Read Online Half Moon Street by Anne Perry - Free Book Online

If it had been merely good I should have said it was good. . . .” He pulled a slight face. “I should have been exquisitely vague. As to whether it will succeed or not . . . that is in the lap of the gods.”
    She laughed. “I’m sorry, darling. I shouldn’t have doubted you. But I do care so much. If we can only make people see the woman’s side.” She waved a hand in a wide gesture. “Freddie may be able to get his bill passed in the House. Change the climate, then the law. Ibsen has already achieved miracles. We are going to build on it. People will see there must be rights in divorce for women also. Isn’t it marvelous to live in an age when there is such work to be done—new battles— chances?”
    “Indeed it is,” he agreed, still staring at her. Then suddenly he seemed to remember the others present. “Cecily, you haven’t met my wife, Caroline, and her son-in-law, Thomas Pitt.”
    Cecily smiled charmingly and acknowledged the introductions. There was no question she looked just a moment longer at Pitt than at Caroline. Then she turned back to Joshua.
    Caroline looked at the other people in the tiny room. Just behind Cecily there was the man she had indicated as Freddie. He had a powerful face, broad-bridged nose and sensuous mouth. He seemed very relaxed, even slightly amused.
    Lounging in the other chair was the young man whom Caroline had noticed in the play. Closer to, he bore more of a resemblance to Cecily, and Caroline was not surprised when a few moments later he was introduced as Orlando Antrim; she gathered from the reference that he was Cecily’s son.
    There was a couple named Harris and Lydia, and the man so close to Cecily was Lord Frederick Warriner. His presence was partially explained by the reference to a private member’s bill before Parliament, apparently to liberalize the divorce proceedings for women.
    Joshua and Cecily were still talking, with only the occasional glance at anyone else. Perhaps they did not mean to exclude others, but their exuberance carried them along, and their professional appreciation was on a different level of understanding from that of those who were merely watchers.
    “I tried the scene in rehearsal at least three different ways,” Cecily was saying earnestly. “You see, we might have played it as near hysteria, emotions crowding to break through, high tones in the voice, knife-edge, sharp, jerking movements.” She demonstrated with gestures which somehow excluded Caroline and Pitt, simply because they extended too close to them, as if to a screen on a wall. “Or with tragedy,” she went on. “As if in her heart she already knew what was inevitable. Do you think she did, Joshua? What would you have done?”
    “Unaware of it,” he said immediately. “She was beyond such consideration of thought. I am sure if you asked the playwright he’d have said she was far too driven, too honest in emotion to have been aware of what would happen eventually.”
    “You’re right,” she agreed, swinging around to Orlando.
    He grinned. “Wouldn’t dream of arguing, Mother. More than my role is worth!”
    She glared at him in mock anger, then threw her hands up and laughed. She turned to Caroline. “Did you enjoy the play . . . Caroline? Yes—Caroline. What did you think of it?” Her wide eyes were unwavering, gray-blue, dark-lashed, impossible to lie to.
    Caroline felt cornered. She would far rather not have answered, but now everyone was looking at her, including Joshua. What should she say? Something polite and flattering? Should she try to be perceptive, explain some of the impressions the play had created? She was not even sure if she knew what they wanted to hear.
    Or should she tell the truth, that it was disturbing, intrusive, that it raised questions she thought were perhaps better not asked? That it would hurt, maybe waken unhappiness best left sleeping because there was no cure for it? The play had ended in tragedy. Was it good for life to