She found herself leaning forward more than once, wholly engaged, and on one occasion, when a line struck with particular force, she forgot herself enough to speak under her breath. “How extraordinary.”
Not long after this, during one of the quieter scenes when the house had settled into a hush so complete that even the pit seemed subdued, she became suddenly aware of being watched.
The sensation came upon her all at once, with no warning she could name: that slight prickle on the back of the neck, the inexplicable certainty that one’s person has become the object of a gaze too fixed to be accidental. It was not like the ordinary inspection of Society, which she had long since learned to ignore. This was more deliberate.
Her eyes moved instinctively away from the stage, down and then across… into the pit.
At first she saw nothing but the expected blur of faces, coats, movement, and shadow. Then one face resolved itself from the rest with such shocking familiarity that her breath altered before she could prevent it: Thomas Kendall.
He stood, rather than seated on a bench, somewhat back from the crush, near one of the side passages, and he was watching the box, watching her. His expression was unreadable from that distance, but she knew, from the line of his shoulders, the stillness of his head, the unmistakable fixity of attention. He was not there by chance. He was not looking generally upward in the manner of a man surveying the audience. He was looking at her. A chill went through her.
Why had he come? Had he known she would be there? Had Lady Upton mentioned it? No—surely not. Yet there he was, plainly dressed enough to pass unnoticed among many in the pitand yet impossible, now that she had seen him, not to see. Her hand tightened on the fan in her lap.
“Miss Vale?”
Major Manners’ voice was low, but so near and so attentive that it startled her almost as much as Kendall’s presence had.
She turned her head too quickly.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Nothing.” The answer was immediate and wholly unconvincing. She knew it the moment she said it, and his expression told her he did as well.
“You have gone pale.”
“It is warm in here.”
“It is.”
She almost laughed at the absurdity of it, but the laugh would not come. Instead she glanced, involuntarily, back towards the pit. That was enough.
Major Manners followed the direction of her gaze with the practised economy of a man who noticed for a living. She saw the instant at which he identified the object of her attention. Something in him altered—very little outwardly, but enough that she sensed it at once.
When he turned back towards her, his voice had changed too. It remained quiet, but whatever lightness had existed in it before was gone.
“Did he do something to upset you?”
Francesca kept her eyes on the stage because she no longer trusted herself to allow them anywhere else. For a moment, she and the Major sat in a silence that seemed much louder than the theatre itself.
“I did not expect him to be here,” she said at last, and was vexed by how much that sounded like an explanation.
“Nor did I.”
She dared another glance. Kendall had not moved—or perhaps he had only shifted so slightly that she could not tell. The effect was somehow worse. He was neither approaching nor leaving. He was only there, watching.
A dozen interpretations rose and fell within her in rapid succession. Perhaps his presence meant nothing. Perhaps it meant precisely what her nerves had already told her it meant: that Kendall now moved in circles she had not expected, and that his interest in her movements had grown sharper than friendship alone required.
Major Manner’s hand, resting along the arm of his chair, shifted the slightest degree nearer to hers… not touching, merely there.
The same strange sensation returned to her—the one she had first recognized at the small of her back while entering the theatre—that of protection. “If you wish to leave,” he said, “you have only to say so.”
She looked at him.
The offer was perfectly serious. He would have removed her at once from Lord Upton’s box, from Drury Lane, from the whole of London, if she had asked in that moment. The certainty of it shone so plainly in his expression that she almost forgot to answer.
“No,” she said quietly. “There is nothing unremarkable in him attending the theatre.”
His eyes held hers for one instant longer, then he inclined his head once, accepting the decision with alacrity.
