The recollection of recent events caused Charis to flush bright crimson, but Emily’s interest had already taken a different direction so that she scarcely heeded the indistinguishable reply.

  ‘And what in the name of all that’s holy is it that you have there?’ she demanded.

  Charis realised that she was still clutching the sodden bundle protectively to her breast.

  ‘They are … or rather, were library books, Em. I’m afraid I dropped them.’

  ‘Tch! Could you not have left them outside? Dripping all over my clean floor ‒ and that dress ruined, I shouldn’t wonder, with the colours all running down! Here, give them to me.’

  Charis thrust the books at her and fled, thankful to have escaped a more gruelling inquisition. In the safety of her room, she closed the door softly and leaned back against it, striving to assemble her disordered thoughts.

  To be sure, the gentleman had behaved with shocking impropriety, but ‒ she caught her breath on the thought ‒ how must she have appeared in his eyes? She bit her lip, remembering that one crazy instant when she had known herself to be irresistibly drawn to him. Had he perhaps sensed that momentary lapse? If so, it might account for his having used her so … outrageously!

  A sudden shiver recalled Charis to the present. With a discomforture that was not wholly physical, she moved away from the door, suddenly eager to be rid of all reminders of her foolishness, and in passing the dressing-table mirror, caught a glimpse of herself.

  Oh, good God! She looked like some dreadful demirep with her muslins deliberately damped down in order to make them cling! If that was how he had seen her, small wonder that he thought … Here she pulled up short, her imagination boggling at the probable trend of his thoughts. She stripped off the offending garment with fingers that trembled, crumpled it into a ball, and flung it into the furthest corner of the room.

  How could she have allowed herself to become embroiled in such a compromising situation? It was useless to plead innocence. She was far from being a green girl, for in her two and twenty years she had been about a great deal (though sadly not of late), and with her brother’s friends forever in and out of the house she was well used to dealing with young men ‒ except, she amended with scrupulous honesty, that none of Tristram’s friends would dream of treating her with such a ruthless disregard of her sensibilities. But then, the traitorous little voice at the back of her mind came again to taunt her, would she have felt that peculiar surge of exhilaration if they had? The unhappy truth had to be owned ‒ she would not.

  Charis was deeply shocked by this revelation of her own shortcomings. A gently nurtured young lady ‒ his description, she ruefully recalled ‒ must surely have swooned away, or at the very least have suffered an intense agitation of the spirit upon being forcibly kissed by a strange man.

  Not quite knowing what this made of her, she fudged the issue and proceeded to rub herself down with a briskness that left her pink and glowing. By the time Meg panted upstairs with the hot water, she had donned a fresh gown and coaxed her hair into some kind of order. Her normally ebullient disposition was in a fair way to being restored and she had managed to convince herself that it would be foolish indeed to refine too much upon a trivial incident that would be much better forgotten.

  The decision was easily made, but less easily accomplished with the experience echoing over and over in her head. And then Tristram arrived home with a piece of news that drove all else from her mind.

  Chapter Two

  She was on her knees in the linen closet when Tristram arrived, shattering the peace of the house with his exuberant shout which vied with the reverberation caused by the slamming of the front door.

  ‘Charis? Are you there?’

  She looked up eagerly from the reproachful contemplation of a hitherto undiscovered thin patch in the best pair of sheets.

  ‘Up here, Tris.’

  ‘Such a turn up! Just wait until I tell you!’

  Her brother could be heard taking the stairs two at a time.

  ‘That boy has no moderation in him at all,’ declared Emily in the reproving tones of one who, having raised the said boy from a muling infant, reserved the right to treat him as though he were still in short coats. ‘Skimble-brained!’ she added for good measure, as though by thus berating him she could in some measure disguise the fact that she adored him. ‘The good Lord alone knows how he ever got to be taken on as secretary to such a great government swell!’

  Charis sat back on her heels, hugging the offending sheet to her with a blithe disregard for the way she was crushing it.

