THE OPERA
Lark’s gaze moved over her face. She tilted her head, and her eyes narrowed.
Oh, bother.
Beatrice had not said a word. Had not so much as smiled. And still, Lark knew.
Beatrice met her friend’s inquisitive stare and gave the smallest possible shrug.
And as Lady Barrington lamented that Theodosia had declined yet another proposal—from a marquess, no less—Beatrice could only silently arrange her skirts, smooth her gloves, and adjust a ribbon that required no adjusting at all.
Hopefully, at some point in the evening she would get the opportunity to speak privately with Lark.
Only… she was not entirely certain how much she wanted to say.
Or how one began such a conversation. Because… how did one describe what had happened on Gideon’s sofa that morning?
Even Beatrice did not quite know what to make of it.
She had returned home flushed and unsettled, so much so that she had struggled to get any sleep that night.
She had paced. Sat. Stood again. Then caught herself staring at nothing, fingers hovering near her mouth, and felt heat rise in her face all over again.
What had it meant?
She had made Gideon promise not to go to Dash about it, but that did not answer the more difficult questions. Would he court her eventually? Did he wish to? Did she wish him to?
And there, unfortunately, her thoughts became less sensible.
Because yes.
Whatever else she did or did not know, Beatrice wanted more of him.
She simply had no notion what more could look like without creating impossible complications.
By the time Lady Barrington’s party had been shown into the earl’s private box, there was the usual flutter of settling in—cloaks surrendered, fans opened, and greetings exchanged with acquaintances in neighboring boxes.
At last, Lady Barrington leaned forward to speak to her sister, and the others turned their attention to the audience below.
Lark seized the moment.
“Well?” she said.
Beatrice drew in a breath.
“He kissed me.” It was as good a place to start as any.
“Lord Hawkins,” Lark confirmed, and Beatrice nodded. “Where? When?” She glanced around the adjacent boxes, only partly occupied, and winced apologetically at the volume of her voice.
“This morning.” And then, avoiding direct eye contact, “In his drawing room.”
Lark shook her head, eyes wide. “I won’t even ask what you were doing there.
I take it you were alone.” Disapproval was written all over her friend’s face.
Under no circumstances was a lady to visit a gentleman’s house—certainly not without a chaperone—but warring with the disapproval turning down her friend’s mouth, there was… curiosity.
“Are you betrothed?”
“No!” Beatrice yelped, scandalized. And then, lowering her voice, “Of course not.”
Lark arched her brow. “What do you mean ‘of course not’? Why not?”
“Because he’s… Gideon. He’s Dash’s friend.”
There had even been times when she would have claimed he was like a brother. Not anymore. Definitely not now.
“So your brother’s friend can kiss you, but he can’t marry you?”
“It…” The trouble was Beatrice didn’t know the answer to this question.
“I hadn’t planned on marrying,” she said after a moment of thought, but with less fervor than she normally had on this subject.
“And…” She needed to change the subject.
“There… was more.” Beatrice worried the lace at the edge of her glove.
“What I am about to tell you may permanently alter your opinion of my character.”
“My opinion of your character is already quite settled,” Lark said. “You are reckless, loyal, scandalous, and far more interesting than anyone else in this box. Do continue.”
Beatrice supposed that was only fair, though usually the scandalous sorts of things she got up to were of a very different nature.
Things such as attacking unsuspecting viscounts who were playing hero to ladies caught in rosebushes.
Or turning her brother’s ballroom into an archery range and, later, a room for pugilist practice.
Outlandish things. Purposeful things. Not improper things of an alarmingly personal nature.
Heat bloomed in her cheeks, and she knew the rosy color must be all too obvious to her friend. “It… was more than a kiss,” she said in a near-whisper.
Both of Lark’s brows shot up.
Beatrice had never told her everything about what had happened five years ago. Not plainly. But Lark was clever and far too observant not to have filled in the parts Beatrice had left unsaid.
Her friend’s expression softened.
“And you…” Lark lowered her voice. “You wanted this?”
