Chapter 7
Chapter 7
After dismissing his valet, Graham stood a moment longer before the pier glass, eyes narrowed, assessing.
As a lad, he’d come in for his fair share of mockery for his red hair. At the fine English public school to which his father’s will had ordered he be sent, some had seen it as the mark of a peasant, not the son of a nobleman. Did your mother lift her skirts for every stableboy, McKay? Or just the ugly ones?
He had responded with a flail of fists and a fine assortment of Gaelic oaths that none of them had been able to understand, not even the headmaster—though he’d nevertheless caned Graham for his foul mouth. Graham hadn’t been able to sit at table for a week.
Eventually, he’d learned to confine his replies to paper. Poems and dialogues tucked into his copybook, hidden beneath his blotter or in the locked wooden box beneath his bed. No one ever saw them. Those English boys fancied they’d triumphed.
At least, until Ransom Blackadder’s work had begun to appear onstage.
In the years since, Graham had had more than ample reassurance that, in spite of his schoolmates’ claims to the contrary, women did not think him ugly. Apparently, they couldn’t see the ugliness inside. How bitterness and fear had tainted his blood and eaten away at his soul like a canker.
Or if they did see it, they were willing to overlook it in favor of his chiseled jaw.
He ran one hand over his chin, feeling the growth of a three days’ beard. When he was a younger man, his beard had been little more than a golden gleam. Now, at almost thirty, he bore an auburn shadow. He considered calling back Harcourt, his valet, to scrape it away.
But no, his present appearance would have to do. The curtain rose promptly at half-past six. It waited for no man—not even the king.
Though pressed for time, once outside his chambers, he paused again. Rather than descend, he followed the staircase up another flight and stopped before the door to a room at the back of the house, relieved to see a narrow seam of light beneath it.
“Keynes?” He rapped with the knuckle of his first finger.
A moment’s bustle within, and then the door swung open and his secretary bowed. “My lord. May I be of some assistance?”
Keynes had been given, or more likely had chosen, the smallest, most spartan chamber. Though both were narrow, the bed and writing table together hardly left room for a comfortable chair.
Yet Keynes looked comfortable, enviably so, with his spectacles perched on his forehead, his cravat loosened, and the top buttons of his waistcoat undone. Rather than being littered by Graham’s correspondence and bills, as in the study below, the table here contained only half a glass of claret and a thick volume lying face down and open. The book bore all the signs of having come from a circulating library. A novel, then, and evidently of the page-turning variety.
Graham felt a slight pang. Guilt at having intruded on the man’s quiet hours. But also, even more unexpectedly, envy. Such a peaceful, pleasant means of escape, so unlike the various routes Graham had chosen.
He waved off Keynes’s flustered attempt to put his clothes to rights. “I’m sorry to interrupt.”
The other man’s hands fell slack, along with his jaw. Graham’s apology appeared to have struck him dumb.
Good God. It was almost enough to make Graham regret having been such a bastard to his secretary all these years.
But not enough to keep him from saying, “I came to find out what you’ve learned about the identity of Miss on Scene.”
Keynes quickly pulled himself together. “Verra little, my lord. I calculated the proportion of nouns and adjectives in the review, to determine if there is anything distinctive about the author’s style. And I made note of uncommon diction. I had nae time for more. I didnae think you would want the matter to take priority over my usual tasks. But if you wish it, I will—”
He moved as if intending to go down to the study immediately and resume his work.
Graham squared himself in the doorway and shook his head. “Nay, Mr. Keynes. That’ll do for now.”
Keynes dipped his head once in acknowledgment. The movement did not disguise the flare of astonishment in his eyes. Clearly, he had not been expecting a reprieve.
In fact, Graham had come tonight, planning on adding to the man’s assignment. Oh, nothing too taxing. A few simple inquiries, nothing more. But enough to further delay progress on the important undertaking of discovering Miss on Scene’s identity.
So instead, Graham said, “Enjoy your evening, Mr. Keynes,” as he turned away from the door.
“Thank you, my lord.” The slightest pause. “From the hour, I ken you’re bound for the theater?”
Graham did not glance over his shoulder. “Aye.”
