Anne Perry - Midnight at Marble Arch

Charlotte was puzzled. “Is that so serious? She is very young. Perhaps that is why she was so highly strung the other evening? She is not yet ready to think of marriage? She’s only two years older than Jemima. She’s still a child!”

“My dear, there is a lot of difference between fourteen and sixteen,” Vespasia responded.

“Two years!” Charlotte could not possibly imagine Jemima thinking of marriage in two years. Any thought of her leaving home was years away.

Now Vespasia’s smile was gentle but bright with amusement. “You will be surprised what a change those two years will bring. The first time she will fall in love with a real man, not a dream, is not nearly as far away as you think.”

“Well, perhaps Angeles is in love, but not yet ready to think of marrying,” Charlotte suggested. “It is fun to be in love without the thought of settling down in a new home, with new responsibilities-and before you know it, children of your own. She has barely begun to taste life. It would be very natural to wish for another year or two at least before that.”

“Indeed. But one may remain engaged for several years,” Vespasia pointed out.

Charlotte frowned. “Then what is it you think may have happened? A quarrel? Or she imagines herself in love with someone else?” A more painful thought occurred to her. “Or she has heard something distressing about her fiancé?”

“I doubt that,” Vespasia answered.

Minnie Maude knocked on the door and came in with a tray of tea and very thin cucumber sandwiches, which Charlotte had recently taught her to cut.

The maid glanced at Charlotte to see if she approved.

“Thank you,” Charlotte accepted with a little nod of her head. Minnie Maude had replaced Gracie, the maid the Pitts had had since their marriage. Gracie herself had at last married Sergeant Tellman and set up her own house, of which she was immensely proud. Her place would be impossible to fill, but Minnie Maude was gradually making the role her own. Now a wide smile split her face for a moment before she recalled her decorum again, dropped a curtsy, and withdrew, closing the door behind her.

Charlotte looked at Vespasia.

Vespasia regarded the sandwiches. “Excellent,” she murmured. “Minnie Maude is coming on very well.” She took one and put it on her plate while Charlotte poured the tea.

“What do you fear has happened to Angeles Castelbranco?” Charlotte asked a few moments later.

“The marriage was an arranged one, naturally,” Vespasia replied. “The de Freitas family is wealthy and highly respected. For Angeles it is a good match. Tiago is six or seven years older than her and, as far as I hear, nothing ill is known of him.”

“How much is that worth?” Charlotte asked skeptically, surprised how protective she felt of a girl she had seen only once. Did that mean she was bound to become overprotective of Jemima as well? She could remember her mother being so, and she had hated it.

Vespasia was watching her with wry amusement and perhaps also with recollections of her own daughters. “A good deal,” she replied. “Plus Isaura Castelbranco was young once, and I am sure has not forgotten the romance she dreamed of for herself; I doubt she would arrange for her daughter to marry someone unworthy.”

“Then why are you worried?” Charlotte asked, suddenly grave again. “What is it you fear?”

Vespasia was silent for several moments. She sipped her tea and ate another of Minnie Maude’s cucumber sandwiches.

Charlotte waited, recalling the party at the Spanish Embassy and the look in Angeles’s face. Had it truly been as fearful as she pictured it now, or was she putting her own feelings onto it?

“What is it you think has happened?” she asked more urgently.

“I don’t know,” Vespasia admitted. “It is a big thing indeed to break an engagement in a family like that. If she does not give a powerful reason, then other reasons will be suggested, largely unflattering in nature. It has been said, so far, that it is she who broke it off, but sometimes a young man will allow that, as a gallantry, when in fact it is he who has done so.”

Charlotte was startled. “What are you saying? That she has … has lost her virginity? She’s sixteen, not a thirty-year-old courtesan. How could you suggest such a thing?”

“I didn’t,” Vespasia pointed out gently. “You did. Which perfectly makes my point. People will look for reasons, and if they are not given them they will create their own. Breaking a betrothal is not something one does lightly.”

Charlotte looked down at the carpet. “She’s so young. And she looked so vulnerable at that party. The room was crowded with people, and yet she was alone.”

Vespasia finished her tea and set the cup down. “I hope I am mistaken.” She rose to her feet. “Shall we leave?”

For some time at the party Charlotte accompanied Vespasia as they met friends or acquaintances and exchanged the usual polite remarks. She had wanted to come, to be in the swirl of conversation, feeling the exhilaration of meeting new people, but after half an hour or so she realized how little she truly knew, could know, of the men and women around her; their clothes, their manners, and their speech covered up far more of the truth than they revealed.

Looking at a woman in a bright dress, she wondered if it was exuberance that prompted her to wear it or bravado hiding some uncertainty, fear, or grief. And the woman in the plain-cut, subdued shade of blue-was that modesty, a supreme confidence that needed no display, or simply the only gown she had not already worn in this same company? So much could be interpreted half a dozen different ways.

It was about ten minutes later that Charlotte encountered Isaura Castelbranco and with pleasure found an opportunity to engage her in conversation. It seemed very easy to ask what region of Portugal she grew up in and to hear a description of the beautiful valley that had been her home until her marriage.

“Port wine?” Charlotte said with an interest she did not have to feign. “I often wondered how they make it because it is quite different from anything else, even sherry.”

“It is wine from the grapes in the Douro Valley,” Isaura replied, enthusiasm lighting her eyes. “But that is not really what makes it special. It is fortified with a brandy spirit, and aged in barrels of a particular wood. It takes a great deal of skill, and some of the process is kept secret.”

She smiled and there was pride in it. “We have made it for centuries, and the arts are passed down the generations within a family. Not that mine is one of them,” she added hastily. “We just lived in the region. My husband’s family is, however. His father and brothers were disappointed when he studied politics and chose the diplomatic service, but I think he has never regretted it. Although, of course, we still feel that tug of nostalgia when we go back to the vineyards, the sun on the vines, the labor of picking, the excitement of the first taste of the vintage.

“As a girl I used to daydream about the gentlemen whose tables it would be passed around. I pictured who they would be, what great events of state might be discussed with a glass of port in one hand.” She laughed a little self-consciously. “I would think of daring adventures planned, explorations, discoveries recounted, theories put forward on a hundred new ideas, reforms to change the laws of nations. Silly, maybe, but …”

“Not silly at all!” Charlotte said quietly. “Much better than half the daydreams I had, I promise you. It is something to be proud of.”

Isaura laughed. “Some of my in-laws’ port was in the glasses of great Portuguese navigators, traders in exotic silks and spices, but much of it was also on English dining tables after the ladies had withdrawn. In my mind every great Englishman drank port, while he planned to settle America or Australia, find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific, discover how the circulation of blood works, or write about the origin of species.” She flushed slightly at her own audacity.