Chapter Six #2
“Neville!?” Harris jerked back. “I’m astonished. You, of all people! You know I cannot accommodate an assignation. The Duke of Bedford would have my head.”
Harris’s protest felt more like an excuse. Bedford, the theater’s owner, was known to have fathered more than one illegitimate child. Who was to say Bedford hadn’t used one of these many chambers for an illicit meeting or two?
“Nothing untoward, I promise,” Neville continued. “Honestly, do you know me at all?”
Harris’s lips pinched. “You don’t appear to be exactly yourself this evening.”
Oh, Neville was aware! “A lady acquaintance of mine—both a ward of my friend and my cousin Harbury’s sister-in-law—may be in distress.
More than distress. Danger. Grave danger.
I—oh, hell, I don’t know! All I know is that I must speak with her.
Urgently. Else…else…” He looked frantically around.
“Else I will have no choice but to force my way into the Eltenham box.”
“You?” Harris’s expression turned amused. “Make a scene?”
“I swear I will!” Neville insisted, his expression mulish.
If the only way to save Millicent was a scene, then Neville would make a scene, even if that meant he must ask for her hand after, to keep her from further harm. She might hate him forever for leaving her no choice, but she would be better off with him than if left in Willard’s clutches.
Neville? Her bewildered response to his heated gaze in the library this afternoon echoed in his ears. Briefly, he closed his eyes.
Perhaps Harbury had been right. Perhaps Millie didn’t hate him. Perhaps he might one day convince her to wed him of her own accord. But such a dream would only be possible if he was able to free her from Willard’s ill intent.
“I do believe you are serious.” Harris studied his face. “You’d do anything for this lady, wouldn’t you?”
“As God is my witness,” Neville vowed again. “Help me, please.”
“Eltenham’s box, you say?”
“Willard has use of it tonight,” Neville explained. “Miss Millicent Wainwright is with him.”
“And she’s Harbury’s sister-in-law?”
Neville nodded. The involvement of a duke’s relation could only help him prove his case.
Harris touched his forefinger against his bottom lip as he considered.
“Willard sent the lads in his party to the lounge. He, however, is still in his father’s box, as are, I believe, the ladies.
Are you sure Miss Wainwright is in trouble?
And you can solve her trouble, if I find a place for the two of you to meet? ”
“Yes!”
“Well…” Harris turned calculating. “The royal box stands empty. And, as I have just had word that the Regent has made an appearance at Drury Lane tonight, our whole royal suite is unlikely to be used. If I can manage to draw the lady from the box, you could speak to her in the royal retiring room, which is just behind the box. There’s an entrance to the same corridor Willard’s box empties into. I will alert the guard.”
“Brilliant! Thank you.”
“But be brief!” Harris’s right brow ticked up. “And getting her back to Willard could prove a problem, though.”
“My preference would be that she doesn’t return.” Neville brightened with a sudden idea. “I could escort her out the Hart Street entrance the Royals use without attracting much notice.”
“Are you mad?” Harris shook his head. “Willard would raise a hue and cry if she completely disappears.”
“That’s a possible outcome,” Neville said. “But her mortal soul, Harris. Her mortal soul.”
Harris grunted. “You prepare to meet her in the retiring room. I’ll think of some way to get her there and, if needs be, to get her out after. But remember—you’ll owe me dearly for this!”
Neville exhaled. “Nothing less than my life, Harris.”
He meant every word of that pledge.
After all, what was his life to him if he did not succeed? With Millicent in danger, his very heart was at stake.
*
As the theater’s lights brightened, the men around Millie stirred. Millie rose in unison with Lord Willard, who turned first to Lady Eltenham. The lady opened her eyes, blinking and frowning, then shook her head, as if disoriented.
“Bunch of butcher’s dogs we are,” murmured a young man behind Millie in the box.
“And so we are,” one added with a chuckle. “At least for now.”
Butcher’s…dogs? Millie stiffened. What did that mean?
A butcher’s dog would… She wasn’t sure.
Watch men slice things up? Guard meat they were never to eat?
That seemed the more likely of the two interpretations.
“Just be content to view the dairy,” the buck behind her said.
“The flat cock does hoist some pretty nice heavers,” the first man replied, in low tones that suggested agreement.
Willard sent the man a warning look—the first time she’d ever seen him don even the slightest of frowns all evening.
