Regency Secrets, page 32
Kit smiled at his half-sister’s uncharacteristic bloodthirstiness and let his gaze slip past her to Genny. She appeared as engrossed by the play as Emily, her whole body canted forward in a manner that might have drawn his grandmother’s condemnation if she hadn’t already slipped into a fitful doze.
Like this, Genny looked years younger—as if surrendering to the passion of the drama had peeled years off her. One fisted hand was clenched to her sternum, pressing her bosom into an even more impressive display of perfect curves as she leaned forward. Kit realised his own hand had fisted too, and he released it. But it fisted again, involuntarily, as she raised her hand to her mouth as if to stifle a gasp at Kean’s latest masterpiece of evil.
He turned back to the stage himself, a little annoyed at his green response to her surprisingly girlish show of enjoyment, coupled with her wholly female show of curves.
She’d had those rare moments in Spain as well, when she’d been caught up in the heated discussions that had often brewed around her grandfather’s dinner table in the barracks. Her careful mantle of control would slip, and her excitement and determination would be bared in service of whatever cause she’d felt worth defending. Then some comment would check her, and she’d withdraw like a fern, furling back as night fell, her gaze glacial, as if challenging anyone to remind her she’d been on fire only a moment before.
The contrast with the soft and frothy Serena had been even more obvious during those vivid eruptions and retreats. From his lofty age of twenty-five he’d thought it merely a sign of a girl hovering on the tricky bridge between youth and womanhood, and he’d felt both sorry for her and strangely proud, as if he was as invested in her awkward intelligence as her grandfather had been.
But she had not appreciated his stilted attempts to smooth those moments over and, looking back, he couldn’t blame her. Charlie had done it much more successfully by poking fun at her at the same time as making his awe of her unburnished intelligence clear.
She’d certainly managed to leash that awkwardness over the years, but right now she looked precisely as she had in the heat of passionate argument. Her eyes glistened a strange vulpine silver, like snow deep in the shadows, and her generous mouth was parted and moving faintly, the sheen of the chandelier dancing on the soft curve of her lower lip. She seemed to be echoing the soliloquy below, and in a strange twist of acoustics he seemed to hear the words emanate from her—a tortured, hopeless call to arms against everything and everyone.
As if aware of being watched, she turned, her face alight with surprising excitement, her light grey eyes catching the gold flickers of the chandeliers like sun flicking off an ice-bound sea. She seemed hardly to see him, caught wholly in the deep human drama on the stage.
He turned away, rubbing his tingling fingers surreptitiously on his trousers, a little ashamed to have distracted her with his schoolboy gawking. He was here to watch the play and make Emily happy—not to ogle the woman who had become his unexpected nemesis.
He managed to insert himself back into the play, but was relieved when the crowd rumbled in a mix of protests and cheers that marked the departure of Sir Giles Overreach from the stage.
Genny Maitland sat back with a faint exhalation and in the same moment turned. Their eyes met once more. Her smile, already soft and faraway, deepened, encompassing him, inviting him to appreciate something extraordinary.
It caught at him. The immensity of the theatre, the strange abandonment that came from being told a bedtime story on a grand scale. He could feel the beating heart of the audience, the wonder, the passion, the escape…
That sensation was strange enough, but then her smile made the theatre shrink and fall away, and he saw only a young woman freed for a moment from everything that held her down. It stripped him raw, and he had the unsettling conviction that she was looking right inside him to something he hadn’t even realised was there.
It was merely a short, sharp moment. Then Julian rose, blocking his sight of her.
By the time he passed towards the door of the box she had turned back to the stage, her head tilted as Serena spoke to her. Though she was still smiling, the wonder was gone from her face, replaced by the slight crease between her brows that she’d worn for most of the ball.
The managing Miss Maitland was back.
‘Is it true that pirates bury their treasure?’
This question, blurted out by the youngest of the Duke of Burford’s granddaughters, caused a sudden break in the buzzing voices that surrounded them in the foyer of Drury Lane Theatre. Several pairs of eyes, from the brown of the two Burford girls to the blue of Lady Sarah Ponsonby and the pale green of a young woman whose name he could not recollect, were all fixed on him, awaiting his clarification on this crucial issue.
Kit, having twice already in the conversation disclaimed being a pirate, stifled a sigh. ‘Burying is a rather risky way to treat your valuable belongings, Lady Calista. I don’t know what pirates do, but I prefer to place mine safely in a bank.’
‘Oh,’ she said, clearly disappointed.
Her sister and the green-eyed girl appeared only slightly less disaffected with this prosaic approach, but Lady Sarah Ponsonby smiled a trifle condescendingly.
‘I told you burying treasures made no sense, Cally. It is shockingly risky. Anyone could be watching and might make off with it the moment you sail away.’
‘But you don’t have banks at sea, do you?’ Lady Sophronia pointed out, hurrying to her sister’s defence.
Lady Calista perked up. ‘That is quite true, Ronny! Perhaps you could place a curse on your treasure to stop other pirates from making away with it?’
‘My mother taught me that it is impolite to curse,’ Kit replied, once again debating and abandoning the idea of arguing with the ‘other pirates’ categorisation. Denial only appeared to fuel conviction.
