Free The Shifting Fog by Kate Morton Page B

glimmer of a smile crossed her lips. I could not help it, I smiled back, fearfully, only stopping when Myra glanced sideways in the dark and gave my arm a pinch.
    Hannah, glowing, joined hands with Emmeline and David and the three stretched out across the stage and took a bow. As they did, a glob of jam-smeared cream dropped from Emmeline’s nose and landed with a sizzle on a nearby limelight.
    ‘Just so,’ came a high fluty voice from the audience, Lady Clementine. ‘A fellow I know knew a fellow with leprosy, out in India. His nose dropped off just like that in his shaving dish.’
    It was too much for Mr Frederick. His eyes met Hannah’s and he began to laugh. Such a laugh as I had never heard: infectious by virtue of its sheer sincerity. One by one, others joined him; though Lady Violet, I noticed, was not amongst them. I couldn’t help my own laughter, spontaneous ripples of relief, until Myra hissed into my ear, ‘That’s enough, miss. You can come and help me with supper.’
    I would miss the rest of the recital, but I had seen all I wanted to. As we left the room and made our way down the corridor, I was aware of the applause dying, the recital rolling on. And I felt infused by a strange energy.
    By the time we had carried Mrs Townsend’s supper and the trays of coffee to the drawing room, given the armchair cushions a preparatory plump, the recital had ended and the guests had started to arrive, arm in arm in order of rank. First came Lady Violet and Major James, then Lord Ashbury and Lady Clementine, then Mr Frederick with Jemima and Fanny. The Hartford children, I guessed, were still upstairs.
    As they took their places, Myra arranged the coffee tray so Lady Violet could pour. While her guests chatted lightly around her, Lady Violet leaned toward Mr Frederick’s armchair and said, through a thin smile, ‘You indulge those children, Frederick.’
    Mr Frederick’s lips tightened. The criticism, I could tell, was not a new one.
    Eyes on the coffee she was pouring, Lady Violet said, ‘You may find their antics amusing now, but the day will come when you’ll rue your leniency. You’ve let them grow wild. Hannah, especially. There’s nothing spoils a young lady’s loveliness so much as impertinence of intellect.’
    Her invective delivered, Lady Violet straightened, arranged her expression into one of cordial amiability, and passed a coffee to Lady Clementine.
    Conversation had turned, as it so often did those days, to the strife in Europe and the likelihood of Great Britain going to war.
    ‘There’ll be war. There always is,’ Lady Clementine said, matterof-factly, taking the proffered coffee and wedging her buttocks deep into Lady Violet’s favourite armchair. Her pitch rose. ‘And we’ll all suffer. Men, women and children. The Germans aren’t civilised like us. They’ll pillage our countryside, murder our little ones in their beds and enslave good English women that we might propagate little Huns for them. You mark my words for I’m very rarely wrong. We’ll be at war before the summer’s out.’
    ‘Surely you exaggerate, Clementine,’ Lady Violet said. ‘The war—
    if it comes—couldn’t be as bad as all that. These are modern times, after all.’
    ‘That’s right,’ Lord Ashbury said. ‘It’ll be twentieth-century warfare; a whole new game. Not to mention there’s not a Hun could lift a torch to an Englishman.’
    ‘It might be improper to say,’ Fanny said, perching herself at one end of the chaise longue, curls shaking excitedly, ‘but I rather hope the war does come.’ She turned hastily to Lady Clementine. ‘Not all the pillaging and killing of course, Aunty, nor the propagating; I shouldn’t like that. But I do so love seeing gentlemen dressed in uniform.’ She cast a furtive glance toward Major James then returned her attention to the group. ‘I had a letter today from my friend Margery . . . You remember Margery, don’t you, Aunty Clem?’
    Lady Clementine