“You are not fine, Lady Agnes.” Lenore lowered her voice, genuinely concerned.
“No, no, I must be. I have to be.” Lady Agnes drew in a breath and stood straighter, pressing a trembling hand to her décolletage and looking as though she might grasp the thick strands of pearls around her neck and use them to strangle herself, putting herself out of her misery. “Mama insists that I must do my duty by our family and find a husband.”
“Oh?” Lenore kept a hand on the woman’s arm until she was certain Lady Agnes wouldn’t faint.
“Yes.” Lady Agnes nodded tightly, gulped, and forced herself to smile. “Even though I would so much rather stay safe at home.” Her eyes took on a hunted look, and Lenore thought she might cry.
“Agnes.” Her mother’s single syllable was all it took for Lady Agnes to straighten and put on a tight smile as the formidable Lady Hamilton approached. “The house is opening,” Lady Hamilton said. The woman’s expression was all concern.
“Well, that’s that, then,” Lady Agnes said breathily, reaching for her mother’s hand and letting herself be led off to the theater.
Lenore watched the two women go, feeling terrible for Lady Agnes.
“What a curious interlude,” Phineas said, a look of careful calculation in his eyes as he adjusted his spectacles.
Lenore wasn’t sure she liked his tone. “I have a friend like her—who has what I assume is her same problem—back home,” she said in a scolding tone. “Bethany had a mortal fear of crowds. They make her anxious to the point of tears, as though she is in imminent danger. She says that in crowded circumstances her pulse races, her hands grow numb and clammy, and she feels as though she might pass out, even if there is no more danger than some of the boys from town running around too fast and making too much noise.”
“Yes, I have heard of the condition as well,” Phineas said with enough of a sympathetic look that Lenore’s good opinion of him remained intact. He nodded across the room, then went on with, “You’d better rejoin your fiancé and his friend.” There was just enough intonation to the way he spoke to leave Lenore believing Phineas knew all about Freddy and Reese. “The house is open.”
Lenore stayed right where she was. She crossed her arms and studied Phineas. “I suppose you think you’re clever,” she said, one eyebrow arched, daring him to point out the truth of her arrangement with Freddy. And Reese, for that matter.
“Oh, I know I’m very clever indeed,” he answered with a mischievous grin, made somehow more alluring by the way his glasses framed his eyes. “But then, I suspect you are clever as well.”
A shiver of excitement swirled through her. She adored speaking in code, particularly when done in the context of flirtation with a man. It was almost a shame she hadn’t met Phineas before she met Freddy. Then again, even if she had, there wouldn’t have been a damn thing she could have done about the undeniable attraction between them.
“I think you should escort me into the theater,” she said, letting her arms drop and holding one of them out as though she expected him to take it. “I wager we’re sitting in boxes located close to one another.”
“I don’t have tickets for the evening’s performance,” Phineas admitted.
Lenore’s brow shot up. “Then why loiter around a crowded theater lobby without intending to see the show?”
“I’ve seen the show,” he replied, his grin so wicked that lust pulsed through her.
“How can you have?” she asked. “It’s a brand-new play by that playwright, Niall Cristofori, who everyone seems to adore. No one has seen it before tonight.”
“That is not the show to which I was referring, Miss Garrett,” he said with even more heat in his gaze. “I’ve seen a show far more entertaining than that already this evening.”
He had the audacity to drop his gaze to the low cut of her neckline. Lenore loved it. There was nothing more enjoyable than being ogled by a man she fancied. Even more so when she, in all of London, seemed to be alone in that fancy.
“Besides which,” Phineas went on, “I’ve gotten what I came for already.”
“And what is that, Mr. Mercer?”
He didn’t answer. At least, he didn’t answer with words. His impish grin was all the answer Lenore needed, though.
“Your fiancé and his friend are waiting,” he said, nodding to the stairs that led up to the boxes. Freddy lingered near the top, watching Lenore with a look of pure amusement. “I’m sure he’d love to hear what the two of us have been talking about.”
“I’m sure,” Lenore said. She took a step away from Phineas, peeking over her shoulder at him. “Let’s not wait so long between encounters next time, Mr. Mercer,” she said as she walked away. “I rather like you.”
“The feeling is mutual, Miss Garrett.”
“You know,” she added, pausing her steps. “I will be walking in Hyde Park tomorrow around midday.”
“Good to know,” Phineas said before nodding, then slipping out through the nearest door.
Lenore giggled to herself as she crossed the now mostly-empty lobby and climbed the stairs to rejoin Freddy.
“Mr. Mercer seems quite taken with you,” Freddy said in a way that implied she was quite taken with Mr. Mercer.
“I find him to be singularly interesting,” she said, taking Freddy’s arm and letting him lead her on to their box for the evening.
It was just a crying shame that she’d already made too many fatal mistakes to do anything about it.
Chapter 2
“Miss Lenore Garrett is perfection,” Phineas Mercer remarked to his brother, Lionel, the next morning as the two of them strolled through Belgravia. “Not only is she one of the finest beauties that has graced London for years now, she is intelligent, witty, and, unlike most of the porcelain-fragile ladies of the British aristocracy, she has a backbone.”
“Yes,” Lionel said, most of his attention on the handwritten sheets of paper he read as the two of them walked. “A backbone I’m certain you’d love to bend over the nearest settee so that you can have your wicked way with her.” Before Phin could so much as open his mouth to reply, Lionel went on, laughing, with, “I say. What an inventive use of opera glasses. That’s certain to pop the eyes of more than a few of your readers.” He whistled at the page he’d just finished reading, then shuffled it to the back of the pile as he continued to read the next sheet.
“The best part is that I believe Miss Garrett would be up for any manner of backbone bending activities,” Phin went on with a grin. He glanced sideways to see what part of his story Lionel had reached, but his thoughts remained single-minded. “That’s another thing that sets her apart from the simpering, delicate misses I’m supposed to be courting.”
“What?” Lionel glanced up from the page and smirked at Phin. “That she has loose morals?”
“There’s a world of difference between loose morals and the ability to step outside of the false strictures of society in order to enjoy oneself in the way Nature intended.”