Dorchester Terrace by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online Page A

dangerous … a secret. Do you see?”
    Vespasia put her hand on Serafina’s very gently, and felt the bones and the thin, knotted tendons under her fingers. “But, my dear, right now you are here in London, in late February of 1896, and you know exactly who I am. Those old secrets are past. Italy is united, except for the small part in the east still under Austrian rule. Hungary is still lesser in the empire, and getting more so with each year, and the whole Balkan peninsula is still ruled from Vienna. Most of the people we knew are dead. The battle has passed on from us. We don’t even know who is involved anymore.”
    “
You
don’t,” Serafina whispered. “I still know secrets that matter—loves and hates from the past that count even now. It wasn’t really so long ago. In politics, perhaps, but not in the memories of those who were betrayed.”
    Vespasia struggled for something to say that would comfort this frightened woman.
    “Perhaps Miss Freemarsh will see that you are not left alone with anyone, if you ask her?” she suggested. “That would not be unnatural, in the circumstances.”
    Serafina smiled bleakly. “Nerissa? She thinks I am fantasizing. She has no idea of the past. To her I am an old woman who enlarges her memories and paints them in brighter colors than they were, in order to draw attention to herself, and to make up for the grayness of today. She is far too polite to say so, but I see it in her eyes.” Serafina looked down at the coverlet. “And she has other things on her mind. I believe she might be in love. I remember what that was like: the excitement, the wondering if he was coming that day or the next, the torment if I thought he favored someone else.” She looked up at Vespasia again, laughter and sadness in her eyes, and questioning.
    “Of course,” Vespasia agreed. “One does not forget. Perhaps one only pretends to now and then, because the sweetness of it comes soseldom as one gets older. We remember the pleasure and tend to forget the pain.” She drew her mind back to the present issue. “Does Nerissa have any idea who you are, and what you have accomplished?”
    Serafina shook her head. “No. How could she? The world was different then. I knew everybody who mattered in one empire, and you did in the other. We knew too many secrets, and I wonder if perhaps you still do?”
    Vespasia was momentarily discomfited. She did know far more of the present world and its political and personal secrets than she would tell anyone, even Thomas Pitt. How had Serafina seen through her so easily, and in a mere quarter of an hour?
    The answer was simple: because at heart they were alike, believers who cared too much, women who used their courage and charm to influence men who held power and could change nations.
    “A few,” Vespasia admitted. “But old ones, embarrassing possibly, but not dangerous.”
    Serafina laughed. “Liar!” she said cheerfully. “If that were true there would be sadness in your voice, and there isn’t. I hear no regret.”
    “I apologize,” Vespasia said sincerely. “I underestimated you, and that was rude of me.”
    “I forgive you. I expected it. One has to lie to survive. My fear is that as I get worse, I shall lose the judgment, and possibly even the ability to lie anymore.”
    Vespasia felt another, even more painful, wave of pity for her. Serafina had been magnificent, a tigress of a woman, and now she lay wounded and alone, afraid of shadows from the past.
    “I shall speak to Miss Freemarsh,” she said firmly. “What about your Tucker? Is she still able to hold her authority with the other servants?”
    “Oh, yes, God bless her. I wouldn’t have anyone else. But she is seventy if she is a day, and I cannot expect her to be here all the time. Sometimes I see how tired she is.” She stopped; no more explanation was necessary.
    “Perhaps it would be possible to get you a nurse who would be by your side all the time, at least all day, when