Chapter 9
The heavy crimson velvet curtains fell with a muffled thud, signaling the brief interval before the second act. Almost immediately, the grand auditorium began to empty, pouring its glittering contents into the wide marble corridors of the opera house.
“I am entirely convinced that the playwright wrote this opera after being violently rejected by a soprano,” Aunt Phoebe announced, adjusting the stiff lace at her wrists.
“Is it the tragic poison scene that offends your artistic sensibilities, Aunt Phoebe, or merely the tenor’s persistent refusal to sing in key?” Corinna asked, smiling into the rim of her painted paper fan as she stepped out of the way of two hurried gentlemen in identical black evening tails.
“The tenor is a public nuisance, of course, but it is the heroine’s total lack of common sense that truly wounds me,” Phoebe replied briskly.
“She has surrendered her entire fortune, her quiet reputation, and a perfectly good carriage to a man who cannot even manage his own neckwear,” Corinna noted, agreeing completely with her aunt’s assessment.
“It is utterly absurd,” Phoebe declared. She steered Corinna toward a carpeted alcove near a sweeping arched window.
“It is a profound relief that Mother chose to remain at home this evening,” Corinna remarked, and they watched as a group of gossiping matrons blocked the main stairway with their massive silk skirts.
“Your mother has very little patience for grand rooms explicitly designed to be watched in,” Phoebe pointed out, claiming a spot against the cool stone wall.
“And I suppose you possess endless patience for it?” Corinna teased gently.
“I possess endless patience for nothing else,” Phoebe replied, a wicked gleam in her eye.
“Eleanor is much happier with her correspondence and her quiet needlework.” Corinna felt a pang of longing for the quiet library back at their country estate.
“Exactly,” Phoebe said, snapping her fan open. “The household keeps running exactly as it always has under her watchful eye, which leaves us perfectly free to observe the circus.”
“Speaking of the circus,” Corinna nodded toward the closed theater doors, “perhaps the heroine simply believed his promises. People in operas are notoriously susceptible to speeches delivered in a minor key.”
“People in operas are remarkably foolish,” Phoebe countered immediately.
“You would not be swayed by a grand romantic gesture?” Corinna pressed, highly entertained by her aunt’s ruthless pragmatism.
“If a gentleman stood beneath my window and made that much noise, I should throw a bucket of soapy water on his head and lock the shutters,” Phoebe stated flatly.
“That would certainly cut the third act short,” a deep, quiet voice observed from the shadows just behind them.
Corinna turned slightly, her breath catching in a highly inconvenient, embarrassing flutter against her ribs. Mr. Marsh stepped into the soft glow of the gas sconces, moving with that silent, predatory grace she was beginning to recognize.
He looked broad, dark, and entirely out of place in his plain secretary coat amid the sea of glittering diamonds and embroidered waistcoats. Yet, as always, he carried himself with an effortless, undeniable authority that made the rest of the room seem remarkably small and frivolous.
He looks like a hardened soldier who has accidentally stumbled into a pastry shop, Corinna thought, her eyes lingering on the sharp, unyielding line of his jaw. And he is clearly trying to decide which dessert poses the greatest tactical threat.
“Do you disagree with my aunt’s practical advice, Mr. Marsh?” Corinna asked, keeping her voice light to mask the sudden, racing rhythm of her heart.
“I believe soapy water is a highly practical solution to most social grievances, Miss Ashwell,” the secretary replied smoothly.
“You do not find it overly harsh?” Corinna challenged, stepping just a fraction of an inch closer to him.
“It is remarkably effective, immediate, and leaves very little room for misinterpretation,” he countered.
“How wonderfully unromantic of you,” Corinna murmured, tilting her chin up to maintain eye contact.
“I am a secretary, Miss Ashwell,” he reminded her, a dry warmth lacing his deep voice.
“And secretaries are immune to romance?” she asked. Her pulse jumped as his gaze dropped briefly to her lips before snapping back to her eyes.
“We deal strictly in facts, ledgers, and cold water.” His broad shoulders shifted slightly under the cheap wool of his coat.
“That sounds like a terribly dreary existence,” Corinna noted softly.
“Romance is an expensive luxury reserved for gentlemen who do not have to manage estate accounts,” he finished, and the tight line of his mouth softened just a fraction.
