Chapter 19 #2
“Dear,” Helen murmured, covering Pandora’s gloved hand with hers, “I can say from personal experience that it’s not pleasant to learn about the women a husband may have known in his past. But very few men lead a chaste life before marrying. I hope you won’t—”
“Oh, I don’t blame Gabriel for having had a mistress,” Pandora whispered.
“I don’t like it, of course, but I can hardly complain about anyone else’s faults when I have so many of my own.
Gabriel told me about Mrs. Black before we married, and promised to end the relationship, and obviously he has.
She doesn’t seem to have taken it well, however.
” She paused. “I don’t think he broke the news to her the right way. ”
Helen’s lips quirked. “I don’t think there’s any way to end an affair happily, no matter how well-chosen the words are.”
“The question is, why would her husband tolerate her behavior? She was trying to make a scene right in front of him, and he did nothing about it.”
Helen glanced at their surroundings to make certain the box was quite empty, and held up her program on the pretext of reading about the next act.
“Rhys told me just before intermission,” she said in an undertone, “that Ambassador Black was a Lieutenant General in the Union Army, during the American Civil War. It’s rumored that he sustained injuries in battle that make it difficult for him to.
..” Blushing, Helen gave a little shrug.
“To do what?”
“Perform his husbandly duties,” Helen whispered, turning even redder. “Mrs. Black is his second wife—he was a widower when they met—and obviously she’s still a young woman. That’s why he chooses to look the other way when she strays.”
Pandora sighed shortly. “Now I almost feel sorry for her.” With a wry grin, she added, “But she still can’t have my husband.”
A t the conclusion of the performance, Pandora and Gabriel made their way slowly past the swarming hallways, foyers, and box-lobbies to the colonnaded entrance hall.
Helen and Winterborne were a few yards ahead of them, but they were difficult to see amid the close-packed crowd.
The play had been heavily attended, and the press of bodies was so close that Pandora began to feel anxious.
“We’re almost through it,” Gabriel murmured, keeping a protective arm around her.
As they emerged from the theater, the crowding was even worse.
People jostled and milled in the portico area, clustering among the six Corinthian columns that extended to the edge of the pavement.
A long row of private carriages and hansom cabs had massed along the thoroughfare, trapping some vehicles in place.
Making matters worse, the gathering of theatergoers had attracted pickpockets, confidence tricksters, muggers, and beggars from nearby alleys and streets.
A lone uniformed policeman could be seen trying to bring order to the scene, with little apparent success.
“Both your driver and mine are hemmed in,” Winterborne came to tell Gabriel, having pushed his way through the gathering. He gestured toward the southern end of Haymarket. “They’ve stopped over there. They’ll have to wait for some of the street traffic to depart before there’s room to move.”
“We can walk to the carriages,” Gabriel said.
Winterborne gave him a glance of wry amusement. “I wouldn’t advise it. A flock of cyprians has just crossed over from Pall Mall, and we’d have to go through the lot of them.”
“Do you mean prostitutes, Mr. Winterborne?” Pandora asked, forgetting to modulate her voice.
A few people in the crowd turned to look at her with raised brows.
Gabriel grinned for the first time all evening, and pulled Pandora’s head against his chest. “Yes, he means prostitutes,” he murmured, and kissed her ear gently.
“Why are they called cyprians?” Pandora asked. “Cypress is an island in Greece, and I’m sure they don’t all come from there.”
“I’ll explain later.”
“Pandora,” Helen exclaimed, “I want to introduce you to some of my friends from the Ladies’ Book Club, including Mrs. Thomas, its founder. They’re in the group standing near the last column.”
Pandora looked up at Gabriel. “Do you mind if I go with Helen for a moment?”
“I’d rather you stayed with me.”
“It’s just over there,” she protested. “We’re going to have to wait for the carriage regardless.”
Reluctantly Gabriel let go of her. “Stay where I can keep an eye on you.”
“I will.” Pandora gave him a warning glance. “Don’t talk to Grecian women. ”
He smiled and watched as she made her way through the crowd with Helen.
“Mrs. Thomas is working to establish reading rooms around London for the poor,” Helen told Pandora. “She’s incredibly generous, and fascinating. You’ll adore each other.”
“Can anyone join the book club?”
“Anyone who’s not a man.”
“Perfect, I qualify,” Pandora exclaimed.
They stopped at the edge of a small group of women, and Helen waited for an opportune moment to break into the conversation.
