“As far as I could tell, he didn’t say anything. And then my husband passed away and his solicitors had to tell me that he left me a very small dower portion, not wanting me to have a bigger dower—and then go on to marry some other rich man.”
She lifted and lowered the piano’s lid, lifted and lowered it, the chagrin on her face changing to bewilderment, then resignation. Walking slowly, she returned to her chair and took a seat. “After the reading of Mr. Cousins’s will, I received an unsigned typed note that said, Do you not wish that you had cuckolded him when I gave you the chance? I am laughing at you both.
Her eyes flashed with anger. “I hated him for that, his gleeful pleasure at my pain. When I realized Mrs. Treadles would be working with him, I begged her to beware of him. I was beginning to be very grateful to her, but we weren’t close yet, and it was such a personal and deeply humiliating story that I couldn’t bring myself to give the details. Perhaps if I had told her everything in full, she would have been more careful. But you can see it, can’t you, how he would have done it? Pretending to understand her difficulties to gain her trust, but only so that he could better prey on her.”
She drained the rest of the cherry brandy and drew a shaky breath. “I shouldn’t say this, but I’m not at all sorry that Mr. Sullivan is dead. Whoever killed him did us all a service.”
* * *
As Charlotte came out of Mrs. Cousins’s house, Lord Ingram descended from their waiting carriage.
She did not blush or otherwise react, but in her throat and chest she felt the heat of the same embarrassment. It certainly didn’t help that he was smiling. The brim of his hat cast a shadow on his face, which only made the curvature of his lips more striking.
She was not accustomed to such full, unguarded smiles from him. Or the undisguised pleasure in his expression.
Perhaps the heat she felt, which seemed to expand everywhere, wasn’t only embarrassment.
As he handed her up, his hand held hers a moment longer than necessary.
For two people who had been lovers, and who had kissed rather lavishly only the day before, a slightly prolonged handhold, with both parties sturdily gloved, really shouldn’t matter all that much. But a new scalding heat surged up from her fingers directly into the socket of her shoulder.
“I’m sorry to have wasted your time,” she said in a rush, before he had even sat down across from her.
“I was at the home of some party guests not far from here,” he said, knocking on the roof of the vehicle to signal the coachman to start. “And Mrs. Cousins’s is on the way to the next house I need to call on. So it’s no inconvenience at all.”
“Still—”
“And I’m happy to see you again.”
It wasn’t so much the words—he’d said similar things to her before—but the ease in his voice, the unreserved candor.
And she had no idea how to respond, either in speech or in sentiment. He did not compel her but he had changed, and that change . . . it was as if she were a seed of many winters set in warm soil and generously watered. Something swelled and burgeoned inside her. And that put stress on her, a great pressure from within.
She gave him an account of what Mrs. Treadles had told Mrs. Watson in the morning, as well as what she’d learned from Mrs. Cousins just now.
He was silent, a grave silence. “I have met such men in my life. But that I am a man of a certain station in life makes me nearly immune from the worst they can do. Not so much the Mrs. Cousins and Mrs. Treadles of the world. And it pains me to think of all the women who have far less wealth and standing than they do, and all the Mr. Sullivans they must face.”
She gazed at him. To him, power was synonymous not with the subjugation of others, but with care and responsibility. He looked after those in his life, sometimes to the detriment of himself.
“You don’t think of Mrs. Cousins as having encouraged Mr. Sullivan?”
He shook his head firmly. “She is human and displayed foibles. But foibles are not the same thing as ill will. I can fault her for having made questionable choices, if I must, but I will not use her mistake to justify Mr. Sullivan’s predation.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
He glanced outside the carriage window, a pensive expression on his face, and looked back at her. “I have said this to you before: You are the reason I have questioned many things that I would otherwise have happily accepted as given. But I have not told you that I’m glad of it. I would have been a different man, a lesser one, were it not for you.”
It took Charlotte a moment to understand the strange, expansive, yet somewhat uncomfortable feeling in her heart. She was humbled.
Their gazes held. The carriage turned. The light from its lanterns swung. Somewhere on the street a hawker loudly advertised his fresh, fragrant Christmas wreaths.
She felt as if she ought to say something. But what did one say to such a monumental confession? She moistened her lips, opened her mouth, and out came, “I . . . I wonder what manner of woman is Mrs. Sullivan.”
* * *
Mrs. Sullivan was a small, plump woman who gave the impression of being easily startled, with her large, darting eyes and fingers that kept lacing and unlacing in her lap.
Mourning attire did swallow her whole. In the ornate padded chair she occupied, she seemed less like a widow than a bundle of clothes left behind.
In fact, the entire drawing room overwhelmed her, packed as it was with grandiose furnishing. Not an inch of the walls could be seen for the paintings, large and small, that had been fitted onto them like pieces of an ambitious mosaic. Nor was much of the wood used in the construction of the furniture visible, obscured by the ivory inlay, ormolu motifs, and gilded caryatids that had been heaped onto all the surfaces.
Charlotte had seen a more wildly outfitted house, which Livia had described as both “a brothel and a circus.” Mrs. Sullivan’s drawing room did not make one think of a bordello with greater aspirations, but rather the warehouse of an auction house, on the night before its biggest public sale, packed pell-mell and stuffed to the gills.
Charlotte liked it, this room, the gaudiness of which could not be entirely muted even by the black crape draped over windows and mirrors. And she could not help but think of the smile that would have animated Lord Ingram’s lips, had he been on hand to intuit her enjoyment of the décor.
Alas he had not accompanied her to this house but gone on to the next set of guests he needed to speak to, though he’d said he’d meet her on Cold Street, where she would have her last scheduled appointment of the day, if he finished soon enough.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Sullivan,” Charlotte said. “I apologize for taking up your time in your hour of grief.”