Highgate Rise by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online

anyone interesting, or scandalous? Are you working on a case?”
    Charlotte smiled sweetly and benignly, and ignoring the questions, opened the parcel, laying aside the wrapping paper neatly, both to tantalize Emily and because it was far toopretty to tear. She would keep it and use it at Christmas. Inside were three trailing bouquets of handmade silk flowers that were so lush and magnificent she gasped with amazement when she saw them. They would make the most ordinary hat look fit for a duchess, or in the folds of a skirt make a simple taffeta dress into a ball gown. One was in pastel pinks, one blazing reds, and the third all the shades between flamingo and flame.
    “Oh, Emily. You’re a genius.” Her mind raced through all the things she could do with them, apart from the sheer pleasure of turning them over and over in her hand and dreaming, which was a joy in itself if she never got any further. “Oh, thank you! They are exquisite.”
    Emily was glowing with satisfaction. “I shall bring the paintings of Florence next time. But now I brought Thomas a dozen silk handkerchiefs—with his initials on.”
    “He’ll adore them,” Charlotte said with absolute certainty. “Now tell me about your trip—everything you can that isn’t terribly private.” She did not mean to ask Emily if she were happy, nor would she have. Marrying Jack Radley had been a wild and very personal decision. He had no money and no prospects; after George Ashworth, who had had both, and a title as well, it was a radical social change. And she had certainly loved George and felt his death profoundly. Yet Jack, whose reputation was dubious, had proved that his charm was not nearly as shallow as it appeared at first. He was a loyal friend, with courage as well as humor and imagination, and was prepared to take risks in a cause he believed right.
    “Put on the kettle,” Emily ordered. “And have you got pastry baking?” She sniffed. “It smells delicious.”
    Charlotte obeyed, and then settled to listen.
    Emily had written regularly, except for the last few weeks, which had been spent at sea on the long, late-summer voyage home from Naples to London. They had sailed slowly by intent, calling at many ports, but she had not mailed letters, believing they would not reach Charlotte before she did herself. Now the words poured out in descriptions of Sardinia,the Balearic Isles, North Africa, Gibraltar, Portugal, northern Spain and the Atlantic coast of France.
    To Charlotte they were magical places, immeasurably distant from Bloomsbury and the busy streets of London, housework and domestic duties, children, and Pitt’s recounting of his day. She would never see them, and half of her regretted it and would love to have watched the brilliant light on colored walls, smelled the spice and fruit and dust in the air, felt the heat and heard the different rhythm of foreign tongues. They would have filled her imagination and enriched her memory for years. But she could have the best of them through Emily’s recounting, and do it without the seasickness, the weariness of long cramped coach rides, highly irregular sanitation and a wide variety of insects which Emily described in repulsive detail.
    Through it all there emerged a sharper, kinder and less romantic picture of Jack, and Charlotte found many of her anxieties slipping away.
    “Now that you’re home, are you going to stay in the city?” she asked, looking at Emily’s face, flushed with color from sun and wind but tired around the eyes. “Or are you going to the country?” She had inherited a large house in its own parklands, in trust for her son from her marriage to Lord Ashworth.
    “Oh, no,” Emily said quickly. “At least—” She made a small, rueful face. “I don’t know. It’s very different now we’re not on a planned journey with something new to see or to do each day, and somewhere we have to be by nightfall. This is the beginning of real life.” She looked down at her