by Thea Devine
129
aside and murmured, "Really, her manners are unimpeachable, and her looks quite spectacular. And with Nick handling her trust, why, I would wager someone will offer for her within a month or less of her debut. Never fear, Lucretia: I will launder the story until it is bleached with respectability if that is what Nick wants. You may rest easy on that score."
But Lucretia Waynflete felt very little rest or reassurance from Jane's words. Jane was naive and looked for the best in everyone, and she believed wholeheartedly in Nick, and never would she credit that he would foist a jade into the household of her best friend.
Well, it was done now, and while Miss Bowman did not look smug (which she ought, Lucretia thought mordantly, at having passed the first hurdle of charming Jane Griswold), she did look undeniably beautiful, and more than that, unremittingly exasperated and not at all grateful.
Lucretia thought a Uttle gratitude would have gone a long way toward soothing her increasingly bad feelings at having done Nick this service; it was no longer a lark. But she didn't know quite what it was. She only knew that wealthy and bored widows like herself did not accept wayward girls into their homes with open arms except at the behest of a rogue like Nick, and she swore that evening as they returned to her home in Mayfair that if anything untoward happened over this misadventure, she would make sure that Nick was ostracized—at least for a week. She did not like feeling powerless, and she did not like feeling gray, but she felt old again, as she and Jainee debarked at the house and went slowly up the steps.
The girl was not what she seemed, and she was not what Nick made of her, and Lucretia did not know what to make of the whole. It was easier, she thought, to just pretend the thing was what Nick said it was. At least that way, she could get some enjoyment out of it. And Nick would never let it explode in her face—he just wouldn't: it was very bad ton.
And with that saving grace, she was able to make her peace with her part in the affair, and meet Jainee at dinner with some degree of equanimity, and Jeremy who had come to join them,
130
and discuss the plateload of plans she had made for the succeeding days.
******************
Marie became her confidante. It was so likely: Marie had been with her through the worst—the time after her mother's death, the onerous trip from Italy, the hard times before they had come upon the Alices—and Marie knew the whole and spoke her language, and mended her clothes just as if she were as noble as Southam claimed, and Marie never protested her role in Jainee's life except to say she was happy to be on the periphery of it.
She had always had little expectations herself: had she not come with Jainee, she would have remained in Italy with the Murats, serving the emperor's household in one way or another.
No, Marie was happy to be away from that situation and amenable to becoming the wall of silence against which Jainee framed her thoughts, objections and frustrations.
Marie was also the voice of practicality, hers ever so much more sensible than Jainee's because she dealt with the everyday and commonplace realities, and now Jainee was flying higher than a hot air balloon with as much heat and amorphous air propelling her.
Jainee must not lose sight of the fact that she made a bargain with Southam and that she must not renege, no matter what the cost.
"I don't wish to think about that aspect at all," Jainee said, biting her lip with vexation as she surveyed the newly cleaned and repaired blue kerseymere for which she had to thank Marie's clever fingers.
"You must think about it," Marie told her gently. "The moment will be at hand when Monsieur demands what is rightfully his by the terms of your agreement, and you must come to terms with that. Like your mother and the emperor: she was flattered, yes, but she was not wildly in love. She loved the pursuit, the games, and in the end, her good sense made her understand that she could extract much from this bargain that she would not have had otherwise."
131
"How true," Jainee muttered in annoyance. "My mother was a pattern card of respectable greed. Everything is possible in the name of honor or fulfilling a bargain. I was better off in Brighton—and I didn't know it. Who would have known did I not promise my mother on her deathbed to seek out the thing most impossible to find? No one. No one would have cared. No one would have been hurt. Therese would not have turned in her grave. No one would ever have known I had not left France to seek Therese's dream.
"And yet, here I am, having compromised everything and on the threshold of committing all the same follies as did Therese, and perhaps what I will see for my trouble is a handsome stipend from the scurrilous Lord Southam and nothing else. Nothing. It is as if I have been transposed into my mother's life, and I cant bear it—/ can't.
"This is the very thing I dreaded—the heritage I fought to escape. Now it comes down upon me with the ferocity of a windstorm and carries me with it until I no longer know who I am or what I am doing."
"Nononono . . ." Marie whispered. "No no no, mademoiselle, you know who you are and what you are about. You care, that is why you have made the devil's bargain. You care. You will fulfill your promise as the good daughter you were, and with all the love you bore your mother. You will. And you will find the man, and you will find the child, and you will satisfy yourself that all is well and then you will know that your maman can rest in peace. That is why you have come so far, mademoiselle. The rest does not matter. The Lord Southam is the* means to the end. He will be kind to you because it is, his whim to be, and nothing shall hurt you so long as you are in my care.
"Ah, rest easy, mademoiselle. Everything will play out in due time and you will see that all your worries will have been for nought, even the necessity of submitting to my lord. It is all for a reason, all for a purpose, and mademoiselle will make the fates work for her as she has always done.
"Rest easy, mademoiselle, for I will always be at your side . . ."
132
A week later, Jainee wasn't sure that was enough to make her rest easy, as she donned the blue kerseymere in preparation for an afternoon's outing with Lady Waynflete.
