you are counseling us about, Miss Latterly, perhaps we had better know what it is."
Felicia looked at him sharply, but he chose to ignore her.
Hester would like to have told him it was between her and Peverell, but she did not dare. No words came to her that could have been even remotely civil. She looked back at his rather baleful stare and felt acutely uncomfortable.
There was silence around the table. No one came to her rescue, as if their courage had suddenly deserted them also.
"I - " She took a deep breath and began again. "I have the acquaintance of a most excellent barrister who has previously fought and won seemingly impossible cases. I thought - I thought Mr. Erskine might wish to consider his services for Mrs. Carlyon."
Felicia's nostrils flared and a spark of cold anger lit her face.
"Thank you, Miss Latterly, but as I think I have already pointed out, a barrister is not required. My daughter-in-law has already confessed to the crime; there is no case to be argued. It is only a matter of arranging for her to be put away as discreetly as possible in the place best suited to care for her in her state."
"She may not be guilty, Mama," Edith said tentatively, the force and enthusiasm gone out of her voice.
"Then why would she admit to it, Edith?" Felicia asked without bothering to look at her.
Edith's face tightened. "To protect Sabella. Alex isn't insane, we all know that. But Sabella may well be . . ."
"Nonsense!" Felicia said sharply. "She was a trifle emotional after her child was born. It happens from time to time. It passes." She broke a little brown bread on the plate to her left, her fingers powerful. "Women have been known to kill their children sometimes, in such fits of melancholia, but not their fathers. You should not offer opinions in matters you know nothing about."
"She hated Thaddeus!" Edith persisted, two spots of color in her cheeks, and it came to Hester sharply that the reference to Edith's ignorance of childbirth had been a deliberate cruelty.
"Don't be ridiculous!" Felicia said to her sharply. "She was unruly and very self-willed. Alexandra should have been much firmer with her. But that is hardly the same thing as being homicidal."
Peverell smiled charmingly. "It really doesn't matter, Mama-in-law, because Alexandra will give me whatever instructions she wishes, and I shall be obliged to act accordingly. After she has thought about it awhile, and realized that it will not simply be a matter of being shut away in some agreeable nursing establishment, but of being hanged ..." He ignored Felicia's indrawn breath and wince of distaste at the grossness of his choice of words. "... then she may change her plea and wish to be defended." He took another sip from his spoon. "And of course I shall have to put all the alternatives before her."
Felicia's face darkened. "For goodness sake, Peverell, are you not competent to get the matter taken care of decently and with some discretion?" she said with exasperated contempt. "Poor Alexandra's mind has snapped. She has taken leave of her wits and allowed her jealous fancies to provoke her into a moment of insane rage. It can help no one to expose her to public ridicule and hatred. It is the most absurd of crimes. What would happen if every woman who imagined her husband paid more attention to another woman than he should - which must be half London! - were to resort to murder? Society would fall apart, and everything that goes with it." She took a deep breath and began again, more gently, as if explaining to a child. "Can you not put it to her, when you see her, that even if she has no feeling left for herself, or for us, that she must consider her family, especially her son, who is a child? Think what the scandal will do to him! If she makes public this jealousy of hers, and goodness knows there was no ground for it except in her poor mad brain, then she will ruin Cassian's future and at the very least be a source of embarrassment to her daughters."
Peverell seemed unmoved, except by politeness and a certain outward sympathy for Felicia.
"I will point out all the possible courses to her, Mama-in-law, and the results, as I believe them, of any action she might make." He dabbed his lips with his napkin and his face retained so smooth an