But they paused now and again to give each other’s arms little squeezes.
Delilah gestured with her chin to her husband, who, along with Sergeant Massey and Lord Bolt, was keeping an eye on affairs to make sure things remained civil, and he came to her side.
“Do you know anything about this?” Tristan murmured to the ladies.
They shook their heads.
“I think I do,” he said.
He was less amazed than he’d thought he’d be.
Because Captain Hardy knew more than a little bit about the mountains a man would move for a woman he loved. And how fragile and new even the greatest, most battered of hearts could become in the hands of the right woman.
He felt protective of his theory. He wouldn’t betray the man. He let it lie for now.
Delacorte had campaigned for the role (“Who’s louder than I am?” he’d insisted indignantly), but Lucien finally won the vote over who would announce the start of the performance. As Mrs. Pariseau had said more than once before, Lord Bolt had a very fine reading voice and ought to be onstage, which was what she thought of everyone who possessed a very fine reading voice.
His voice was indeed perfect for this night: resonant, refined, his pristine aristocratic English accent still a bit haunted about the edges by the French he’d been raised with and the other lands to which he’d traveled.
He strolled out onstage, stood before the curtain, and like a conjurer, raised his arms and announced:
“Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you all for coming. We are so pleased to have you with us tonight for this very special occasion. May I have your silence and attention, please. And please take your seats.”
The rustling of programs and fans gradually eased, like a dying breeze.
And then Dot and Rose, each in a blue apron, a white tissue flower tucked into her hair and her belt, moved along the aisles and carefully doused every other sconce on the wall. The net effect was like watching the gradual fall of eventide.
A sigh went up when, in this darkened room, a hundred more little jeweled stars were revealed, twisting and glinting on the finest of wire from the midnight-blue-bedecked ceiling.
And then, with somber wonderment, as though he could not believe his luck and theirs, Lucien announced:
“Ladies and gentlemen . . . Miss Mariana Wylde.”
The curtains shimmied smoothly aside on their runners.
To reveal a star-studded blue against which hung a huge luminous moon.
Where was Mariana?
They heard her before they saw her. A soft call. A sighing note, wavering, like a breeze moving through the trees. A call like a nightingale.
Singing, she strolled from the shadows, like a nymph called by the moonlight, a flowered wreath in her loosed hair, a nacre-colored silk gown flowing in Grecian folds from her shoulders, banded beneath her breasts with a little ribbon.
There was a collective gasp.
Then murmurs.
Then frantic shushing.
Then silence.
Then the soft, groaning sigh of a bow drawn across cello strings. Beneath it rose the siren sob of a violin. The very sounds of lovemaking.
They heralded what was about to happen to the audience.
With her voice, for the next forty minutes, Mariana made playthings of their hearts. Shredded them and tossed them aloft like confetti. Put them back together, then filled them like sails with joy. She did to their hearts all that had been done to her own in the past month by the Duke of Valkirk, and in every word, profound and mundane, she sang of him.
And in the end, she owned every heart in the room.
Handkerchiefs were soaked. Applause was thunderous. Helga’s cakes were devoured, and the punch disappeared.
At intermission, every member of the audience obediently queued for an opportunity to bow over her kid-gloved hand. All the guests, unbeknownst to them, were watched like a hawk by Captain Hardy and Sergeant Massey.
“Miss Wylde, it was a privilege to meet you. A privilege, I say!” This was Viscount Dalrymple. A lowered voice. “If there’s anything we can ever do to help . . .”
She made a note for the next time she might appear in the gossip columns and need a reputation burnishing.
“Miss Wylde, what a remarkable evening. I am Mrs. Franklin. I will of a certainty write a glowing notice for the newspaper,” said a woman resplendent in mauve silk and pearls. A purple plume arched over her head like an alert familiar.
Not one person in the crowd said the duke’s name. Oh, but she knew that this was his doing. She knew by how everyone looked at her, by that rank curiosity tinged with respect and envy—perhaps even a little awe.
And of course a certain prurient curiosity, which they would never dare to fully show to her.
Who else had the power to command recalcitrant aristocrats to attend an event at the docks en masse?
What it meant, she could not say. If it meant anything at all.
Was it a parting gift? An apology? She refused to entertain theories.
Even if she never saw him again, he’d made certain she knew she was loved.
Even if he wasn’t here, she was glad she could, in this way, share her triumph with him.
Because that’s precisely what it was. He had given her the audience, but the triumph was all her own.
Today a triumph.
Tomorrow a lobster.
Such was the rhythm of life.
Chapter Nineteen
It had been too long since James had been to this farm where he’d grown up. It looked much the same, which was precisely what he’d always loved about it. It didn’t change.
A few things needed tending. The low stone walls along the walk leading to the house had been battered a bit by the weather; wildflowers were peeping through.
“You’re done for, walls,” he thought, amused and sympathetic. “The wildflowers will win.”
They could be built up again.
But his own walls were rubble. Absolute smithereens, like the vase he’d hurled. They could not be rebuilt. Which was all to the good: he didn’t want them.
He stood naked and surrendered and free.
He stood, breathing in the country air, and wondered how he’d become more a set of qualities than a person. Brick by brick, that’s how it had happened. The man he was had been built up by, then bricked in by, duty and expectation and admiration and reverence and, yes, honor. And by his own pride.
He knew that what he’d felt with her was happy. It was not a virtue or a vice. Perhaps the condition ought not even be labeled. Because it was pure, it was everything and nothing all at once, which was how he imagined the sky above felt. He imagined it was what a baby felt when it first opened its eyes into the world outside the womb. It seemed so clear that this was the human’s native state, perhaps the birthright. And that all of life was just a mission to get back to it.
These epiphanies were as disorienting as if he’d taken one of Delacorte’s powders.
His every breath in their aftermath was almost painful.
It was also interesting and new.
He stood next to his son in silence, beneath a blossoming tree. The sky above had no need of cherubs trailing scarves.
He’d walked the land out over an expanse of green interrupted by contented fluffy sheep. Sky and meadow met in the purest blue and green. It was that sort of day. They were rare enough.
The sheep were healthy and fat, and the sheepdogs were lean and lively and skilled. Earlier he’d spoken with the head shepherd, and found he was knowledgeable and conscientious. The house was in fine condition: comfortable, welcoming, warm. His son had seen to its care out of pride, not necessarily any passion for it, but James was proud of his son’s diligence.