhere. You can taste them in the air. All the people are dirty, and thin, and terribly poor.”

Emily thought of her own experiences with poverty, the times she had helped Charlotte or Pitt and seen the reality of hunger: people crowded ten or twelve to a room, sleeping on the floor, always cold, without privacy even for the most intimate functions. She knew far better than Tallulah what they were speaking of. Perhaps this Jago really was good.

“How do you know him?” she said aloud. “He’s not exactly your circle. I can’t see him at something like this.” Her eye strayed to the giggling women, their corseted waists, their flowing skirts, their gleaming white shoulders and necks colored with gems. If anyone here had gone hungry, it would be for vanity’s sake. But to be fair, at least in the unmarried ones among them, beauty was survival.

“He used to be,” Tallulah responded. She looked at Emily frankly. “You think I’m seeing him through a romantic haze, don’t you? That I have no idea what the real person is like … that I only see his calling and his professional self.” She shook her head. “That’s not true. He’s the same age as my brother, Finlay, and they used to be friends. Finlay’s older than I am. Eight years. But I can remember Jago coming to the house often when I was about sixteen, just before I came out into society. He used to be awfully sweet to me then.”

“But he isn’t now?”

Tallulah looked at her with bitterness.

“Of course not. He’d be polite if we chanced to meet, naturally. He’s polite to everyone. But I can see the contempt in his eyes. The very fact that he speaks at me, through a glass wall of good manners, as if I’m not a real person to him at all, says just how he despises me.”

“Why should he despise you? Isn’t that pretty intolerant?”

Tallulah’s face set into misery again, losing all its brightness and courage.

“Not really. Perhaps ‘despise’ is too strong a word. He just has no time for me. I spend my life indulging myself. I go from one party to another. I eat wonderful food which I don’t work to buy; I don’t even cook it myself.” She lifted one elegant shoulder. “To be frank, I don’t even know where it comes from. I simply order it from the kitchen and it arrives, on the plate ready for me to eat. And when it’s finished someone removes it and does whatever they do. Wash it, put it away, I suppose.”

She smoothed her hands over the silk of her skirt, her fingertips caressing the soft, bright fabric.

“And I wear gorgeous dresses, which I don’t make, and I wouldn’t begin to know how to care for,” she went on. “I even have a maid to help me put them on and take them off. She sends them to the laundry maid, who washes them, except the best ones, like this, which she will do herself. I think some of them even have to be unpicked to be cleaned properly, I’m not sure.”

“Yes, they do,” Emily told her. “It’s a very long job.”

“You see?”

“No. Lots of people live like that. Don’t you like it?”

Tallulah’s head came up, her mouth pressed into a thin line, her eyes fixed on Emily’s.

“Yes, I do. I love it! Of course I love it. Don’t you? Don’t you want to dine and dance, look beautiful, spend your time in beautiful places, watch plays and laugh with witty people? Don’t you want to be outrageous at times, lead fashion, say shocking things and spend time with marvelous people?”

Emily knew exactly what she meant, but she could not help smiling and allowing her eyes to wander to the group of staid and very proper ladies a dozen feet away who were sitting upright—a necessity in whalebone corsets—and discussing in hushed voices the very minor improprieties of an acquaintance.

“Perhaps his idea of marvelous people is not the same as yours?” she suggested.

“Of course it isn’t,” Tallulah said sharply, although the flash of humor in her face betrayed that she took the point. “I think Oscar Wilde is marvelous. He is simply never, ever a bore, and never speaks down to one, except artistically, which is quite different. And he is sincerely insincere, if you know what I mean?”

“I’ve no idea,” Emily confessed, waiting for an explanation.

“I mean …” Tallulah searched for words. “I mean … he does not delude himself. There is no pomposity in him. He is so preposterous you know that he is laughing at everything, and yet it all matters intensely. He’s … he’s fun. He never goes around trying to improve other people or making moral judgments, and his gossip is always witty, and entertaining to repeat, and does no harm.” She looked around the room. “This is so … crashingly tedious. Not one person has said a single thing worth remembering, let alone recounting to anyone else.”

Emily was obliged to agree.

“So what is it about Jago that holds you? From what you say, he is as unlike Mr. Wilde as it would be possible to be.”

“I know,” Tallulah admitted. “But then I like to listen to Oscar Wilde. I wouldn’t ever want to marry him—that’s quite different.”

Perhaps she did not realize what she had said. Emily looked at her and saw the earnestness in her face, the self-mockery lying just beneath it, and realized whether she had intended to speak it aloud or not, it was what she meant.

“I don’t know why,” Tallulah went on. “I don’t think I want to know why.”

They were prevented from discussing the matter any further by the arrival of the gentlemen. Jack looked very serious. He came in, deep in conversation with a heavily whiskered man with a ruddy complexion and the scarlet ribbon of an order across his chest. He glanced at Emily, held her eyes, then continued on. That moment was intended to convey that he could not be interrupted, and she understood.

