Anne Perry - Silence in Hanover Close

“I’m so sorry,” she said aloud.

“It was a long time ago,” Aunt Adeline replied half over her shoulder as she crossed the hall, going down a wide passage and opening the door into a lady’s sitting room, known as a boudoir. It was decorated in cream and a muted tone the color of dry sand, with touches of cool liquid green, and one splash of pale coral provided by a single chair. It was most unusual, and rather out of character with the rest of the house. It led Charlotte to a sudden thought that perhaps the young Mrs. Danver had not felt at home here; perhaps she had made this room into an island for herself, contrasting it with the other rooms as strongly as she dared?

On the wall opposite the fireplace was a painting of the Bosphorus, looking down from the Topkapi Palace on the Golden Horn. Fleets of little boats plied the blue-green waters, and in the distance, blurred by the haze of heat and the dazzle of the sun, loomed the shore of Asia. A strong man might easily swim as far, as Leander had done for Hero. Had young Mrs. Danver thought of that when she chose it?

“You say nothing,” Aunt Adeline remarked.

Charlotte was very weary of triteness. She wanted to discard the convention-imprisoned Miss Barnaby and be herself, especially with this woman, whom she liked more and more.

“What could I possibly say that could meet the loveliness of this, or all the ideas and the dreams one might find in it?” she demanded. “I refuse to add any more platitudes to the evening.”

“Oh my dear child, you are doomed to disaster!” Adeline said candidly. “You will take wings like Icarus, and like Icarus, fall into the sea. Society does not permit women to fly, as you will doubtless discover. For heaven’s sake, do not marry suitably; it may well be like walking into cold water, inch by inch, until it covers your head.”

Charlotte had a tremendous impulse to tell Adeline she had already married, highly unsuitably, and was extremely happy. Remembering Emily, she held her tongue at the last moment.

“Shall I marry unsuitably, if I can?” she asked with only half a smile; it was wry, and she knew it, a little painful.

“I don’t suppose your parents will allow it,” Aunt Adeline demurred. “Mine wouldn’t.”

Charlotte drew breath to say again that she was sorry, then knew it would sound too condescending. Adeline was not the sort of person for whom one should feel ever the most glancing touch of that pity which has no fellow feeling. She did not believe that Adeline Danver had shrunk from any decision out of cowardice; but even if she had, passing judgment on it now was none of Charlotte’s right, nor desire.

Instead, she drew a little on truth, remembering what had actually happened to her. “My grandmother is the one who would make the worst fuss,” she said.

Adeline smiled bleakly, but her eyes held no self-pity. She sat sideways on the arm of one of the big sand-colored chairs. “My mother enjoyed poor health. She played it for every second of obedience and attention she could extract from it. But when I was young we all believed she might die from one of her ‘turns.’ Eventually it was Garrard who called her bluff, for which I shall always respect him. But then it was too late for me.” She took a deep breath. “Of course, had I been a beauty, I should have lived a life of glamorous sin. But having never been asked, I am obliged to pretend that I would not have accepted.” Her brown eyes were brilliant. “Have you noticed how one condemns most self-righteously that which one has never had the opportunity to do?”

“Yes,” Charlotte agreed with a candid smile. “Indeed I have. It casts a new meaning upon ‘making a virtue of necessity.’ It is one of the hypocrisies that irritates me the most.”

“You’ll see a great deal of it. You’d do well to hide your feelings and learn to hold conversation with yourself.”

“I fear you are right.”

“I am most certainly right.” Adeline stood up. She really was very gaunt, but there was a strength of vitality in her which made her the most interesting person in the house. She looked at the picture again. “Do you know that a courtesan named Theodora rose to be empress of Byzantium?” she said quite casually. “I wonder if she wore outrageous colors. I love royal blues and peacock greens and scarlets and saffron yellow-even the names of them sound good- but I dare not wear them. Garrard wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace. He would certainly stop my dress allowance.” She stared fixedly at the picture as if she could see beyond it. “You know, there was a woman who used to visit this house, once or twice, in the middle of the night, very beautiful, like a black swan. She wore gowns of blazing cerise, not fiery, not a yellow red like flames, but shot with blues. Fearful color on anyone else. I should look like a nightmare in it.” She turned round with a look of faint surprise. “But she looked marvelous. Can’t imagine what she was doing here, except to see Julian, perhaps; but he really should have been more discreet. Garrard would have been furious. Still, since he began courting Veronica York, as far as I know, he has been above reproach, and that is all one can reasonably expect of a man. A man’s past is his own affair. I wish it were so for a woman, but I am not ingenuous enough to believe it ever will be.”

Charlotte’s mind was whirling. Adeline had said so much, she needed time to disentangle it.

“I have an aunt whom you would like,” she said, realizing even as she spoke how daring she had become. “Lady Cumming-Gould. She is nearly eighty, but she is marvelous. She believes in women having the vote for Parliament, and she is prepared to fight to help bring it about.”

“How unselfish of her.” Adeline’s eyes were bright, although there was self-mockery as well as enthusiasm in them. “She will not live to see it.”

“Don’t you think so? If we all pressed as hard as we could, would not men eventually see the justice of it, and. .” The expression on Adeline’s face made Charlotte feel naive, and her voice died away.

“My dear,” Adeline said, shaking her head slightly. “Of course if we all spoke together we could persuade men, or even force them-but we never do speak together. How often have you seen half a dozen women agree and band together for a cause, let alone half a million?” Her thin fingers smoothed over the velvet back of the chair. “We all live our separate lives, in our own kitchens if we are poor, our withdrawing rooms if we are well-to-do; and we do not cooperate for anything, but see ourselves as rivals for the few eligible and well-financed men that are available. Men, on the other hand, work fairly well together, imagining themselves the protectors and providers of the nation, obliged to do everything they can to preserve the situation precisely as it is-in their control-on the assumption that they know best what is right for us and must see that we get it, come hell or high water.” Her head jerked up. “And there are only too many women who are happy to assist them, since the status quo suits them very well also, and they are invariably the people with power.”

“Miss Danver! I think you are a revolutionary!” Charlotte said with delight. “You must meet Great-aunt Vespasia; you’d love each other.”

Before Adeline could respond there were footsteps in the passageway and Harriet appeared at the door, her face pale and her eyes heavy, as if she lacked sleep.

“The gentlemen have rejoined us. Won’t you come back, Aunt Addie?” Then she remembered her manners. “Miss Barnaby?”

A look of pity passed over Adeline’s face and vanished so rapidly that Charlotte was almost doubtful she had seen it; perhaps she had only imagined an echo of her own quick understanding. “Of course.” Adeline moved towards the door. “We were admiring your mother’s painting of the Bosphorus. Come, Miss Barnaby, asylum is over for this evening. We must leave Theodora and Byzantium and return to the world and the pressing matters of the present, such as whether Miss Weatherly will become engaged to Captain Marriott this month, or next, or whether perhaps he will evade her entirely”-she shrugged her thin shoulders-“and go to sea in a sieve.”