A Necessary Deception (9 page)

“Everyone was staring at you,” Barbara complained.

Lydia merely laughed and entered the house. She needed to ready herself for the night’s entertainment—a ball, the opera? Without her invitations, she didn’t know.

“Is the opera tonight?” she asked.

“No, tonight is a soirée. The opera is in three days. But you know it’s not truly an opera.” Barbara looked smug. “The opera house burned down four years ago, and they haven’t performed opera there since.”

“Well of course they couldn’t if it’s burned down.” Lydia couldn’t help teasing a bit.

Barbara frowned. “I mean they haven’t performed opera in the new one. It’s a pantomime.”

“Hmm.” Lydia glanced at Christien’s closed door. She must take him the books. The night would be long and tedious for him stranded there.

Stranded because someone wanted him out of the way, temporarily or permanently?

She really couldn’t think of that. She needed to get ready, ensure Cassandra dragged herself from her books and Honore wasn’t making more plans to ride off with Mr. Frobisher.

Christien smiled at her entrance with the books—a smile for the tomes, not her, of course. Still, it lit his eyes and twisted something inside her like a spill used to start a fire.

“You are kindness itself, my lady. But not kind enough to stay and talk?”

For a moment, she considered doing so, then shook her head and backed to the door. The less she knew of him, the better. “I have to go out tonight and tomorrow and—”

“In other words, you give me hospitality but will not give me company.”

“I . . . cannot.” As she hastened from his chamber, a tightness inside her gave fair warning that “I will not” might have been a better response. She would not spend time with him.

Avoiding him during the three days the doctor requested de Meuse remain immobile proved rather easy. Lydia kept herself and her sisters running from shops to social gatherings to long walks in the park. By the end of the third day, she wanted to do nothing but sleep. But they had a box at the Royal Opera House, and she had to chaperone the girls. Mama had gone to bed with one of her sick headaches and an alarming wheeze to her breathing.

“I’ll call in the doctor,” she told Mama. He could examine Monsieur de Meuse and send him home too.

The physician arrived while Lydia dressed for the evening. Caught up in his report on Mama’s health and monsieur’s healing injury, she completely forgot that one of the destroyed missives had come from Mr. Barnaby, promising he would accompany her to the opera house. He and Gerald Frobisher.

Seven of them slipped into the Whittaker family box at the Royal Opera House moments before the performance began. Candles blazed from the stage and chandeliers, reflecting in the jewels dripping from the ladies in the tiers and the paste gemstones on the females in the pit. The cheap perfume of those women rose on the heated air to mingle with the more expensive scents of the occupants of the boxes, and Lydia wrinkled her nose. She had to endure not only a form of entertainment she didn’t care for but also the overwhelming odor of unwashed bodies masked with scent, the noise of people who never ceased talking, and the companionship of Messrs. Barnaby and Frobisher.

Gerald Frobisher lounged in one of the box’s front-row chairs beside Honore. The young lady glowed in her white muslin gown trimmed in blue ribbons and embroidery that matched her satin evening cloak. More than half a dozen opera glasses flashed as they turned in Honore’s direction. At the interval, the box would be crowded with young men—and older ones too, no doubt—wanting to make or further an acquaintance with Miss Honore Bainbridge. That was good. Frobisher would have less time to turn his charm on her.

With Barbara seated in the front also, between Honore and Cassandra, Lydia seated herself in the back of the box. She intended to talk under cover of the chattering audience and actors onstage.

At least this wouldn’t be an opera. Caterwauling, as Charles had always referred to it.

“I should have given my cloak to an attendant.” Lydia plucked at the gold frog closure at the neck of her own blue satin wrap. “It’s quite stifling in here.”

Barnaby sat upright on his gilt chair, his gaze turned toward the drawn curtain. “You mustn’t risk a chill, Lady Gale.”

Lydia fanned herself. “If I never caught a chill living next to Dartmoor, I won’t catch one here. Have you ever been to Tavistock, sir?”

“No, never. I’ve never been west of Lime Regis.” A faint smile curved his lips, making him rather attractive. “For some reason, I think of Devonshire and Cornwall as being rather uncivilized.”

“Then how do you know Elias Lang?”

Barnaby shrugged. “Lime Regis, I believe.”

“Not Falmouth?”

“Falmouth, my lady, is in Cornwall.”

Lydia glared at him. “I am quite aware of that, sir, but it’s where Mr. Lang collected some information about a certain enemy of England, or so he claims.”

“He is better traveled than I.”

No comment on the enemy of England.

“All the way to Paris, perhaps?” Lydia pressed.

“My lady.” Barnaby’s hand clamped on her forearm. “Have a care.”

“Why?” Lydia gave him a wide-eyed glance. “If you’re the sp—”

“Shh.” Barnaby’s hiss to be quiet joined that of other theatergoers. Whether he intended to quiet her for the sake of the performance or the words she spoke, she couldn’t be sure.