“Are you quite certain, after your letter this morning, that Mrs. Hayes will nae have claimed the box already for the night?”
He thought of Julia’s small, gloved hand wrapped around the ticket, the way the ivory disc must have absorbed the warmth of her touch.
“In fact, Keynes, I’m certain she has.”
He could also picture how the groove between Keynes’s brows, etched there by years of care and consternation, must have deepened at that reply.
He hadn’t yet been reduced to explaining himself to his secretary, however.
Graham had repeated one simple phrase—Julia Addison is no concern of yours—often enough that afternoon that it had almost become an incantation. He was fully persuaded he spoke the truth. He wasn’t concerned. Merely . . . curious.
And surely a man was entitled to assuage his curiosity.
* * *
Graham arrived at Covent Garden with little time to spare before the curtain rose. Fortunately, he faced no obstacles in gaining admittance, though he was not in possession of the ticket to his box. It had required no more than his name, which had elicited a few whispers and nudges among the staff—those who presumably knew what had become of the box manager—and he had been ushered inside with alacrity.
He found his box full to overflowing with fashionable females, and none of them the women he had expected to find within. Convinced he had taken a wrong turn and pulled aside the wrong velvet drapery, he began a slow, strategic retreat.
Too late.His presence had been observed. Around him, the ladies’ alarmed expressions told him his own face had settled into its habitual scowl, a mask he had found far more effective at hiding its wearer’s true feelings than even Melpomene or Thalia, the familiar masks of tragedy and comedy. When these women reported on the evening to their friends, they would describe him as angry or irritated or unhappy.
Better that than the truth: surrounded by so many strangers, discomfort had shot shards of ice into his veins and struck up an ominous thudding in his chest. The longer he hesitated, the greater the risk of him turning to stone.
But at the sight of him, the sea of occupants parted to reveal Mrs. Hayes. The widow, already seated in the center of the back row, expressed her delight that he should join them.
And then, over her shoulder, Miss Addison appeared, and his pulse, already rapid, ratcheted another notch upward. She blinked at him twice in evident astonishment before sinking into her seat.
With curtsies, sidelong glances, and a great deal of whispering behind fans, several of the women departed for their own boxes, leaving just five behind: Mrs. Hayes; her friend Lady Clearwater; Lady Clearwater’s two daughters, whose dark-blond hair and elegant dresses were, he suspected, too often mistaken for prettiness; and Julia.
The two Misses Clearwater joined Julia in the front of the box; “the better to be observed,” remarked their mother slyly. Her daughters tittered at the insinuation, while Julia slumped lower in her chair. Or was it his imagination? Was he ascribing his own preference for the shadows to her? Certainly she was every bit as deserving of society’s notice as the Misses Clearwater. Whether she wanted the attention was a question yet to be answered.
Mrs. Hayes gestured him to the chair on her right as Lady Clearwater settled into the chair to her left, behind Miss Addison. He and Julia were thus seated as far apart as the small box made possible, which was, of course, irrelevant to his mission. Perhaps even an advantage. Less of a distraction.
He was more than usually annoyed, however, by the two other young ladies, who—in addition to chattering and fluttering their fans and waving to friends on the opposite side of the theater even after the curtain had risen—dared to send him the occasional simpering glance.
Oh, it was hardly surprising behavior, no matter how often he scolded audiences for it in his plays. Even when the production was something new and exciting—and The Iron Chest did not qualify as either—people came to the theater to be seen and to socialize, to flirt and to fawn, not to listen and learn.
Still, must they continually disrupt his view of the stage, perfectly situated as it was past the end of Julia’s tilt-tipped nose?
Not that he had come to watch the play either. Tonight, he would be among the guilty parties. He had come intending to give most of his attention to Mrs. Hayes.
He began well enough, with a leading question about how often she and her companion attended the theater. But he hadn’t considered just how much of his research would involve listening to Mrs. Hayes rattle on about everything but Julia. By the second act he had accomplished nothing more than confirming what Julia herself had already revealed: she was the daughter of a clergyman, now deceased.
Eventually, Mrs. Hayes added that Julia had been born and humbly raised in Oxfordshire—“just out of reach of everything a girl could truly want, though she never complains, of course.”
