Chapter Fourteen #3
He didn’t seem to have an argument, though she wished he had.
She waited for one as she deposited two lumps of sugar into her cup, two evidently being the correct number whatever the circumstances, but when he still didn’t have a response, she turned her head to look at him.
His chair was empty. Splendidly done, Iris.
Tilting her head, Pauline Grenedy eyed herself in the dressing mirror. The sapphires were lovely, their deep blue accenting the mix of light and dark blues throughout her gown. In a brightly lit ballroom, she would sparkle. “Yes, I think so,” she mused. “The bracelet as well, Betty.”
“Right away, my lady.” The maid removed the sapphire-dotted bracelet from its velvet cushion and Pauline held out her left hand while Betty fastened it around her wrist. “You’re so elegant in blue, Lady Pauline.”
“Thank you, Betty. I happen to know that my sister has decorated her ballroom in silver, which will set my dress off beautifully.”
“Lady Caldridge has a fine eye for decorations.”
“Oh, Betty. This isn’t about Wilhemina. It’s about my gown.”
“Yes, my lady.”
A knock sounded at her bedchamber door, and she waved the maid away. “See to it.”
Betty hurried to the door, while Pauline made another twirl in front of the mirror. She did look quite well this evening. “You have a note,” Betty said helpfully, waving the folded missive in her hand.
“Yes, I see it. Give it to me, if you please.”
Pauline noted the bear with a falcon in its mouth imbedded into the wax seal, and with a quick breath she broke the wax and unfolded the note. “Oh. Dash it. Betty, fetch the rubies. I don’t wish to be all blue at the theater.”
“The theater? My lady, you’re attending your sister’s party this evening, if you’ll recall.”
Dimwit. “Not any longer. The rubies!”
“Oh! Yes, my lady. At once.”
While the maid removed her sapphires and replaced them with deep-red rubies, then changed the blue sash she wore for a matching red one, Pauline read through the missive again.
She didn’t enjoy the theater; it was far too dark, and to be seen properly one needed to sit at the very front of a box, practically leaning over the railing.
But he’d asked her. With almost no notice, but Lord Hentrose had invited her to join him, in his prime box, for an evening at the Covent Garden Theater.
Finally, an event she hadn’t had to arrange, or where she’d had to notify him of her intention to attend in the hope that he would present himself there—which he’d done perhaps thrice in a fortnight.
Eyeing the replacement jewelry in the mirror, she nodded at herself. All she needed now was a red ribbon woven through her hair. Catching Betty’s rapt expression in the reflection, Pauline frowned. “Go. Put on that gray-and-blue gown of yours, and do … something with your hair.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. I could attend my sister’s party without a companion. I cannot sit in a widower’s box at the theater unchaperoned. Quickly, Betty!”
Pauline grabbed a red ribbon and went to find her mother. “Mother, I won’t be attending Wilhemina’s fete tonight,” she said, strolling into the marchioness’s dressing room. “Violet, please weave this into my hair. Betty’s putting on something that won’t embarrass me.”
Her mother motioned with her hand, and her lady’s maid took the ribbon and went to work on Pauline’s coiffure.
“I hope it’s Lord Hentrose who has you running about like a madwoman,” Lady Ramsey said, one eyebrow lifted.
“The newspapers have made note of the attention he’s been paying you.
He purchased you a horse, for heaven’s sake.
If he doesn’t propose in the next day or two, I mean to declare him a blackguard who possesses the morals of a hedgehog. ”
“Yes, I will be joining Beckett at the theater this evening. I imagine a proposal is imminent, either this evening or tomorrow.” Her heart sped; finally, after days and days of careful planning and conversation with the marquis, of being supportive but not clinging, of reminding him of his own honor and using it at the same time to point out that she had expectations of marriage, this could be the moment.
Thank heavens she’d decided to surprise him with luncheon the other day—and managed to end up with a new mare on top of it.
That widow needed to remember her place, and her very precarious standing in Society.
Widows weren’t to be gifted with horses from men who were courting dukes’s granddaughters.
And she did enjoy putting someone in their place.
She’d heard that the widow might become the new Duchess of Trent, but that title had become a jest three wives ago.
Trent used them like street harlots, dressed them accordingly, embarrassed them at every opportunity, and then outlived them all.