On the stage, the curtain rose to a two-dimensional woodland. The character of Queen Mab, played by a middle-aged beauty, sailed across the stage, intoning the speech that announced the beginning of the pantomime. What the words actually were, Lydia couldn’t hear above the shouts and cheers from the audience. Fortunately, pantomime relied on the antics of Harlequin, his consort and supporting cast, and the charm of the dancers to entertain the crowd. Words to speeches or lyrics to songs would have been impossible to hear over the audience. The air heated as the candles blazed and the audience clapped, stamped, and cheered, or paid no heed at all to the stage.

“I need some air,” Lydia exclaimed.

Mr. Barnaby ignored her. He perched on the edge of his chair, his fingers moving as though he conducted a miniature orchestra, and a look of such beatific joy washed over his face he appeared ten years younger than his perhaps forty years.

The performance held all of his attention.

A little wobbly inside, Lydia slid back in her chair and focused her attention on the stage. Harlequin danced with Columbine. The actors appeared young, aglow with delight at their art, graceful in their antics. A reluctant smile tugged at the corners of Lydia’s mouth and pulled a chord deep inside her. A chord of memory, of sitting at pantomime for the first time, wanting to enjoy it, to have something intelligent to say to the military officer beside her, another guest of—whom? She couldn’t recall. She only remembered the handsome man in his regimentals, his profile a perfect etching of manliness, along with his broad shoulders and upright stance.

At the end of the first act, he’d turned to her, his upper lip curled. “Men dodging shells on a battlefield dance more gracefully than that. But it’s better than the screeching of the opera.”

She’d agreed. Of course she had. She’d been taught to never openly disagree with a man. But she lied. She found the entertainment lighthearted and delightful and wanted to clap and cheer with the uninhibited bucks in the pit.

She never attended a pantomime or an opera again. Charles had begun to court her that night and for the rest of the Season. He was on leave—the second son, but the family’s best hope for a marriage and heirs because the eldest son seemed to produce only daughters. Charles had kept her from Covent Garden. He liked dancing. He liked riding. He liked boating on the river. He told her what she should like and so she convinced herself of it.

That behavior for a girl of nineteen, who had a father who told her what she could and could not do—including her art, which she believed was a gift from God—was understandable. Now, a woman of six and twenty, of poor but adequate means, should have more independence, more of an ability to choose her path like others who had gone before her. Women like Mary Wortley Montagu, who had lived there in Cavendish Square, or Lady Mary Cowper. Mary Wollstonecraft?

Not Mary Wollstonecraft. She’d been independent, but she’d lived an immoral life and tried to kill herself. And the other two were married to influential men, who surely smoothed their paths to social acceptance and appearance of independent thought.

But that wasn’t proper for the widow of a knight of the realm or the daughter of a baron.

Lydia’s hands hurt. She glanced down to find her fists clenched inside the white silk gloves. If she’d made too many mistakes in her life, compromising her reputation was not one of them. Yet being a model of propriety had gotten her nowhere but genteel poverty because she wouldn’t live at home and let her father dictate her days.

Oh no, and now some man, who seemed to have two manifestations—as the Mr. Lang who was supposed to have requested that she help Christien de Meuse, and the Mr. Lang who had blackmailed her in Portsmouth—was dictating her days. She must shake him loose as she had shaken loose her father.

And her husband?

“I can’t sit here.” She shot to her feet. “Please,” she murmured.

Mr. Barnaby jumped, glanced at her, lunged to his feet. “I beg your pardon, do you want past?”

“Please,” she repeated.

She slipped past him. She expected him to follow. He returned to his chair instead.

Alone in the passage, she took several deep breaths of relatively fresh air. Music soared through the thin barricade of the curtain. The pantomime was nearly complete and would become a play after the interval. Before the corridor filled with people, she needed to walk, to breathe, to . . . do something.

But no respectable female could stride up and down alone in the passage behind the boxes. With a sigh, she returned to the box just as the curtain fell and the crowd’s voices rose to a roar of conversation and flirtation. As though someone had pulled a cork from an upturned bottle, the passageway flooded with people. Men swarmed from one box to another like honeybees seeking the sweetest flowers.

At least six headed toward the Bainbridges’ box. Lydia stepped inside to chaperone Honore and keep Frobisher entertained so Honore could talk to the other young men.

Those young men cut Frobisher out without any help from Lydia. They flocked around Honore with compliments and invitations, a poem to her blue eyes, and a nosegay of pansies. Honore glowed.

Frobisher scowled.

Lydia touched his arm. “You mustn’t be selfish, young man. This is Honore’s first Season. She hasn’t even enjoyed her ball or court presentation yet.”

“Does anyone enjoy a court presentation?” Frobisher’s upper lip curled. “The king is mad and the queen—” He snapped his teeth together as though someone had smacked him beneath the chin.

“Indeed.” Lydia smiled. “Watch your tongue, sir. You might be accused of sedition.”

