Page 24

The knowledge that she still felt the same as he did was close on unbearable. And so, though he knew it was the worst kind of folly, when the music began and the lights seemed to dim a little – though not nearly enough for his purposes – he reached out and took her hand, low down against the silk of her skirts where nobody could see. He’d already taken off his own gloves and laid them on his thigh. Slowly he unbuttoned her right glove all the way to the wrist, then slid two fingers inside, and very, very lightly he stroked her palm. She did not pull away, as she so easily could have done, or stiffen in his clasp. Instead she curved her fingers around his, making a warm little cave, and he tried to convey all that he would rather be doing by the gentle, rhythmic motion of his fingers. Though he did not look to see – his eyes were on the stage, seeing nothing at all of the doings there – he knew that she had bitten her lip to stifle a tiny moan. Luckily, the orchestra was loud. Whatever else one might say about it, it was loud.

Time passed very swiftly when thus occupied, but the music and singing rose to a crescendo and warned Xan that he must stop what he was doing or find himself in a great deal of trouble. By the time the first act, or whatever it was, had come to a conclusion, he was properly gloved again, though breathing hard. He’d fastened up Bianca’s buttons for her – an act almost as erotic as undoing them had been – and they both presented, he hoped, an appearance of outward respectability. No doubt his erection would subside eventually, though it showed no signs of doing so at the moment. And this despite the fact that he had laid desperate hands on himself, twice, before leaving the house for the evening, knowing the effect that her presence always had on him.

Their companions were conversing, and he must at least pretend to pay polite attention to them. ‘I don’t think it’s very historically accurate, do you, ma’am?’ the Duchess was saying drolly. If she was still furious with him for his treatment of her sister, she wasn’t letting it show tonight, for which he supposed he should be grateful. ‘I can’t claim I always paid as much attention in the schoolroom as I should have done, but I really don’t recall Mary, Queen of Scots, having all these extra children, nor Lord Leicester marrying one of them in such dramatic circumstances. I think even I might have remembered that.’

‘No, it is pure nonsense,’ his aunt agreed, fanning herself. ‘But the singing is fine, and the costumes excessively pretty. What is your opinion of Signor Rossini’s new work, Miss Constantine? Or perhaps it is not new to you – maybe you had seen it before, in Italy?’

‘In fact, I had.’ She was astonishingly composed, and somehow that was even more arousing. Only he knew that she had been all but gasping with unfulfilled desire a moment or two ago. ‘I was lucky enough to attend the premiere in Naples a few years ago with my friends there – a very grand and memorable occasion. It is historically ridiculous, as you say, and much of the music is reused from elsewhere, but are not operas often so? I’m enjoying it enormously this time too, for all the story is a little silly.’

‘So am I,’ said Xan, feeling he must contribute something. And indeed he was, in his own way, though he knew no good could possibly come of it.

38

Mrs Arbuthnot was also attending the opera tonight with her husband and a party of other people – Bianca did not imagine for a moment that this was any kind of coincidence – and the couple inevitably came over to her mother’s box during the interval to speak to her and her guests. This should hammer home the impression, in case anybody watching the proceedings should happen to be particularly dense, that all Lord Fairmount’s family repudiated with some indignation the gossip that was currently circulating, and considered his relations with Miss Constantine always to have been entirely proper.

‘The old gargoyle has left us, thank heaven,’ were the first words the gentleman, Mr Arbuthnot, uttered after being presented to them. Bianca had not met him before despite spending so much time in his house and with his family. She found him to be amiable, if a little fixated on one subject and one subject only. He had very prominent pale-blue eyes, a high colour, and rather resembled one of the royal dukes in face and manner, though he was of course much younger than any of those gentlemen. Perhaps he was an illegitimate son; they were known to have plenty between them.

But he was not done speaking. ‘Yes, we’re rid of her at last! Packed up her traps and gone in high dudgeon, though of course she couldn’t say anything directly about it to us, off to Grillon’s and taken her damn monkey with her. The children are upset, and want me to buy them one – “Over my dead body, hideous brats!” I said. May have to get them another puppy; fine. That’s a proper pet. Cat, even, box of white mice, or a parrot at a pinch. Parrots can be dashed amusing fellows, considering they’re just glorified chickens. Not something with nasty little clutching hands and teeth like razors. Not something in a jacket. Flies against nature, don’t you think, Fairmount?’