She also understood nearly an hour later when he came over and told her, with much apology, that he was obliged to leave the party early and go to the Home Office with the gentleman of the whiskers, and he would leave the carriage for her to return home when she wished. She should not wait up for him, as he could not say when his business might be concluded. It was just conceivable that it might last all night. He was very sorry indeed.

So it was that twenty minutes later, so bored that it was difficult for her to make sensible answers to trivial questions, she was delighted to see Tallulah FitzJames again.

“I can’t bear this anymore,” Tallulah said in a whisper. “My cousin is apparently succeeding with Miss Whatever-her-name-is and I can safely leave him to enjoy his victory.” Her tone suggested how little she thought that was worth. “Reggie Howard has invited me to go to a party he knows of in Chelsea. The sort of people we were talking about will be there, artists and poets, people of ideas. They’ll discuss all manner of things.” Now she was full of enthusiasm. “Some of them have been to Paris and met the writers there. Indeed, I heard that Arthur Symons is just back, a month or two ago, and could tell us of his meeting with the great Verlaine. It has to be immeasurably more interesting than this!”

It was clearly an invitation, and Emily hesitated. She ought simply to excuse herself and take her own carriage home. She had acquitted her duty and it would be acceptable.

But she was weary of doing her duty to those who expected it and were barely aware of her. She was not needed by Jack or her children. The house ran itself; her decisions were merely a matter of form. She was asked only out of politeness. The cook, the butler and the housekeeper would all do precisely the same whether she was there or not. Her mother was remarried and far too absorbed in her own happiness to need either company or counseling.

Even Charlotte had not needed or wanted her help lately. Pitt had not had a case in which they could assist. She did not even know what he was involved with at the moment.

But Tallulah FitzJames had a grief to which she might offer some very good advice. It was there on the edge of her tongue as she thought about it. The answer was a matter of priorities and inner honesty. No one could have everything, and somehow choices needed to be made. One should make them with candor and courage, and then have the sense to see that one accepted the decision and realized the consequences.

And it might be great fun to hear what was going on in Paris, in the way of outrageous ideas.

“How exciting,” she said with decision. “I should love to come.”

“Reggie will take us,” Tallulah said instantly. “Come on, Reggie. Do you know Mrs. Radley? The Honorable Reginald Howard.” And without waiting for them to do more than nod to each other, she led the way to their hostess to say their farewells, and Emily sent her own carriage home without her.

The party in Chelsea was as different from the event they had left as it was possible to conceive. It was held in several rooms, all of them large, filled with books and comfortable chairs and chaise longues. The air was hazy with smoke, some of which had the peculiar sweetness of incense, quite unfamiliar to Emily. Everywhere people, a far greater preponderance of men than women, were engaged in intense conversation.

The first man Emily noticed individually had a dreaming face, large nose, humorous eyes and small, delicate mouth. His hair seemed fair in the gaslight, and he wore it long enough to touch the white, lace-edged collar of his velvet jacket.

“I think that’s Richard Le Gallienne,” Tallulah whispered. “The writer.” She looked ahead to where another earnest young man, wavy hair parted in the center, rich mustache decorating a full upper lip, was describing something to his audience to their entranced delight. “And that’s Arthur Symons,” she went on, her voice rising eagerly. “He must be telling them about Paris. I hear he met simply everyone there!”

They were welcomed very casually by a middle-aged woman with powerful features, dressed in garb which could have come straight from an artist’s impression of an Eastern traveler. It was flattering, but highly eccentric. She held a cigar in one long-fingered hand and seemed to know Tallulah, and therefore to be happy to accommodate anyone who accompanied her.

Emily thanked her, then gazed around with interest and a touch of apprehension. A large potted palm nearly obscured a corner of the room, where two young men sat so close to each other they were all but touching. One of them appeared to be reading to the other out of a very thin, leather-bound volume. They were oblivious of everyone else.

On a chaise longue near the farther wall a middle-aged man with a florid face was either asleep or insensible.

Arthur Symons was holding forth about his recent trip to Paris, where he had indeed visited Paul Verlaine.

“We went to his home,” he said excitedly, gazing at his audience, “where we were most cordially received … Havelock Ellis and myself. I wish I could describe to you the atmosphere, everything I saw and heard. He entertained us with the last wine, all the while he smoked like a bonfire. I swear I shall never smell smoke again without it bringing to my mind that evening. Imagine it!” He held up his hands as if grasping a whole world, precious and complete.

Everyone within earshot was staring at him. No one made the slightest move to leave.

His face glowed with the rapture of the moment, although Emily wondered whether it was memory which burned so hotly in him or delight at being so absolutely the center of interest and the envy of his peers.

“Havelock and I sitting in the home of Verlaine himself. How we talked! We spoke of all manner of things, of philosophy and arts and poetry and what it is to be alive. It was as if we had always known each other.”

There was a murmur around the small circle, a sigh of admiration, perhaps of longing. One young man seemed almost intoxicated by the very thought of such an experience. His fair face was brightly flushed and he leaned forward as if by being in such close proximity he could touch or feel it for himself.

“He invited us to return the following day,” Symons continued.

“And of course you did!” the young man said urgently.