None were allowed to open their mouths without his permission, and that, to her, seemed a fine position for such an interloper as Mrs. Silbern.
She smiled. Be surprised, be pleased, mention the girl together with being happy at the idea of becoming a mother, she reminded herself, as she’d done every day since meeting Beckett Raines.
Because until she’d stood in a church in front of a pastor, said the words, and signed the register, she had a part to play.
Violet stepped back. “You look quite fine, my lady,” she said in her soft voice, and even the countess nodded her faint approval.
“Thank you. Don’t wait up for me. I may be quite late.”
With only the one coach at Grenedy House, she had to have Poleson summon a hack for her and Betty to deliver them to the theater.
Their family coach would have been more impressive, but her mother would never put up with having to wait about for it to return in order for them to travel to Wilhemina’s house.
At the Covent Garden Theater she had to give her name to one of the attendants and inform that imperious man that she was a guest of the Marquis of Hentrose.
Insufferable. At least Beckett had left word that she would be joining him, because once the dolt found her name on the list he carried, he escorted her up the long, curved staircase to the back side of the row of premium boxes and then pulled the curtain aside for her to enter.
“Beckett,” she exclaimed, handing her wrap to Betty so she could appear in all her finery, “thank you so much for inviting me to join you this evening. I never expected it.”
He stood from his seat in the box’s front row and came around to greet her. “I’m pleased you could attend, Pauline. And I apologize for the short notice. I wrote you an invitation several days ago, but evidently someone spilled jam on it and put it in the wastebasket.”
She offered her hand, and he bowed over it, kissing her knuckles. Oh, this was grand. This was her moment, and if they remained standing, everyone would see it. “Please don’t apologize,” she countered, smiling. “I’m always happy to spend time with you, darling.”
Still holding her hand, he drew her to the front of the box, where her ankle brushed against a foot.
A foot? Pauline glanced down. It was a foot.
Attached to a leg, which was attached to the girl.
Rebecca, she summoned at the last moment.
“Lady Rebecca,” she said smoothly, all her anticipation crashing into annoyance, “you look lovely this evening, my dear.”
In truth, she barely noted the girl’s attire.
It didn’t signify. Only her presence mattered, because having the daughter there made a proposal much less likely.
It made simple adult conversation much less likely.
Beckett took the seat on the far side of his daughter, leaving the short thing in the middle where she’d planted herself like a weed.
“Rebecca has informed me, through an intermediary,” Beckett said mildly, motioning Pauline to sit on the girl’s right, “that she will not be speaking this evening. She does thank you for the compliment to her attire, and I add a compliment to yours.”
“Oh. Thank you, then. Both of you.”
Blast it all. If she’d acted more swiftly she might have announced that she couldn’t stay due to a prior engagement, but that she wanted to take a moment to come by and thank him in person for the invitation.
But now Betty had seated herself at the back of the box, and she’d already gushed about how pleased she was to be there. She had to stay.
“I didn’t even think to ask,” she said, as the thing folded her arms over her flat chest and sank lower in her seat, “but what will we be seeing tonight?”
“The Rivals,” Beckett answered over his daughter’s head. “Rebecca’s been wanting to see it.”
Ugh. A Richard Sheridan play. She detested them. The man thought he was so clever, giving his characters allegorical names and putting them in situations of utter nonsense. And no one said anything without turning it into a pun or a double entendre or a rhyme or some other mad thing.
“I’m certain you’ll enjoy it, Lady Rebecca,” she cooed. “It’s a grand, clever play.”
It didn’t work. The girl didn’t speak. By the halfway point of the play Pauline had given up on any attempt to have a private word with Beckett, or with trying to get the beast to smile or laugh or speak, and her sobering presence positively destroyed any possible chance to remind Beckett that he was meant to be proposing.
By the time they reached the play’s final line, she felt ready to tear out her hair.
What a disaster. The only thing she’d demonstrated was that she didn’t flee from sulking children—though perhaps that would be a good point to remind him about later.
Yes. She would find a way to mention that the silly moods of children didn’t trouble her, and in fact, she found it all endearing.
And the beast sticking out her tongue the moment her father’s back was turned? Well, Rebecca Raines could continue to stick out her tongue to her heart’s content—from behind the windows of a boarding school.