Xan murmured that it did, and that he was excessively glad not to have encountered the beast when he had called on his cousin the other day, or on any other occasion. Arbuthnot fixed his globular eyes on him and said in a low, confidential tone, which was still perfectly audible to everyone else in the small space, and certainly to Bianca, ‘Can’t trust a person like that, insists on feeding the thing from her own plate as if it was a human child. Cut up little pieces of expensive fruit from my own succession house, coaxed it to try each slice at my dinner table, and I had to sit there watching and looking as though I didn’t object, which I dashed well do. Pineapple, I ask you! This, this, mind you, after the beast had taken a damned big bite out of my hand and liked the taste of me so much it lay in wait for me the next day in the hall and tried to do it again. Turned my stomach, I can tell you. I don’t believe a word she says about anything. Anything, d’you understand me, old man? Not the time of day if she said it, not whether it was raining, not a word about you or any lady or anybody else. Woman’s no better than a lunatic, what?’

Bianca looked down hastily, as the gentleman was contorting his face into what she supposed must be a series of significant winks; she was not sure that her composure would survive more of them.

Xan obviously understood him, as anyone of modest intelligence might, and told him that he did, and was grateful for the sentiment. Mr Arbuthnot’s wife and mother-in-law tried rather desperately to divert him to more pleasant topics, but had still not succeeded in doing so when it was time for the couple to return to their own box for the next act of the opera. Bianca was obliged to bite the inside of her lip to prevent herself from wondering aloud what the distressed gentleman could possibly be making of the operatic performance. He could hardly be supposed to be here of his own free will. Perhaps he was spending the evening ignoring the far-fetched activities on the stage and brooding on how exactly he might be revenged on Lady Wellbeloved and his nemesis, her exotic pet.

‘Every day that passes,’ Lady Deborah said in a conversational tone as soon as they had left, ‘I wonder what possessed my husband to consent to that marriage when Arbuthnot came and asked for Jessica’s hand. He is amiable, I suppose, undoubtedly wealthy, and they seem happy enough. But if brains were gunpowder, he could not blow his own nose with what he has in his skull. Oh, they are beginning again. I expect somebody in Queen Elizabeth’s court will betray somebody else before too long, which is at least somewhat realistic, though singing about it afterwards is decidedly not, in my experience.’

Bianca sat back in her seat, and wondered if Xan would take her hand again, and what she’d do if he did. Pull away, as she should, or make it clear that she was quite prepared to participate, as she had a few moments ago? It was a serious weakness on both their parts, she must consider – this inability to keep their hands off each other, when it was plain that whatever lay between them had no future. Perhaps Viola had been right – perhaps they should attempt by drastic means to get it out of their systems once and for all. The idea was undeniably tempting. But that was hardly going to happen tonight, or here.

‘Can you imagine what we could do here if we were alone?’ he said in the faintest whisper under cover of the lively music.

‘But we are not,’ she returned in equally low tones. ‘And we never will be.’ She could imagine. That was the problem.

39

Lord Fairmount’s coach dropped the Duchess at her town mansion near the park before heading back to Challender House. ‘That was a most successful evening,’ said Lady Deborah contentedly as the vehicle drew up outside the Da Costas’ home to set Bianca down first. ‘All the more because it is quite plain that poor Arbuthnot is going about London telling everyone who will listen to him, and many who would prefer not to, that Lettice Wellbeloved is highly eccentric and barely civilised, to put it no more strongly. And if her pet savages half the staff and some of the residents of Grillon’s, as we must all hope it will, that should also help matters. But I shall still expect to take you to Lord Meacham’s house for dinner before the ball next week, my dear child. I believe they expect the Duke of Kent to look in later in the evening; he’s on the hunt for a bride, of course.’