“Of course,” Symons agreed. Then a curious expression crossed his features, anger, laughter, sorrow. “Unfortunately, he was not in.”

Beside Emily someone drew in her breath sharply.

“We left in the utmost dejection,” Symons went on, looking even now as if some tragedy had just struck him. “It was appalling! Our dreams crashed to the ground, the cup broken the very instant it was at our lips.” He hesitated dramatically. “Then at the very moment we were leaving … we encountered him returning with a friend.”

“And …?” someone prompted vaguely.

Again the mixture of emotions crossed Symons’s face. “He had not the faintest idea who we were,” he confessed. “He had forgotten us completely.”

This tale was greeted with a mixture of responses, including a gasp of amazement from Reggie Howard and an outburst of laughter from Tallulah.

But Symons had their attention, and that was all he required. He went on to describe in minute, witty and most colorful detail their earlier visits to cafés, theaters, concerts and various salons. They visited several artists and made a long trip out to the suburbs, where they went to the workshop of Auguste Rodin, who barely spoke to them—or to anyone else.

Utterly different, and holding his audience to even more rapt attention, was the tale of his visit to the Café Moulin Rouge, colorful, hectic and seedy, with its music and dancers, its mixture of high and low society. He told them of his encounter with the brilliant and perverse Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, who painted the cancan girls and the prostitutes.

Emily was fascinated. It was a world of which she had barely dreamed. Of course she knew the names—everyone did, even if some of them were spoken in a whisper. They were the poets and thinkers who defied convention, who set out to shock, and usually succeeded. They idolized decadence, and said so.

From listening to Arthur Symons, she moved into the next room and eavesdropped on a conversation between two young men who seemed oblivious of her—an experience she had not had before, at least not at a party in her circle where politeness was exercised, often in defense of very obvious truth, and compliments were the usual currency of exchange.

This was outside all she knew, and invigorating because of it. No one mentioned the weather or who was courting whom. Politics need not have existed, or bankers or royalty either. Here it was all art, words, sensations and ideas.

“But he wore green!” one young man said in horror, his face twisted as if he suffered physical pain. “The music was the most obviously purple I have ever heard. All shades of indigo and violet, melting into darkness. Green was absolutely so insensitive! So utterly devoid of understanding.”

“Did you say anything to him?” the other asked quickly.

“I tried,” was the reply. “I spent ages with him. I explained all about the interrelationship between the senses, how color and sound are part of each other, how taste and touch combine, but I really don’t think he understood a word.” He gestured intensely with his hands, fingers spaced and then clenched. “I wanted him to grasp a complete art! He is so one-dimensional. But what can one do?”

“Shock!” his companion said instantly. “With something so sublime he will be forced to reconsider everything he has ever believed.”

The first man dashed the heel of his hand against his brow.

“But of course! Why didn’t I think of that? That’s what dear Oscar says: the first duty of the artist is continually to astonish.”

His friend leaned forward.

“My dear! Did you read Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine last month?”

Both of them were completely unaware of Emily, a bare six feet away.

The young man thought for a moment.

“No, I don’t think so. You mean July? Why? What was in it? Has Oscar said something outrageous?” He touched the other lightly on the arm. “Do tell me!”

“Absolutely! It’s almost too marvelous.” The reply was so eager the words almost fell upon each other. “A story of a young and beautiful man—guess who? Well anyway, he falls in with a depraved dandy, an older man with a wonderful wit, to whom he says one day that he wishes he could never grow old but would always have the looks and the youth that he has at that moment.” His eyebrows rose. “He is very lovely, you understand?”

“So you said. What of it?” The young man leaned back, precariously close to the potted palm behind him. “We would all be delighted to retain such beauty as we have. Such a thought is hardly worthy of Oscar’s invention, and certainly not shocking.”

“Oh, but this story is!” he was assured. “You see, another man, a largely honorable man, paints a portrait of him—and his wish is granted! His face is beautiful!” He held up one long-fingered, white hand. “But his soul grows steadily more and more harrowed as he indulges in a life of utter pleasure seeking, regardless of the cost to others, which is high, even to life at times.”

“Still ordinary, my dear. A mere observation of the obvious.” He leaned back against the Chinese cushions behind him, exhibiting his boredom.

“Do you really imagine Oscar would ever be obvious?” The first man’s high eyebrows rose even farther. “How unimaginative you are, and what a poor judge of character.”

“Well, it may not be obvious to you, dear boy, but it is to me,” his companion rejoined.

“Then tell me the ending!” he challenged.

“There is no ending. It is merely life.”

“That is where you are wrong!” He wagged his finger. “He remains as young and utterly beautiful as ever. Years and years go by. His face is unmarked by the squalor of his soul and the viciousness of his life—”

“Wishful thinking.”

“But the portrait is not! Week by week the face on the canvas grows more terrible—”

“What?” He sat suddenly upright, knocking off one of the voluptuous cushions. Emily suppressed her instinct to pick it up and replace it.

“The face on the canvas grows more terrible!” the man continued his tale. “All the sin and meanness, the disease of his soul, is stamped on it, till the very sight of it is enough to freeze the blood and make you lie awake at night for fear of sleeping and dreaming of it!”