And so might she if she drew the picture running through her head, if viewers misunderstood her meaning—Frobisher sneering at the queen instead of taking his bow. Frobisher not on the right side of the law, not serving England if he felt that way about the royal family, evidencing enough contempt to speak against them in public.

Or was it an act?

Lydia wished she could produce the volume of an operatic soprano. She might shriek in a high A and shatter some of the paste jewels on the “ladies” in the pit.

And a few on the ladies in the boxes, no doubt.

“Why do you wish to enter Society if you hold us in such low regard, Mr. Frobisher?”

Lydia scanned the crowded box. More men had come to pay their respects to Honore. A few spoke with Cassandra. Two gentlemen in particular had cornered her, though her smile and vivacious motions with her hands hardly demonstrated distress on her part.

Whittaker was the distressed one. He had his back against the front of the box and his arms crossed over his broad chest. His mouth was set in a grim line, and he stared at Cassandra’s callers from between narrowed lids.

“I don’t hold Society in low regard, my lady,” Frobisher was saying. “Your family especially intrigues me. So much beauty and talent in one group of ladies is unusual.”

“Not at all.” Lydia turned abruptly and grasped his arm, holding him against the side of the box. “What do you want with all of us?”

For a heartbeat, his eyes widened and flared. Then his expression grew bland again, and he gave her his sweet smile. “Why, nothing more than I’m getting—a seat in a box at the opera house, invitations to several balls and soirées, an opportunity to play a little faro or whist and perhaps make my fortune.”

“Your fortune.” Lydia released his arm and stepped back as though he were a poisonous snake. “You’re nothing more than a gamester wanting to play the high stakes of the wealthy. You’re a Captain Sharp.”

He blinked and shook his head. “My dear Lady Gale, I am wounded that you could think such a low thing of me.”

Little did he know what relief she would feel if all he and Barnaby wanted was an introduction to the gaming set. She abhorred gambling so much that anyone who engaged in it deserved what fleecing he got.

Well, perhaps not. Their families didn’t deserve to be impoverished by their carelessness, and she would hate to be the instrument of one of her peers losing an ancient family estate. Sadly, it happened on the turn of a card or a raindrop too slow to reach the windowsill during a storm, or whatever nonsense gamesters chose to stake their futures on.

“Then why were you . . . gentlemen so anxious for introductions?” Lydia pressed.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Barnaby in earnest conversation with one of the young men who had entered the box with others of Honore’s admirers, then remained on the fringes of the crowd. Their heads were rather too close together for casual conversation.

Or was she seeing spies around every corner?

Face stiff, she returned her attention to Frobisher, only to notice that he too watched Barnaby and the young man, and his eyes glowed like those of a little boy in a sweets shop. Lydia half expected him to start bouncing from foot to foot. Instead, he excused himself and joined the other two men.

Left to her own devices, Lydia edged her way around the box to Whittaker. On her way past Honore, she heard her younger sister laughing and chattering like a brook sparkling in sunlight. She waved her fan, tapped it on her chin, and rapped one young man’s knuckles as he reached for her hand.

Surely Honore would forget her
tendre
for Frobisher now.

Lydia focused on Whittaker, who had drawn his dark brows together in the grim scowl of an angry man. Beyond him, Cassandra, like her younger sister, shimmered in her silvery pink gown.

“I’ve never considered balloon travel useful,” she was saying. “I thought it merely a lark. But if you’ve made scientific calculations with wind velocity . . .”

“If she thinks she’s going up in a balloon,” Whittaker growled, “she’d best think again. I won’t have her risking her neck like that.”

Lydia opened her mouth to respond. A voice echoed so loudly in her head she couldn’t think what to say.
If you think
, Charles had shouted,
that you’re going to join me on campaign, you’d best think again.

“It’s too dangerous,” Whittaker added.

It’s too dangerous
, Charles had claimed.

“Many people fly in balloons.” Lydia tried to defend Cassandra’s position, as she had tried—and failed—to defend hers. “I think it looks vastly entertaining.”

“Lady Gale—Lydia, nothing that leaves the ground like that can be safe enough to be entertaining.” Whittaker frowned at Cassandra. “She met those two in the park the other day and has been turning her attention from Homer to aerodynamics. The dead Greeks I can tolerate. Live aeronauts I cannot. It’s not decent.”

It’s not decent
, Charles had claimed, though thousands of officers’ wives accompanied their husbands on campaign.

He didn’t want her with him. After only a week of marriage, he wanted away from her.

“Don’t be autocratic with her, Whittaker.” Lydia injected as much urgency into her tone as she could manage. “Please.”

“I’m not being autocratic. I want to keep her safe.”

I want to keep you safe
, Charles had insisted
.

I want my girls to be safe
, Father said every time he stopped them from enjoying some lark.

“If you will excuse me.” Whittaker turned toward his fiancée and shouldered the other men aside. “I’d like to walk, Cassandra.”