“Oh. Yes. I never heard. They didn’t mention the letter to me. Not even when I boasted to my schoolmates, after we returned, that I had seen the world. I was quite puffed up with my own consequence.”
“Did you take the, ah, the ‘grand tour’ after your school days like so many young English milords?”
How old did she think he was? “By the time I was of an age to do that, France had erupted in revolution,” he pointed out.
“Ah. Yes.” Her dark eyes grew distant. “And then the war came to our country. I was to go—” She broke off abruptly.
It seemed as if every conversational avenue led to awkwardness. Arthur wondered what journey the fighting in Spain had disrupted. He wanted to know all about her, and she didn’t wish to reveal anything about her life. It was an impasse.
“It became impossible to travel,” she said as if closing the subject.
He hated seeing melancholy in her face. What could he do to banish it? Arthur felt he would go to any lengths to cheer her. If only he knew how.
He hadn’t meant to pry. It was natural to want to get to know a new…friend? Señora Alvarez was looking down again, hiding her face with the mantilla. Arthur struggled with unfamiliar frustration. Generally, people he met were eager to further the acquaintance. Some did it because they saw an advantage in the connection, of course. Society was full of toadeaters. But many liked him for himself. He became aware of an impulse to tell her so, and immediately felt like a preening coxcomb. He should talk of something else. Surely if he found the right words, she would respond. But none came to mind in this moment.
The beginning of the play both rescued and thwarted him as everyone’s attention turned to the stage.
Lord for a Season was the story of a young man who arrived in London pretending to be a lord. Based on many years of theater attendance, Arthur suspected the young man would actually turn out to be one in the end. Tom played one of the fashionable friends the hero made in town. It was a very small part—mostly standing about as the action unfolded, Tom had said. But he was onstage a good deal and had a few speeches. It was an opportunity for the lad to show what he could do. Arthur hoped that all would go well for his debut.
Teresa leaned forward as Tom entered the play several scenes in. The theater makeup and borrowed clothes made him look older and more handsome, she thought. Tom was one of those males who would look better at forty than at sixteen.
He showed no sign of fear. In truth, she was more nervous with Lord Macklin at her side than Tom seemed to be onstage. The earl wasn’t so very close to her, but somehow it felt as if he was. He was a powerful personality in every sense of those words. A fact that should not be forgotten, she reminded herself.
The hero of the play pranced about and made affected speeches. Other characters answered him. The ingenue simpered. Tom had little to do, but he didn’t simply stand on the stage letting the action flow around him. He reacted to each line spoken with expressions and small movements. He reflected or contradicted other actors’ attitudes. Teresa could see the audience noticing him. Once they laughed when he gaped in astonishment at an exchange of quips. He was certainly drawing attention. Teresa saw two other actors frown at him in ways that had nothing to do with the action of the play.
“What do you think of Tom’s performance?” Lord Macklin asked her when the first interval began.
“I think he is in danger of annoying the chief actors by attracting too much attention,” Teresa replied.
“I saw that. Not wise for a newcomer.”
“No.” Jealousy was common in the theater.
“He is rather good though.”
She nodded. “He seems so much at ease on the stage. It’s as if he doesn’t even notice all the people staring at him.”
“Tom has a gift of ease. I’ve often wondered where it can come from, considering his unfortunate childhood. Some inner light that cannot be extinguished, I suppose.”
The man had a brush of the poet, Teresa thought. As well as the looks of a fairy-tale hero. Those steady blue eyes urged one to drop into them and forget all else. What was that English word? Blandishments. Yes. That’s what they were. Seductive blandishments. They promised honesty and understanding and warmth. As if eyes could not lie. Dangerous. She turned away. “That is a good way of putting it,” she said.
A flurry at the doorway of the box drew her attention. It was crowded with male visitors. The young ladies were clearly attracting beaus in their bow to society. “How young they all look,” she murmured without thinking. She had wondered at first if the girls might be targets of the earl’s gallantry, but he’d shown no sign of interest. In fact, all the arrangements pointed to a desire to talk with her.
“When I was their age, I was newly on the town and thought myself vastly sophisticated,” replied the earl quietly. He was smiling.
“I was…” She stopped. At seventeen, she’d been engaged to the son of a Spanish count, a marriage arranged by their parents. Her bride clothes had been sewn and the wedding date set. And then her fiancé fell ill and died. She’d mourned the young man she hardly knew and, later, the future that had expired with him. Her life would have been so different if he’d lived. His estates were outside the main battle zone. They might have lost much, but not everything, in the subsequent war.
“Is something wrong?”
This Lord Macklin was too perceptive for comfort. His open expression invited confidences. But Teresa knew that confidences nearly always led to betrayal. They would be used to manipulate or extort. “Of course,” she said, making her tone dismissive. She had vowed never to be foolish again.
She should have refused this invitation. She was enjoying Tom’s performance, but she was also creating a false impression. The young ladies were obviously curious, or had been before their admirers arrived. The earl’s party wanted to know who she was, where she came from, and why he had invited her to sit beside him in the box. The first two were none of their affair, and the last was…a whim she ought not to have indulged. She bent her head behind the shield of her mantilla.
“Compton seems to be mounting a defense against the onslaught of visitors,” said Macklin. He sounded amused.
“He is engaged to the young lady with the eyebrows,” Teresa replied. She had absorbed the flurry of introductions at the beginning of the evening.
“Miss Ada Grandison,” the earl said.
“She is very happy about that, I think.”
“Yes, she won him in a treasure hunt.”
Teresa wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. Was this perhaps some odd English idiom? She decided to ignore it. “I think the girl with the red hair wishes she was somewhere else,” she said.