Highgate Rise by Anne Perry Read Free Book Online Page B

could have been killed!” she said angrily, but there were tears in her eyes. “You must never do such a mad thing again! I suppose whatever I think of to say to you, Thomas will already have said it? I trust he scolded you to within an inch of your life?”
    “It was not necessary,” Charlotte said honestly. “I was quite aware of it all myself. Are you ready to go and see Aunt Vespasia?”
    “Certainly. But you are not. You must change out of that very plain stuff dress and put on something more appealing.”
    “To do the ironing?”
    “Nonsense. You are coming with me. It will do you good. It is a lovely day and the drive will be excellent.”
    Charlotte gave duty a brief thought, then submitted to temptation.
    “Yes—if you wish. It will only take me a few moments to change. Gracie!” And she hurried out to find the maid and request her to prepare the children’s tea for their return and peel the vegetables for the main evening meal.
    Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould lived in a spacious, fashionable house, and her door was opened by a maid in a crisp uniform with lace-trimmed cap and apron. She recognized Charlotte and Emily immediately and showed them in without the usual formalities of prevarication. There was no question as to whether they would be received. Her ladyship was not only very fond of them both, she was also acutely bored with the chatter of society and the endless minutiae of etiquette.
    Vespasia was sitting in her private withdrawing room, very sparsely furnished by current standards of taste—no heavy oak tables, no overstuffed sofas and no fringes on the curtains. Instead it was reminiscent of a far earlier age, when Vespasia herself was born, the high empire of Napoleon Bonaparte, before the Battle of Waterloo, the clean lines of the Georgian era and the austerity of a long, desperate war for survival. One of her uncles had died in Nelson’s navy at Trafalgar. Now even the Iron Duke was dead and Wellington a name in history books, and those who fought in the Crimea forty years later were old men now.
    Vespasia was sitting upright on a hard-backed Chippendale chair, her dove-gray gown high at the neck, touched with French lace, and four ropes of pearls hanging almost to her waist. She did not bother with the pretense of indifference. Her smile was full of delight.
    “Emily, my dear. How very well you look. I’m so pleased you have come. You shall tell me everything you enjoyed. The tedious parts you may omit, no doubt they were just the same as when I was there and it is quite unnecessary that any of us should endure them again. Charlotte, you will live through it all a second time and ask all the pertinent questions. Come, sit down.”
    They both went to her, kissed her in turn, then took the places she indicated.
    “Agatha,” she commanded the maid. “You will bring tea. Cucumber sandwiches, if you please—and then have Cook make some fresh scones with—I think—raspberry jam, and of course cream.”
    “Yes, my lady.” Agatha nodded obediently.
    “In an hour and a half,” Vespasia added. “We have much to hear.”
    Whether they would stay so long was not open to argument, nor if any other chance caller should be admitted. Lady Vespasia was not at home to anyone else.
    “You may begin,” Vespasia said, her eyes bright with a mixture of anticipation and laughter.
    Nearly two hours later the tea table was empty and Emily finally could think of nothing else whatever to add.
    “And now what are you going to do?” Vespasia inquired with interest.
    Emily looked down at the carpet. “I don’t know. I suppose I could become involved in good works of some sort. I could be patron of the local committee for the care of fallen women!”
    “I doubt it,” Charlotte said dryly. “You are not Lady Ashworth anymore. You’d have to be an ordinary member.”
    Emily made a face at her. “I have no intention of becoming either. I don’t mind the fallen women—it’s the committee members I