He had his friend’s total attention.

“My God! Then what? What is the end?”

“He murders the artist, who has guessed his secret,” the man said triumphantly. “Then at last, terrified at the hideousness of his own soul which he sees in the painted face, he stabs it.”

Emily drew in her breath in a gasp, but neither of them heard her.

“And …?” the man demanded.

“It is himself he has killed! He is inextricably bound with the painting. He is it and it is he! He dies—and the body takes on the monstrosity of the portrait, which now becomes again as beautiful and as innocent as when it was first painted. But the story is full of marvelous wit and wonderful lines, as Oscar always is.” He shrugged and sat back, smiling. “Of course, there are those in the establishment who are furious, saying it is depraved, evil and so on. But what do you expect? A work of art accepted by everyone is damned from the start. There can hardly be a more explicit way of demonstrating that it has nothing whatsoever to say! If you don’t offend anyone at all, you might as well not bother to speak. You obviously have nothing to say.”

“I must get Lippincott’s immediately!”

“There is talk he may publish it in a book.”

“What is it called? I must know!”

“ ‘The Picture of Dorian Grey.’ ”

“Wonderful! I shall read it—probably several times.”

So shall I, Emily thought to herself, moving away as the two men started to discuss the deeper implications of the story. But I shall not tell Jack. He might not understand.

She was beginning to feel a little dizzy, and certainly very tired. She was not used to so much smoke in the air. In polite society gentlemen retired from the main apartments in order to smoke. There were rooms specifically set aside for it, so as not to offend those who did not, and special jackets worn, not to carry the smell back into the rest of the house.

She looked across and saw Tallulah. She was flirting with a languid young man in green, but it seemed more a thing of habit than of any real intent. Emily had no idea what time it was, but all intelligence said it must be very late indeed. She had no way of going home, except with Tallulah. She could not leave alone and wander the streets looking for a hansom at this hour of the morning. Any men around, any policemen, would take her for a prostitute. Since the uproar four years ago about prostitution generally, and the purge on pornography, all sorts of decent women had been arrested walking about in daylight in the wrong areas, let alone at this hour.

A fraction unsteadily, she made her way across the room, stopping by the chair and looking down at Tallulah.

“I think it is time we excused ourselves,” she said clearly, at least she meant it to be clear. “It has been delightful, but I should like to be home in time for breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Tallulah blinked. “Oh!” She sat upright sharply. “Oh yes, the mundane world that eats breakfast. I suppose we must return.” She sighed. It seemed as if she had already forgotten the young man, and he did not seem disconcerted. His attention turned as easily to someone else.

They found Reggie quite quickly, and he was amiable enough to be willing to leave, wandering outside with Emily on one arm and Tallulah on the other. He woke his coachman and they all climbed into the carriage, half asleep, Reggie closing the door behind them with difficulty. There was already a pale fin of light in the east, and the earliest traffic on the roads.

No one had asked Emily where she lived, and as she sat jolting gently as they moved along the riverbank, then turned north, she looked at the sleeping figure of Reggie Howard in the light of the lamps they passed under, and hesitated to ask him to take her home first. They were going in the wrong direction. She would have to wait.

They stopped rather abruptly in Devonshire Street. Reggie woke with a start.

“Ah. Home,” he said, blinking. “Let me assist you.” He fumbled to open the door, but the footman was there before him, offering his hand to Tallulah, and then to Emily.

“You’d better stay with me tonight,” Tallulah said quickly. “You don’t want to arrive home at this hour.”

Emily hesitated only a moment. Perhaps this was also a polite way of allowing her to know that Reggie’s carriage was not available for her any further. It was quite true; it would be easier to explain to Jack that she spent the night with Tallulah than that she was out until four in the morning at a party in Chelsea with artists and writers of the highly fashionable decadent school.

“Thank you.” She scrambled out with more haste than grace. “That is most generous of you.” She also thanked Reggie, and the footman, and then as the carriage rumbled away, she followed Tallulah across the pavement, through the areaway doors and into the back yard, where the scullery entrance was apparently unlocked.

Tallulah stood in the kitchen. She looked surprisingly fragile in the first cold daylight, away from the gas lamps’ glow and the velvet hangings. She was framed instead by the wooden dresser with the rows of dishes, the copper pans hanging on the wall, and the flour bins, the black kitchen range to the left. Clean linen hung on the airing rack above, and there was a smell of dried herbs and strings of onions in the air.

It would not be long before the first maids were up to clear out the stove and black it and light it ready for Cook to begin breakfast.

The same would shortly be happening in Emily’s own home.

Tallulah took a deep breath and let it out soundlessly. She turned to lead the way up towards the stairs. Emily followed, tiptoeing, so as not to be heard by the early-waking servants.

On the landing Tallulah stopped outside a guest room door.