Beatrice nodded. She had more than wanted… that. And then, because she was pressingly compelled to examine it with the one person she trusted— “I… was on his lap. Astride. Fully clothed, of course, but… things happened.”
Lark blinked several times. “Dare I ask what kinds of things happened?”
Pressing.
Touching.
Rubbing.
“Suffice it to say… I was left in a state of…”
“Embarrassment?”
Beatrice shook her head.
“Regret?”
Another shake.
“Bliss?”
Beatrice’s blush deepened. “Yes. That one.”
Lark leaned back slightly, folding her hands in her lap. “I see.”
But did she?
Beatrice did not. Not at all. Which was precisely the problem.
“I know you say marriage isn’t likely, but…” Lark continued almost tentatively, lowering her voice even more if that was possible. “But what if you are… in a delicate condition?”
A delicate…?
“Oh! I’m not! We didn’t—”
Lark narrowed her eyes.
“Truly,” Beatrice said, and then reiterated, “No clothing was removed.”
Lark’s expression, by now, would be considered almost comical if Beatrice wasn’t so confused by all of it herself.
“It was… incredibly intimate. And exciting. But… I am most definitely not in a delicate condition.”
Unless, of course, some very important detail had been omitted from her education on such matters.
Lark was blinking again, this time with her brows furrowed.
“I did not realize such a thing was possible.”
“Nor did I,” Beatrice admitted at once.
Ordinarily, Beatrice considered herself quite capable of understanding her own thoughts. Her own preferences. Her own mind.
Yet, ever since returning home that morning, she had struggled to make proper sense of any of it.
Matters between her and Gideon had become… alarmingly complicated.
And before Beatrice could even begin untangling those complications with Lark, Lady Barrington turned and touched Lark’s arm.
“Miss Montague, I quite forgot. Would you be so good as to ask the attendant whether Lord Barrington’s spare opera glasses were brought up from the carriage? I meant to see to it before we came in.”
“Of course.” Lark gave Beatrice one last, sharply inquisitive look before rising.
Which meant Beatrice could not explain the interruption by the butler, nor Gideon’s swift decision to conceal himself behind a decorative cushion—a choice that had seemed merely prudent at the time, but which had since provided her with an entirely fresh source of embarrassment.
Because while Beatrice had experienced la petite mort…
She was fairly certain Gideon had not.
And the implications of that seemed to raise still more questions.
Before those disturbing questions could settle in and request tea, the door to the box opened and Lark stepped back in, the opera glasses apparently located, and took her place beside Beatrice just as the lights dimmed.
Conversation quieted throughout the theater. The orchestra began the opening strains of The Marriage of Figaro.
As the actors appeared onstage, Lark touched Beatrice’s hand lightly and leaned close.
“I am happy for you,” she whispered.
The simple sincerity of it caught Beatrice unexpectedly off guard.
And in that moment, she realized quite firmly that the two of them were going to require an entire morning alone together in the park.
Possibly two.
Not for the first time, she found herself wishing Lark had not insisted upon seeking employment, and that they might instead sit up half the night as they once had—discussing every imaginable subject beneath the heavens.
Including, apparently…
Feelings. Of the romantic variety.
Onstage, the opera gathered speed—voices overlapping, tempers flaring, secrets tumbling into the light, but Beatrice scarcely followed any of it.
Her thoughts were not in the theater.
They were in a drawing room.
On a sofa.
With Gideon.
The music swelled. Laughter rippled through the audience. Beatrice heard it all from a distance.
Her mind kept moving backward, searching for the moment Gideon had become something other than Dash’s friend.
The day he came to Beckman House and she nearly clipped him with a throwing knife?
Hatherleigh, and Gideon stepping between them?
The lessons. The garden party. The archery. The boat.
His hands. His voice. That almost-kiss.
He had always been kind. Overbearing at times—but kind.
This spring, though, he had been different.
As had she.
She was so thoroughly lost in the memory that when the curtain fell and the audience stirred to life around her, she started.
Intermission.
Already?
Beatrice blinked as the audience rose around her, the theater swelling with movement and conversation.