Throughout, Julia had remained devoted entirely to what passed on the boards below, indifferent to the noise around her. He supposed, in her time with Mrs. Hayes, she had determined how much of that lady’s flowing stream of conversation could safely be ignored. But at those last words—everything a girl could truly want—her shoulders gave the slightest twitch, as if she were fighting the impulse to twist around in her chair and send Mrs. Hayes a quelling glance.
Just what had the woman inadvertently revealed about her companion’s desires?
Before he could begin to speculate, Mrs. Hayes was on to the next bit of gossip. Buried among a number of far less interesting anecdotes was the information that Julia’s mother had recently remarried and was now Mrs. Remington. And Julia’s brother had not, in fact, followed in his father’s footsteps, but had instead joined the army. “I suppose,” Mrs. Hayes reflected, raising her lorgnette to peer at the occupants of the pit, “he must have thought it a surer route to being able to support his mother and sister, after inheriting more debts than devoirs.”
That was a detail uniquely suited to pique Graham’s attention. He knew firsthand about troublesome inheritances. Something tied up in Chancery, perhaps, or an entailed piece of property that cost more to maintain than it brought in.
“Imagine,” Mrs. Hayes went on, “waking up one morning to find yourself a viscount!”
Better or worse, Graham wondered, than being roused with the news of my brother’s death and realizing I was the earl?
“The title was worth so little that to this day, he still prefers to be called Captain Addison among his friends,” exclaimed Mrs. Hayes, returning his thoughts to the present moment. “Though I believe that’s also to protect my niece,” she added in a softer tone. “My Laura has a stout heart, but after all that nonsense two years ago, what young woman wouldn’t shy away from the prospect of being addressed as Lady Sterling?”
“Forgive me, ma’am. But I—”
I don’t particularly care.
It was Julia he wanted to understand, not her brother—though the information that she was sister to a viscount was a not unpleasant surprise.
Mrs. Hayes, however, was too ready to offer an explanation, whether or not he had expressed a need for one. “It was in all the papers, about that pickpocket who styled herself Lady Sterling,” she told him, openly incredulous that anyone would not remember such a tale. “But I’m glad to know some people have begun to forget the scandal. For all the good Captain Addison and my niece have done, I should like to hear them addressed as they ought to be.”
Mrs. Hayes told the rest of the story with numerous detours and interruptions, but Graham eventually deduced that Lord and Lady Sterling had established some sort of philanthropic endeavor on his estate in Wiltshire—the taste for country living of which Julia had spoken that afternoon—made possible by the substantial dowry Mrs. Hayes’s niece had brought to the match. And they were assisted in the work by Lord Sterling’s mother and stepfather.
Instead of joining them, Julia had elected to put herself at the beck and call of the garrulous Mrs. Hayes. What kept her connected to London? Something more than the prospect of an occasional outing to Covent Garden with her employer, whatever she might claim. And he thought he could guess what it might be.
He had some familiarity with a longing for independence, even to the point of recklessness. But he had never had to battle against the sort of restrictions society placed on young ladies. Here, she had no family nearby to check her, to watch over her. He doubted whether Mrs. Hayes knew that her companion went gallivanting about London on her own. To say nothing of what she might get up to while she was out.
Not that he was concerned about Julia. Merely curious.
If anything, more curious than he had been an hour ago.
Well, as Mr. Pope—the poet, not the box manager—had so succinctly phrased it nearly a century before, “A little learning is a dangerous thing.” Dangerous, not because one should wish to remain ignorant, but because those first sips of new information could be intoxicating, without truly slaking one’s thirst.
Fortunately, Graham knew the rest of that pithy couplet, the admonition to drink deep from the wellspring of knowledge. Better to learn as much as one could.
At long last, intermission put an end to the pretense that any of them, except possibly Julia, was there to watch a play. Perhaps he could get more information straight from the source.
“Tell me,” he said, speaking over the fading applause and the rising conversation as all but Mrs. Hayes stood. “What is your impression of the performance, Miss A—?”
