Chapter 14
“Icannot decide,” Charity said, leaning slightly forward in her seat as the curtain rose on the second act, “whether the tenor is genuinely talented or simply very loud.”
“Both, I think,” Temperance said. “He has committed to the volume regardless of the pitch.”
“That is very charitable of you,” Alethea said, from her other side. “I would simply call it loud.”
“He is passionate,” Temperance said. “One must admire the commitment, even if the result is somewhat overwhelming.”
“Passionate,” Charity repeated, as though testing the word. “Is that what we are calling it.”
“It is what I am calling it,” Temperance said. “You may call it whatever you like.”
The opera house was full and their party occupied two boxes, the ladies in one and the gentlemen in the other.
Temperance had been looking forward to this evening for some time for the specific pleasure of an evening with her friends that was not a ball and did not require her to smile at strangers for three hours.
She had put on her best evening dress and she had come out with every intention of enjoying herself.
Which was going as planned until the interval arrived and Harper appeared in the doorway of their box.
Charity saw him first and said, very quietly, “Oh dear.”
“Miss Hosmer,” Harper said, from the doorway. “I wonder if I might have a word.”
“The interval is only twenty minutes,” she said.
“I am aware of what an interval is,” he said pleasantly.
She looked at Charity, who gave her the expression of a woman who was going to want a full report later, and stood up and went with him into the corridor, which was cooler and considerably noisier, full of people taking the interval as an opportunity to move about.
Harper steered them to a slightly quieter section near the far wall and turned to face her.
“The Alderman dinner is next Thursday,” he said.
“I know,” she said.
“Lord Pemberton will be attending,” he said. “He is recently widowed, which I mention only because it means he is actively looking, which considerably improves the likelihood of a formal introduction becoming something more substantial than….”
“Harper,” she said. “I am at the opera and I would very much like to go back and watch the second act without thinking about Lord Pemberton or his recent widowing or his actively looking.”
He looked at her. “I am simply trying to ensure that you have adequate time to…”
“I know what you are trying to do,” she said. “I understand your intentions but I would appreciate, just for this one evening if we could not discuss practical matters.”
Something moved in his expression that she could not quite read.
“Very well,” he said.
She went back to the box.
Charity looked at her face when she sat down. “What did he want?”
“Lord Pemberton,” Temperance said.
Charity made a sound that contained several things at once.
“Recently widowed,” Temperance added. “Actively looking.”
“Good heavens,” Alethea said.
“He means well,” Temperance said, which was both true and completely beside the point, and she fixed her attention on the stage as the curtain rose for the second act and the tenor launched himself back into the fray with the same committed volume he had brought to the first.
She lost the thread of the opera somewhere in the middle of the second act.
It was not the tenor’s fault, or not entirely.
The problem was that she could see Harper’s box from where she was sitting, if she looked in the right direction, and she had been very careful not to look in that direction, and the effort of not looking had become, somewhere around the halfway point, more distracting than simply looking would have been.
His profile was visible from this angle and he had not, as far as she could tell, looked at their box once since the second act began.
She looked back at the stage.
“Are you watching the opera or the other box?” Charity asked, very quietly, without looking at her.
“The opera,” Temperance said.
“I am not sure about that. You seem rather focused on the duke…”
“You’re imagining things,” Temperance rolled her eyes, “let’s not discuss him anymore.”
It was Charity who approached Harper at the second interval.
Temperance had not asked her to but Charity had been her friend for long enough to know when something needed to be said. She appeared at Harper’s elbow in the corridor as Temperance watched from across the corridor, mildly horrified.
Duncan drifted to her side.
“Should I be concerned?” Temperance asked.
“About Charity having a word with the Duke of Sedgewick?” Duncan said. “I would say at least moderately, yes.”
Alethea had appeared at Charity’s other side at some point, which meant it was now two against one, which Temperance felt was probably fair given the circumstances.