He cast his gaze over the perfectly coiffed heads surrounding him and searching the crowd in hope of salvation.
His grandmother, who’d positioned him in this crowd of debutantes and then wandered off with the Duke of Burford, would be no salvation, and despite his height he could not see the other members of their party.
‘Was your mother a pirate as well?’ asked Lady Calista, and was met with a hiss of warning from the other young women. The youngest Burford flushed and added hurriedly, ‘Oh, I forgot…she was an actress.’
Dead silence.
Now all the young women were all red as lobsters—even Lady Sarah Ponsonby, usually as cool and biting as ice. He took pity on them even as he cursed Genny Maitland for manoeuvring him into coming tonight.
‘No, my grandfather was the actor, as well as being a bookbinder. Though my mother did enjoy the theatre very much. I learned my appreciation of Shakespeare from her—as well as my manners,’ he added a little pointedly. ‘Now, if you will excuse me? It has been delightful conversing with you, but I must find my sister.’
He ran Mary to ground behind one of the Doric columns, watching over Emily and Peter who stood in a small group of younger people.
She smiled at his approach. ‘I cannot believe this is Emily’s first time in a proper theatre! I have been very remiss.’
‘From what I know of Emily, she is more likely to enjoy a visit to a foundry than a theatre. Still, I am glad she is enjoying herself.’
‘Oh, dear. I take it you aren’t?’
‘I am surviving. Though if one more doe-eyed young woman asks me about pirates and treasure I might do something drastic and tell them I keep mine under my bed, along with the skulls of my enemies.’
‘Kit! Pray be patient. They mean well, you know.’
He turned away before he told her what he thought of her naiveté. He spotted Serena Carrington, in conversation with two women by the stairs leading up to the boxes, but there was no sight of Genny.
‘Where is Miss Maitland? I haven’t seen her in the foyer.’
Mary glanced around her.
‘Oh. I daresay she has remained in the box with Grandmama.’
‘No, Grandmother is over there, with His Aging Grace. It was she who threw me to the sharks among the debutantes. Genny wasn’t with her.’
Mary frowned as she scanned the crowded rotunda ‘Perhaps she prefers to remain in the box on her own. She is like that sometimes.’
Kit felt a twinge of offence on Genny’s behalf at Mary’s casual unconcern for her whereabouts. Then he remembered Genny sitting in the stable at the house, conferring with the kitten, and how lost in rapture she’d been during the play. Now he thought of it, she had played the social game with consummate skill at the ball, but at no time had she looked to be enjoying herself. Perhaps she truly did prefer her own company. He of all people should be able to respect that.
‘Or perhaps she is with Julian,’ Mary continued, with the same blithe unconcern, even as she turned away to greet two women approaching her.
Kit left her before he was roped into more piratical queries. They still had the second performance to sit through and he was already itching to leave.
He moved towards the stairs, wondering where Julian had gone. The Green Room, where actors entertained guests, was unlikely to be open for the usual influx of admirers until after the second play or musical piece, but no doubt Julian would find a way to wheedle himself into whatever room her liked.
Or perhaps he was, as Mary had said, with Genevieve Maitland.
He noted that Lord Ponsonby and his daughter were now standing with Serena by the stairs. Passing by them without stopping would be clearly rude, so instead he slipped into one of the side corridors and took a set of stairs leading upwards, hoping they would eventually lead to the boxes.
There were few lights here, and the narrow corridors were hushed. He smiled as he climbed the narrow stairs. It was fitting that he had turned into what was probably the servants’ passage, or perhaps one of the passages where actors like his grandfather had once navigated the warren-like structure.
He’d barely heaved a sigh of relief at the quiet when he stopped. Two shadowy figures stood at the end of the darkened corridor, outlined by the hazy light coming through a window darkened with grime. They were standing quite close, their voices hushed, and they had not yet seen him.
Kit knew it was poor form to eavesdrop, but he stood silently, watching the dark-on-dark outline of Genevieve Maitland’s profile. His cousin Julian was lounging against the wall, his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets, his chin tucked into the folds of his cravat.
‘You promised me, Julian! I won’t allow you to back out now.’
‘I’m not backing out, love. Merely renegotiating. I gave in far too easily.’
‘There is nothing to renegotiate.’
‘There is always something to renegotiate.’
The same ease of long familiarity that he’d seen at the ball was even more evident here. Genevieve Maitland might be radiating annoyance, her arms folded like a disapproving headmistress and plumping up her bosom, to Julian’s evident appreciation, but her voice was more resigned than angry, and the affection beneath it was as clear as her enjoyment of the play.
‘I think you are being difficult for difficulty’s sake, Julian.’
‘All I am saying is that I think I deserve some incentive for being so…biddable.’
‘Really, Julian. You do choose your moments.’ She sighed with resignation, but there was a peculiar relief in her voice, as if she’d been expecting something worse.
‘Do you know how much I adore being scolded by you, Gen…?’ Julian’s voice dropped as he moved even closer.
Kit moved into the corridor.