“I’ll lend you a gown,” she said very quietly. “And I’ll send my maid in the morning.” She winced. “At least about eight o’clock. Nobody’ll breakfast very early … I don’t think. Actually …” She looked at Emily with a sudden misery in her face. “Actually, it’s not a very good time, at the moment. Something rather wretched has happened.” Her voice was no more than a whisper. “A woman of the streets was murdered off the Whitechapel Road somewhere, and the police found an old club badge there that belonged to my brother. They actually came to the house asking questions.” She shuddered. “Of course he didn’t have anything to do with it, but I’m terrified they won’t believe him.” She stared at Emily, waiting for her to say something.

“I’m sorry,” Emily said sincerely. “It must be awful for you. Perhaps they’ll discover the real person quickly.” Then her habitual curiosity broke through. “Where did they find the badge?”

“In her room, where she was killed.” Tallulah bit her lip and her fear was naked in her face, accentuated in the sharp shadows cast by the faint light of a gas lamp glowing dimly at the stairhead and the daylight beginning to show through the landing windows.

“Oh.” There was nothing comforting Emily could say to that. She was not shocked that Tallulah’s brother should use a prostitute. She was worldly enough to have known such things for years. It was not even impossible that he had actually killed her. Somebody had. Perhaps he had not meant to. It could have been a quarrel over money. She might have attempted to rob him. Emily knew from Pitt that such things happened. It did not take a great deal of imagination to think how it could come about: a rich young man, expensively dressed, gold cuff links, gold watch, perhaps cigar cutter, card case, studs, money in his pocket to spend on satisfying his appetites … and a desperate woman who was tired, hungry and not even certain of a roof over her head next week. She might even have had a child to feed. It was only surprising it did not happen more often.

But that was hardly the thing to say to Tallulah. Although perhaps—looking at her pale face, tiredness smudging shadows under her eyes, fear bleaching the vitality and the spark from her—it was something she already knew.

Emily forced a smile, bleak and a little shaky.

“There must have been lots of other people there too,” she said hopefully. “It was probably someone she knew. They have men who take their money and look after them, you know. It was more likely he. The police will know that. I expect they only came here as a matter of form.”

“Do you?” Tallulah asked. “He was very polite. He spoke beautifully, I mean like a gentleman, but he was rather scruffy to look at. His collar was very clean, but crooked, and his hair was all over the place. If I didn’t know he was a policeman, I would have thought he could have been an artist, or a writer. But I don’t think he was a fool. He wasn’t afraid of Papa, and most people are.”

Emily had a sudden feeling of chill, a ripple of familiarity, like a scene from a dream, when you know what is going to happen before it does.

“Don’t worry,” she said as confidently as she could. “He’ll find the truth. He’ll never charge the wrong person. Your brother will be all right.”

Tallulah stood motionless.

Outside a cart rattled along the street and someone on the footpath was whistling as he walked. It was almost daylight. The scullery maid could be coming down the back stairs any minute.

“Thank you,” she said at last. “I’ll see you at breakfast. I’ll fetch the nightgown.”

Emily smiled her gratitude and determined to find a telephone the moment she could, and at least inform her ladies’ maid that she was perfectly well and spending the night with a friend. If Jack was home, that would serve for explanation to him as well. If he should rise in the morning and find her late for breakfast, he would understand.

Emily woke with a start. The sun was streaming through the open curtains into a room she had never seen before. It was all yellow florals with a little gray and blue. There was a maid pouring hot water into a large china bowl and fresh towels over the back of the chair.

“Mornin’, miss,” the girl said cheerfully. “Nice day again. Looks to be set for sunshine and warm. Miss Tallulah said as if you’d care to borrow one of her dresses for the time bein’, you’d be welcome. Seein’ as your gown’s a bit formal for breakfast.” She did not glance at Emily’s green dinner gown with its ivory and yellow roses spread over the chaise longue, its skirts fanned out, its deep-cut bodice and flimsy sleeves looking like wilted flowers in the sharp morning light. Nor was her expression anything but politely helpful. She was a very good maid indeed.

“Thank you,” Emily accepted. She would dislike intensely turning up at Augustus FitzJames’s breakfast table looking as if she had been up all night. And the cream muslin dress offered was certainly very attractive. It was a trifle young for her, but not unsophisticated with its swathed bodice and delicate embroidery.

She went downstairs with Tallulah, in order that her presence might be duly explained and she be properly introduced.

The dining room was large, formal and extremely attractive, but she had no time to do more than notice it momentarily. Her attention was taken entirely by the three people who sat around the table. At the head of it was Augustus FitzJames, his long, powerful face set in lines of severity as he studied the morning newspaper. He had it folded in front of him, but he did not look up when the two young women came in until he realized that there was someone present he had not expected.

“Good morning, Papa,” Tallulah said cheerfully. “May I present Mrs. Radley? I invited her to stay the night with us because the hour was late and her husband had been obliged to take their carriage on an urgent call of government business.” She lied quite adroitly, as if she had considered the matter beforehand.

Augustus regarded Emily with a slight frown, then as he connected the name with a member of Parliament, he inclined his head in acknowledgment.

“Good morning, Mrs. Radley. I’m delighted we were able to offer you hospitality. Please join us for breakfast.” He glanced at the woman at the foot of the table. Her hair was perfectly coiffed, her morning gown immaculate, but her face was creased with tiny lines of anxiety. “My wife,” he said expressionlessly.

