Chapter Thirty-Four
The chandelier sparkled against the firelight, swinging into place at the last possible minute, like all things theatrical and of beauty.
Jasper was watching from the mezzanine, one hand in his hair and the other mostly in his mouth as the entire, crystal-dripping fixture swung significantly harder than he would have liked and tinkled like an anxious wind chime before settling, grudgingly, into place.
“Good thing it wasn’t lit yet!” called the foreman from the orchestra level. “That would’ve put all the candles out for certain!”
“Or lit some new ones,” Malcolm observed dryly. “Is it level, Jasper?”
“It looks to be,” Jasper called back, still half-convinced the whole affair was about to crash to the ground.
The three men stood in silence for a solid minute, listening to every second that ticked past. And then, together, they exhaled.
“Shall we bring it back down and light it?” the foreman asked, looping the rope around his arm like a mooring cable. “Or secure her for the night?”
“Secure,” Malcolm and Jasper announced in unison.
Even from up here, he could feel Mal’s expression of relief. He knew without hearing it spoken that his oldest friend was thinking that the hanging and the lighting were events for two different turns of the sun.
Jasper turned and headed for the stairs, taking them two at a time as Mal and the foreman secured the ropes into their permanent places.
There were a couple of Libba’s troupe members who functioned as handymen and fixers, but Jasper had reasoned with her that a man from the docks was going to tie the most secure knot possible, and no offense to her vagabonds.
“You’re going to be one of those vagabonds tonight, Townsend,” she’d told him dryly. “I need you to make sure all the chaotic parties attending tonight are seated well away from one another and in the best places. Now come here and let me show you the floorplan.”
“Doors will be open soon,” Jasper called as he reached the orchestra, watching the foreman secure the final rope. “We barely skirted that.”
“But skirt it we did,” said Malcolm with a sigh, adjusting his cravat and smoothing the lay of his tails. “Are you staying for the show, sir?”
The foreman startled, blinking at Mal. “Am I invited?”
“Of course,” said Mal. “Jasper here will find you a seat.”
“Indeed,” Jasper agreed, tossing a tiny, withering glance at his friend. “I am tonight’s … erm … shepherd.”
“Attendant,” Malcolm provided.
“Deacon,” Jasper suggested. “Docent.”
“Attendant,” Malcolm said again, his mischief thoroughly punctured in the face of poor vocabulary.
“You can sit with the others who worked on that chandelier,” Jasper told the foreman, taking him by the shoulder and steering him back toward the mezzanine stairs. “The lapidary expressly requested being at eye level. I imagine he’ll be cross we haven’t lit it, though.”
He got the man situated and seated just as the hanging clock chimed on the hour, creating a stir of agitated babble from the little orchestra pit and a sudden emergence of Liberty Lennox, still pulling on one of her elbow-length satin gloves as she muttered to herself and hurried down the stage stairs toward the entrance.
Jasper grinned to himself and turned to do the same, eager to meet her for one final stolen moment before they let the outside world in.
He liked opening night, he thought. So far, he liked it very well.
He wasn’t going to tell her that, though. She’d already expressed to him that it was rubbish. “The only thing worse is closing night,” she’d said with enough resentment that he suspected she believed it.
She was wearing a rich, amethyst satin, her skin oiled and glowing over the sharp lines of her collarbones and the strip of visible skin between the tops of her gloves and the bottoms of her puffed sleeves. She had purple gems behind her ears, her hair a glorious tumble of curated curls.
She looks like a queen, he thought.
He caught her before she could fly past him, on the final stair of the mezzanine approach. His hand to her elbow swung her around like a door hinge, her face flickering rapidly from wide eyes to narrowed ones to rolled ones and a sigh.
“Friar Lawrence lost his shoes,” she complained by way of greeting.
“That’s all right,” Jasper told her, pulling her gently by her elbow to meet him for a quick peck on the lips. “No one’s going to think a poor monk looks less authentic when barefoot.”
She blinked, pushing him back a little as the thought clicked into place behind her eyes.
She immediately sagged a little with relief. “You’re right,” she said, and then she kissed him again. “You’re right.”
“I’m right,” he agreed, following her happily as she turned and marched them to the doors.
“Try to intercept the Templeton-Raths first,” she told him quickly, smoothing her gloved hands over one another all the way up to the tops of the seams at her biceps.
“I’ll take the Starlings except for Elias and Hattie.
The Templeton-Raths should meet the local baron and baroness.
You facilitate that introduction and I will attempt to intercept my father before he can run into Malcolm. ”
“Aye,” he said with a respectful little nod and a click of his heels.
She narrowed her eyes. “Good. Ready?”
“Ready,” he told her.
And she nodded to the men at the doors, allowing them to push open the portal to the night.
It wasn’t quite a swarm, though Jasper couldn’t think of a better name for it. People were so bereft of entertainment after the summer crowds fled and the pavilions closed for the low season that apparently, the promise of theater had worked the remaining denizens of Brighton into a frenzy.
There would only be standing room, he predicted, so he needed to get his assigned persons to their seats as quickly as he could.
Sadly, they did not enter the vestibule in the expected order, and as such, there was immediate chaos and reshuffling.
Ulysses Lennox was the first person in the queue, and the first man to enter the Odalisque who was not part of the production. He must have been outside for hours, Jasper realized. He must have shown up as soon as the sun had begun to set.
He was holding a posy of roses, his thin, gray hair combed down into order, and an old cravat crinkled and folded at his throat.
“Mr. Lennox!” Jasper boomed, crossing to him immediately. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes. Do you remember me?”
The other man startled, taking a step back and flicking his eyes over Jasper. “I don’t …” he began, but then realization hit him, his gaze wrinkling and hovering over the freckles on Jasper’s nose and the red of his hair. “Oh, sink me. The Townsend boy?!”