  ‘Oh, Tristram isn’t anything so grand as a secretary, Em. In fact, I should be surprised if he has so much as laid eyes on Lord Rowby since he went to work for him. I’m sure that his lordship only made a place for Tristram out of a sense of obligation. Both he and Lord Castlereagh thought very highly of Papa, you know.’

  ‘And why wouldn’t they? He was a grand man, your father ‒ took his diplomatic duties seriously, whatever his other failings.’ Emily’s attention was momentarily diverted as she held up a towel. ‘Will you look at that, now? There’s no saving this one, I’m thinking.’

  ‘Tear it up for dishmops,’ said Charis absently, her mind dwelling with uncomfortable persistence upon Emily’s reference to Papa’s failings. She hoped devoutly that Tristram had not inherited the unsteadiness of character that, in Papa, had shown itself in a passion for gambling that had left them near penniless at his death. To be sure, Tristram had not so far as she was aware succumbed to any specific vice ‒ but dear as he was to her, she could not but wish for a little more ambition, some evidence in him of a determination to seek advancement.

  ‘Oh well.’ She shrugged philosophically. ‘I suppose even diplomats must sometimes begin as lowly clerks, and Tris is still young enough to prove himself.’

  ‘Young, is it?’ Emily’s tone was so dry that it crackled. ‘When I was his age I’d been married to Mr MacGrath for all of five years and had borne him four lusty children, including a brace of twins the same as yourselves.’

  Emily’s irrefutable brand of logic always confounded Charis, and she blessed Tristram’s whirlwind arrival, which relieved her of the necessity of making some reply. He filled the narrow doorway ‒ a slim young sprig of fashion ‒ his infectious smile a mirror of hers, the words spilling out of him in his eagerness to impart his news.

  ‘You’ll never guess ‒ it’s the most tremendous piece of luck ‒ Lord Rowby has been posted to Brussels, and I’m to go with him!’

  The sheet billowed to the floor forgotten as Charis was lifted to her feet and crushed in a triumphant, suffocating embrace. Her kiss landed somewhere just below his left ear, her words of congratulation being muffled by the stuff of his stylish blue coat as she turned her face swiftly into his shoulder.

  ‘Isn’t it perfectly splendid, Em?’ he said above her head. ‘Aside from Vienna, there isn’t anywhere likely to be half so gay, for everyone who isn’t going to the Congress is following the army of occupation to Brussels. I dare say the place will be simply crawling with nabobs, and there’s no knowing what a fellow might not achieve!’

  Emily MacGrath swooped wrathfully on the crumpled sheet and began busily to smooth its creases. ‘If you achieve one half of what’s expected of you, it’ll be a miracle, I’m thinking! Now, out of me way, the both of you ‒ and let somebody in this house do a day’s work.’

  Tristram realised that Charis had said very little. He held her away from him, his merry eyes quizzing her as she forced a bright smile to hide a fast-engulfing dismay.

  ‘What’s wrong, little sister? I thought you’d be pleased.’

  ‘I am,’ she insisted.

  ‘Liar,’ he said softly.

  There was a wryness in her grin. ‘You’re right, of course. Indeed, I am very happy for you, my dear. But I’m also pea-green with jealousy …’ She threw her arms wide in a curiously helpless gesture. ‘And, oh lordy, I am going to miss you quite dreadfully!’

  ‘So that’s what ails you. I thought as much.’ Tristram reached out for her hands, bringing them together in a warm, possessive clasp against his chest. ‘Well, then, we’d better see what can be done about it, hadn’t we?’

  Charis could hardly bear to speak lest she should be reading more into his words than he intended.

  ‘Stoopid!’ he murmured in mock reproof as eye to eye he met her now brilliant, questioning gaze. ‘You didn’t really think that I would leave you behind?’ His fingers squeezed hers reassuringly tight. ‘How could I possibly survive without my good right hand?’

  At this they collapsed against one another in a spontaneous explosion of merriment which on her side was part relief, part sheer exhilaration.

  ‘Without a doubt it was my superior command of languages that clinched things for me,’ Tristram concluded with an absence of modesty that in anyone else would have been odious. ‘That, and the fact that his lordship’s private secretary made particular mention that, though my work was erratic, I could upon occasion pen a remarkably neat hand.’