“How do you do, Mrs. FitzJames,” Emily said with a smile. “Thank you for your kindness in allowing me to stay here.” It was a formality, something to say in the stiff silence. Aloysia had been totally unaware of her presence.

“You are most welcome,” Aloysia said hastily. “I hope you slept well?”

“Very, thank you.” Emily sat on the chair indicated for her, while the maid set an extra place for Tallulah.

“My son,” Augustus continued, gesturing with his rather bony hands to the young man who sat opposite Emily.

“How do you do, Mr. FitzJames,” she responded, looking at him with a far greater interest than she could ever have had, had Tallulah not confided in her his disastrous connection with the murder in Whitechapel. She tried to smile brightly, noncommittally, as if she knew nothing, but she could not help trying to read his face. He was handsome; he had a good nose, a wide mouth, and a broad, firm jaw. His hair was beautiful. It sprang back from his brow in thick, fair waves. It was the face of a man who would never be lost for female admiration. What uncontrolled appetite or unseen weakness had taken him to find a prostitute in Whitechapel, of all places? Looking at him across the family breakfast table, she thought how little of a person one sees in the inbred manners and the traditional dress, the neatly barbered hair.

“How do you do, Mrs. Radley,” he replied without interest. “Morning, Tallulah. Have a good evening?”

Tallulah sat down next to Emily and picked at a bowl of fruit, then set it aside and chose toast and apricot preserve instead.

“Yes, thank you,” she replied noncommittally. He was not asking with any interest.

Emily was offered smoked haddock or eggs and declined both. She too said toast would be sufficient. She must return home as soon as she decently could. It would be difficult enough to give a satisfactory explanation of her night’s absence as it was.

“Where did you go?” Augustus asked Tallulah. His tone was not peremptory, but there was an underlying assumption in it that he would be answered, and answered truthfully.

Tallulah did not look up from her plate.

“To Lady Swaffham’s for dinner. Did I not mention it?”

“Yes, you did,” he said grimly. “And you did not remain there until after two in the morning. I know Lady Swaffham better than that.”

They had not mentioned the time they came in. Presumably two was the time he had gone to bed himself, and he knew she was not home.

“I went on with Reggie Howard and Mrs. Radley to a literary discussion in Chelsea,” Tallulah replied, glancing up at her father.

“At two in the morning?” His eyebrows rose sarcastically. “I think, madam, that you mean a party at which certain young men who imagine themselves writers sit around striking poses and talking nonsense. Was Oscar Wilde there?”

“No.”

He looked at Emily to confirm or deny the statement.

“I don’t believe any of his set were there,” she said with complete honesty. Actually, she was not sure who his “set” were anyway, and she resented being put in the position of having to answer for Tallulah or make her a liar.

“I don’t care for young Howard,” Augustus continued, taking another slice of toast and pouring himself more tea. He did not look at his daughter. “You will not go out in his company again.”

Tallulah drew in her breath and her face hardened.

Augustus faced his wife.

“It is time you took her to more appropriate places, my dear. It is your job to find her a suitable match. This year, I think. It is past time you did so. As long as she does not jeopardize her reputation too far by wasting her time in loose company, then she is eminently eligible. Regardless of behavior, she will not remain so indefinitely.” He was still looking at Aloysia, not Tallulah, but Emily saw Tallulah’s cheeks flush with humiliation. “I will make a list of desirable families,” he concluded, and bit into his toast, his other hand reaching for his cup.

“Desirable to whom?” Tallulah said hotly.

He turned to her. There was not a shred of humor or light in his eyes.

“To me, of course. It is my responsibility to see that you are well provided for and that you make a success of your life. You have everything that is necessary, except self-discipline. You will now apply that, beginning today.”

Had she thought anyone was taking the slightest notice of her, Emily would have been embarrassed, but even Finlay seemed absorbed in what his father was saying. Apparently such total command did not surprise any of them. She did not need to look at Tallulah’s downcast head to know that Augustus FitzJames’s list of acceptable suitors for his daughter’s hand would not include the “Jago” she had referred to. The virtue she was so sure he possessed would not endear him to a socially ambitious father.

Tallulah needed to do some very serious evaluating of her own desires, and some weighing of costs and rewards, if she were to have any chance of happiness.

Emily looked across at Finlay, still eating toast and marmalade and finishing his last cup of tea. Any sympathy he might have felt for his sister did not register in his face.

Without warning Augustus turned on him.

“And it is past time you found a suitable wife. You cannot take up an embassy post of any importance unless you have a wife capable of maintaining the position. She should have breeding, dignity, the capacity to hold intelligent conversation without forcing her own opinions into it, and sufficient charm to appeal, but not so much as to cause gossip and speculation. Wholesomeness is preferable to beauty. Naturally her reputation must be impeccable. That goes without saying. I can think of a dozen or more who would be suitable.”

“At the moment—” Finlay began, then stopped abruptly.