“The very same!” Jasper said cheerily. “Come with me. I’ve got you a seat saved right up front where you’ll be able to see everything clearly.”
“But my daughter,” said old Ulysses, turning over his shoulder to gaze at Libba, who had collected Hattie and Elias immediately upon their entry and was ordering them to wait by the Turkish pillars that led to the balcony stairs. “I’ve brought her flowers.”
“Flowers are for after the show,” Jasper told him in a conspiratorial whisper. “They mean more when they’re an accolade.”
“Oh,” said the man, immediately moving to hide the blooms in his jacket. “Oh, right. Steady on, then.”
Jasper got him seated and saved the two seats next to him for his own parents, should they arrive early enough to be granted seats.
The instant he hit the lobby again, he ran directly into Julian Harcourt, who was gazing up at the chandelier with a dazzled sparkle in his eyes, like a little boy who’d just seen jewels for the first time.
“Look at that,” he said in a daze, blinking his attention to Jasper. “You’ve done excellent work, young man.”
“Ah, well,” Jasper said, coloring. “I try. Would you like to sit in the balcony with the Starlings or up front with the other parents?”
“The other …” Harcourt said, trailing off with a wry, fond smile twisting his lips. “That’s right, isn’t it? My boy is playing Tybalt.”
“He certainly is,” Jasper agreed.
“Then put me where he’s most likely to spot me watching,” Harcourt decided, tugging on his lapels. “He’ll like that, I think.”
The Templeton-Raths did not arrive until the second wave of people, released from behind a velvet rope by the gent manning the little ticket booth.
All of them had come, Jasper realized, with a queasy lurch and a forced smile. Even Ayomide Rath, who apparently had seen right through them from the beginning. He forced himself forward to greet them, his face as stiff as driftwood.
“Evening!” he called, giving a stiff and objectively awkward little wave. “You made it.”
“Indeed we did,” John Templeton-Rath declared, smacking his lips and looking around. “What a beauty this building is.”
“It’s come a long way,” Jasper said with a wince, noting that Paul Rath immediately hid a chuckle that implied he was aware of this building’s tawdry past and was kind enough not to voice it.
“Where is the princess, then?” Miss Rath demanded, raising her dark brows.
“Miss Lennox is preparing the cast,” Jasper replied, forced to meet her eyes, which glinted with enough of an edge to slice through steel. “I will tell her you wished to greet her.”
“Did I wish that?” Miss Rath said with a sniff. “They were out of playbills up front.”
“Ayo,” her cousin said, frowning. “Be nice.”
“I’ll get you a stack,” Jasper said quickly. “We’ve a private balcony reserved for you, but I also wished to make an introduction before the show begins. Have you met the Baron and Baroness Selwyn? Come this way …”
He made the introductions, pleased that Elias was in a charming mood rather than one of his broods. Hattie had her hand over her gently swelling belly and was glowing so brightly, she could have rivaled the chandelier.
It was a relief.
For a moment.
“‘Miss Lennox’?” said Agatha Templeton-Rath, her voice soft as she faded to the back of her family to speak to Jasper directly. “Or ‘Mrs. Townsend’? We heard the banns, you know.”
“She will always be Miss Lennox of the stage,” Jasper said, tilting his head to the side. “It is the way of things.”
“Is it, indeed?” Mrs. Templeton-Rath replied with amusement. “Well, I suppose I cannot judge. I kept my name, too, when I married John. Congratulations, all the same.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “I appreciate it.”
“Hm,” she said. “When are the nuptials, then?”
“Next week,” he said, and he bit his tongue on asking if she wanted an invitation.
Surely, she did not.
Instead, he asked, “How goes the forwarding office?”
She frowned. “That rusty crane is more trouble than it’s worth. I should have petitioned to have it destroyed entirely and a new one installed rather than this tedium of repair. You ought to have told me that, young man.”
“The Reaper still swings and lifts,” he said immediately, frowning. “She just needs a polish.”
“She needs a great deal, actually,” she retorted.
“As for the running of the office, we have decided to manage it ourselves for now. Pippa wishes to learn the business and her health has seen much improvement in this climate, so she and my brother-in-law will be staying while the rest of us return to Bridgetown. It shall serve as a kind of apprenticeship, I think, until she is ready to run the thing herself.”
He blinked several times. “Oh.”
It made Mrs. Templeton-Rath smile, a knowing glint in her incisors. “Yes,” she said. “Oh.”
“It’s in her blood, I suppose,” Jasper managed. “I’m pleased to hear she is feeling improved. Brighton is known to be tonic in that way, you know.”
“Yes, you said before,” she answered. She turned to consider him, her head tilted to the side. “And you, Mr. Townsend? Have you found peace with East India?”
“Peace is a strong word,” he replied, scratching nervously at the spot behind his ear.
“I’d like to set up my own post someday.
I’ve been doing some odd jobs for this theater, in service to my …
well, my soon-to-be wife. I think I could make a go at setting up a secondary office that specializes in bridging multiple businesses for large projects.
A sort of hub agency to accommodate liaison between local businesses.
It is something she and I are discussing. ”
She paused, tilting her head to the side to consider it, and gave a slow, thoughtful nod.
“Yes, I could see you being quite good at that,” she decided.
“You could also provide staffing services, like you did for us with the laborers. All twelve have remained with us, you know, in this past month. All twelve will likely stay on with Templeton-Rath after we return to Ceylon.”
“I suspected they might,” Jasper said, his smile this time rising without nausea. “I am pleased to hear it.”
“Indeed, indeed,” she said, flapping her hand. “Now, where is that balcony you mentioned?”