Bianca could only murmur assent, as Xan jumped down to help her out. He accompanied her to Sabrina’s door and waited with her while it was opened, but there was no time for either of them to say anything of any moment, and she wasn’t sure what she would have said in any case. But she knew, as she made her way up the stairs to bed, that she would be getting a new gown from Madame Lisette for the ball, even though she didn’t really need one. And she had no desire at all to lie awake in the dark wondering what precisely that might mean, but still she did.

* * *

Her new gown was the first she had ordered in several years that was deliberately made to be short enough for dancing. Bianca couldn’t for a moment recall the last time she had danced in public, but thought it must have been in spring 1815, in Suffolk, after she, Beatrice and Cecilia had inherited their fortune and their house. There had been a village assembly – an event very much unlike a grand London ball – and she had danced with all sorts of people, including the man who was now Cecilia’s husband, and his scholar brother, and a gentleman of rank who had met an untimely end only a night or two later. But she had never danced with Xan Challender, not here and not in Venice. There had never been an occasion for it.

If Madame Lisette had heard the rumours about her young client and Lord Fairmount, which seemed all too likely, she said nothing of them. She produced a splendid golden ensemble that was fuller in the skirts than most that Bianca had worn before. The bodice had very little of the gold fabric in it; instead, the finest cream silk covered her bosom and had been made into intricate swagged and puffed sleeves that left her shoulders largely bare. The creamy fabric somehow looked as though it was about to slip further off at any moment, though it was ingeniously constructed in such a way that, the modiste assured her, it never would. Deep bands of cream, also plaited and embroidered with brilliants, embellished the hem. The outfit was finished with a gauzy gold- and cream-striped shawl, and Sabrina’s maid braided and coiled her dark hair on the night of the ball, fastening it high on the back of her head and training loose ringlets down over her ears. Viola had lent her a magnificent pearl necklace, too, which complimented the gown perfectly: when she caught sight of herself in the cheval glass in her bedroom, she barely recognised what she saw there. She looked older and grander than she had ever done before, and just like someone who had a perfect right to dance with earls, dukes and royal princes if she wished to do so. The question was, did she wish to?

Sabrina dismissed her maid with a word of thanks and regarded her youngest sister with satisfaction. ‘I know the purpose of this event is to quell the gossip about you once and for all,’ she said. ‘Let us hope it succeeds. But it will do more than that, you know, Littlest, either way. You will have suitors after this, you mark my words. And not just ones attracted by your fortune, either. I must say, it is about time.’

‘I don’t want suitors,’ Bianca replied crossly, still regarding herself with a sort of wary fascination, as though her reflection were a glamorous stranger whose intentions she did not quite trust. ‘I’m not a woman of fashion and I don’t want to be one. I just want to paint and be left in peace.’

‘Who says you can’t do both?’ Mrs Da Costa asked her. ‘Go into society when it suits you, and pursue your art the rest of the time?’

‘A husband, I should think,’ Bianca retorted smartly. ‘That sounds exactly like the kind of thing a husband would have strong views on, and the means to enforce them if they differed from mine. I didn’t spend all this time working away to develop my skills only to give it all up the first time some fop condescends to look at me. You know I didn’t. Not everybody has to get married.’

‘Of course not,’ Sabrina said mildly, and Bianca chose not to pursue the topic any further, in case it led to a falling-out. She had been extravagant, she thought, choosing this gown, but everyone deserved a little indulgence now and again, she could afford it, and if she never wore it above once it could be passed on to one of her older nieces for remaking. That shouldn’t be a depressing thought, yet somehow it was.

40

It pained Xan to see that his aunt had been right. His mere presence in society was causing a perceptible stir, and it seemed increasingly to have little to do with the rumours connecting him to Bianca Constantine or her mythical cousin. He was forced to wonder if the gossip had been no more than an excuse, and his concern for Bianca’s good name, which he had so rashly expressed to Aunt Deborah, had in fact been ruthlessly exploited to drag him into the Season, into places he would never go of his own free will, and keep him there. If he did not take the greatest care, he would find himself offering marriage to some simpering debutante before the month was out, with very little idea how it had happened. And that was the last thing he wanted.