“Flowers are for after the show,” Jasper told him in a conspiratorial whisper. “They mean more when they’re an accolade.”
“Oh,” said the man, immediately moving to hide the blooms in his jacket. “Oh, right. Steady on, then.”
Jasper got him seated and saved the two seats next to him for his own parents, should they arrive early enough to be granted seats. The instant he hit the lobby again, he ran directly into Julian Harcourt, who was gazing up at the chandelier with a dazzled sparkle in his eyes, like a little boy who’d just seen jewels for the first time.
“Look at that,” he said in a daze, blinking his attention to Jasper. “You’ve done excellent work, young man.”
“Ah, well,” Jasper said, coloring. “I try. Would you like to sit in the balcony with the Starlings or up front with the other parents?”
“The other…” Harcourt said, trailing off with a wry, fond smile twisting his lips. “That’s right, isn’t it? My boy is playing Tybalt.”
“He certainly is,” Jasper agreed.
“Then put me where he’s most likely to spot me watching,” Harcourt decided, tugging on his lapels. “He’ll like that, I think.”
The Templeton-Raths did not arrive until the second wave of people, released from behind a velvet rope by the gent manning the little ticket booth.
All of them had come, Jasper realized, with a queasy lurch and a forced smile. Even Ayomide Rath, who apparently had seen right through them from the beginning. He forced himself forward to greet them, his face as stiff as driftwood.
“Evening!” he called, giving a stiff and objectively awkward little wave. “You made it.”
“Indeed we did,” John Templeton-Rath declared, smacking his lips and looking around. “What a beauty this building is.”
“It’s come a long way,” Jasper said with a wince, noting that Paul Rath immediately hid a chuckle that implied he was aware of this building’s tawdry past and was kind enough not to voice it.
“Where is the princess, then?” Miss Rath demanded, raising her dark brows.
“Miss Lennox is preparing the cast,” Jasper replied, forced to meet her eyes, which glinted with enough of an edge to slice through steel. “I will tell her you wished to greet her.”
“Did I wish that?” Miss Rath said with a sniff. “They were out of playbills up front.”
“Ayo,” her cousin said, frowning. “Be nice.”
“I’ll get you a stack,” Jasper said quickly. “We’ve a private balcony reserved for you, but I also wished to make an introduction before the show begins. Have you met the Baron and Baroness Selwyn? Come this way…”
He made the introductions, pleased that Elias was in a charming mood rather than one of his broods. Hattie had her hand over her gently swelling belly and was glowing so brightly, she could have rivaled the chandelier.
It was a relief.
For a moment.
“‘Miss Lennox’?” said Agatha Templeton-Rath, her voice soft as she faded to the back of her family to speak to Jasper directly. “Or ‘Mrs. Townsend’? We heard the banns, you know.”
“She will always be Miss Lennox of the stage,” Jasper said, tilting his head to the side. “It is the way of things.”
“Is it, indeed?” Mrs. Templeton-Rath replied with amusement. “Well, I suppose I cannot judge. I kept my name, too, when I married John. Congratulations, all the same.”
“Thank you,” he replied. “I appreciate it.”
“Hm,” she said. “When are the nuptials, then?”
“Next week,” he said, and he bit his tongue on asking if she wanted an invitation.
Surely, she did not.
Instead, he asked, “How goes the forwarding office?”
She frowned. “That rusty crane is more trouble than it’s worth. I should have petitioned to have it destroyed entirely and a new one installed rather than this tedium of repair. You ought to have told me that, young man.”
