The theatre blazed with movement. Rowan endured it because it was expected, because appearances still mattered while the banns were being read. The second Sunday had passed two days before and all of London now knew, if they had not before, that he meant to marry Lady Emmeline Greene.
He began to guide Frederick toward the stairs?—
And there she was.
Emmeline stood with her father at the entrance, lamplight catching along the pale line of her throat and the bright shine of her hair. She wore deep blue this evening, a color that made her skin look warmer and her eyes softer at first glance. Hisattention fixed on her so quickly that the room might as well have emptied around her.
Lord Weston saw him first and smiled with tired cordiality.
“Your Grace.”
“Lord Weston,” Rowan said, and then his gaze shifted to her. “Lady Emmeline.”
She curtsied. “Your Grace.”
There was nothing wrong in her tone. And still he heard the faint reserve in it, the note that had remained between them ever since the garden party, since Aaron’s frightened face and that brief, impossible absence of a stammer and the look she had given Rowan after.
Frederick bowed over Emmeline’s hand before Rowan could say more. “My lady. How fortunate that the theatre remains a place where one may run into one’s friends without appearing to have engineered it.”
Emmeline’s mouth softened. “Is that what you are calling this, Lord Calham? Fortune?”
“When it favors me, always.”
Lord Weston chuckled.
Rowan cut cleanly through it before Frederick could continue. “Join us in our box.”
Lord Weston began at once to decline out of politeness. “You are kind, Your Grace, but I would not intrude?—”
“Come,” Rowan said.
It was answer enough.
A few minutes later, they were seated together, the theatre unfolding in warm gold beneath them, rows of faces tilted toward the stage, the murmur of voices gradually lowering as the musicians below prepared to begin.
Frederick, with what Rowan suspected was intention disguised as courtesy, placed Emmeline in the chair nearest Rowan and took the farther one for himself, leaving Lord Weston beside him. `
“You attend the theatre often, Your Grace?” Emmeline asked after the first bustle had settled.
Rowan turned, moving closer to her than he had meant to. Her soft, clean scent filled his lungs, and for a moment it hit him hard enough to make his thoughts blur. “When required.”
Her brows lifted faintly. “Required?”
“A great many things in London are endured under the name of social necessity.”
Frederick made a soft noise of amusement. “You see, Lady Emmeline, what romance awaits you in marriage.”
She ignored him. Her eyes remained on Rowan.
“And Aaron?” she asked. “Do you bring him here?”
Rowan leaned back slightly. “No.”
“Why not?”
“The plays in London are too long, too loud, and too heavy for a child.”
Emmeline’s head tilted. “I do not know that I agree.”
