certain Italian gentlemen she befriended, during long years of solitary travel.”
Charlotte looked up suddenly to find Longfellow's hazel eyes appraising her.
“I'm sorry to hear it,” she replied, setting the book onto a nearby table.
“What else could be expected of a woman who chooses to ignore convention, and lives alone in a foreign country? Though she may have had one good reason to leave England.”
“Oh?”
“She was outshone at last by her own daughter, the woman who married Bute, before he became prime minister.”
“Lord Bute,” asked Charlotte, “who was seen with the Devil in Boston last summer?” She followed his gaze to the windows. “Hanging in a tree?”
“Our Liberty Boys do such admirable work in papier mâché,” he returned, “that all of Boston may soon demand to be copied in the stuff, and painted up for posterity. The ladies, at least. What do you think, Mrs. Willett?”
Despite the bantering tone of Richard's remark, Charlotte saw that Diana was unmoved. Perhaps she still admired the moonlit snow beyond the frosted panes. But it was more likely that her thoughts had drifted back to her lost child. At least there was a marked contrast to her usual impatience with her brother's teasing pronouncements. Until very recently, Diana had been a rising force among the unyielding ladies of Boston, known for her clever tongue and courageous spirit, if her words were sometimes said to have a little too much bite. But now, she seemed a statue of quiet grief.
Charlotte rose and went forward, looking down on loosely curled auburn locks. When these moved, she met a pair of brimming emerald eyes. She pulled a lavender-scented handkerchief from her sleeve. It was taken gladly, and did help to stem a flow of tears that glistened, for a few moments, in the candlelight. Yet Diana's smile of thanks was more pitiful than what had come before.
Charlotte sighed and returned to the fire, where she was surprised to find a bold admiration in her neighbor's steady expression. In a manner she hoped was careless, she settled herself onto the arm of one of his stuffed chairs. Had he finally begun to soften toward her? She felt emboldened by the idea. Then again, she remembered her recent glimpse of Eternity. In recalling the black water that had nearly claimed her, she felt her knees begin to quiver. Should she tell them both what had nearly happened? She decided not.
“Has Edmund described to you, Diana, the visit he made to Walpole's castellino?” Longfellow asked a short time later. His sister nodded, and went to pour herself a small glass of sherry from a tea table near the hearth.
“Then I will tell the story to Mrs. Willett. It seems Horace Walpole has been nurturing a monstrosity at Twickenham, near London. Pope is buried there, but may regret it; people regularly come out, not to pay their respects to him, but to see the progress of the ‘little castle.’ The captain was asked to join one such party arranged by his friend Mr. Goldsmith. Edmund says Walpole adds a tower here, a cloister there—he's caused stained glass windows to be put up, depicting the lives of tormented saints. He's inserted numerous niches into the walls to display ancient weapons, and suits of mail and armor, removed from someone's attic or cellar. If he craves something fanciful that can't be supported by the underlying structure of his old farmhouse—a battlement, for instance—he simply orders it to be created out of cardboard! Wallpaper, too, is used to imitate groined vaults, and stone stairways…”
As the description went on, Charlotte grew astonished at the remarkable coincidence. Hadn't she seen something similar that very afternoon, not ten miles away?
“All of this falls, of course, under a term that is well known,” Longfellow said at last.
“Gothic?” she suggested, recalling the title page of the book she'd recently put down. She received a smile of approval.
“An architectural style,” he went on to explain, “involving pointed arches, spires, buttresses, gargoyles—things found in the cathedrals of Europe. Lately, people of elevated taste have begun to use the term for a sensibility they link to the romantic temperament; their aim, it seems, is to be thrilled by the fantastic and the grotesque. In fact, a growing number of ladies and gentlemen use ‘gothic’ as a word of praise, shivering at the supernatural worlds they imagine. Yet these fantasies prove they are no better than untutored children, easily frightened, unable to accept or enjoy the world around them.”
Diana sent a query from across