As Wren entered the duke’s box on her husband’s arm, having already run the gauntlet of other new arrivals outside the theater and in the foyer and on the stairs, she was fully aware that she could not have orchestrated a more public introduction to the ton if she had tried. And it seemed to her, in that first dizzying moment, that the other boxes and the galleries and the pit were already crowded with people. It was probably fanciful to suppose that every single eye turned upon them, but perhaps not. This had been madness of epic proportions and would not have happened if she and Viola had not just finished challenging each other to face the world together. But by world they had meant London—the place, not the people in it, and specifically not the ton.
Alexander smiled at her as he seated her on a chair next to the outer rail of the box so that she would have a clear view of the stage. Fortunately it was her right profile that faced outward to the theater. She was warmed by his smile and clung to that warmth. The visit to Kew Gardens had been splendid. They had talked and laughed and touched frequently, both when they sat side by side in the curricle and when they strolled in the gardens. She had felt that he wanted to be there with her, that he enjoyed her company, that, like her, he was remembering last night’s intimacies and anticipating similar pleasure tonight. She had felt … well, married. She would have felt perfectly, blissfully happy if she had not also been feeling a bit sick with apprehension about this evening.
And here she was, and it was every bit as dreadful as she had feared. It would not take much for her to jump to her feet and bolt. But bolt where?
“You do that awfully well,” Alexander murmured in her ear.
“What is that?” she asked.
“That perfectly poised look, chin raised, eyes directed along the nose,” he said. “You appear as though you have been a duchess for the last twenty years.”
“Whereas in reality I have been a countess for … what? Thirty-three hours?” she said.
“And you are very beautiful, I might add,” he said.
“Flatterer!”
The duchess—Anna—was still on her feet, talking to Viola, whose hand she held in both her own. “I am so pleased you came, Aunt Viola,” she said. “I am very vexed with Camille and Joel, and I told them so in my last letter. I had my heart set on all of you coming to spend a month or so of the summer at Morland Abbey. I wanted to have lots of time to show off Josephine and to get to know their adopted baby, Sarah. And to see their adopted daughter, Winifred, again. I remember her well from the orphanage and shed tears when Camille and Joel adopted her as well as Sarah. But they have selfishly chosen this summer to have a baby of their own. And so you and Abigail will go to Bath, and Avery and Josephine will have to go there too to see you all.”
Viola and Abigail were both smiling. Anna was teasing, Wren realized. She was also trying to take their minds off these first few minutes of their ordeal at being on display to the ton for the first time since their lives changed so catastrophically last year. Joel Cunningham, Camille’s husband, Wren had learned, had grown up at the orphanage in Bath with Anna and was her best friend. Wren remembered Viola telling her that she had decided to love Anna, though she could not yet feel that love. It was an idea to ponder.
The Duke of Netherby looked even more gorgeous than usual in satin and lace when most gentlemen, Alexander included, were wearing the more fashionable black and white. He was gazing outward across the theater with haughty languor through his quizzing glass. Candlelight glinted and winked off the jewels encrusted in its handle and about its rim and off those on his fingers and at his throat. He was a comforting presence as, she guessed, he fully intended to be this evening. So was Alexander, sitting slightly behind her, his hand beside hers on the velvet rail, their little fingers overlapping. Occasionally his finger stroked hers.
“When will the play begin?” she asked.
“It should be starting now,” Alexander told her. “But it is always a little late to allow for the arrival of stragglers. The stragglers know it, of course, and arrive even later than they otherwise would.”
“I believe the lateness of the start is also an acknowledgment of the fact that most people come to the theater to see everyone else as much as to watch the play, Alexander,” Viola said.
“Ah, such cynicism,” the duke said on a sigh. “Who was it who said the play’s the thing?”
“William Shakespeare,” Jessica said.
“… wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king,” Abigail added.
“Ah yes,” he said faintly.
Wren was watching a group of people step into the empty box across from theirs, two ladies and four gentlemen. Both ladies were blond and dressed all in sparkling white. They might well have been sisters. One of them seated herself off to one side of the box and one of the gentlemen went to sit beside and slightly behind her. The other lady took a seat in the middle of the box. She looked small and almost fragile amid a court of the other three gentlemen, who hovered about her, one of them positioning her chair, another taking her fan from her hand and plying it gently before her face, the third fetching something, presumably a footstool, from the back of the box and setting it at her feet. She smiled sweetly at them all and turned her attention outward to her court of admirers in the galleries and pit—or so it seemed to Wren, who was inclined at first to be amused.
But there was a strange feeling. A slight light-headedness. A suggestion of a buzzing in the ears. It could not be, of course. Twenty years had passed, and with those years some clarity of memory. But even if her memory had been crystal clear, time—twenty years of time—would have wrought significant changes. The lady raised one white-gloved hand in acknowledgment of the homage being paid her by a cluster of gentlemen in the pit and moved her head in a gracious nod. And there was something about both gestures …
“One does wonder how she does it,” Viola was saying, sounding amused.
“With a wig and cosmetics and an army of experts,” Jessica said. “When you see her close up, Aunt Viola, she looks quite grotesque.”
They might have been talking about anyone. And all talk ceased soon anyway, at least within their own box, as the candlelight dimmed and the play began. It was the first dramatic performance Wren had watched, and she marveled at the scenery, the costumes, the voices and gestures of the actors, the sense of gorgeous unreality that drew her into another world and made her almost forget her own. She would have been enthralled if she could have ignored the erratic fluttering of her heart.
It could not be.
One wonders how she does it.
With a wig and cosmetics and an army of experts.
And, just before silence had fallen in their box, Alexander’s voice—even her daughter is older than I am, perhaps older than Lizzie.
He might have been talking about anyone. She did not ask.
“Abigail, take my arm,” the Duke of Netherby said when the intermission began, “and we will stroll outside the box and perhaps even imbibe some lemonade, heaven help us. Jess, take my other arm so that I will be balanced.”
“Ought I?” Abigail asked.
“An unanswerable question,” he said, “and a thoroughly boring one.”
She took his arm after a glance at her mother and the three of them left the box.
“Shall we go too, Aunt Viola?” Anna suggested.
“Oh, whyever not?” Viola said, getting to her feet.