She could not hear the conversation from where she was standing but she could read the shape of it. Charity was saying something measured and direct. Harper was listening with the composed attention he brought to all things, his expression giving nothing away.
It went on like this for several minutes.
The bell rang for the third act. People moved back toward their boxes.
Charity said one final thing and Harper responded and the conversation concluded in the way conversations concluded with Harper, which was with everything having been said and nothing having moved.
Charity appeared at Temperance’s elbow. “He is very stubborn,” she said.
“I know,” Temperance said.
“He said his intentions are entirely in your best interests,” Charity said. “In those exact words.”
“He always says that,” Temperance said.
“He believes it,” Alethea said, from her other side. “That is rather the problem. It is very difficult to argue with a man who is genuinely convinced he is right.”
“What did you say?” Temperance asked.
“I said that you were perfectly capable of managing your own affairs and that the season was nearly over and that you had done perfectly well for twenty-five years without his intervention,” Charity said. “Alethea said that you were one of the most capable women she had ever known.”
“And he said?” Temperance asked.
“He said he did not think you were incapable,” Alethea said. “He said he thought you deserved better options than the ones available to you and that he felt responsible for improving those options.”
“That is very well put,” Temperance said.
“That is what I told him,” Charity said. “I also told him that well put and correct were not always the same thing.”
“Did that help?”
Charity looked at her with the expression of a woman who had tried her best and was being honest about the results. “Not especially,” she said.
The third act was considerably better than the first two, which Temperance attributed partly to the tenor having found his footing and partly to the fact that she had stopped trying not to look at the other box and had simply decided to watch the opera, which was after all what she had come to do.
It ended well, and the applause was genuine and enthusiastic.
In the corridor afterward, the party assembled itself with the usual slightly chaotic efficiency of a group of people trying to organize themselves after an event.
It was only until they were alone together in the carriage did they get a chance to speak to one another.
Harper said nothing for the first few minutes.
“You spoke to Charity,” she said, when the silence had gone on long enough.
“She came to me, yes.”
“She told me what she said.”
“Then you know what was discussed,” he said. “So why ask me?”
“I would like to know what you said.”
He turned from the window.
“I said that my intentions were entirely in your best interests,” he said, “which is true, and which I do not intend to apologize for.”
“Have you considered that being in my best interests and being what I want are not always the same thing?”
“You are frustrated,” he said.
“I have been frustrated for some time,” she said. “It is not a new development.”
“What would you have me do differently?” he said. “Tell me specifically. I would like to know.”
She looked at him for a moment. The carriage moved through the streets and the city noise moved with it, and she thought about the question and what the honest answer to it was.
“Ask me,” she said. “Before you arrange anything. Before you find Lord Pemberton or anyone like him. Ask me what I think and actually listen to the answer, and if I say I am not interested then trust that I have a reason and do not require further management.”
“I have been asking,” he said.
“No, I think you’ve been informing me.”
“You shouldn’t get stuck in the little details,” he said, “and it doesn’t really matter, anyway. I’m acting in your best interests.”
“Sure, but perhaps my opinion should be considered in my best interests, as well.”
“You find it difficult to let go of control,” he remarked.
“As do you,” she said. They had reached another one of those points in their arguments where there was just so winning. “Forget it, there’s no use in discussing it.”
There was another silence that fell between them.
“For what it is worth, I do not think the problem is the men I have been introducing you to.”
She looked at him. “No?”
“No,” he said. He was looking at the window.
“The problem is that you walk into every room with your mind already made up and your manner already closed and any man with any sense can see immediately that you have absolutely no interest in being there, which is not exactly an invitation.” He paused.
“You are entirely pleasant and entirely unreachable at the same time, and the men who approach you get the pleasant version and nothing else. It is no wonder they do not know what to make of you.”
She stared at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“Don’t take it as a criticism,” he said. “I am telling you what I observe.”
“You are telling me that it is my fault that the suitors have not worked out,” she said.