Page 24 of Becoming Lady Dalton
13
Piers hadhis first taste of American Kilpatricks at the evening’s performance ofLove in a Village.The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane’s latest incarnation, had switched to new gas lighting—a fact that Piers had gained appreciation for ever since the Briarcliff townhouse had burned down. There was nothing like being touched with personal tragedy to bring home the danger of simply leaving the house, Piers mused.
“Don’t know what you mean by that?” Lady Margaret interjected sullenly.
In truth, Piers had forgotten about his companion. Apparently, he’d muttered the thought out loud. “By what?” he asked.
Lady Margaret gave him a peculiar expression, half stare, half sneer. If a petite woman could be said to look down her nose at a taller man, she managed it. “You mumbled something about the danger of leaving the house, Lord Dalton. I don’t understand your meaning,” she replied slowly, as though speaking to a child or a simpleton.
“I mean that the gas lights are safer than candles,” Piers replied starchily. “From a fire perspective.”
The evening was off to an awkward start. Evendaw had badgered him into joining his party, then insisted he take a place in his box. Piers, hemmed in by gossip that he was courting Lady Margaret, had been hard-pressed to refuse. It was a downright conspiracy to wed him off. Though his object in coming here this evening was to be near another woman.
Viola. However hard she tried to push him into Lady Margaret’s arms, after three minutes of conversation, there was no possibility that he would sign on for a lifetime of stilted exchanges and suspicious, cold shoulders. Not for an heir. If he hadn’t already been disinclined to court Lady Margaret, the prospect of getting one on an unwilling woman was enough to make him shudder with revulsion.
“I quite prefer the twinkly candlelight of the Haymarket Theatre. The effect is very pretty with the pink, crimson, and gold scheme,” Margaret offered after a moment.
“I find it rather loud, myself.” Piers shifted away from Lady Margaret, scanning the crowd. Why couldn’t he have said, “Oh, that’s delightful. So true,”instead of inserting his opinion where it was unwanted? This was one reason he’d never had much success with ladies of the ton. Not that he’d exactly given it much effort since his late wife’s death. He wasn’t much given to coddling delicate ladies with fragile sensibilities. Even Emilia had been a handful, given to sprightly challenges and witty ripostes. While he couldn’t have said he was deeply in love, they’d rubbed on together well enough. There had been brief moments of affection and a core of respect.
He couldn’t do that again. Holding Emilia at a distance had been hard enough. She’d been a woman he could have fallen in love with, if he’d let himself. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have married her.
Beside him, Lady Margaret lapsed into her customary surly silence. If anything, it appeared to be more pronounced now than it had been when they took the box. Fair to say there was no prospect of him and Margaret rubbing along well enough, now or in the future—not with her hissing at him like a wet cat whenever Piers opened his mouth.
“Listen, Margaret,” Piers began, then immediately snapped it shut. He’d become too used to addressing Viola by her given name, and in his distraction, he’d just committed a grave insult by omitting his companion’s title.
“LadyMargaret,” she insisted without looking at him. Instead, she raised her lorgnette and scanned the boxes while the orchestra warmed up.
“Pedantry is never a fine quality in a lady,” he shot back as annoyance got the better of him. They didn’t like one another. He needed to end this catastrophic courtship before rumor turned into fact.
“I’ll thank you not to be overly familiar with me, Lord Dalton. I shall let it slide this once, but if it happens again, I assure you I shall inform my brother.” The disgruntled young woman beside him straightened suddenly and peered out from behind her lorgnette. “Oh, look. There’s Miss Lowry with the Kilpatricks. Let’s go and visit them, shall we?”
Anything to put distance between him and the woman he was supposedly courting—though after their brief introduction at the disastrous Woolryte ball, Piers was less than enthusiastic at the prospect of closer acquaintance with the brash American family. Yet, the alternative was to remain here, trapped for the next two hours in this tiny box with Evendaw, his sister, and his wife. Evendaw glanced over at him with an approving smirk.
“We’re going to visit Miss Lowry,” Lady Margaret informed her brother. Piers detected no affection between them. The lone person Margaret appeared to have any feelings for was her new friend, Miss Lowry. Her fixation on her friends spoke of a lack of maturity.
“Are you?” Evendaw responded, his gaze cutting to Piers.
He lifted one shoulder as if to imply,she’s your sister.His old school friend didn’t challenge him.Instead, the man examined his program with a dismissiveness that made Piers want to shake Evendaw like a terrier with a rat. As he doubted Lady Margaret would appreciate his imagined gesture of protectiveness, he instead followed her out of the box and down the red-silk-wallpapered hallway toward her friends on the opposite side.
They ducked into the box just as the orchestra began to signal the start of the performance. Three auburn heads with matching pearl-encrusted monoculars scanned the audience. A fourth head piled high with fat, glossy, dark curls sat between one of the redheads and the end. If Miss Lowry possessed a magnifying device of any sort, he couldn’t see it. She closed her eyes as the orchestra played the opening notes and sighed. Lady Margaret settled herself into the space between Miss Lowry and the lone Kilpatrick sister who sat apart.
“The Duke of Havencrest! I thought he never left his estate?”
“I heard he’s rich as Croesus. He has a connection to Queen Charlotte; isn’t that how he became a duke?”
“Iheard the man is disfigured.”
From the backs of their heads, Piers couldn’t identify whether it was Annabelle, Beth, or Carolina Kilpatrick who spoke. It didn’t matter. Havencrest was a duke; wealth was assumed. Appalled, Piers hovered behind the row of women, debating whether he ought to stay here or go in search of more amiable companions. Margaret’s head bowed with Miss Lowry’s obligated him to stay.
“How badly?” asked the sister who sat apart.
Three pairs of mother-of-pearl and brass theater glasses were trained on the Havencrest box. Piers accidentally caught Miss Lowry’s eye—as though the Kilpatricks’ guest had any power to stop the mercenary Americans from disparaging the newest member of England’s aristocracy. Lady Margaret and Miss Lowry’s heads were bowed in deep conference. The two sisters glared coolly at their sibling who continued on without acknowledging their disdain.
“For example, could one close one’s eyes once a fortnight and do the deed or would daily exposure to the man’s scarred hideousness be too high a price to pay for becoming a duchess?”
“I imagine any price is worth paying to become a duchess,” observed Miss Lowry.
Hearing the same sentiments expressed from a man would’ve offended him less. Three young ladies brazenly dissecting a man’s physical appeal and potential fortune was a pleasure he’d had the good fortune to avoid, thanks to his brief courtship, subsequent marriage and general avoidance of society. Piers considered the repercussions of abandoning Miss Lowry to her friend’s abrasive friends and edged backward, out of sight. From this new angle, he caught sight of his ultimate quarry. No wonder he hadn’t spotted Viola before now. She occupied a box below and to the back of Evendaw’s, accompanied by her grandmother and the damnable Admiral Saxon.
