The play continued. The audience laughed, gasped, applauded, and hushed itself again. Lady Upton, happily absorbed, seemed not to have noticed anything amiss. Lord Upton watched the stage with a grave concentration which could be construed as boredom.
Francesca, though she kept her face turned towards the performance and her posture as composed as ever, was aware of two men now with a clarity that made all Shakespeare secondary.
When the curtain fell on the act and the house erupted into movement and conversation, the spell broke around them—but not within her. She looked again towards the passage beside the pit. Kendall was gone.
CHAPTER 11
Arch arrived at Renforth House in company with Baines, which was rather like returning from church in company with a fox—one might be glad of the companionship while remaining perfectly certain that mischief was near. The night had deepened whilst they were at Drury Lane, and the air possessed a dark fog that sharpened the senses. The streets were still active, of course. London never truly consented to sleep when there remained coaches to rattle, gentlemen to swagger homeward from clubs, ladies to be conveyed from assemblies, and those of the persuasion that night better suited their purposes than day.
Baines, who had joined Arch at Upton Place the very moment Arch was departing—and had then insisted upon accompanying him back to St. James’s—looked so intolerably pleased with himself that Arch considered refusing to ask, for at least a quarter of the journey, what had happened on principle alone.
He did not, however, succeed in maintaining the silence. Baines’ expression invited inquiry with the vulgar force of an act at the Bartholomew Fair.
Renforth’s drawing room was already occupied when they arrived. That, too, was as it ought to be. The house kept certainhabits as faithfully as a regiment kept its watches. Renforth sat in his usual chair near the hearth, one ankle upon the opposite knee, his brandy resting untouched upon the small table beside him. Stuart had taken possession of the sofa, Fielding lounged in the armchair by the bookcase, one hand folded loosely about his glass and the other turning over some folded paper that he had plainly ceased to read the moment he had heard the door.
All three looked up as they entered, and all three, in their separate ways, took in first Arch’s coat, then Baines’ expression, and then registered the conclusion that neither man had returned merely from the theatre.
O’Malley appeared, as ever, from nowhere and everywhere, relieving them of hats and coats. “I trust the evening rewarded your efforts, sirs?”
“Immensely,” said Baines before Arch could answer.
He handed them both a glass of brandy almost before Arch had taken note of the motion, and vanished again with the eerie discretion that made O’Malley seem less like a butler than a useful haunting.
Fielding lifted his glass in Arch’s direction. “Well?” he said. “Did the theatre improve your character?”
“It enlarged my acquaintance with human vanity and did nothing to recommend the stage as a cure for it.”
Stuart’s eyes moved lazily from Arch to Baines. “Baines looks as though he has swallowed a canary whole.”
“Do you not have wives to return to?” Baines addressed both Stuart and Fielding.
“Both are in the country, visiting, as it happens,” Stuart replied, nonplussed.
Renforth regarded Arch. “I take it,” he said, “that Lord Upton’s box has survived your attendance?”
“It did,” Arch said.
“Did Miss Vale?”
Arch took a slow swallow of brandy before answering. “Miss Vale also survived.”
Fielding leaned back in his chair. “You say that as though survival was not guaranteed.”
Arch looked into the fire. “It seldom is, where Society is concerned.”
Baines dropped himself into the nearest chair with outrageous satisfaction. “Will you hear him?” he said. “A week of balls and reformists and now he speaks like an old dowager.”
Stuart’s mouth twitched. “He was always grave. He is only now becoming decorative in it.”
Arch gave them all a look of practised boredom.
“There it is, a look just like his mater’s,” Baines teased. “He has become Lady Upton’s lap-dog.”
Arch turned his head very slowly.
“Take care,” said Stuart mildly. “He is tired enough to kill and trained enough to do it neatly.”
Baines only grinned wider. “There is no shame in it, Arch. You go where you are sent. You come to heel when called. You bear ladies through the crowd with admirable solemnity. Another fortnight and you shall fetch slippers.”