"No one would ever know that Southam had drowned me in chocolate," she complimented Marie, pleased with her image in the mirror as she pirouetted this way and that.
"Neither does Monsieur remember," Marie assured her, smoothing down the line of buttons she had repaired and replaced.
"One would think he had utterly forgotten about me," Jainee agreed. "He has been nowhere around for the previous five days and I am thankful for that. It makes it easier to forget him. Lady Waynflete has kept me so busy I haven't had a moment to think. The British Museum one day, the Tower of London the next. A day browsing in some lending library this last afternoon, as if it were the most important thing to be seen borrowing books. And fittings, fittings, fittings. The dresses! Marie, did you wish, you could become a dressmaker par excellence with no end in sight of business. You are every bit as clever as any of these seamstresses, and far less temperamental.
"Today ... let me see, today we go to see some kind of view of some city in Russia that some painter has made, and apparently you view it in a full circle. The thing goes round the room. I cannot conceive—well ... I will see. And then, of course, there is another fitting. Thank heavens this abominable card party actually happens this weekend. I could scream with frustration, but at least an end is in sight."
"And your reckoning with Monsieur," Marie said.
"Or his reckoning with me," Jainee threw out over her shoulder as she dashed from the room in order to meet Lady Waynflete at the appointed hour.
She had been very careful not to offend Lady Waynflete in any way and to express the proper degree of appreciation for Lady Waynflete's escorting her to the various and sundry entertainments which at least had the virtue of passing the time agreeably.
133
The panorama, one of several to be seen in the city, was indeed in its fashion, a wonder and a curiosity. That a man had made with his own hands
, and in perfect proportion, a lifelike rendering of an exotic city in such a way as to capture all the details and elements of it, was an entertainment in itself. It was impressive, and Jainee, who had never seen anything like it, was dazzled and willing to spend much more time than she would have thought possible admiring the intricacies of it.
This naive appreciation of something that had come to be commonplace for a seasoned city dweller charmed Lady Waynflete out of all bounds, and she was wilhng to let Jainee draw her here and there around the room to examine the particulars of each figure and building.
But soon she wearied of that, and reminded Jainee that she still must have a fitting that afternoon, and if a dress were ready, she, Lady Waynflete, was considering an outing to the opera that evening.
Jainee hoped not. What was the opera but a group of overdressed, overstuffed buffoons caterwauling on a stage in front of a hundred or more people who had no musical sense of appreciation of the melodramatics of the story? She couldn't think of a worse way to spend an evening, and so, she was very disappointed when they arrived at the dressmaker's and found that the ivory satin was ready to be taken home and wanted only a final fitting.
Still and all, this dress—a luscious thick creamy envelope of a dress with its oval bosom-baring neckline, was the most beautiful thing Jainee had ever seen. The moment Madame Signy slid it over her head, she ached to wear it—even to the opera.
"Mademoiselle is a goddess," Madame pronounced as she smoothed away a wrinkle here, and arranged the neckline just so there. "The slippers—here. A matching turban, mademoiselle, the perfect touch," and she set the folds of twisted material on Jainee's dark curls and Jainee had to hold herself back from laughing.
"Perfect," Lady Waynflete said, once again bending that formidable scolding gaze on Jainee lest she commit some
134
impropriety about the turban which, were she feeling more charitable, she would admit looked perfectly ridiculous on Jainee because of her statuesque height.
"We will take the dress with us," she added, and after, as they were on their way back to Mayfair with all packages delicately wrapped and placed in a fragile pile on the seat beside them, she said to Jainee, "The woman is a fool. She recognizes the elegance of your person and then proceeds to make you look like a clown. I will say this, you are quite right about hats for you, and I predict you will cause a sensation in that dress. Only I am not sure if this is good or bad."
"It is whatever my lord wishes," Jainee murmured, looking for some way to reverse Lady Waynflete's negative feelings about her. "Perhaps he will be at the opera tonight?"
"I expect so," Lady Waynflete said, but even she wasnt sure. Nick always seemed moved by the whim of the moment, and no one was ever able to predict what he might or might not do.
But perhaps he ought to see his protegιe in action, she thought. He had taken a particularly hands-off stance since the morning of the chocolate debacle, and he had not come round with either flowers or apologies, and in fact had made sure to meet with Jeremy far from the scene of the crime.
Well, his own perpetration was about to be launched publicly, and he ought to be there, she decided, to see whether this barque of frailty sank or sailed.
135
Chapter Eight
The Regent Royal Theater was an elegant white marble building crafted in pure classical style, from the columned and pedimented entry portico to its arched doorways and gilded and garnished reception hall.
There were ornately capped columns everywhere, including between the tiered balconies that ascended in three crowded levels from the orchestra. The front of each box was decorated with classical motifs and elegant little paintings of neo-Grecian scenes full of mythical creatures and swooning maidens.
It was a spectacle, and it was obvious that here too one attended to be seen and the event of the evening was purely secondary to that.