Augustus’s face froze. “I am quite aware that at the moment there are other matters to be cleared up.” His face was tight and hard, and he did not look at his son when he spoke. “I trust that that will not take more than a few days.”

“I should think not,” Finlay said unhappily, staring at his father as if willing him to look up and meet his eyes. “I had nothing to do with it! And if they have any competence at all, they will soon know that.” He said it as if it were a challenge, and he did not expect to be believed without proving it, and yet Emily heard the sincerity sharp in his voice.

Tallulah ignored her unfinished toast, and her tea grew cold. She looked from her father to her mother, and back again.

“Of course they will,” Aloysia said meaninglessly. “It is unpleasant, but there is no need whatever to worry.”

Augustus regarded her with a world of contempt in his eyes and the tired lines around his mouth deepened.

“No one is worried, Aloysia. It is simply a matter of dealing with things so that nothing unpleasant does happen as a result of … incompetence, or other misfortune we cannot prevent.” He turned to Tallulah. “You, madam, will deport yourself in a manner which raises no eyebrows whatsoever and gives no malicious tongues the fuel with which to spread gossip. And you, sir”—he looked at Finlay—“will conduct yourself like a gentleman. You will confine your attentions to your duty and to such pleasures as are enjoyed by the sort of young lady you would wish to marry. You might escort your sister. There are soirées, exhibitions and other appropriate gatherings all over London.”

Finlay looked desperate.

“Otherwise,” Augustus continued, “this matter may not be as easily contained as you would wish.”

“I had nothing to do with it!” Finlay protested, a rising note of desperation in his voice.

“Possibly,” Augustus said dryly, continuing with his breakfast. The discussion was over. He did not need to say so in words; the finality in his voice was total. Argument with it would have been useless.

Tallulah and Emily finished the remains of their meal in silence, then excused themselves. As soon as they were in the hallway and out of earshot, Tallulah turned to Emily.

“I’m sorry,” she said with distress. “That must have been dreadful for you, because I’m sure you know what he was talking about. Of course they will clear it all up, but it could take ages. And what if they never find out who it was?” Her voice sharpened as panic mounted inside her. “They never found the other Whitechapel murderer! He killed five women, and that was two years ago, and still no one has the faintest idea who he was. It could be anyone!”

“No it couldn’t,” Emily said steadily. She was speaking empty words, but she hoped Tallulah would not know it. “That other failure had very little to do with this.” She believed Pitt could find the truth, but probably all the truth, which even if Finlay were as innocent as he claimed, might include a few facts about him which were embarrassing or painful, or both. The trouble with an investigation was that all manner of things were discovered, perhaps irrelevant to the crime, private sins and shames which it was afterwards impossible to forget.

And when people were afraid they too often behaved badly. One might see them far more clearly than one ever wished. There was more to fear than simply a discovery of guilt.

“It is probably someone in her daily life,” she went on very steadily, thinking even as she was saying it that Augustus FitzJames was not certain of his son’s innocence. Emily knew from the edge in his voice, the way he overrode his wife’s comfortable words, that a needle of doubt had pricked him. Why? Why would a man have so little confidence in his own son as to allow such an awful possibility into his mind?

“Yes, of course it is,” Tallulah agreed. “I’m just upset because Papa is going to try to force me to marry some bore and become a bland, uninteresting wife sewing useless embroidery and painting watercolors no one wants to look at.”

“Thank you.” Emily smiled at her.

Tallulah blushed scarlet. “Oh God! I’m so sorry! What an unpardonable thing to say! I didn’t mean it like that!”

Emily blinked at the blasphemy, but said frankly, “Yes you did. And I don’t blame you. Plenty of women spend their whole lives doing things they despise. I bore myself to tears sometimes. And I am married to a politician, and usually he is very interesting. I was bored last night because he has been so busy I have seen little of him lately, and I have done nothing to interest myself. I need a good issue to fight for.”

Gradually the color subsided in Tallulah’s cheeks, but she still looked mortified.

Emily took her by the arm and led her back up the stairs towards her temporary bedroom.

“I have a great-aunt by marriage,” she continued, “who is never bored a day in her life, because she is always concerned with something, usually battling some injustice or ignorance. She doesn’t take on anything easy, so everything tends to last.” She could have mentioned that she had a mother who had just married a Jewish actor seventeen years her junior, and a sister who had married beneath her, to a man in the police force, and brought drama into all their lives by becoming involved in the worst of his cases. But just at the moment that would be tactless, not to mention overwhelming.

“Does she?” Tallulah said with a flicker of interest. “Her husband doesn’t mind?”

“Actually he’s dead, and he doesn’t count,” Emily conceded. “If he were alive that would make it harder. What about this Jago that you mentioned?”

“Jago!” Tallulah laughed jerkily. “Can you see Papa allowing me to marry a parish priest in Whitechapel? I should end up with about two dresses to my name, one to wash, one to wear, and live in a drafty room with cold water and a roof that leaked. Socially I should cease to exist!”

“I thought priests had vicarages,” Emily argued, standing at the top of the stairs on the bright sunlit landing with its yellow carpet and potted palms. A housemaid in crisp lace-trimmed cap and apron walked across the hall below them, her heels clicking on the parquet. There might be vicarages in Whitechapel, but they were still another world from this.