  For some reason that Emily couldn’t fathom, this sent them into fresh paroxysms of mirth. She watched them with a baleful eye and went on folding her linen as Charis, catching her breath, gasped, ‘Oh, you can indeed!’

  Overgrown children, that’s all they were ‒ just a pair of silly, irresponsible children! Not but what Miss Charis hadn’t sense enough and to spare for the two of them when all came to all, only that she let her brother have his head far too often. Emily sighed. Well, for that she must take her own share of the blame, since she was no more proof against his charm than the rest.

  They were off downstairs now, the two of them, all else forgotten as they fell to arguing amiably over the how and the when of the remove to Brussels.

  ‘Skimble-brained,’ muttered Emily again, listening to their animated chatter. She leaned stiffly over the banister rail. ‘Listen, now ‒ when you’ve the time to spare from arguing over how many new clothes you’ll be needing, perhaps you’ll give some thought to me, and this house, and what’s to be done with the both of us while you go gallivating off to foreign parts, for I give you fair warning that I’ve reached the time of life when I’d be loath to uproot meself in order to come traipsing after you on any kind of hair-brained scheme!’

  From the landing below, the two heads lifted as one; two pairs of eyes the colour of jade, thickly fringed, regarded her, wickedly aslant, from under winged brows ‒ Miss Charis’s faintly troubled and his teasing as he said, ‘Oh, come on, Em ‒ you’re not that old!’

  ‘Did I say anything about being old?’ she came back at him, quick as light, acutely aware that she would not see sixty again. ‘A body doesn’t have to be old to want her feet under her own table of a night and her own friends about her instead of a lot of pesky strangers who don’t even have the sense to converse in a decent tongue!’

  Charis threw her brother a warning look, and said soothingly, ‘You know you don’t really mean that, dear Emily. And anyway, we wouldn’t dream of making any definite plans without consulting you!’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she grunted, somewhat mollified. ‘But fine words butter no parsnips, and I’ll thank you to remember it.’

  This being one of her most favoured pronouncements, they received it with equanimity, gave her a reassuring smile, and went blithely on their way.

  There was no denying that they were a handsome couple, Emily acknowledged with grudging pride ‒ she a little on the tall side for a girl and he as slim and elegant a young man as you could wish for ‒ and the likeness between them quite marked since the day Miss Charis had gone out and had her lovely auburn hair cropped so that it would better resemble that new-fangled swirly style with the fancy foreign name her brother had taken to wearing. All the crack, he’d said it was! For him, maybe, Emily had retorted, but what was allowable in a man might well be deemed fast in a young lady. They had simply laughed at her.

  They were laughing now as they vanished from Emily’s view, Master Tristram with his arm draped casually about his sister’s shoulders, and she chiding him indulgently. They were too close, of course, always had been, and their father’s habit of taking them abroad with him whenever possible, employing the services of a tutor instead of sending his son off to school like a sensible man, had forged an even closer bond between them.

  Perhaps, if their mother had lived? Emily sighed. She had done her best, as the good Lord would bear witness, but it wasn’t the same. And their father’s sister, who had married Viscount Weston and might have been looked to for help, was a silly butterfly of a woman without a thought in her head beyond balls and the like, though to be fair, she had taken Miss Charis about as much as could be thought reasonable in a woman with a daughter of her own to bestow.

  And if Miss Charis didn’t choose to make the most of such opportunities as were offered, she had no one to blame but herself. Emily knew for a fact that she had discouraged at least two most promising suitors ‒ and for why?

  ‘Because she was content as she was, if you please,’ the old lady had confided to the ubiquitous Mrs Arbuthnot, ‘and wouldn’t, in any case, dream of abandoning her brother to fend for himself! I could have slapped her! Well, fond as I am of him, it’s small hope there’d be of him showing her the same consideration … and I didn’t scruple to tell her so!’

  Mrs Arbuthnot had nodded sagely and wondered how such frankness had been received.

