She was not at any society entertainments, clinging to the wall and waiting for him to walk through the door. She was not, as Miss Pevensey was doing and Bertie longed to do, thronging the parlors of the nobility waiting for an eligiblepartito take an interest. Nor, as he had intended, was she trapped in a ballroom, the subject of stares and gossip.
No, Miss Lithwick had escaped to the opera, in pursuit of nothing but her own pleasure, and the expression on her fluid, expressive features said that she floated in the realm of the sublime.
Logic and calculation fled before a deeper prompting Jem could not but obey. Uncaring what his friends might think of either his tactics or his motives, he headed toward the stage, where those who desired intimate exposure to the action paid for the privilege of being close enough to touch the singers, and occasionally distract them. A miasma of perfumes surrounded him as he crossed the pit, a plethora of competing florals and musks emanating from bodies and fabrics and hair.
It was easy enough to maneuver behind the Gorgons, where he could observe but not be noticed. Standing closer than was proper to Lucasta Lithwick, Jem detected a different scent, clean, earthy, yet complex. A scent that struck him as both sweet and dark, prim and naughty at the same time. It suited her.
Despite the objectionable gown, her head was stylish, as if someone else had the care of her from the neck up. Beneath a cap of gauze and ribbons and feathers, her hair was dressed in a fashionable chignon and powdered the reddish apricot color that was all the rage at the moment. The powder was so subtle, in fact, that he smelled no powder at all, nor had turmeric fallen onto her shoulders and gown, as it did to so many other poor girls who attempted that same burnished red-gold.
“Your Signor Marchesi seems out of sorts tonight,” remarked one of the Gorgons. The German duke’s daughter who had snubbed Ashley at the Queen’s levee, crushing his pretensions quite thoroughly. “I would have thought he’d enjoy playing a diva like Achilles.”
“I wonder if he has a head-cold, the poor dear,” Miss Lithwick remarked. “That cadenza he added to his last aria was not up to his usual standards.”
“Iphigenia doesn’t care if she lives or dies,” said the other tall one, the Russian princess. Jem wondered fleetingly why the two foreign girls, who could be the toast of London for their exotic looks and their not altogether undashing style, chose not to make the effort to enchant anyone.
“She’s a soubrette, and the part is written for a spinto soprano,” Lucasta answered. “She’s straining to reach above her range, and I don’t think she understands a word of Italian.”
“The chorus sounds disjointed somehow,” the petite one said. She was an appealing thing, if not to Jem’s taste, and he had endeavored to give her a hint when she had worn a costume one night that flattered neither her color nor her figure. It appeared she had heeded his advice, to great improvement.
“They’re coming in on all the wrong cues,” Miss Lithwick snapped. “Is the conductor drunk or blind?”
Jem stiffened. For a moment he saw red, and it was not Miss Lithwick’s hair. The sheer arrogance of the remark, thebreathless, unthinking cruelty was a mark of the upper class, no different from what he encountered a dozen times a day. It was the world they lived in.
He wanted the world to be better. He wantedherto be better.
He leaned close, his tone low and his nose close to the stray curl hanging behind her ear. “So a man who is castrated might master music, but a man who is blind cannot?”
She stilled, but a strange ripple passed through her, as if she were a plucked string. He felt her attention lift and focus on him before, very slowly, she turned her chin. That direct gaze had a strange effect on his insides.
He had not been mistaken about the shade of her eyes, a greenish brown flecked with gold. The dusky rose of a blush appeared on her cheeks.
“I beg your pardon, Lord Rudyard. I did not see you there.”
Of course not, because he had approached her with the stealth of a poacher stalking a deer.
“Your remarks about the conductor,” he prompted. It was rude to interrogate a young lady, but he wanted her prejudice out in the open. Perhaps it would finally free him of this foolish impulse to hang upon her opinions. “I gather you dislike his technique.”
He watched her sort through her mind for what she had said and, as anyone would do when called to account, tried to modify the harshness of her complaint. “I was suggesting a man too far in his cups might lose track of his cues.”
“I thought you had assumed he was blind, and therefore incompetent.” His voice was soft, silken with fury. Lucasta Lithwick did not know him well enough to recognize this. She stared fixedly at his cravat pin, as if it fascinated her.
“They are not equivalent, and it was wrong of me to suggest it.” Her brows knit in a frown. “Mr. John Stanley composes beautiful music. He is a governor of the Foundling Hospital andMaster of the King’s Band, and he has been almost entirely blind since childhood.”
Jem knew Mr. Stanley but was surprised Miss Lithwick did. Still, her repentance was not enough to put him in charity with her.
“I thought castratos were falling out of fashion.” He glanced at the stage where Achilles, in a display of musical histrionics, was lamenting the ruse that had brought Iphigenia to the port where the Greek armies gathered, her fate not marriage to him but death as a promised sacrifice for a fair wind to Troy. “Achilles seems to enjoy being the center of attention.”
As she was supposed to be doing, rather than hiding here. She transferred her attention to the stage, and he was forgotten.
“Signor Marchesi is a rare talent. Thatvoice! He has the most remarkable gift of timbre and range. If he adds rather too much coloratura, and enjoys his bravura performances far more than his cantabile singing, it is perhaps to be forgiven.”
Jem felt jealousy sharpen its teeth on his temper. Jealousy, over a man who was not a full man! “You seem an ardent admirer. He is very handsome.”
She sighed, her shoulders wilting. He liked those fine, sharp shoulders of hers, another way she did not conform to fashion, when the favored look was sloping shoulders and soft roundedness. “That is why my aunt will not allow me to take voice lessons from him.”
“Because he is handsome?”
“And because he is Italian. And because—he is so ardently admired.”
