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It falls to women perhaps more than to men to be sensible of the impression attire can make. Though London is justly famous for the skill of its tailors and for a degree of male elegance one is unlikely to meet in any other great city, the husband hunter must be wary of any gentleman given to excessive solicitude for the knot of his neckcloth, the cut of his lapels, or the pattern of his waistcoat.

—The Husband Hunter’s Guide to London

Chapter 9

Harriet had not intended to accept Wynford’s invitation, but Lady Luxborough insisted that the ice-skating party firmly absolved Harriet of any further duties to the Luxborough children that night. When Harriet mentioned her promise to start the game, her employer merely raised a brow and told her the game could wait.

Now her seat in the back of the second tier box allowed her the luxury of invisibility in the great crowd. Under the lights in the vast red-and-gold interior, everyone seemed to be talking at once, and how the actors ever made their lines heard over the din was a wonder. Wynford sat in front of her between Octavia and the marchioness, giving Harriet far too much time to contemplate the set of his shoulders and his profile as he turned to his partners.

At the second interval he disengaged from the marchioness and left the box to procure refreshments. Harriet let her gaze wander the theater as she listened to Octavia chatter. In spite of the bruises to her pride and person from her tumble on the ice, the girl seemed in good spirits, her color heightened by excitement. Below in the pit were dozens of young gentlemen in black eveningwear and the scarlet coats of several regiments, some of whom looked up at their box. Octavia, who was leaning on the balustrade, sat back and vigorously plied her fan.

After a while she ceased. “How silly I’m being,” she confided to the marchioness. “A gentleman might look at a lady, but without an introduction he will not come to our box.”

“Did you wish an introduction, my dear?” asked the marchioness.

“Do you know that gentleman?” Octavia asked the marchioness. Harriet could not see the man in question.

“Captain Fanshaw, is it?” said the marchioness. “Would you like to meet him?”

Octavia nodded. “He looks...amiable. Doesn’t he?”

“Well, we will have to see what we can do,” said the marchioness.

When Charles reentered the box, instead of taking his place between the ladies, he came to Harriet’s side. “May we speak?” he asked quietly.

She stood and moved with him into the shadows at the back of the box.

“Are you enjoying the play?”

“I am, thank you. It’s my first time seeing the younger Mr. Kemble.” She tried to be sensible in the face of the smile Wynford gave her. She was doing him a favor. That was the thing to remember. It was her duty to help his sister, and the one piece of Octavia’s conversation with the marchioness that puzzled and troubled her was the marchioness’s claim to know a young English officer. “Do you still think the marchioness is a danger to your sister?”

Wynford frowned. “I can’t see what it is in Octavia’s naïveté that interests her.”

Harriet tried to read his expression. The marchioness’s interest in Octavia was puzzling, though it did not appear to justify Wynford’s anxiety unless there was something he was not telling Harriet. “That bothers you?”

“Yes. I have no illusions that a woman of the marchioness’s experience finds Octavia’s views enlightening.”

“I have to agree.”

An amused glint came into his eyes. “And you don’t like agreeing with me, do you?”

“That idea is as absurd as one of your waistcoats. I think I can manage to agree with you whenever...” Under his gaze, her thoughts trailed off. It was oddly intimate to talk quietly in the dim recess of the box, away from the lights, concealed from their nearest neighbors by gilt panels.

“Whenever I might be right?”

Harriet glanced at the pair still in conversation at the front of the box. From what Harriet had heard, the marchioness listened with little apparent interest to most of Octavia’s confidences.

“It is only that I wonder whether the marchioness is interested in Octavia at all?”

“What then? You have an idea?”

“I have been listening to them this half hour. The marchioness’s interest seems to be in you. I doubt she listens to anything Octavia says unless she’s speaking of you, and the marchioness is quite clever at eliciting Octavia’s artless confidences.”

“Really?”

Harriet nodded. “Any disclosure about you, however trivial, has her full attention.”

“Such as?”