“Attendant,” Malcolm provided.
“Deacon,” Jasper suggested. “Docent.”
“Attendant,” Malcolm said again, his mischief thoroughly punctured in the face of poor vocabulary.
“You can sit with the others who worked on that chandelier,” Jasper told the foreman, taking him by the shoulder and steering him back toward the mezzanine stairs. “The lapidary expressly requested being at eye level. I imagine he’ll be cross we haven’t lit it, though.”
He got the man situated and seated just as the hanging clock chimed on the hour, creating a stir of agitated babble from the little orchestra pit and a sudden emergence of Liberty Lennox, still pulling on one of her elbow-length satin gloves as she muttered to herself and hurried down the stage stairs toward the entrance.
Jasper grinned to himself and turned to do the same, eager to meet her for one final stolen moment before they let the outside world in.
He liked opening night, he thought. So far, he liked it very well.
He wasn’t going to tell her that, though. She’d already expressed to him that it was rubbish. “The only thing worse is closing night,” she’d said with enough resentment that he suspected she believed it.
She was wearing a rich, amethyst satin, her skin oiled and glowing over the sharp lines of her collarbones and the strip of visible skin between the tops of her gloves and the bottoms of her puffed sleeves. She had purple gems behind her ears, her hair a glorious tumble of curated curls.
She looks like a queen, he thought.
He caught her before she could fly past him, on the final stair of the mezzanine approach. His hand to her elbow swung her around like a door hinge, her face flickering rapidly from wide eyes to narrowed ones to rolled ones and a sigh.
“Friar Lawrence lost his shoes,” she complained by way of greeting.
“That’s all right,” Jasper told her, pulling her gently by her elbow to meet him for a quick peck on the lips. “No one’s going to think a poor monk looks less authentic when barefoot.”
She blinked, pushing him back a little as the thought clicked into place behind her eyes.
She immediately sagged a little with relief. “You’re right,” she said, and then she kissed him again. “You’re right.”
“I’m right,” he agreed, following her happily as she turned and marched them to the doors.
“Try to intercept the Templeton-Raths first,” she told him quickly, smoothing her gloved hands over one another all the way up to the tops of the seams at her biceps. “I’ll take the Starlings except for Elias and Hattie. The Templeton-Raths should meet the local baron and baroness. You facilitate that introduction and I will attempt to intercept my father before he can run into Malcolm.”
“Aye,” he said with a respectful little nod and a click of his heels.
She narrowed her eyes. “Good. Ready?”
“Ready,” he told her.
And she nodded to the men at the doors, allowing them to push open the portal to the night.
It wasn’t quite a swarm, though Jasper couldn’t think of a better name for it. People were so bereft of entertainment after the summer crowds fled and the pavilions closed for the low season that apparently, the promise of theater had worked the remaining denizens of Brighton into a frenzy.
There would only be standing room, he predicted, so he needed to get his assigned persons to their seats as quickly as he could.
Sadly, they did not enter the vestibule in the expected order, and as such, there was immediate chaos and reshuffling.
Ulysses Lennox was the first person in the queue, and the first man to enter the Odalisque who was not part of the production. He must have been outside for hours, Jasper realized. He must have shown up as soon as the sun had begun to set.
He was holding a posy of roses, his thin, gray hair combed down into order, and an old cravat crinkled and folded at his throat.
“Mr. Lennox!” Jasper boomed, crossing to him immediately. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes. Do you remember me?”
The other man startled, taking a step back and flicking his eyes over Jasper. “I don’t…” he began, but then realization hit him, his gaze wrinkling and hovering over the freckles on Jasper’s nose and the red of his hair. “Oh, sink me. The Townsend boy?!”
“The very same!” Jasper said cheerily. “Come with me. I’ve got you a seat saved right up front where you’ll be able to see everything clearly.”
“But my daughter,” said old Ulysses, turning over his shoulder to gaze at Libba, who had collected Hattie and Elias immediately upon their entry and was ordering them to wait by the Turkish pillars that led to the balcony stairs. “I’ve brought her flowers.”