Before he could complete the sentence, both Miss Anna Clearwater and Miss Agatha Clearwater—he had not paid enough attention to know which was which—whirled to face him, their expressions eager. Julia turned too, albeit more slowly.
“My daughters know so little of the theater,” said Lady Clearwater, with a warning glance to silence them before they could venture an opinion. “I’m sure they would benefit more from hearing your thoughts on the play, Lord Dunstane.”
So, Lady Clearwater meant to give him an opportunity to pontificate. Hardly surprising. In the world of fashionable society, a young lady was expected to shape her sentiments to match the gentleman’s, no matter what.
Julia dropped her gaze to the floor, as if trying to hide her face, though not before he thought he glimpsed a smile. Was she recalling her own jibe about his discriminating tastes?
“I assure you, ma’am,” he replied to Lady Clearwater, thinking about the shocking things he could reveal to innocent young ladies about the theatrical world, “they would not.”
Lady Clearwater was undeterred, however. “You are right, of course. This is no place for serious conversation. I wonder, my lord, whether you might join us one evening—say, the day after tomorrow—for a small entertainment at home among friends: supper, cards—”
“And dancing, Mama?” added one of the Misses Clearwater, sounding hopeful.
Lady Clearwater smiled warmly at her daughter before turning the expression on him. “Whatever would most amuse our guests.”
He knew just the sort of small entertainment to which Lady Clearwater referred, neither small enough for a man of his solitary disposition, nor entertaining to a man of his understanding.
When he did not immediately answer, she coaxed him with a playful tap of her folded fan against his shoulder. “Surely, my lord, you have not returned to London after all these years merely to attend a few plays?”
Perhaps not. But neither had he come to Town to put himself at the service of a matchmaking mama.
If and when he became convinced of the necessity of a wife—or, more accurately, the necessity of an heir—he would look elsewhere than among the English beau monde.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement, the slightest shrug of Julia’s shoulders. As if she might now be suppressing not just a smile, but a laugh. As if she found his predicament amusing.
“Mrs. Hayes will be among the company, I hope?” he asked archly. If the answer was no, Lady Clearwater was being unpardonably rude to her friend. “And Miss Addison—her niece?”
Lady Clearwater’s smile faltered, but she caught it before it fell away from her lips entirely. He could not blame her for wanting to avoid the possibility of Julia competing for suitors with her daughters. Absent exceptional dowries, the Misses Clearwater would surely lose.
But if Julia was determined to stay in London, then she ought not to be excluded from every proper entertainment but the theater. After all, despite her present position, she was a gentleman’s daughter and a nobleman’s sister. Not just a lady’s companion, but a lady.
“O-of course,” Lady Clearwater insisted, though it was abundantly clear she had intended no such thing.
At last, he had succeeded in gaining Julia’s full attention. Her head snapped up, and she fixed him with a look—not quite of anger, he thought, but astonishment. As it had that afternoon, a blush darkened her cheeks, deepening the blue of her eyes.
Would her skin be soft as a rose petal? Warm to the touch?
Histouch?
Would she blush so readily, so prettily at the offer of a kiss?
Hiskiss?
Oh, but the knowledge he wanted was dangerous, indeed.
Julia’s mouth popped open, the sure prelude to a protest.
“In that case,” he said, forestalling her, “I would be delighted.” Then he bowed, signaling his intention to depart. “Enjoy the rest of the play.”
“You’re leaving?” exclaimed one of the Misses Clearwater, making very little effort to hide her disappointment.
“You won’t stay to see how it ends?” pleaded the other.
“He already knows,” said Julia, with a flicker of annoyance. “Everyone does.”
“Then you must have had other reasons for coming.” Lady Clearwater sounded absurdly hopeful.
“Must I?” said Graham. “Then let us say that tonight, I merely wished to assuage my curiosity.”
“And have you?” Julia asked boldly. The question was accompanied by an increasingly familiar—and undeniably attractive—lift of her chin.
Had she overheard enough of his conversation with Mrs. Hayes to guess the direction of his interest?
“Not by half, Miss Addison,” he answered softly.
Then he bowed again, this time to each of them, taking the Misses Clearwater together and, in defiance of good manners, saving the last for Julia. “Until the day after tomorrow.”