“No,” she said, glancing meaningfully towards the crowd, “only to maternal ones.”
That won the expression she had wanted: the brief, involuntary smile that altered his whole face before discipline reclaimed it. She found herself absurdly gratified.
Lord and Lady Upton went before them, his lordship nodding here and there to acquaintances, her ladyship moving with the serene certainty of a reigning queen. Lord Upton’s box, when they reached it, was as excellent as one would have expected. To have anything less would have offended the natural order of aristocratic London. It commanded the stage perfectly, yet also afforded a fine view of the house itself, which Francescasoon discovered to be almost as interesting as the performance promised to be.
From the box she could look down into the pit, which was alive with a different species of audience altogether. There stood fashionable bachelors who preferred the view and company from the floor; orange sellers moved through the crowd with practised agility, which included apprentices, clerks and others who could not afford such seats as Lord Upton’s and yet had purchased their evening’s diversion all the same. The whole theatre, in fact, seemed to gather England into itself by ranks and gradations.
She was still looking when Major Manners, having first assisted Lady Upton to her seat and then greeted acquaintances, came behind her to take his seat. The box was not so large as to permit indifference to proximity. As he passed, his hand rested, just for a moment, at the small of her back to guide her clear of a narrow angle between the chairs.
It was the merest touch: firm, brief and perfectly proper—and she liked it more than she ought.
The awareness of that simple fact was so new that it startled her. She had been looked at often enough since coming to London. She had been bowed to, smiled at, complimented, appraised, and invited. None of it had produced this curious and inward quickening; this sense, not of being claimed—which would have offended her instantly—but of being looked after. Protected. The distinction was not a small one.
It disconcerted her so much that she sat down too quickly and nearly dropped her fan. Major Manners retrieved it before it fell.
She took back the fan with care, for they were seated in the front of the box. “Well, I cannot protest the quality of Lord Upton’s patronage,” she replied lightly.
“You may protest many things,” he said. “The quality of his box is not among them.”
“It only remains to determine whether the company proves tolerable.”
“I can answer only for one portion of it.”
“There, sir, is either confidence or caution. I have not yet decided which.”
“Perhaps, rather, a tactical uncertainty.”
“How very military a response.”
She turned slightly towards him, half amused, half intrigued by the ease with which they had fallen into this pattern. It was not at all like speaking with Harcourt, who flattered her with elegant agreement. Neither was it like Lord Ashbourne, whose notion of female capacity would no doubt prove generous so long as it remained supervised. With Major Manners there was no supervision and very little agreement, yet there was an odd and growing pleasure in the resistance of his mind. He did not yield merely to please her. She had not expected to enjoy any of it. She had not expected, either, to feel quite so at ease.
The audience settled by degrees. Opera glasses were lifted. Latecomers moved into position as if they were strategically late. In the pit, a brief altercation rose and subsided with admirable speed. On the stage the orchestra prepared itself, all tuning and anticipation. The whole house seemed to inhale.
Lady Upton leaned forward slightly. “If Kean is as good tonight as he was the last time I had the pleasure of his performance, you are in for quite a treat, my dear.”
Lord Upton gave a quiet sound that might have been scepticism.
Francesca looked down again at the pit, thinking how strange it was that the same city which could starve workers and pass acts to silence reform could also gather here to watch a man speak Shakespeare under painted ceilings. Contradictionwas perhaps London’s most abundant product. It manufactured splendour and misery with equal skill.
“You are thinking again,” remarked Major Manners.
“You say that as though it were a vice.”
“In this room it may be counted as eccentric.”
“Then I shall endeavour to be ordinary.”
“I would advise against it,” he said.
She raised a brow. “Why so?”
“Because ordinary is a bore.”
She looked at him fully then, and something in his expression—so grave while saying something that ought to have been light—caught her off guard. It was not flirtation. It was not even admiration, though there may have been a hint of that too. It was attention of a rarer and more unsettling kind: the compliment of someone who did not give them lightly.
For one perilous instant she thought of that morning and of Kendall’s letter still folded in her writing desk. She thought of caution and confidence, of the ledgers and the salon and the peculiar discomfort of finding herself suspicious of a man she had always trusted. Meanwhile, here, beside her, sat a gentleman she had no reason to trust and yet found herself looking to all the same. How ridiculous human judgement was; how unhelpfully entangled. The curtain rose at last and rescued her from further thought.
For a time she surrendered, as any rational creature must, to the force of performance. Kean justified every reputation she had heard attached to him and perhaps exceeded several. There was something almost dangerous in watching such command of feeling—the ability to seize a room full of people and hold them, not by rank or wealth or social expectation, but by talent alone. Francesca had not realized until that moment how rare such a gift truly was. It was earned in every breath and gesture,and therefore it satisfied her far more than the whole glittering apparatus around it.
