“How dare you humiliate me this way?” Mrs. Shrewsbury rained down blows on her husband. “How dare you?”
The painted French fan, folded up, made for a surprisingly potent weapon—a cross between a bolt of silk and a police baton. Roger Shrewsbury whimpered.
He didn’t understand the way her mind worked.
Very well, he had committed an unforgivable error: The night before he’d been so drunk he mistook his wife for Mimi, his mistress, and told the wife what he was going to do this afternoon with Charlotte Holmes. But if Mrs. Shrewsbury hadn’t wanted him to deflower Miss Holmes, why hadn’t she smacked him then and there and forbidden him to do anything of the sort? Or she could have gone ’round to Miss Holmes’s and slapped her for not having a higher regard for her hymen.
Instead she had mustered a regiment of sisters, cousins, and friends, set his mother at the helm of the entire enterprise, and stormed the Bastille just as he settled into Miss Holmes. So how could she accuse him of humiliating her, when she was the one who had made sure that a good dozen other women saw her husband in flagrante delicto?
He knew better than to give voice to his thoughts. After twenty-six years as Lady Shrewsbury’s son and three as Anne Shrewsbury’s husband, he’d learned that he was always wrong. The less he said, the better.
The missus continued to hit him. He wrapped his arms around his head, made himself as small as possible, and tried to disappear into a nice memory, a time and a place in which he wasn’t a bounder twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year.
Lady Shrewsbury frowned mightily at the young woman who sat opposite her in the brougham. Charlotte Holmes was still, her face pale but composed.
Eerily composed, given she was now ruined beyond repair.
So composed that Lady Shrewsbury, who had been prepared for any amount of hysterical sobbing and frantic pleas, was beginning to feel rattled—a sensation she hadn’t experienced in years.
Lady Shrewsbury had been the one to throw a sheet over the girl. She had then ordered her son to go home with his wife, and the rest of the women to disperse. Miss Holmes had not trembled in a corner, her hands over her face. Nor had she stared numbly at the floor. Instead she had watched the goings-on as if she were a mere bystander, one whose own fate had not in the least taken an unthinkable turn. As Roger was shoved out by his wife, Miss Holmes glanced at him, without anger, loathing, or any reflection of his helplessness.
It had been a sympathetic and apologetic look, the kind the ringleader of a gang of unruly children might give one of her followers, after she had got the latter into unlimited trouble.
Lady Shrewsbury had fully expected this bravado to disintegrate once the others had gone. She was famous for her sternness. Roger, whenever he found himself alone with her, perspired even when she hadn’t planned to inquire into what he had been doing with himself of late.
But her formidableness had no effect on Charlotte Holmes. After the gaggle of eyewitnesses departed to spread the salacious story in drawing rooms all over London, Miss Holmes, instead of dissolving into tears, dressed and ordered a considerable tea service.
Then, under Lady Shrewsbury’s increasingly incredulous gaze, she proceeded to polish off a plate of plum cake, a plate of cherry tartlets, and a plate of sardines and toast. All without saying a single word, or even acknowledging Lady Shrewsbury’s presence.
Lady Shrewsbury controlled her vexation. Silence was one of her greatest weapons and she would not be goaded into abandoning that strategic advantage. Alas, her magnificent silence had no effect on Charlotte Holmes, who dined as if she were a queen and Lady Shrewsbury a lowly lackey, not worthy of even a spare glance.
When the girl was ready to leave, she simply walked out, forcing Lady Shrewsbury to catch up. Again, as if she weren’t a strict moral guardian escorting a fallen woman to her consequences, but a simpleminded maid scampering behind her mistress.
The silence continued in the brougham. Miss Holmes studied the carriages that clogged the street—shiny, lacquered town coaches jostling for space amidst long queues of hansom cabs. From time to time her gaze fell on Lady Shrewsbury and Lady Shrewsbury had the distinct sensation that of the two of them, Miss Holmes considered Lady Shrewsbury the far stranger specimen.
“Have you nothing to say for yourself?” she snapped, unable to stand the silence another second.
“For myself, no,” Charlotte Holmes said softly. “But I hope you will not be too harsh on Roger. He is not to blame for this.”
Inspector Robert Treadles of the Metropolitan Police always enjoyed an outing to Burlington House, especially to attend Lord Ingram’s lectures. They had met via a shared ardor for archeology—Lord Ingram had sponsored Treadles’s entry into the London Society of Antiquaries, in fact.