Chapter 5 #2
The teasing tone told Inez her sister wasn’t being serious, but still that heat blazed in her chest. Inez ducked her head.
“Wait.” Rita caught her by the arm, looked her up and down. “Are you?”
“Don’t be silly; we’ve only just met. He was kind to me, that’s all.”
“Was he? Good. I like him a little better, even though he’s a feckless singer.”
“You said he was bloody good—”
“Oh, it’s not an insult. I think all professional singers are feckless. It’s what makes them so interesting.”
“My pets.” Pauline approached, regal in dove-gray silk and an overskirt of black netting, diamonds and opals around both wrists and her throat. “Tell me how we’re faring.”
“Splendid,” Rita said, just as Inez mumbled, “Fine.”
Maman tapped Rita affectionately on the forearm with her fan, then turned to Inez. “You seemed not entirely miserable at dinner. Your companion—who is he?”
“Mr. George Vernon,” Rita supplied. “A concert singer.”
“Mr. Vernon certainly seemed engaged in your conversation. Is he a pleasant gentleman?”
“Good golly,” Inez burst out, defensive, and quickly lowered her voice. “I just met him! I hardly know him! He—he was perfectly fine. Perfectly adequate.”
Pauline arched an eyebrow at Rita. “I believe that’s the nicest thing I’ve ever heard her say about a suitor.”
“It is,” Rita agreed.
Inez burned with mortification. “He is not a suitor!”
Maman bent to press a perfumed kiss against her daughter’s cheek. “As you say, my darling. Our hostess has been pleading with me to liberate some notes from her terrible antique pianoforte. I think I’ll just have a bit more champagne before obliging her.”
She drifted off without another look.
“How am I a member of this family?” Inez wondered beneath her breath.
“By virtue of blood and sinew and providence. You got every ounce of the genteel Jolivet grace. The rest of us are feral, messy beasts, but you love us.”
Inez brought a hand to her cheek, just where her mother’s kiss had landed. Even through her glove, her face felt too warm from the heat of the room and the fire and her rushing pulse.
Unlike Maman, Rita, at least, seemed disposed to linger. She swirled the last of the sherry in her glass; the liquid rose up and up, but never quite crested the edge.
“Only,” she began, sober suddenly, very quiet, “listen, sissy …”
“Yes?”
The other ladies revolved gracefully around them in jewels and sequins and velvet, so unhurried it was as if they moved underwater, meeting, chatting, breaking apart.
“I heard a rumor about Mr. Vernon. That all those things I mentioned to you before, his being a banker and a singer, his background, it’s all true. But also all a pretext for something else.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“A pretext for government work. Secret government work.”
Inez couldn’t help it; she started to laugh. After everything else that had happened tonight, it was too ridiculous. “Oh, really! You’re saying he’s a spy.”
“I’m saying nothing of the sort. I’m saying others are saying it. Look around you. Aren’t we all rather prime? Aren’t we all rather entangled in the beau monde? What’s a concert singer from an unknown family doing here? Or, for that matter, a former boring old banker?”
“Or an actress, or a violinist,” Inez retorted.
“Hmm.” Rita tipped the last of the sherry into her mouth. “Well, it’s only a rumor. I would have kept it under my hat, but I saw how you were looking at him, and he at you.”
What a curse it was to be so fair; Inez felt her cheeks prickling. “And how was that?”
“Like you’d both just accidentally discovered the reflection of Narcissus staring back at you from the stream. Do me a favor, and don’t fall in love with him.”
Inez took her own tiny glass of sherry from a passing footman, grateful for the chance to angle away. “Love! That is the last thing you have to worry about with me.”
NO DOUBT MRS. Cornwallis-West had been correct when she’d told Inez it was a jovial group, but after an hour of standing, and then sitting, and then standing again, trying to blend in with the walls as everyone around her laughed and drank and conversed and the evening wound on, Inez was exhausted.
She had very little small talk to offer beyond commenting on the weather or the elegance of the mansion; she had none at all to offer about fashion or childrearing or royal gossip, as most of the other ladies seemed to enjoy.
Occasionally, she found Mr. Vernon watching her from across the chamber, but even though he would nod his head to her, he never approached.
Which somehow made her feel even more uncomfortable.
When at last Pauline moved to the pianoforte to play, Inez seized the opportunity to retreat to the alcove.
