Читаем A Dangerous Fortune (1994) полностью

Augusta finally lost her composure. She turned red and her eyes seemed to bulge. "You're going to regret this for the rest of your lives!" she spat. Then she stalked off.

She cut a swath through the crowd in the ballroom as she headed for the door. People stared at her and looked nervous. She realized her rage was showing on her face, and she wished she could hide her feelings, but she was too distraught. All the people she loathed and despised had triumphed. The guttersnipe Maisie, the underbred Hugh and the appalling Nora had thwarted her and got what they wanted. Her stomach was twisted in knots of frustration and she felt nauseated.

At last she reached the door and passed out onto the second-floor landing, where the crowd was thinner. She buttonholed a passing footman. "Call Mrs. Pilaster's carriage instantly!" she commanded. He went off at a run. At least she could still intimidate footmen.

She left the party without speaking to anyone else. Her husband could go home in a hansom. She fumed all the way to Kensington.

When she got to the house her butler Hastead was waiting in the hall. "Mr. Hobbes is in the drawing room, ma'am," he said sleepily. "I told him you might not be back until dawn, but he insisted on waiting."

"What the dickens does he want?"

"He didn't say."

Augusta was in no mood to see the editor of The Forum. What was he doing here in the early hours of the morning? She was tempted to ignore him and go straight to her room, but then she thought of the peerage and decided she had better talk to him.

She went into the drawing room. Hobbes was asleep by the dying fire. "Good morning!" Augusta said loudly.

He started and sprang to his feet, peering at her through his smeared spectacles. "Mrs. Pilaster! Good--ah, yes, morning."

"What brings you here so late?"

"I thought you would like to be the first to see this," he said, and he handed her a journal.

It was the new number of The Forum, still smelling of the printing press. She opened it to the title page and read the headline over the leading article:

CAN A JEW BE A LORD?

Her spirits lifted. Tonight's fiasco was only one defeat, she reminded herself. There were other battles to be fought.

She read the first few lines:

We trust there is no truth in the rumours, currently circulating at Westminster and in the London clubs, that the Prime Minister is contemplating the grant of a peerage to a prominent banker of the Jewish race and faith.