  Emily grunted. ‘Much as you’d expect. “Emily, dear Emily,” the child told me, blithe as you please. “Of course, I wouldn’t expect Tris to make any such sacrifice ‒ nor would he expect it of me, I promise you! The plain fact is, I have no wish to exchange my present, very agreeable, mode of life for any other, and until someone comes along who can make me change my mind, I am quite resolved to eschew marriage”.’ Emily’s eyes kindled anew at the telling. ‘Did you ever hear the like?’

  Mrs Arbuthnot was clearly moved by such transports of idealism, and was rash enough to say so.

  ‘Romantic twaddle, more like!’ her exasperated friend had snapped. As if marriage had anything to do with such silliness! Miss Charis needed a man ‒ a real man ‒ and small chance she had of finding one among her brother’s friends, who were all as light-minded as himself. A scapegrace he had been as a boy and a scapegrace he would always be.

  This Brussels business now might have been the very thing to separate them, but it would be a waste of good breath suggesting it. Miss Charis was set on going, and go she would, though Emily might wish it otherwise. Which meant that, notwithstanding all her protestations, she too must bestir herself, for let them out of her sight she would not, come what may.

  Down below in the hall, brother and sister were still wrangling amiably, oblivious of her concern.

  ‘Honestly, Tris ‒ you have no tact at all! It will probably take me the best part of the afternoon now to smooth Emily’s ruffled feathers.’

  ‘She’ll come round,’ he said with a careless grin. ‘Em’s bark was ever worse than her bite.’

  ‘Yes, but you have touched upon her age, my dear ‒ and that is a very sensitive area these days. Even you must have noticed that poor Emily isn’t as robust as she was used to be …’

  ‘Stuff! She’s as tough as an old warhorse! Anyway, she don’t have to come with us.’

  ‘Oh, but she’d be so hurt if we so much as hinted that she might stay behind!’

  Tristram lifted a laconic eyebrow. ‘My dear, soft-hearted sister, it is not many minutes since she was avowing that such was her intention.’

  ‘Only because she is confident that we can’t survive without her,’ Charis explained patiently.

  ‘Heaven defend me from feminine logic!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘And us from the ruthlessness of men!’ she retorted with spirit.

  He grinned. ‘I can’t stay to argue. Neill, that dragon of a private secretary, don’t know I’ve slipped my leash.’

  ‘Oh, Tris!’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said airily. ‘Ned’s covering for me, and anyway, they’ll never miss me. Lord Rowby’s nephew and heir is due home from the war ‒ the Conquering Hero is to have a hero’s welcome ‒ and the entire household is in a ferment of anticipation.’ He turned away to pick up his valise, and when he turned back his voice had grown softly coaxing. ‘Dear little sister, I know you will have a million things to do, but ‒’ he produced a folder of papers ‒ ‘could you find a minute or two to copy these?’

  When Tristram looked at her like that, she was incapable of refusing him anything. Not that she wished to do so. It wasn’t the first time he had brought work home for her to complete. Her ability to produce a reasonable facsimile of his hand was a skill tried and perfected in the schoolroom, where Tristram had frequently shown an engaging indisposition towards work. And when, in his early days at Lord Rowby’s, he had found so much of his work deadly dull and had thus fallen behind with it, it had seemed no more than a harmless prank to slip some of the papers into his valise and bring them home for her to finish.

  But sometimes of late the ethics of what she was doing troubled Charis.

  ‘I suppose it is all right?’ she said now, taking the folder from him with sudden reluctance. ‘I mean, there might be things I shouldn’t see … documents that outsiders should not be privy to.’

  Tristram lifted a quizzical eyebrow. ‘Lord, Charis ‒ you don’t imagine old Neill gives us lowly minions so much as a sniff at anything of significance, do you? We are but specks of dust in the corridors of power, fit only to copy out mundane agenda and other such tedious stuff!’

  ‘Oh, but I don’t find it in the least tedious.’

  He pressed a finger to her mouth in mock horror. ‘Never say so, my dear! I don’t want it noised abroad that my sister is a blue-stocking!’

 

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