Anne Perry - A Christmas Journey

He blushed miserably.

The tale progressed, each person adding colorful details until a picture emerged of the courtship of Bertie and Gwendolen, reaching the point when everyone expected an announcement. More than one person had noticed that Isobel was not pleased, even though she attempted to hide the fact. Now all the thoughts came to the surface, and she was clearly humiliated, but she did not dare escape. It would have been an admission, and she was determined not to make one.

But the tide swept relentlessly on. Even Vespasia was carried along by it until she was placed in a position where she must speak either for Isobel or against her. She had been forced to see more clearly now than at the time how deep the feelings had been on both sides. Under the veneer of wit and a kind of friendship, there had been a struggle for victory, which would have lifted either one woman or the other back onto the crest of a wave in society, assured of comfort and acceptance. The other would be left among the number of women alone, always a little apart, a little lost, hoping for the next invitation, but never certain that it would come, dreading the next bill in case it would not be met.

Without realizing why, Vespasia spoke for Isobel. Gwendolen was beyond her help, and many others were eager to take her part.

“We use what arts we have,” she said, looking more at Omegus than the others. “Gwendolen was pretty and charming. She flattered people by allowing them to help her, and she was grateful. Isobel was far too proud for that, and too honest. She used wit, and sometimes it was cruel. I think when Gwendolen was the victim, she affected to be more wounded than she was. She craved sympathy, and she won it. Isobel was foolish enough not to see that.”

“If Gwendolen was not really hurt, why did she kill herself?” Blanche demanded angrily, challenge in her eyes and the set of her thin shoulders. “That seems to be taking the cry for sympathy rather too far to be of any use!” Her voice was heavily sarcastic, her smile a sneer.

Vespasia looked at Bertie. “When Gwendolen left last night, after Isobel’s remark, did you go after her to see if she was all right?” she asked him. “Did you assure her that you did not for an instant believe she was in love with your money and position rather than with you?”

Bertie colored painfully and his face tightened.

Everyone waited.

“Did you?” Omegus said in a very clear voice.

Bertie looked up. “No. I admit it. Isobel spoke with such … certainty, I did wonder. I, God forgive me, I doubted her.” He fidgeted. “I started to think of things she had said, things other people had said—warnings.” He tried to laugh and failed. “Of course, I realize now that they were merely malicious, born of jealousy. But last night I hesitated. If I hadn’t, poor Gwendolen would be alive, and I should not be alone, mourning her loss.” The look he gave Isobel was venomous in its intensity and its blame.

Vespasia was stunned. It was the last response she had intended to provoke. Far from helping Isobel, she had sealed her fate.

Omegus also looked wretched, but he was bound by his own rules.

The verdict was a matter of form. By overwhelming majority they found Isobel guilty of unbridled cruelty and deliberate intent to ruin Gwendolen, falsely, in the eyes of the man she loved. There was sympathy for Bertie, but it was not unmixed with a certain contempt.

“And what is this pilgrimage that Mrs. Alvie is to make?” Fenton Twyford asked angrily. “I must say I agree with Peter. I really don’t care where she goes, as long as it is not across my path. I can’t stand a woman with a vicious tongue. It’s inexcusable.”

“Very little is inexcusable,” Omegus said with sudden cutting authority, his face at once bleak and touched with a terrible compassion. “You have given your word before everyone here that if she completes the journey, you will wipe the matter from your memory as if it did not happen. Otherwise, you will have broken your word—and that also cannot be excused. If a man’s oath does not bind him, then he cannot be a part of any civilized society.”

Twyford went white. He glanced around the table. No one smiled at him. Lord Salchester nodded in agreement. “Quite so,” he said. “Quite so.”

“Are we agreed?” Omegus inquired softly.

“We are,” came the answer from everyone except Isobel.

Omegus turned to her and waited.

“What journey?” she said huskily.

Omegus explained. “Gwendolen left a letter addressed to her mother, Mrs. Naylor. I have not opened it, nor will you. It’s obviously private. You will take it to Mrs. Naylor and explain to her that Gwendolen has taken her own life, and your part in it. If Mrs. Naylor wishes to come to London, or to Applecross, you will accompany her, unless she will not permit you to. But you will do all in your power to succeed. She lives near Inverness, in the Highlands of Scotland. Her address is on the envelope.”

The silence in the room was broken by the sound of a sudden shower lashing the windows.

“I won’t!” Isobel said in a rush of outrage. “The north of Scotland! At this time of year? And to … to face … absolutely not.” She stood up, her body shaking, her face burning with hectic color. “I will not do it.” For a moment she stared at them, and then left the room, grasping the door until it slammed against the farther wall, then swinging it shut after her.

Vespasia half rose also, then realized the futility of it and sat down again.

“I thought she wouldn’t,” Lady Warburton said with a smile of satisfaction.

Vespasia thought for an instant of a crocodile who fears it is robbed of its prey, and then feels its teeth sink into flesh after all. “You must be pleased,” she said aloud. “I imagine you would have found it nigh on impossible to know something unkind about someone and be unable to repeat it to others.”

Lady Warburton looked at her coldly, her face suddenly bloodless, eyes glittering. “I would be more careful in my choice of friends, if I were you, Lady Vespasia. Your father’s title will not protect you forever. There is a degree of foolishness beyond which even you will have to pay.”

“You are suggesting I desert my friends the moment it becomes inconvenient to me?” Vespasia inquired, although there was barely an inflection in her tone, only heavy disgust. “Why does it not astound me that you should say so?” She also rose to her feet. “Excuse me,” she said to no one in particular, and left the room.

Outside in the hall she was completely alone. There was no servant in sight, no footman waiting to be called. They had taken Omegus’s request for privacy as an absolute order. There was something strangely judicial about it, as if everything, even domestic detail, might be different from now on.

She crossed the wooden parquet and climbed slowly up the great staircase. A few words had changed everything. But they were not merely words: They sprang from thoughts and passions, deep tides that had been there all the time; it was only the knowledge of them that was new.

Vespasia found it difficult to concentrate on dressing for dinner. Her maid suggested one gown after another, but nothing seemed appropriate, nor for once did she really care. The silks, laces, embroidery, the whole palette of subtle and gorgeous colors seemed an empty pleasure. Gwendolen was dead, from whatever despair real or imagined that had gripped her, and Isobel was on the brink of suffering more than she yet understood.

She thought everyone else would be dressing soberly, in grief for Gwendolen, and in parade of their sense of social triumph, somber but victorious. She decided to wear purple. It suited her porcelain skin and the shimmering glory of her hair. It would be beautiful, appropriate for half mourning, and outrageous for a woman of her youth. Altogether it would serve every purpose.