"You are Hester Latterly?" she asked, although the question was obviously rhetorical. "Edith said you were coming this afternoon. I'm so glad. Ever since she told me you went to the Crimea with Miss Nightingale, I have been longing to meet you. You must come again, when we are more ourselves, and tell us about it." She flashed a sudden illuminating smile. "Or tell me, anyway. I'm not at all sure Papa would approve, and I'm quite certain Mama would not. Far too independent. Rocks the foundations of society when women don't know their proper place - which, of course, is at home, keeping civilization safe for the rest of us."
She walked over to a neo-rococo love seat and threw herself on it utterly casually. "Seeing we learn to clean our teeth every day," she went on. "Eat our rice pudding, speak correctly, never split infinitives, wear our gloves at all the appropriate times, keep a stiff upper lip whatever vicissitudes we may find ourselves placed in, and generally set a good example to the lower classes - who depend upon us for precisely this." She was sitting sideways over the seat. For anyone else it would have been awkward, but for her it had a kind of grace because it was so wholehearted. She did not care greatly what others thought of her. Yet even in this careless attitude there was an ill-concealed tension in her, and Hester could easily imagine the frenzied distress Edith had spoken of.
Now Damaris's face darkened again as she looked at Hester.
"I suppose Edith has told you about our tragedy - Thaddeus's death - and that they are now saying it was murder?" Her brow furrowed even more deeply. "Although I can't imagine why anyone should want to kill Thaddeus." She turned to Edith. "Can you? I mean, he was a terrible bore at times, but most men are. They think all the wrong things are important. Oh - I'm sorry - I do mean most men, not all!" Suddenly she had realized she might have offended Hester and her contrition was real.
"That is quite all right." Hester smiled. "I agree with you. And I daresay they feel the same about us."
Damaris winced. "Touched Did Edith tell you about it?"
"The dinner party? No - she said it would be better if you did, since you were there." She hoped she sounded concerned and not unbecomingly inquisitive.
Damaris closed her eyes and slid a little farther down on her unorthodox seat.
"It was ghastly. A fiasco almost from the beginning." She opened her eyes again and stared at Hester. "Do you really want to know about it?"
"Unless you find it too painful." That was not the truth. She wanted to know about it regardless, but decency, and compassion, prevented her from pressing too hard.
Damaris shrugged, but she did not meet Hester's eyes. "I don't mind talking about it - it is all going on inside my head anyway, repeating over and over again. Some parts of it don't even seem real anymore."
"Begin at the beginning," Edith prompted, curling her feet up under her. ' "That is the only way we have a hope of making any sense of it. Apparently someone did kill Thad-deus, and it is going to be extremely unpleasant until we find out who."
Damaris shivered and shot her a sour glance, then addressed Hester.
"Peverell and I were the first to arrive. You haven't met him, but you will like him when you do." She said it unselfconsciously and without desire for effect, simply as a comment of fact. "At that time we were both in good spirits and looking forward to the evening." She lifted her eyes to the ceiling. "Can you imagine that? Do you know Maxim and Louisa Furnival? No, I don't suppose you do. Edith says you don't waste time in Society."
Hester smiled and looked down at her hands in her lap to avoid meeting Edith's eyes. That was a charmingly euphemistic way of putting it. Hester was too old to be strictly marriageable, well over twenty-five, and even twenty-five was optimistic. And since her father had lost his money before his death, she had no dowry, nor any social background worth anyone's while to pursue. Also she was of an unbecomingly direct character and both held and expressed too many opinions.
"I have no time I can afford to waste," she answered aloud.
"And I have too much," Edith added.
Hester brought them back to the subject. "Please tell