Millie stiffened. She’d no idea what they’d just said, but she was certain Willard’s friends had been talking about her. And, despite the word “nice,” she didn’t think she wanted to understand the compliment. She gripped her elbow.
Lady Eltenham nodded at her son as he helped her to her feet. At least her chaperone was not, as Millie had feared during the play’s first act, about to slip into eternal rest.
“Out with you, lads,” Willard said. “The coffee room’s quite fine, and the ladies need peace.”
Well, that had been thoughtful. More aligned with how he’d acted last night at Almack’s. Reassured, she let her gaze wander about the theater. Since they’d come late, she hadn’t had a chance to study much of the inside, excepting the stage.
The room was a horseshoe shape, with four tiers of grand boxes, all painted white, and prettily bordered with gold and green, except for one on her side, which, from what little she could see from this angle, was more elaborately decorated.
The royal box.
She glanced down. The pit below was slightly wider than deep and fitted with tiered benches.
One man in a terrible rush had just made his way to the end of a row near the front.
He looked like the one who’d caught her eye when they’d first arrived, the one who’d engaged in shocking flirtations with his companion.
She searched the bench for the distinctive blonde curls she’d seen resting on his shoulder. Oh! How rude! He’d left his “lady” behind and was hurrying away, the cad.
He shifted fluidly from side to side as he moved along the pit’s edge toward the orchestra, coming close to but never quite trampling those in his path. She frowned.
What made him seem familiar?
Certainly not his clothes. That shade of green! She shuddered.
His walk, perhaps? The shoulders that stretched the seams of his garish coat? The broad chest he displayed, each time he turned?
Despite moving in haste, he was not holding himself rigid, the way Lenora had done the other night, in a demonstration of Willard’s posture.
Millie slid a surreptitious glance to Willard, now guiding his mother toward the back of the box. Willard was rigid. She judged Lenora’s mimicry of him more accurate with each passing moment.
She turned back to the pit. The man she’d been watching hesitated for a moment, running his hand through his graying locks. Even though that hair suggested a more advanced age, he called to mind the man she’d seen outside her window last night, the man she had thought might be Neville.
That was it! Like the man last night, he had shoulders similar to Neville’s.
But this man was clearly not Neville. Neville would never… Well, he certainly would never make love to a woman in public. Or, likely anywhere else. Only…
The man disappeared behind a curtain.
Behind her, the door to the box clicked closed, giving her a start. She’d expected Willard and his mother to call her over if his mother wished to take a turn in one of the lounges.
She turned and saw the box had emptied of everyone but herself and Lord Willard.
She placed her hand against the box’s green side panel and then quickly made her way toward the door.
“Where has Lady Eltenham gone?” she whispered, not wanting to call anyone’s attention to the fact she and Willard were now alone.
Willard shrugged. His eyes fixed on her, and he ignored the stares and whispers coming from the pit below. His singular attention might be flattering, under other circumstances. But something felt very wrong.
“No need to worry,” he said.
The second time tonight he’d said so in reference to her chaperone, no?
“My mother just stepped out into the corridor for some air.”
“Oh!” Millie responded lightly, dropping her gaze to the floor as she picked her way up. “I must not have heard her call for me to accompany her.”
As Millie reached the door, Willard moved to block her way.
She glanced over her shoulder. This far back in the box, they were out of sight of most of the people who remained in their seats instead of using the break to explore the theater’s various halls and lounges.
Out of sight by most, but not all.
“If you’ll excuse me…” She cleared her throat, hating having to say aloud what should have been obvious. “I am uncomfortable without your mother’s presence, my lord.”
“Ah, Miss Millicent. Aren’t you just darling?”
His low chuckle left her chilled. She read no mirth in his eyes.
“Gone prim and proper all at once, have you?” he asked.
“No, but—”
“A shame,” he interrupted again, “but I daresay I understand. Not quite the thing to be without a chaperone. Let me see to your comfort.” Without stepping away, he undid a curtain she hadn’t noticed in the corner.
He then pulled the velvet across the back of the box so that they were now standing between the fabric and the door. “Do you approve of my shelter?”
His shelter?
The curtain was present more to dull the sound of the door than to be a barrier.
There was hardly any space for the two of them.
Still, without permission, he grasped her elbow, and as he did so, he deftly switched their locations so that she had her back to the wall, and he had his back to the curtain, and he had done so as easily and as naturally as he had when they’d been dos-à-dos in last night’s country dance.