Pitt and Daniel exchanged glances, but both were wise enough not to take issue with her.
AN HOUR LATER CHARLOTTE went upstairs to Jemima’s room and knocked on the door. When there was no answer she rapped sharply, then went in anyway. Jemima was sitting on the bed, her hair loose and tangled, her cheeks tearstained. She glared defiantly at her mother.
“I suppose you’ve come to tell me off,” she said belligerently. “That I have to wear blue, and be glad of it. And that if I smile I’ll look charming anyway … and about as interesting as a jug of milk!”
Charlotte did not ask whose interest Jemima was working to awaken; she already knew. His name was Robert Durbridge and he was eighteen. He was far too old for Jemima at the moment, but otherwise was a pleasant-seeming young man, the son of the local rector and bent on every kind of rebellion against the path in the Church that his parents had planned for him.
“Wear a green sash around your waist and you will be quite different from other girls,” she suggested helpfully.
“What?” Jemima’s eyes flew wide open. “Mama, you can’t wear blue and green together! Nobody does that!”
Charlotte smiled at her. “Then you will be the first. I thought you wanted to be different. Have you changed your mind?”
“Blue and green?”
“Why not? Blue sky and green trees. You see it all the time.”
“I don’t want to look like a field,” Jemima said in disgust.
“A willow tree against the sky,” Charlotte corrected her. “Stop being so obstructive. There is nothing less attractive than bad temper, I promise you. Now wash your face and pull yourself together. It is not your father’s fault, or your brother’s, that you are full of emotion and indecision. It’s part of growing up and we all experience it. You are behaving as if you are the center of the world, and you aren’t.”
“You don’t understand!” Jemima wailed, her face crumpling.
“Of course not,” Charlotte agreed with a smile. “I was never fourteen, I went straight from being twelve to being twenty. So did both of my sisters.”
“Twenty!” Jemima was horrified. “You mean I’m going to feel like this for another six years?”
“Please heaven, I hope not!” Charlotte said with feeling.
In spite of herself, Jemima smiled, and then started to giggle. “Can I really wear a green sash on my dress?”
“Of course. So you had better walk with your head up, and smile to everyone, because they will all be looking at you, including young Robert Durbridge.”
“Do you think so?” Jemima blushed. “But then maybe I should wear …”
“Jemima!” Charlotte interrupted.
“Yes, Mama.”
“The subject is closed.”
CHARLOTTE AND PITT ATTENDED yet another reception that duty obliged them to, but Charlotte admitted to herself that there were elements of it she thoroughly enjoyed, not the least being that she was nobody’s guest. She was here because Pitt was invited.
In the swirl of greetings, polite conversations, and the swapping of suitably trivial inquiries and answers, they began to move among the throng of people. Charlotte noticed Vespasia, strikingly elegant as usual. Pitt looked for those with whom he needed to speak.
Charlotte met various women she had encountered before, but found her attention wandering. They were discussing family matters: who was engaged to marry whom; love affairs and misfortunes she was thankful did not concern her. She realized that all too soon she would have to consider Jemima finding a suitable husband, but she had three or four years’ grace yet before that needed to be a preoccupation. When she was young and single she had loathed being presented to various people in the hope that some young man might please her, and she him. Now she felt an embarrassing wave of sympathy for her own mother. She knew perfectly well that she had been extraordinarily difficult, and in the end decided to marry a policeman and virtually disappear from Society.
By that time her mother had been relieved to accept any settled life for her middle daughter and had put up barely any resistance.
She was still smiling at the memory when she saw Angeles Castelbranco with some other young women. They all appeared to be laughing with two young men, both of whom were quite openly admiring Angeles. Charlotte could not blame them or find it surprising. She was a beautiful young woman, and at the moment her face was flushed and her eyes brilliant.
Then Neville Forsbrook approached the group, smiling.
Seeing him, Angeles’s face fell and she backed away sharply. It