Page 5 of The Lady Plays with Fire

This silent suggestion was met with a harumph of displeasure. “Oh, I think not, sir.”

“I could easily find you places for next week,” Mr. Pope suggested.

Next week? Julia gulped. Not that she had grown so spoiled she imagined she would suffer some irreparable harm by waiting a few days to see Othello. It was not her own disappointment she was struggling to swallow.

Under the name “Miss on Scene,” she wrote reviews of theatrical performances for Mrs. Goode’s Magazine for Misses, and this month’s deadline was tomorrow. Lady Stalbridge, the magazine’s editor, was expecting Julia’s contribution by midday at the latest. Lady Stalbridge, the readers, and the magazine would all lose by Mr. Pope’s double-dealing.

A sudden hush had fallen across the theater, which caused the noise in her throat to be surprisingly audible, easily mistaken for a soft sob. Lord Dunstane settled his light eyes on her, taking in every detail of her appearance, her age, the modest quality of her sprigged muslin gown. A poor relation , his sardonic gaze said clearly, doomed to a future as a lady’s companion.

And yet, he did not immediately look away—at least, not until Mrs. Hayes’s pronouncement: “Unacceptable. We shall simply have to join Lord Dunstane here. As he’s alone, I’m sure he won’t mind.”

With that, she began to move deeper into the box, her cane clearing the path ahead of her, both Mr. Pope and Lord Dunstane looking on, dumbfounded.

When neither of the men made as if either to assist or prevent her, Julia stepped forward and laid a hand on her arm. “We mustn’t presume, ma’am . . .” she began.

But Mrs. Hayes kept going. “Hmph. Can’t see that we are the presumptuous ones. Now, help me to that seat, child.” She pointed with the tip of her cane.

Though well-positioned, the box—their box, as Julia had been thinking of it until a few moments ago—was one of the smaller ones in the theater, holding just six seats in two rows of three. Lord Scottish was evidently not the sort who reserved a box with the intention of inviting a dozen of his closest friends to chatter their way through the performance.

After Mrs. Hayes was seated in the front row closest to the stage, Julia moved to take one of the blue-upholstered chairs in the back. Lord Dunstane spoke from behind her. “You’ll be more comfortable—see better—from the seat beside your aunt.”

With a mute nod, more surprise than acquiescence, she accepted the middle chair. In another moment, he had taken the spot to her right. Of course he would expect to have the best view—or at least, the best remaining view—from his own box. She refused to turn her head in his direction, not even when a wry laugh gusted from his lips, as if he were incredulous at his own misfortune.

She wanted, uncharacteristically, to fidget. But why should Lord Dunstane make her agitated? After tonight, he would doubtless never give her another thought. Sooner, in fact, she thought, when she recollected his glance of disdain and pity. Once the performance began and gave them all something else to think about, he would forget her existence entirely.

Nevertheless, she could not remember ever having been so aware of the strange intimacy of a theater box, where people sat, almost shoulder to shoulder, snug within their private world and yet on display to anyone who cared to look.

And people would look, from below or across the way, everyone eager for a glimpse of something new or unexpected.

Lord Dunstane—a striking-looking Scotsman who came to London so infrequently that Mr. Pope had believed his deception would go undiscovered, but who nonetheless reserved a box at Covent Garden for performances he would never see—certainly fit the bill.

For just a moment, Julia considered slipping into one of the empty seats at the back of the box after all. But before she could make her move, the curtain rose.

Chapter 2

Determined not to look, Graham could still see the young woman out of the corner of his eye. The shell of her ear, the velvet curve of her cheek, the tilt of her nose . . . she was a shadow in his peripheral vision, a distraction, a constant reminder that he was not spending the evening as he had intended: alone.

It had not been the act of a gentleman to catch the young woman by the wrist and restrain her, as if she were some mere pickpocket. But the appearance of that slender hand beyond the curtain of his box had startled him, and he’d reacted instinctively to guard his solitude.

Rather than succeeding at warding off an impertinent thief of his privacy, he now found himself in the intolerable situation of sharing his box with perfect strangers. If he had not been certain the old lady would cause an unpleasant scene—and more important, if the play had not been about to start—he would have insisted upon their removal. Churlish of him? Yes, of course.

No one who knew him would have expected anything less.

Well, at least he could not be expected to socialize with them. Watching the performance was a silent activity. And they had not even been introduced.

The lack of an introduction proved something of an inconvenience as the play went on, however. Beside him, the young lady began to lean forward, evidently enraptured by what he would have called a mediocre performance. He shifted slightly in his own chair and sighed.

But his sigh fell on deaf ears. Or its meaning was misunderstood.

Rather than disappearing, her profile inserted itself more insistently into his line of sight. She had a long neck he supposed some fool would describe as swan-like. And a pert chin to go with her pert nose, entirely inappropriate for a meek lady’s companion. And a thoroughly unfashionable abundance of dark brown hair that would surely fall to her waist when unbound . . .

“Ahem.” He cleared his throat once, softly, hoping as much to disrupt his own reverie as hers. He had no business thinking about a young lady’s unbound hair, how it would caress her shoulders and cling provocatively to the curve of her full breasts. Most ungentlemanly of him. He was churlish, yes, but not a cad.

“Ahem.” More loudly the second time, when his first effort did not have the desired effect—either on her posture or his thoughts.

When she had intruded so thoroughly into his line of vision that he could focus on little else, could hardly even see the stage, he was driven to lean forward himself, lay a hand on the front railing of the box, and say, “I beg your pardon, miss—”

“Addison,” she supplied without ceremony. Without fully turning her head. And then added for good measure, “Shhh.”