Read London Calling for Free Online Page B

whether she would ever see James again.
    Still, before she even realized she had come to any conclusion, Susanna heard herself say, “Aunt Ruth? I think that I should like to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Charlotte Careme.”

Chapter 5
    The day was warm with the rich, golden sun of early autumn, and Susanna and her aunt stood on the step of Admiral Tremain’s London residence, listening to the echo of the bell chime on the other side of the door. It was a handsome house, located in the fashionable Mayfair district, built of yellow stucco and set back a little from the road in its own fenced-in garden.
    “You’ll notice I have been very discreet, my dear. I have not asked you a word about the purpose of this visit.”
    Susanna forced herself to smile at her aunt. And to ignore the fact that she was not entirely sure of the visit’s purpose herself. “I am grateful, Aunt Ruth. Truly I am.”
    Ruth had responded to Susanna’s request the night before with a puzzled look. But she had said that nothing could be easier than to engineer a meeting with Mrs. Careme.
    “The Admiral is an old acquaintance of mine. His late wife Anne and I were at school together. I have not seen him in years‌—‌not since Anne’s death. But I understand that his residence in London is just a few streets away from our house. We can easily call there tomorrow. Mrs. Careme is actually staying under his roof until their marriage. And,” Ruth had added with a wry smile, “you can imagine what the gossips have to say about that.”
    And now they stood at the Admiral’s door.
    “Thank you, Aunt Ruth,” Susanna said again. “I will tell you everything as soon as I am able. I promise you.”
    The door was opened by a footman in powdered wig and green satin livery, who looked them over and asked their business in frostily accented tones.
    He warmed slightly at the mention of Aunt Ruth’s name, and soon they were being shown into the morning room, where, the man informed them, the family was at home.
    The morning room was a handsome, slightly old-fashioned apartment, with heavy mahogany furniture upholstered in gold and dark maroon hangings at the windows. Several of what Susanna took to be family portraits hung from the walls: men in crimson doublets and hose, ladies in blue satin panniered dresses.
    A big, grey-haired man was seated before the fire, and he rose and came forward as they entered, hands outstretched.
    “Ruth. This is a delightful surprise.”
    Admiral Tremain bowed low over their hands while Ruth performed the introductions.
    As Susanna made her curtsy and murmured the proper rejoinders to his greetings, she studied him curiously from under her lashes.
    He was a large, well-muscled man, tall, with broad shoulders and an air of vigorous energy, as though more suited to action than reflection or thought. His hair was close-cropped and curling, and beneath it his face was bluff and weather-beaten with years of ocean living. His eyes were dark, and his nose classically Roman, and Susanna thought there was something a little pugnacious in the set of his jaw, and the line of his thin, hard mouth. Not a man to cross, the Admiral, or a man to readily admit himself wrong.
    “And may I present my daughter? Miss Marianne Tremain. Marianne? Come here and greet our guests.”
    He turned, slightly impatiently, to the girl who still sat in a chair by the window, head bent over a book. Susanna might have imagined it, but she fancied there was something deliberately slow in the way the girl shut her volume, and, with the same lingering deliberation, put it to one side and rose from her seat.
    The Admiral’s jaw tightened angrily. He would be used to wielding the same authority in the family that he had done on his ship. No doubt he expected his family to leap to obey him with the same alacrity as his fighting men. And small doubt, either, but that this girl would bitterly resent it, and do everything she could to defy his