And almost without meaning to, she looked across to the opposite boxes. Then lower, to the crowded tiers below.
Only observing, she told herself. Only taking in the room.
Liar.
She knew precisely whom she was looking for.
And Gideon was, unfortunately, nowhere to be seen.
The disappointment was so unreasonable that she could not bear to sit there and feel it.
So she stood.
Lark, who had been attending to Lady Theodosia, glanced over at once, but Beatrice gave her a reassuring look and shaped the smallest silent promise with her lips.
I’ll return shortly.
Then, before she could reconsider the wisdom of wandering anywhere in search of a man she was absolutely not searching for, Beatrice slipped from the box and into the crowded corridor beyond.
It was not air she required, not truly. Nor even solitude.
What she needed was some sort of action she could take to alleviate her restlessness.
And then, as though the world was listening to her innermost thoughts, trouble appeared.
Colonel Fairleigh stood a little apart from the main flow of the crowd, his manner easy, his smile well-practiced.
He pressed a glass into the hand of a young lady Beatrice recognized only vaguely as Miss Barlow, one of this spring’s debutantes. She was fresh-faced, pale-gowned, and far too new to know how to escape a gentleman without appearing rude.
Fairleigh leaned nearer than propriety allowed.
Nearer than comfort allowed as well, judging by the way the girl’s shoulders stiffened and her body angled subtly away from him.
She laughed lightly, uncertainly, then cast a brief glance about her, as though expecting someone to intervene.
No one did.
Beatrice felt the shift within herself at once—that familiar, steadying determination settling where confusion had been.
She sidled along the edge of the corridor with quiet certainty, her attention fixed upon them as Fairleigh murmured something she couldn’t quite hear.
Miss Barlow, after only the slightest hesitation, allowed herself to be guided toward a nearby door, practically invisible, the lines matching the design of the wallpaper.
The door closed behind them with a soft, decisive click.
Beatrice waited just enough to count to three.
Then, of course, she followed.
Once she’d reached the door and slipped through, the vibrance of the opera faded away, replaced by dim stillness and the faint, stale scent of dust.
She paused only long enough for her eyes to adjust.
The darkness resolved into a narrow stairway, gloomy and steep, leading down beneath the theater.
“Miss Barlow?” she called in a singsong voice. “Did you come in here? Your mother is asking about you…”
No answer came.
Only the suggestion—no more than that—of movement deeper within.
Grasping a handrail, she carefully made her way down the steps.
The air was cooler here. Undisturbed in a way that had her thinking it was seldom used. Something fine and clingy brushed her face. A spider web. She suppressed a shiver, sweeping it away, and continued on.
“Miss Barlow?” she tried again.
Still nothing.
But the silence had changed.
A faint sound. Behind her, perhaps. Or to one side. It was impossible to say. The subtle shift of clothing. The whisper of movement where there ought to be none.
A chill slid slowly down her spine.
She turned—
And when a hand closed around her arm, the past surged up without warning.
It swallowed her whole. And suddenly…
There was no opera. Only darkness. Only the terrifying feeling of being seized. A horrific fear of being trapped.
Again.
She twisted at once, striking without hesitation, without restraint. Not to escape. Not yet. But to injure. To punish. To ensure that whoever held her would feel it.
“Beatrice—!”
The name reached her dimly, as though through water.
She did not stop.
Her nails found flesh. She clawed and scraped. She fought with a ferocity borne not of panic, but of memory—of a moment long buried and never forgotten. Beads of sweat clung all over, despite the ice running through her veins.
A ragged cry echoed in the stairwell.
High. Broken. Animal.
It took her a moment to realize it came from her.
Gathering all her strength, she drew her foot back and drove her knee upward, striking with all the force she could muster.
The answering groan that cut through the dark was real. Human.
And vaguely familiar.
The stairwell came back to her in pieces.
Dust. Cold air. The hard edge of the wall at her back.
Then the bent-over man looked up and she caught the scent of him.
Not whisky. Not stale tobacco.
Tea.
Everything stopped.
She was not on the ground. She was not pinned beneath crushing weight or being forced to endure foul breath and painful…