I hardly felt my sore knee as I stamped around the perimeter of Covent Garden Theatre to Lady Breckenridge's box. Louisa and I had quarreled before, but this felt very different.
She was tired of me. I did not blame her. And yet I did blame her for being cruel. She was cutting me off from a thing that gave me joy-speaking to her. Later on, I would hurt. Now, I was simply angry.
In such a mood, I entered Lady Breckenridge's box on the upper tier.
Chapter Sixteen
Lady Breckenridge's theatre box rivaled Grenville's for elegance. A gilt-embellished door led to a small outer room with a dining table where guests could take a meal before the performance. An oriental carpet covered the floor, and a crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling to illuminate the satinwood furniture. A double door beyond this room led to the box itself, through which sounds of laughter and conversation drifted from the theatre proper.
The lackey tapped on the inner door for me, then opened it and ushered me through.
Six chairs stood in a row overlooking the stage below. Lady Breckenridge occupied the chair in the middle in a gown of lavender that left her shoulders bare. Her dark hair was threaded with diamonds.
Next to her sat a gentleman I did not know, and on her other side, with an empty chair between them, was Lady Aline Carrington. The gentleman returned my nod when Lady Breckenridge introduced us, but without much interest.
I took the seat between the two ladies. Lady Aline, stout of frame, had her gowns made cleverly, so that the dress neither pointed out nor hid her rotund figure. She rouged her cheeks red, outlined her eyes in kohl, and had coiled her white hair around a feathered headdress.
"Lacey, my boy, I am pleased to see you," she said warmly.
"And I you, my lady."
"I will forgive the lie. I hear you have been haring about town again, solving crimes like a Bow Street Runner. Disgraceful."
I took her admonishment good-humoredly. Lady Aline liked me, and I her.
"Was that Louisa Brandon I saw you speaking to?" Lady Aline went on in her booming voice. She waved her lorgnette, indicating that she'd spied us through it. "I had not thought she was coming tonight."
I responded that she had indeed seen Louisa and hoped my tense anger did not betray itself.
"I shall have to call on her tomorrow and have a good chat," Lady Aline said. She seemed in no hurry to rise and round the theatre to speak with her now.
I had no idea what the opera was below. The players seemed not to have much idea either. The audience laughed at the tragedy and shouted at the comedy, and a group of tall lads, who each reminded me a bit of the lanky Mr. Gower, sang along at the tops of their voices.
Lady Breckenridge wore a thick perfume tonight that smelled of eastern spices. She made little movements with her fan that sent the scent into my nose.
The gentleman on her other side was called Lord Percy Saunders, and that his father was the Duke of Waverly. Lord Percy, somewhere between forty and fifty, with gray hair at his temples, said little, and occasionally wiped his nose with a handkerchief. When he did speak, he confined his remarks to Lady Breckenridge and ignored me and Lady Aline.
When the opera wound to an interval, Lady Aline gathered her things and rose. "I've had enough of this nonsense. Good night, Donata. Give my love to your mother."
Lady Breckenridge smiled and gave her a pleasant, "Good night." Lord Percy rose and bowed, looking bored.
I escorted Lady Aline downstairs, since Lord Percy did not seem inclined to bestir himself. I walked with her all the way to her carriage in King Street, her footman and maid trailing us. Lady Aline told me I had manners, unlike many a gentleman, a high compliment from her, and I shut her carriage door.
When I returned to Lady Breckenridge's box, Lord Percy had gone.
Lady Breckenridge was just coming into the little dining room as I entered it. She paused at the doors that led to the box, an odd look on her face. Then she shook her head and closed the double doors behind her. The noise from the second act of the opera faded somewhat.
"Your friend Percy has no manners," I observed. "He should not have left you alone."
"He is ghastly." The diamonds in her hair sparkled as she turned her head. "He believes I should give up being the dowager Viscountess Breckenridge to become his wife." She shuddered. "I could not bear to be called Lady Percy."
"You might be called Duchess of Waverly later," I said.
"He is a younger son and unlikely to ever become the duke," she said dismissively. "Do you know, Lacey, that just for a moment, when you came in, you looked remarkably like Breckenridge."
I blenched. Her late husband had been a brute of a man with little to redeem him. "I am sorry to hear you say that."
"I do not believe there has been a morning I have not awakened thanking heaven that he is dead." Lady Breckenridge punctuated the callous remark by removing a cigarillo from a silver case. She lit it with one of the candles on the table and put it to her mouth. "Do sit down, Lacey. Unless you would rather listen to that racket that is supposed to be opera."
I did not, so I took one of the Louis Quinze chairs, waiting for her to sit before I did.
She leaned back as she looked me up and down, tendrils of acrid smoke weaving about her head. "You seem in much better health, this evening, I must say."
"Indeed. Your butler's cure worked wonders."
"Barnstable is marvelous. But I see you have not recovered your walking stick. Although that is a fine one."
"Grenville kindly lent it to me."
"Pity about the other," she said, taking a pull on the cigarillo. "It must have been a wrench to lose something that close to you."
I was surprised she understood that. "It is, yes."
"And I read in the newspaper this evening that Mrs. Chapman's husband, of all people, had been arrested for Inglethorpe's murder. Do you think he did it?"
"He confessed," I said.
"Probably mistook Inglethorpe for having an affair with his wife," Lady Breckenridge said with uncanny perception. "Mrs. Chapman was a silly young woman, and I am not surprised she brought everyone around her to a bad end. She was quite common, as I told you."
"Yes, so you said." Her opinion coincided with Marianne's. Peaches had been a woman other women had little use for.
"Do not pity her too much," Lady Breckenridge said, observing my expression. "She brought many of her troubles upon herself."
"I can't forget seeing her lying on the bank of the Thames," I said softly. "It was a brutal death."
"I daresay it was. But do not let that cloud your judgment to what she was."
"You are a bit brutal yourself tonight," I said.
Her eyes took on an enigmatic light. "I am honest. And not always polite, I am afraid."
I smiled a little. "I am surprised you speak with me at all. I am hardly in your class."
She returned the smile. It was surprisingly warm, and her eyes twinkled almost as much as Lady's Aline's. "Nonsense. You come from a fine lineage. I looked you up."
"A rather overly pruned family tree," I said dryly.
"And you have no sons?"
I shook my head.
"But you were married, weren't you?" she asked.
I regarded her in surprise. My marriage was not common knowledge, not because I wanted to hide it, but because I didn't like talking about it. Why cause myself more pain?
Her smile deepened. "You have the look of a man who's had a wife, who has experienced the hell that can be marriage. A widower, you know, looks a different man from a bachelor."
I only nodded, not correcting her that I was not a widower. My wife still lived, in France, possibly with the French officer for whom she had left me. She had changed her name, but I still knew her as Carlotta.