He had no idea. But his mother’s limpid, inquiring gaze suggested it would be wise to dissemble about this as well. “I believe so, yes. I haven’t yet had the opportunity to call, however.”
“Of course.” There was a hint of reproof in her voice he chose to ignore. “As I said,” she added, setting down her teacup, “you’ve been working far too hard this season.”
With that, she turned her attention to Susan, but as she inquired about the girl’s dress for an upcoming ball, Denys found little relief in the change of subject, for he was forced to face the fact that during the past three weeks, the woman he was considering to be his future wife had occupied none of his attention. He hadn’t answered her letters; he hadn’t even read them. In fact, other than a brief consideration of her during his conversation with Lola at Covent Garden, he hadn’t spared so much as a thought for Georgiana during the entire time she’d been away.
Of course, many things had been going on in his life of late. Any man might find himself a bit at sixes and sevens in consequence—
He stopped that attempt to justify his lapse of gentlemanly conduct straightaway, for he knew there was no justification. He was thinking to marry Georgiana, for heaven’s sake. How could he have forgotten about her so completely?
Even as he asked himself that question, he knew the answer.
Denys set down his knife and fork, shoved back his chair, and stood up, intending to remedy his lapse in gentlemanly conduct at once.
“Forgive me, ladies,” he said, bowing to his mother and sister. “But I must be on my way. I have a great deal to do today if I’m to take tomorrow away from the offices.”
He turned to go, but then paused and looked at his mother. “You are quite right, Mama. I have been spending too much time working. Will you be so good as to inform my secretary which events you would most like me to attend in the coming weeks? I shall make every effort to fulfill your wishes on that score and spend more time enjoying the season with our family and friends.”
That accommodation pleased her, he could tell, but it didn’t make him feel much better. As he left the dining room, he was still dismayed by his own forgetfulness, aggravated by the reasons for it, and feeling guilty as hell. He’d vowed that he would not allow this partnership with Lola to have any effect on his private life, and so far, he was not doing very well at keeping that particular vow.
“Be a reed, Denys,” he muttered, raking his hands through his hair as he traversed the corridor to the front of the house. “Not an oak.”
As he turned toward the stairs, he noticed the butler in the foyer, and he paused, one hand on the newel post, one foot on the bottom step. “Monckton?”
The butler turned from the mirror on the wall he was attempting to straighten. “My lord?”
“Have my carriage brought around in half an hour, would you?” he said and started up. “And have Henry fetch a posy of forget-me-nots from the flower girl on the corner, if you please.”
Thirty minutes later, attired in a gray morning suit and top hat suitable for paying calls, Denys came down to find his carriage waiting at the curb, with a pretty bouquet of forget-me-nots on the seat and his driver standing by.
“To 18 Berkeley Square,” he said, and stepped into his carriage.
He knew it was time to put his priorities back in the proper order and start arranging his future, but as his carriage carried him the few short blocks to the Marquess of Belsham’s London residence, Denys couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that his future was going to be about as exciting as watching paint dry.
During the week that had followed her picnic supper with Denys, Lola immersed herself in the play. Due to Arabella’s arrogant tendency to offer unsolicited suggestions and advice to her fellow actors, Lola in particular, there were several more late nights at the rehearsal hall during that week.
At first, Lola had been worried that Arabella’s near-constant criticism of her abilities would cement the notion that she was only here because of the men she had slept with, but as the days passed, the opposite outcome had proved closer to the truth. The more criticism Arabella heaped on her, the more other members of the company had been inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt, especially since Arabella didn’t only pick on her but on them as well.
It was plain the conduct of Jacob’s diva was causing his patience with her to erode, a fact in which Lola couldn’t help taking some satisfaction. By Friday, he’d begun cutting Arabella’s comments off midsentence with terse comments of his own, and actors had started speculating how long it would be before a full-on quarrel erupted. Lola had offered no opinion knowing it was best to keep her mouth closed and her mind on her work. She was not only an actor in the company, she was also an owner, and as Denys had pointed out, owners did not play favorites or take sides.
Regardless of the emotional upheaval, work had proved a blessing. During rehearsals, when she was reciting lines and immersing herself in the play, when she was grinding her teeth in exasperation at Arabella’s latest interruption, or trying to accept Jacob’s vision of her role rather than impose her own, she was able to put Denys out of her mind and concentrate solely on what she’d come here to accomplish.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t work all the time, and in between, there were the gaps, the times when she was alone, and there was nothing to do but think.
She wasn’t used to gaps like that. In New York, she’d had her own show, one that needed the constant replenishment of new songs and new dance routines to keep it fresh and entertaining. Any spare time she had, she’d spent it honing her skill at dramatic acting, and there’d been little time or energy left for things like reflection and contemplation.
But here in London, in spite of Arabella’s desire to keep all of them slaving away, she had far more time on her hands than she’d ever had in New York, and she had few friends here to distract her.
Nights were the worst, for she would lie in bed, wide-awake, thinking of her conversations with Denys at Covent Garden and in the rehearsal hall, the sandwiches and confidences they’d shared, and she’d wonder what had impelled her to be so forthcoming. In the whole of her life, she’d never talked about herself as much as she had during the past few weeks.
How? she wondered, staring up at the plasterwork ceiling that gleamed stark and white in the darkness of the room. How had he managed to wheedle one of the most sordid details of her past out of her? As he had noted, she’d always been very adept at deflecting conversation away from herself, especially with him.
You shared almost nothing with me about what your life was like before we met.
She’d left Charlotte Valinsky behind on her eighteenth birthday, the day she’d bought a steamship ticket from New York to Paris, and when she’d stepped aboard that steamship with a ticket that had Lola Valentine’s name on it, she’d never looked back. During her time with Denys, she had exercised painstaking care and a great deal of ingenuity to deflect any questions and keep her past life hidden from him. Dancing the cancan and singing suggestive French songs was just risqué enough to titillate and intrigue a gentleman of Denys’s class, but that was a far cry from stripping off most of her clothes for the randy sailors who worked the boats of the Bay Ridge Channel. She’d always been afraid if Denys knew the depths to which Charlotte had sunk, it would drive him away. Five nights ago, she’d finally told him the truth—a piece of it, anyway—for that exact purpose.