“People are staring at us,” he said sharply as his mouth moved into a thin line and he spread his lips in a weak imitation of a smile.
“Yes,” Phoebe muttered thickly. “I imagine they are looking over here. You have your hand clamped on my forearm as if you fear that I might run away at any moment. Certainly, people must think we look strange.”
Lord Birchwood made a discontented sound in the back of his throat. Slowly, he peeled his fingers off Phoebe’s arm, and she immediately laced her hands together and placed them in her lap. She knew this would not keep him from reaching for her again, but she felt better having this sort of autonomy than she had a moment before.
“We are engaged to be married,” Lord Birchwood said quietly. “While I concede you might have a point, I should not have been gripping your arm thusly, people will expect us to look pleased with one another. Content, even.”
“How can I forget?” she countered, trying to keep the bitterness from her voice. “We must always rise to meet the expectations of others.”
Phoebe turned her head slowly from left to right and found that many pairs of eyes, not just the Duke of Talwyn’s, were indeed looking toward their box. Faces turned to one another, and mouths moved, and she knew she was being spoken about behind those gloved hands.
Phoebe had long been known as the poor girl who had turned down too many proposals; the unfortunate young lady who had been sent out of London for two years, only to return on the arm of the Marquess of Birchwood.
She knew her story was gossip-worthy, and she despised the way the others gobbled up her misfortunes. Phoebe wanted to be inconspicuous. She wanted to remain unseen, wanted to bemasked.
“The play is beginning to start.” Lord Birchwood’s elbow nudged into her side.
Phoebe startled into composure, her spine straightening as she looked at the stage. Try as she wanted to, she could not entirely block out Lord Birchwood at her side, a man who wouldnot appreciate the arts, because he could not focus on the performers when he was so engaged of giving a performance of his own.
For one last time before the lights extinguished, her eyes drifted back to the Duke and right before he looked back at her, she saw his attention fixed on the stage. There was a simmering excitement to his expression. A fidgeting in his posture that suggested that he, too, had found where he belonged just like Phoebe did.
She enjoyed that.
She enjoyed that he liked the arts as much as she did, just like at the musicale.
No.
No, I should not care about or enjoy anything about the Duke’s interests. I might have shared a moment with him during Lord Spencer’s Masquerade, but going forward, the Duke must be nothing more than my acquaintance.
She sent a look across the divide, hoping to catch his eye once more.
This is ridiculous! I cannot sit next to my fiancé while craving the attention of another man.
Finally, she tore her attention off the Duke, but the heat of his stare remained on her until the first notes of the opera began. She had already forgotten the title of the performance, but everything faded into nothing when the singer sang her first note.
Black curls spilled down her back, and, in a white gown that resembled a wedding dress, she looked out at the audience with tears in her eyes.
Already, this was a tragedy, and Phoebe leaned closer, her fingers wrapping around the balcony before her seat. The opera had begun with a lady singing the opening song about a wedding day she had never wanted…
Phoebe felt the heartbreak of it in her soul.
Over the course of the first half of the opera, Phoebe’s focus strayed to the Duke, sometimes finding him already watching her, other times finding him just as enthralled as she was. There was a looseness to him that had not been present at the dinner party that Lord Birchwood had held several days ago, and Phoebe liked seeing how his shoulders were relaxed.
How, in this place, he seemed in his element, as she was.
I wish I was seated next to him.I want to be next to a man who appreciates what we are watching.
Meanwhile, Lord Birchwood’s attention was scarcely on the stage at all. Instead, he looked around as if wanting to know who noticed him. Nobody did; they were all there for the performance now.
The time for gossiping had come and gone. Later, during the interval, he would receive the attention he wanted, but for now, there was none to be found, and Phoebe felt a little smug at the disappointment in his scowl.
“You brought me to the opera,” Phoebe whispered at one point, “so you must watch the stage, my lord.”
“I am watching it,” he answered tightly. “What do you think I am doing?”
“Looking around the auditorium,” Phoebe muttered under her breath.
Earlier, Phoebe’s sharp tongue and the watchful eyes of the ton had granted her a reprieve from the Marquess’ steely grip, but now that the lights were low and no one was paying them any attention, he did not allow her comments to stand.
