“Pah,” Eleanor retorted. “She doesn’t look the sort to be frightened by anything.”
Arabella couldn’t help but smile. “At least not by manners. Not after attempting to teach them to scores of green girls for the past three years.”
Lady Beldon spoke for the first time. “Marcus told us something of your academy, Miss Loring. I should like to hear about it.”
“Certainly, my lady.”
Marcus then made known his close friends, the Duke of Arden and the Marquess of Claybourne.
The duke was darkly blond, his tall frame one of lithe elegance, while the marquess was nearly as tall but more powerfully built, his hair a tawny brown. They each responded to Arabella quite differently. Arden offered her a cool bow, but Claybourne was far more welcoming, flashing her a smile of amused charm that reminded her a little of Marcus.
Arabella could see why the three noblemen were the talk of London. They were all striking men, beautiful as sin yet utterly…male. It was no wonder females were attracted to them in droves. Certainly they drew the rapt attention of the crowded audience now. It seemed to Arabella as if every eye in the theater was trained on their box.
There were two rows of seats, but when Marcus started to guide Arabella to the nearest chair, his sister intervened.
“Please sit beside me, Miss Loring,” Lady Eleanor said. “We can become better acquainted…and perhaps compare stories about my brother’s guardianship.”
Thus, the front row was occupied by the ladies; first Marcus’s aunt, then his sister, then Arabella, and finally Winifred. When Marcus and his friends took the chairs directly behind, Arabella felt unusually exposed, especially when she spied a number of the audience whispering behind fans and pointing at Lord Danvers’s party.
She soon realized they were gossiping about her, although it soothed her pride somewhat to realize she was receiving a few admiring looks of her own from several of the gentlemen.
Lady Eleanor noticed as well. “Don’t pay them any mind, Miss Loring. You are merely their latest object of interest. It will blow over quickly.” She paused, giving her charming laugh. “At least it always does in my case when I commit some minor infraction.”
“Which is far too frequently,” Marcus said, leaning forward.
He had allowed ample time before the play started so they could become acquainted, and the initial conversation proved highly congenial. Eleanor managed to keep up a spirited dialogue while subtly interrogating Arabella about her and her family. But as Marcus had predicted, she found herself liking his sister, who on first impression seemed witty and lively with a wicked sense of fun.
She had less opportunity to converse with Marcus’s friends, since they sat behind her. The marquess threw in a comment now and then, which was a marked contrast to the duke’s conspicuous silence. Arabella had the distinct feeling his grace disapproved of her, although he unbent a little when Eleanor turned to tease him about his glumness. Apparently Arden had scant fondness for Shakespeare, and they were to see a performance of Richard III tonight, with one of London’s greatest actors, John Kemble, playing the lead role.
It was while the duke was trading quips with Lady Eleanor that Arabella spied her friend Fanny Irwin entering a nearby box on an elderly gentleman’s arm. Looking very much the “Fashionable Impure,” Fanny was gowned in emerald satin with her upswept ebony hair and her ample white bosom bedecked with jewels.
Fanny sent Arabella a discreet smile, which she returned just as discreetly. They had decided several years ago, for the sake of her academy’s reputation, that it wasn’t wise for Arabella to blatantly advertise her friendship with a notorious courtesan.
A few moments later, however, she noticed a red-haired lady staring darkly at her from several boxes away. The woman was simply stunning, dressed in an ivory gown whose low decolletage exposed an abundant amount of alabaster skin adorned by diamonds.
Arabella had no idea what she might have done to arouse such enmity from a perfect stranger, but she saw Lady Beldon give the beauty a polite nod of acknowledgment. Fortunately, the curtain rose, and Arabella’s attention became caught up in the drama being enacted on stage.
Kemble’s performance was truly a pleasure to watch, so the time sped by. At the intermission following Act II, Marcus and the duke rose to fetch the ladies some wine. The marquess offered to act as escort when Eleanor professed a desire to stretch her legs and invited Arabella and Winifred to stroll the halls with her.
Lady Eleanor was hugely popular, they quickly discovered. She was greeted frequently and stopped each time to introduce her new friends.
Eleanor was chatting gaily with an older couple when Arabella spied the stunning, red-haired beauty farther along the crowded corridor. When the lady approached Marcus and offered him a cool smile that held more than a hint of seduction, Arabella felt the strangest urge to scratch the woman’s eyes out.
She was scolding herself for her absurd reaction when Winifred noticed her expression. “Don’t be dismayed, my dear,” her friend whispered. “By all reports their affair was over months ago.”
“What affair?”
Winifred hesitated before grimacing. “You may as well hear the tale from me, so you won’t leap to the wrong conclusions.”
“What conclusions? Winifred, will you please stop talking in riddles?”
She sighed. “Very well, that lady is the Viscount Eberly’s very wealthy widow. To put it bluntly, she had a romantic liaison with Lord Danvers years ago when he was still Baron Pierce. Then after her elderly husband obligingly went to meet his Maker, they resumed the relationship for a brief time last Christmas, but it didn’t last. She was too possessive and fancied becoming Baroness Pierce, so he broke it off. To my knowledge they have not been seen together since.”
Arabella suddenly felt a constriction tightening her chest. “They had an affair while her husband was still alive?”
“Well, yes. But it came to nothing in the end, and I doubt Lord Danvers is the least bit interested in her any longer.”
Arabella stared in dismay at Marcus and his beautiful inamorata. She couldn’t deny her jealousy, yet her distress was not only because the stunning Lady Eberly had once been his mistress; it was also because Marcus had pursued the lady while she was still another man’s wife.
Dragging her gaze away, Arabella lifted a hand to her mouth.
“Are you all right, dear?” Winifred asked in concern.
She couldn’t answer just then for the churning in her stomach. To think Marcus had been trying to persuade her to accept his offer of marriage while assuring her that he was nothing like her father, who had harbored no qualms about committing adultery.
“It is nothing,” Arabella managed to lie. “Perhaps I indulged in too many rich dishes at dinner. And the theater is rather warm. I believe I will return to our box, Winifred.”
“Certainly, you should sit down.”
She drew a steadying breath as they moved along the corridor, telling herself she had no right to feel such hurt. She had no real claim to Marcus. It was just that she had begun to trust him, to open her heart to him. You started to believe he was a man you could love.
She should have known his portrayal of the ideal suitor was too perfect to be real.
But seeing Marcus with his former mistress was a cold awakening to reality. Her father had indulged in countless affairs after marriage, showering his affection on his mistresses, leaving her mother to languish alone in humiliation and resentment and heartbreak, pining after an unfaithful man who could never love her. How could she trust that Marcus would be any different if she wed him?
Arabella felt the hot sting of tears burn her eyes. To think that she had actually attempted to picture herself as his wife. Clearly she had been indulging in pipe dreams. Marriage between them would never work out. She was foolish to have thought it might.