It stood at the western edge of the drawing room, some carved-out, architectural whimsy that was meant to hold a statue, perhaps, or an important piece of furniture.
Tonight it held only her, keeping her near enough to eavesdrop on the party, but hidden enough to sit down with a sigh and close her eyes.
Her feet throbbed. She wore sleek new satin slippers with paper-thin soles that had seemed to fit this afternoon, but now felt at least a size too small.
After a quick survey of her surroundings—there was only the date tree and the Chinese screen, embroidered peacocks with shimmering feathers floating across the folded silk panels—Inez bent forward, hooked a finger behind the heels, and eased off both slippers.
She sat back again. From rooms unseen, a series of timepieces began to chime, at first the pretty, tinkling melodies of bracket clocks or mantle clocks, soon joined by the more serious bass of a longcase.
Midnight. Inez bent her head and lifted her hand to massage the back of her neck, trying not to disturb the pins in her hair. Surely the champagne was done by now, the coffee and conversations done. Surely it was time to head home soon.
“Don’t look now,” said a familiar, masculine voice, “but your sister has fallen under the spell of two of the most interesting people here.”
Her head snapped up. Mr. Vernon leaned a shoulder against the wall nearby, just beyond the screen.
From her position she could see only part of him, shadowed and lean, his face in profile.
He was surveying the drawing room, all the places she could not see.
She half-rose, remembered her discarded slippers and stocking feet, and sank back again.
Mr. Vernon brought a coup of champagne to his lips. The cabochon in his cufflink flashed a brief topaz glow, a cat’s eye in the dark.
“Who?” Inez finally asked.
“Mademoiselle Thenaud and her good friend, Mr. Charles Frohman. Do you know him? No? He’s a theatrical impresario from America. A very big deal, as they say over there. If you catch his fancy, he can pluck you straight up from nothing and land you in the heart of Broadway.”
“Oh.”
“I think it’s fair to say your sister has caught his fancy.”
Inez bristled. “Rita’s not like that.”
Now he glanced her, his lips curved. “Neither is he, believe me. I’m speaking strictly in the professional sense.”
“Oh,” she said again and decided to stand anyway. As she moved toward the edge of the screen, he moved back, arms crossed, keeping a proper distance between them.
She peered around the screen.
Rita was seated in a high-backed salon chair drawn close to two others, not far from the fireplace.
The palm reader sat in the center, tiara glinting, and on the other side of her was an ample, fortyish man with plump cheeks and slicked-back hair who was laughing at something.
Mademoiselle Thenaud held Rita’s gloveless hand in her own, Rita’s palm cupped upward.
The fortuneteller was drawing her index finger across it. Rita’s expression was engrossed.
Mr. Vernon murmured, “I suppose your sister’s not much afraid of the future.”
“She’s not afraid of anything.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go over there and join them? I can always carry your shoes for you.”
“Please,” Inez sighed, giving up and turning to face him, “I’m already so embarrassed. Don’t make it worse.”
He studied her; she had the sense that she had caught him off guard somehow, had done something unexpected, though she couldn’t imagine what.
He bowed his head. “Miss Jolivet, I beg your pardon. I give you my word that I would never deliberately embarrass you.”
She found, to her great astonishment, that she could not look away from him.
She wanted to; she knew she should. Even with three feet between them, he was too close, too warm, too real.
Lemon and lavender. His eyes, his voice, this moment, small and fine and intimate.
For the first time in a long while, Inez didn’t feel like a stranger in her own skin, trapped in a life and a world that was not her own. She felt seen. She felt recognized.
And those two facts together felt suddenly, beautifully dangerous.
She very nearly touched a hand to his sleeve, to complete their unlikely connection, but instead only confessed, “I don’t know how to talk to you. I’ve never known anyone like you before.”
“Ah! You’re fortunate, then. I’m not a complicated fellow. I don’t require quips or tittle-tattle or social niceties. My rough edges barely rub along with this group. But you’re the virtuosa who’s enchanted the king. That’s good enough for me.”
Inez looked back at Rita, who was leaning forward around the palm reader to say something to Mr. Frohman, who was nodding in response.
But Mademoiselle Thenaud herself had lifted her head to observe Inez—Inez and Mr. Vernon standing there together, in their secluded corner of the room—and beneath her tiara of sparkling rubies, her lips were mirthless and her face stiff as stone.