Genny turned and Julian stepped back. For a moment no one spoke.
Then Julian gave a rueful laugh. ‘Your timing leaves a lot to be desired, cousin.’
‘I could say the same of you, Julian. Wouldn’t it be wiser, or at least safer, to conduct your flirtation at Carrington House?’
‘Wiser, perhaps. Not quite as enjoyable. Knowing Grandmama is in the house is bound to put a dampener on one’s enthusiasm.’ He turned to Genny. ‘Though we could continue our discussion at my rooms? I’ll even clear the sofa for you this time.’
‘Julian!’
Genny’s voice snapped down on his name but he merely laughed and sauntered off around the corner.
For a building humming with hundreds of people, this corridor was as quiet as the hold of a ship. The murmur of the crowd from somewhere inside was like the soothing sound of water against the hull.
The comparison did nothing to ease the strange burning of anger inside him. He knew full well he was being irrational, and that if anyone was accountable for the charade he’d been forced to play out in the foyer it was his grandmother, not Genevieve Maitland. But all his frustration, exasperation, impatience, and discomfort homed in on her like light through a piece of glass. Its concentrated heat was searing a hole in him as surely as it would burn through wood.
He struggled for composure, but the words came out anyway. ‘Are you in the habit of meeting Julian in darkened corridors in very public locations?’
‘That is none of your concern, Lord Westford.’
‘No? Since you are living in my house, I rather think it is.’
His eyes were now accustomed to the gloom, and he watched colour rush up her cheeks. But her tone remained as calm as before.
‘Julian was trying to get a rise out of you. Apparently he has succeeded.’
‘I will take that as a yes. Does Mary know?’
‘Does Mary know what?’
‘That the two of you are having an affair.’
Her indrawn breath was long, and gave him another display of her bosom that would likely have delighted Julian.
‘It is amazing to me that men rule the world and yet they can never seem to think past their libidos. Or perhaps that is why they rule the world. Life is so much simpler when you are stupid.’
He ignored this clear attempt to divert his fire. ‘You do realise that if it had been anyone else who had come up those stairs you and Julian would be in the centre of a very unpleasant little scandal?’
‘Then we are lucky it was you, aren’t we?’ Her words were light but her eyes were still watchful.
‘I would rather not depend upon luck protecting my family’s reputation.’
‘Interesting… I was rather of the opinion that was precisely what you have been doing ever since you sold your commission and adopted your…itinerant lifestyle.’
Damnation. The brutality of that thrust was only matched by the fact that she was absolutely right.
Still, what surprised him was the realisation, as sharp as a knife piercing flesh, that she was furious. With him. And she had been from the moment she’d walked into the drawing room the night of the ball. No, before he’d even returned to London.
Just as he made that discovery, he realised why.
‘You think I’m irresponsible.’
She had turned away, as if to follow Julian’s exit, but now she gave a strange little huff and turned back to face him. ‘Yes.’
‘I daresay you think Julian the soul of accountability?’
She shrugged, and turned again in the direction Julian had disappeared in, but he strode after her, capturing her arm and stopping her on the bottom step of another staircase leading upwards.
‘Damnation, you don’t get to throw around accusations—’
‘I didn’t accuse you,’ she interrupted. ‘I answered your question. Then you replied with a completely irrelevant statement. Now it is time to return to the box. The sheep are returning to their pens, and in this particular case I’m not a shepherd but a nice fluffy little sheep—and so are you. If you wish to meet me at dawn with pistols or cutlasses, Captain Carrington, I will be only too happy to oblige, but not now.’
He was so damn tempted to use every inch of his superior height and strength, but that in itself shocked him. He couldn’t remember ever being tempted to use his physical superiority against anyone other than his cousins since his schooldays—let alone a woman. Genny Maitland was bringing out the worst in him.
He moved away but didn’t quite let go of her arm. ‘Damnation—how do you win each and every round?’
‘I’ve won nothing.’
Her voice wobbled and his temper fell right off its high horse.
His hand slipped down to capture hers. It was cold. He was keeping her in a draughty corridor in a dress that probably weighed less than his waistcoat, doing his damnedest to force something out of her he didn’t even understand.
An admission that he wasn’t as black as she thought him?
He didn’t need absolution from her, but he was still here, holding her hand, while she wished him in Hades and while the rest of the world was probably taking their places in the boxes.
With that realisation came a sly, unsettling thought… What would happen if they walked in together after the second play had begun? All that eager buzzing that surrounded him like wasps around a jam tart would turn deafening. And vicious.
He stepped aside. ‘You’d best return to the others.’
She glanced down at the hand he still held. It didn’t feel cold now. He let it slip against his as he withdrew, sensation shooting up his arm. She curled it into a fist and for one long moment he tensed as if for a blow, his whole body thudding with anticipation.
Then she slipped into the darkness.
Chapter Eight
‘I’m so glad you decided to attend the theatre last night, Kit. Though I must say the second piece was not at all of the same quality as Kean’s performance. But Emily found it engaging—especially the spectacle with the waterfall and the dog jumping out of the water. I still cannot understand how they did that, even after Peter’s explanation…’
