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Margorie nodded, joining them on the garden chairs beside the rose bushes. “He was a marvellously handsome man back in the day. Louisa reports that this remains true.”
“Incredibly so,” Louisa affirmed.
“Why do you think he returned to town now, after so long away?” Charlotte asked.
“Difficult to say. Maybe he was tired of feeling a pariah from the life he’d always known. I know I’ve felt like that since my divorce—as though the world I left for my marriage no longer wants me in it,” Margorie said.
Louisa and Charlotte exchanged glances. Although this had never been said outright, it seemed clear that society had this very portrait of divorced women. Margorie tilted her head and muttered, “Yes, well. In any case, I am curious why Jeffrey meandered his way back—if it has anything at all to do with his brother’s death.”
“Why would it? If it was an accident?” Charlotte asked.
“There were questions at the time about the likelihood of the accident,” Margorie stated. “Although poor Alfred was a drinker, he wasn’t the sort of man to hobble about and fall to the ground. He always had his wits about him; he was always laughing.”
It was a funny thing to Charlotte, re-imagining the man they’d encountered at the ball last night with such an ominous past. In his eyes, she’d seen secrets, humour, life—but nothing of the sombre reality of having lost his brother. Charlotte had never even been particularly close to her brother, emotionally, and even she could perceive the horror behind those stories.
How could a man like that return to such darkness?