Lady Waynflete, by virtue of her ability to pay the exorbitant box rental for a season, commanded a seat to the right of the stage in the second tier.
"One doesn't want to be greedy," she said to Jainee as they settled themselves into their seats that night, "nor does one want to be conspicuous. Actually — " she took out her lorgnette and began peering down at the crowd, "it's much easier to be seen in the second row because the first tier is always crowded with hangers-on and parvenus who think they have got the best of things by being so close. But then, that is how some people think."
Jainee held herself aloof, a little dismayed by the intensity of the crowd. It was impossible not to look around: everyone else was surveying the boxes and the orchestra to see who had come—and who hadn't, but still, such blatant ogling was at once annoying and intimidating.
136
But only to her. There was such a gush of greetings and carryings-on from the orchestra to the very top tier of boxes that she wondered whether the rules of etiquette were suspended at public gatherings such as this.
And that did not even account for the dozen or so people who crowded into the box to pay their respects to Lady Waynflete, and the crowds of friends who pushed their way into the surrounding boxes.
Lady Waynflete introduced her to everyone, a dizzying array of names, faces, scents, hands and faintly reserved "how do you do's" which were leavened by the covert asides to Lady Waynflete: "My God, Lucretia—what a gorgeous child; where did you find her?" And then Lady Waynflete's glib explanations, which would find their way all around the opera house by the first intermission.
The play did not matter; the company did not even try to match the noise level of the conversation. Those who were interested peered at the stage through opera glasses and followed the score from booklets which they had brought with them.
For everyone else, it was a public party, complete with excellent company, and champagne throughout the first act, thoughtfully served by waiters who passed from box to box with the offering.
Jainee sipped her champagne, which was the best ruse to avoid having to make conversation with Lady Waynflete's intimates, all of whom sounded like dead bores.
The champagne soothed her so that she was less conscious of the staring and the murmuring that surrounded her. The theater was suffused now with a soft glow from one central chandelier which iit the orchestra and surround with just enough light for everyone to see, but not enough to distract the players on stage.
It was easy to pretend after a while that no one could see her and that she could see everything. It was almost magical, a fairy tale of an evening, with a goddess in her heaven and all the mere mortals down below aching and praying for a mere moment's contact.
How fanciful: it was so easy to fall into all the mythologic nonsense, especially in a place like this, with its cloud-painted ceiling and angelic on-stage host proclaiming in soaring C-notes the glory of love and death as some kind of sanctification.
Jeremy Waynflete slipped into the chair beside her. "Everyone is
137
talking about you. You should be pleased with yourself."
"I only wish to please Lady Waynflete," Jainee said sharply, aware just how sanctimonious this sounded, but Jeremy Waynflete was not being kind, and it was hard to tell whether this fact would please his mother or not.
Or maybe that wasn't important after all. Perhaps her mind should be on the main question: was there any man here familiar to her? She hadn't particularly thought of the opera as a place to begin her search for her father.
It was in fact the last place she would think to look for him, but she began to focus with more intention now, if only to avoid Jeremy Waynflete's disapproving look.
"None of this washes," Jeremy said.
"You've made that quite plain," Jainee countered instantly, "and also that Lord Southam's wishes would be yours, so I do not see the point of belaboring the situation. I am here, as he wishes. Your mother has been kind to me, and I have no desire to embarrass her in any way, and your displeasure does not seem to enter into it at all."
&
nbsp; "I will protect my mother from her own folly," Jeremy retorted, and then he said, "Oh, there's Nick."
Oh, yes—there was Nick: it was almost as if there were some kind of spotlight on him. Jainee did not know how she could have missed him, especially with that opera-dancer on his arm, as brass-faced and flashy as a diamond.
She felt herself girding for the storm. He would come, he would come. He was a master at playing games to please himself. But he had not reckoned with her. She was his equal in all things: huntress to predator. They were the same. She saw it in his eyes, the brief flash of acknowledgement.
When she saw him, she would make sure he knew that his games meant nothing to her. And how easy that would be, with a box crowded to full with Lady Waynflete's contemporaries—and Jeremy's.
All the young men just swarming around her, now they had seen her with Jeremy, and demanding introductions and saying all those sweet meaningless things on which she would dine for many evenings to come.
138
There never was a sincere man, she thought, watching Southam wind his way elegantly through the crowd below. Men were beasts; they would tear the marrow from a woman, devour the best part of her, and leave the rest for carrion.
But not she, not she. Therese, the impulsive, the heedless, the reckless, Therese lived deep within her. Only she would know where to draw the lines and when to obliterate them. Only she would play the game on her terms.
"Miss Bowman."
"My lord?" she said politely. The creature was still with him, as blowsy as an overripe peach.
"May I present. . . Miss Mannion."
"So pleased," she murmured and Miss Mannion muttered something in return, and then disinterestedly moved away to speak with Jeremy.
"Nicely done, Diana," Nicholas said, sitting himself down next to Jainee. "You do me proud."
Jainee smiled, feeling the familiar combativeness wash down her spine. "May I return the compliment?" she asked sweetly, meeting his flat black gaze with a limpid look of pure guilelessness.