Standing behind her, Pandora pulled her soft white gauze wrap farther over her shoulders and fingered the double strand of pearls around her neck.
Without warning, a smooth voice spoke next to her ear—a woman’s voice with an American accent.
“You’re nothing but a skinny, awkward child, just as he described.
He’s visited me since the wedding, you know.
He and I have laughed together over your juvenile infatuation with him. You bore him senseless.”
Pandora turned and found herself confronted by Mrs. Nola Black.
The woman was breathtaking, her features creamy-skinned and flawless, her eyes deep and dark under brows so perfectly groomed and delineated, they looked like thin strips of velvet.
Although Mrs. Black was approximately the same height as Pandora, her figure was a remarkable hourglass shape, with a waist so small one could have buckled a cat’s collar around it.
“That’s nothing but bitchful thinking,” Pandora said calmly. “He hasn’t visited you, or he would have told me.”
Mrs. Black was clearly “picking for a fight,” as Winterborne would have put it.
“He’ll never be faithful to you. Everyone knows you’re a peculiar girl who tricked him into marriage.
He appreciates novelty, to be sure, but it will wear off, and then he’ll send you packing to some remote country house. ”
Pandora was filled with a confusing mixture of feelings.
Jealousy, because this woman had known Gabriel intimately, and had meant something to him.
.. and antagonism, but also a stirring of pity, because there was something wounded in the biting darkness of her eyes.
Behind the stunning facade, she was a savagely unhappy woman.
“I’m sure you think that’s what I should fear,” Pandora said, “but I actually don’t worry about that at all. I didn’t trick him, by the way.” She paused before adding, “I’ll admit to being peculiar. But he seems to like that.”
She saw a twitch of perplexity between those perfect brows, and realized the other woman had expected a different reaction, perhaps tears or rage.
Mrs. Black wanted to do battle, because in her view Pandora had stolen away a man she cared about.
How painful it must be every time she realized she would never have Gabriel in her arms again.
“I’m sorry,” Pandora said softly. “These past few weeks must have been dreadful for you.”
Mrs. Black’s gaze turned poisonous. “Don’t you dare condescend to me.”
Becoming aware that Pandora was talking to someone, Helen turned around and blanched as she saw the American woman. She extended a protective arm around Pandora.
“It’s all right,” Pandora told her sister. “There’s nothing to worry about.”
Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite accurate.
In the next moment Gabriel had reached them, his eyes light and murderous.
He hardly seemed to notice Pandora or Helen, all his attention riveted on Mrs. Black.
“Have you gone mad?” he asked the American woman in a quiet voice that curdled Pandora’s blood. “Approaching my wife—”
“I’m perfectly fine,” Pandora broke in hastily.
By this time, the group of Ladies’ Book Club members had swiveled en masse to watch the growing scene.
Closing his hand around one of Mrs. Black’s gloved wrists, Gabriel muttered, “I’m going to talk to you.”
“What about me?” Pandora protested.
“Go to the carriage,” he told her brusquely. “It’s in front of the portico now.”
Pandora glanced at the row of vehicles. Their carriage had indeed drawn up to the curbstone, and she caught a glimpse of Dragon dressed in his livery.
However, something in her rebelled at the idea of going to the carriage like a dog that had just been commanded to slink off to its kennel.
Even worse, Mrs. Black was sending her a triumphant glance behind Gabriel’s back, having succeeded in gaining the attention she’d craved.
“Now see here—” Pandora began, “I don’t think—”
Another man joined the conversation. “Take your hand off my wife.” The saw-toothed voice belonged to the American ambassador. He regarded Gabriel with a sort of resigned hostility, as if they were a pair of reluctant roosters who’d just been thrown into a cockpit.
The situation was worsening rapidly. Pandora looked at Helen in alarm. “ Help, ” she whispered.
Helen, bless her, swept into action, moving between the two men. “Ambassador Black, I am Lady Helen Winterborne. Do forgive my forwardness, but I thought perhaps we might have met at Mr. Disraeli’s dinner last month?”
The older man blinked, caught off guard by the sudden appearance of a luminous young woman with silver-blonde hair and the eyes of an angel. He didn’t dare treat her discourteously. “I don’t recall having had the honor.”
To Pandora’s satisfaction, she saw Gabriel release Mrs. Black’s arm.
“And here is Mr. Winterborne,” Helen said, barely concealing her relief as her husband arrived to help defuse the situation.