Tallulah bit her lip. “I know that. But I would have to give up so much. No more parties. No more beautiful gowns, witty conversations that last all night. No more trips to the theater and the opera. No more dinners and balls and coming home in the dawn. I wouldn’t even be warm enough half the time, or have enough to eat. I might have to do my own laundry!”

It was all perfectly true.

“Do you want to change Jago into something he isn’t?” Emily asked her.

“No!” Tallulah drew in her breath slowly. “No, I don’t. Of course not … I …” She stopped. She did not know what she meant. The decision was enormous.

“No one gets everything,” Emily said softly. “If what you care for in him is that part which clings to his own values, then you have to accept all that goes with it. Perhaps it is time to weigh up exactly what life with him would mean and what life without him would be for you, and then decide what you really want. Don’t let it go by default. It is too important for that. It could be your whole life.”

Tallulah’s curious face was twisted in self-mockery, but there were tears in her eyes.

“There’s no decision for me to make. Jago wouldn’t even look at me in that way. He despises everything I am. It’s just a matter of trying to help Finlay through this, and I can’t even think of a way to do that. And then not letting Papa marry me to anyone too stultifyingly tedious.” She sniffed. “Maybe he’d marry me to someone very old, and they’d die. Then I can be a widow, like your great-aunt, and do as I please.”

Below them the dining room door opened again and Finlay came out, walking quickly and a little angrily towards the front door.

“Jarvis!” he shouted. “Where’s my hat and my stick? I left them in the stand last night. Who’s moved them?”

A footman materialized, duly deferential.

“Your stick is there, sir, and I took the hat to brush it.”

“Oh. Thank you.” Finlay reached for the stick. “Well, fetch the hat, Jarvis. Why did you take it anyway? I don’t need a hat brushed every time I wear it.”

“A bird unfortunately …” Jarvis began.

Tallulah smiled in spite of herself and took Emily by the arm to guide her back to the room to make the necessary arrangements to have her own dress packed so she could take it with her on her return home.

Emily made her farewells, then rode home in the FitzJameses’ second carriage, Augustus having taken the first. Her thoughts were engaged in Tallulah’s problems. Was it possible that Finlay was guilty?

Why would he do such a thing? What was there about him that his father knew, or suspected, which made him so cold, so uncertain, and yet unhesitant to defend him?

Or had she misread the emotions in his face? She had been an onlooker at one meal. Perhaps she was being foolish, absurdly overrating her own judgment.

She wondered idly what Jago was like that he could have captured Tallulah’s dreams so completely. Apparently he was the opposite of everything she treasured in her present life. Perhaps that was it? Not reality at all, simply an enchantment with the idea of the different. Whatever it was, she liked Tallulah, liked her vividness, her ability to care, and the fact that she was teetering on the edge of dreams for which she would have to pay for the rest of her life. She was worthy of all the help Emily could give her. There was no decision to be made about that.

When she arrived she thanked the FitzJameses’ coachman, alighted and went up her own front steps. The butler opened the door to her without raising his eyebrows.

“Good morning, Jenkins,” she said calmly, walking in.

“Good morning, ma’am,” he replied, closing the door behind her. “Mr. Radley is in the study, ma’am.”

“Thank you.” She passed him the package containing her dinner gown with instructions to give it to her ladies’ maid. Then, feeling a trifle odd in Tallulah’s muslin morning dress, she walked, head high, to the study to explain herself to Jack.

“Good morning,” he said coolly when she opened the door. He was sitting at the desk with a pile of papers, a pen in his hand, his expression unsmiling. “I received your message. Rather incomplete. Where were you?”

She took a deep breath. She found herself resenting the need to account, but she had known it would be unavoidable.

“I accepted a ride to another party, and did not realize how late I had stayed. They were interesting people, and I met someone …” She still had not made up her mind whether to pass it off as help to a friend in trouble or enquiring into Pitt’s current case. Looking at Jack’s displeased face did not assist her. Whatever she said, it had better be something she could substantiate.

“Yes?” he prompted, his eyes chilly.

She must decide immediately, or it would look like a lie. He was not as easy to mislead as she sometimes wished. She had once assumed that his attention could be diverted by a smile, and she had been wrong.

“I’m waiting, Emily….”

“I met a young woman I liked very much, and she was in great distress because her brother has been accused of murder…. Thomas is investigating the case. I couldn’t leave it, Jack! I had to find out all I could about it … for her sake, and Thomas’s … and for the truth itself!”

“Indeed …” He sat back in his chair, regarding her skeptically. “So you stayed the night in her home. What did you learn in this generous effort? Is he guilty?”

“Don’t be sarcastic,” she replied tartly. “Even I can’t solve a murder over breakfast.” She looked at him with a hesitant smile. “It will take me at least until dinner … maybe even longer.” And with that she met his eyes for an instant, saw the beginning of humor in them, then turned and went out, closing the door behind her.

In the hall she gave a sigh of relief and ran swiftly upstairs to change.