her decorum again, dropped a curtsy, and withdrew, closing the door behind her.
Charlotte looked at Vespasia.
Vespasia regarded the sandwiches. “Excellent,” she murmured. “Minnie Maude is coming on very well.” She took one and put it on her plate while Charlotte poured the tea.
“What do you fear has happened to Angeles Castelbranco?” Charlotte asked a few moments later.
“The marriage was an arranged one, naturally,” Vespasia replied. “The de Freitas family is wealthy and highly respected. For Angeles it is a good match. Tiago is six or seven years older than her and, as far as I hear, nothing ill is known of him.”
“How much is that worth?” Charlotte asked skeptically, surprised how protective she felt of a girl she had seen only once. Did that mean she was bound to become overprotective of Jemima as well? She could remember her mother being so, and she had hated it.
Vespasia was watching her with wry amusement and perhaps also with recollections of her own daughters. “A good deal,” she replied. “Plus Isaura Castelbranco was young once, and I am sure has not forgotten the romance she dreamed of for herself; I doubt she would arrange for her daughter to marry someone unworthy.”
“Then why are you worried?” Charlotte asked, suddenly grave again. “What is it you fear?”
Vespasia was silent for several moments. She sipped her tea and ate another of Minnie Maude’s cucumber sandwiches.
Charlotte waited, recalling the party at the Spanish Embassy and the look in Angeles’s face. Had it truly been as fearful as she pictured it now, or was she putting her own feelings onto it?
“What is it you think has happened?” she asked more urgently.
“I don’t know,” Vespasia admitted. “It is a big thing indeed to break an engagement in a family like that. If she does not give a powerful reason, then other reasons will be suggested, largely unflattering in nature. It has been said, so far, that it is she who broke it off, but sometimes a young man will allow that, as a gallantry, when in fact it is he who has done so.”
Charlotte was startled. “What are you saying? That she has … has lost her virginity? She’s sixteen, not a thirty-year-old courtesan. How could you suggest such a thing?”
“I didn’t,” Vespasia pointed out gently. “You did. Which perfectly makes my point. People will look for reasons, and if they are not given them they will create their own. Breaking a betrothal is not something one does lightly.”
Charlotte looked down at the carpet. “She’s so young. And she looked so vulnerable at that party. The room was crowded with people, and yet she was alone.”
Vespasia finished her tea and set the cup down. “I hope I am mistaken.” She rose to her feet. “Shall we leave?”
FOR SOME TIME AT the party Charlotte accompanied Vespasia as they met friends or acquaintances and exchanged the usual polite remarks. She had wanted to come, to be in the swirl of conversation, feeling the exhilaration of meeting new people, but after half an hour or so she realized how little she truly knew, could know, of the men and women around her; their clothes, their manners, and their speech covered up far more of the truth than they revealed.
Looking at a woman in a bright dress, she wondered if it was exuberance that prompted her to wear it or bravado hiding some uncertainty, fear, or grief. And the woman in the plain-cut, subdued shade of blue—was that modesty, a supreme confidence that needed no display, or simply the only gown she had not already worn in this same company? So much could be interpreted half a dozen different ways.
It was about ten minutes later that Charlotte encountered Isaura Castelbranco and with pleasure found an opportunity to engage her in conversation. It seemed very easy to ask what region of Portugal she grew up in and to hear a description of the beautiful valley that had been her home until her marriage.
“Port wine?” Charlotte said with an interest she did not have to feign. “I often wondered how they make it because it is quite different from anything else, even sherry.”
“It is wine from the grapes in the Douro Valley,” Isaura replied, enthusiasm lighting her eyes. “But that is not really what makes it special. It is fortified with a brandy spirit, and aged in barrels of a particular wood. It takes a great deal of skill, and some of the process is kept secret.”