Phoebe stopped fanning herself. She lowered her glass of punch very slowly, her gaze sliding from the secretary’s rigid posture to the undeniable flush blooming on Corinna’s cheeks. She did not say a word, simply tilting her head as she watched the charged space crackling between them.
“Yet even practical secretaries must have an opinion on the drama, Mr. Marsh,” Phoebe finally interjected, her tone perfectly even.
“I am merely an observer, Mrs. Cavendish,” he replied, turning his attention to the older woman with deferential politeness.
“What do you make of the hero’s questionable choices in the first act?” Corinna pressed, refusing to let him retreat behind his servant’s mask.
“I find the hero to be a remarkably foolish man,” the secretary said, his gaze shifting heavily back to Corinna.
“Because he hid his true identity?” Her curiosity was genuinely piqued by the sudden hardness in his tone.
“He spends three whole scenes pretending to be a penniless scholar merely to test the lady’s character,” he explained, his jaw tightening.
“Is it so wrong to want to be loved for oneself, rather than one’s title?” Corinna challenged quietly.
“He is entirely oblivious to the fact that deception is a terribly fragile foundation for anything permanent,” he countered, his voice dropping into a rougher, lower register.
“Perhaps he was simply afraid,” Corinna suggested, leaning closer to the cool stone of the window frame.
“Afraid of what, Miss Ashwell?” He stepped into her space so the faint, clean scent of soap and wool washed over her.
“Perhaps he worried that if she saw his title first, she would never bother to look for the man hidden beneath the gold lace,” Corinna whispered, looking up into his handsome face.
“A man who chooses to hide behind a false coat surrenders his right to complain when people mistake him for a servant,” the secretary said, the words vibrating with a raw, unguarded edge that sent a shiver straight down her spine.
“You speak as though you know the feeling,” Corinna observed, her gray eyes searching his face for a crack in his armor.
“It is a cowardly strategy,” he stated, completely ignoring her observation.
“Is it cowardly to protect oneself?” Corinna refused to look away from the intense fire burning in his blue eyes.
“Protection is one thing,” he argued.
“Or is it merely a sensible defense against a world that judges absolutely everything by its outer polish?” Corinna pressed, feeling the magnetic, undeniable pull between them growing stronger by the second.
“It becomes cowardly the moment it deceives those who act in good faith.” His expression turned agonizingly severe.
“Then you believe honesty is the only path?” Corinna’s breath hitched in her throat as he stared down at her.
“I believe the most dangerous thing a person can do in a room full of performers is let someone see them clearly,” he said, stripping away every single trace of his usual servant’s deference.
The words hung between them in the warm, perfumed air, entirely stripped of the polite social nonsense that governed the rest of the crowded opera house.
“Or,” he added, his voice barely audible over the distant tuning of a violin, “to let themselves be seen as something they are not.”
Corinna knew the difference. She knew this was the exact moment where she ought to retreat, to make a clever, hollow joke about the soprano’s gown and restore the safe wall of polite fiction between them.
Yet she did not want to retreat. She opened her mouth to speak, knowing with absolute certainty that something needed to be said to shatter the dangerous, exquisite spell holding them bound together in the quiet alcove.
Ask him, she told herself frantically, her fingers tightening around the ivory ribs of her fan. Ask him why his eyes look like a storm when he speaks of honesty. Ask him what he is hiding.
She was about to speak. She did not know exactly what she was going to say, only that something monumental needed to be said right then and there.
Just then, the crowd near the grand staircase shifted violently.
An urgent murmur rippled through the corridor, traveling faster than spilled wine on a tablecloth. Heads turned rapidly, conversations died mid-sentence, and painted fans fluttered to a halt.
“Who on earth is that?” a woman nearby whispered loudly, gripping her companion’s arm.
“Look at the cut of that bodice, it must be French,” another matron muttered in a scandalized tone.
“I have never seen her before in my life,” a gentleman added, his voice thick with undisguised intrigue.
The ambient hum of the corridor dipped into a curious hush as the wealthy walking parties pulled back toward the silk-covered walls, creating a wide, clear path.
Through the newly opened space walked a woman who seemed to move without the slightest hurry, entirely indifferent to the hundreds of gaping stares trailing in her wake.
She was stunning. Her hair was an extraordinary, vibrant shade of deep copper, styled into an intricate, tumbling heap of glossy curls that caught the gaslight like spun bronze. She perfectly matched the scandalous description Lady Sophronia had whispered in the park just days before.