Free Cardington Crescent by Anne Perry Page A

make it appear she was quite normal. Then she excused herself and went determinedly upstairs to find George and demand he exercise at least discretion, even if he could not or would not exercise morality.
    She knocked briskly on the dressing room door and waited. There was no answer. She knocked again, then when nothing happened, turned the handle and went in.
    The curtains were open and the room full of sunlight. George was still in bed, the sheets rumpled, the morning coffee tray sitting on the table, obviously used. In fact, there was an empty saucer on the floor near the foot of the bed where he must have shared his coffee with the old lady’s spaniel.
    “George!” Emily said angrily. She did not even wish to think what he had been doing all night that he was still asleep at nearly ten in the morning. “George?” She was standing beside the bed now, staring down at him. He looked very white, and his eyes were sunken as though he had slept badly, if at all. In fact he looked ill.
    “George?” Now she was undeniably frightened. She put out her hand and touched him.
    He did not move. There was not even a flutter of the eyelids.
    “George!” She was shouting, which was ridiculous. He must be able to hear her; she was shaking him roughly enough to waken anyone.
    But he was motionless. Even his chest did not seem to rise and fall.
    Appalled, her mind already guessing at the impossible and terrified of it, she ran to the door, wanting to cry out for someone—but whom?
    Aunt Vespasia! Of course. Aunt Vespasia was the only one she could trust, the only one who cared for her. She flew down the stairs and across the hall, almost pitching into a startled housemaid, and threw open the morning room door. Vespasia was writing letters.
    “Aunt Vespasia!” Her voice was shaking, and was far louder than she had intended. “Aunt Vespasia, George is ill! I can’t wake him! I think—” She took a choking breath. She could not form the words that would make it real.
    Vespasia turned from the rosewood desk where her paper and envelopes were spread, her face grave.
    “Perhaps we had better go and see,” she said quietly, laying the pen down and rising from the chair. “Come, my dear.”
    Heart pounding, scarcely able to swallow for dread of what she would find this time, Emily followed her back up the stairs to the landing with its peony-patterned curtains and bamboo jardinière full of ferns. Vespasia tapped smartly on the dressing room door and, without waiting, opened it and walked over to the bed.
    George was exactly as Emily had left him, except that now she saw the white stiffness of his face more clearly and wondered how she could ever have deceived herself into imagining he was alive.
    Vespasia touched his neck gently with the backs of her fingers. After a moment she turned to Emily, her face weary, her eyes brimming with sorrow.
    “There is nothing we can do, my dear. I think, from my very little knowledge, it was his heart. I daresay he felt little beyond a moment. You had better go to my room, and I will send my maid to help you while Millicent gets you a stiff brandy. I must go and tell the household.”
    Emily said nothing. She knew George was dead, and yet she could not grasp it—it was too big. She had experienced death before; her own sister had been murdered by the Cater Street Hangman. 2 Everyone was used to loss: smallpox, typhus, cholera, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, all were commonplace, and too frequently bringers of death—as was childbirth. But it was always someone else. There had been no warning of this—George had been so alive!
    “Come.” Vespasia put her arm round Emily’s shoulder and without Emily’s realizing it she was walking along the landing again past the ferns and into Vespasia’s room, where her lady’s maid was making the bed.
    “Lord Ashworth is dead,” Vespasia said frankly. “He appears to have had a heart attack. Will you stay with Lady Ashworth, please, Digby. I will