It seemed every vehicle in Brighton was headed toward the Marine Pavilion and a long line had formed on the drive.
“As I suspected,” he said to his aunt, “it’s going to be an annoying crush.”
“I so dislike these things, in general,” Lady Easton said. “It borders on the uncivilized, having to practically shout to be heard. A dinner is so much more pleasant, one can have a rational and extended conversation with another person, not these ships passing in the night.”
If that was all his aunt thought happened at a rout, she had not attended many or had not had her eyes open when she had.
“I do not like to lose sight of Miss Upton,” he said. “There are too many ways to go wrong at a rout. It is too unconstrained. What on earth was Uncle thinking?”
Lady Easton sighed, loud and long. “It appears, Richard, that your uncle has been harboring ideas and opinions for quite some time and now he’s decided to spring them at me all at once. Worse, he seems to have not the slightest care for whether his ideas and opinions are correct. Which, of course, they aren’t.”
Richard shook his head. “He would be better off if he allowed you to guide him as you always have done.”
“I never saw things coming to such a pass,” Lady Easton said wistfully. “In the very beginning of our marriage, he did try to put his foot down here and there. However, my mother had warned me of the likelihood, so I was well-prepared. At such moments, I would lock myself in my bedchamber and weep. Loudly. His attempts eventually petered out and I really never thought to be revisited by the inconvenience.”
Richard was a bit startled by this history. He’d had no idea that mothers might warn daughters about such things. It made him wonder what else they talked about.
“I do not believe Easton has tried to put his foot down since seventeen ninety-six,” Lady Easton went on. “It was about the canaries. He swore he would go mad with their insipid singing all the time and he could not bear it. I cried and told him what he really could not bear was for anybody to be happy.”
Richard stole a sidelong glance at his aunt. “But you’vealwayshad canaries.”
“Yes. You see? That was that.”
Richard declined to inquire any more into it. It was rather disturbing to understand that so much went on in a woman’s mind.
As he peered out the window again to see where his father’s carriage was in the long line ahead, he blinked.
“Good Lord,” he said, “Alvanley and Pierrepoint are helping Miss Upton from the carriage, though they are not even at the head of the line. Did the Regent send them out to discover her? And there goes Uncle with them. They are laughing. Why are they laughing?”
“Those people are always laughing,” Lady Easton said. “Though why your uncle and Caroline should join them in it, I am sure I do not know. But then, what do I know these days? My own husband has gone quite independent—I do not know what he’ll think of next. I suppose he’ll want roasted beef on Thursdays instead of Wednesdays.”
Lady Easton sighed again and it sounded to Richard as if everything she knew to be true had been upended. He could not dwell on it though. Miss Upton had disappeared into the house.
It was going to be a long and arduous evening.
*
As they’d waitedin the carriage, Lord Easton had told Caroline that the Regent was in talks with the famed John Nash to re-do Marine Pavilion and it was almost certain that in the coming years it would cease to be a house and be turned into a palace. An exotic palace, if Lord Easton’s information could be relied upon. Apparently, the Prince was intent on onion domes on the roof like any maharajah’s residence.
Lord Alvanley had announced himself at her carriage door as being a special envoy from the regent. Or as the lord had amusingly put it—to retrieve the recent for the Regent.
Apparently, she was the recent. Lord Alvanley seemed to know Lord Easton very well and Caroline was happy to know him too. He was a comely gentleman not past twenty-five, seemed perennially smiling, and had a good-humored sparkle in his eye. What he was not, unlike some other person she’d recently become acquainted with, was a stick.
The jolly party made their way through the doors and Caroline gazed around her, catching glimpses of the room through the throngs of people milling about. Though the crowd blocked much of her view, she caught peeks of it. The building itself was of the neoclassical style, decorated on the exterior with cream glazed tiles. The interior was far different. The walls were covered in a bold red Chinese paper and what chairs she could see were black lacquer, the seats a robin’s egg blue silk embroidered with gold thread.
Lord Pierrepoint was collared by some elderly lady who needed his opinion on the history of a painting on the wall. Lord Alvanley suppressed a smile and whispered, “The poor dowager, she’s entirely besotted with Pierrepoint.”
Caroline did not respond, though she found great mirth in the idea of a venerable old woman developing a youthful infatuation over a dashing gentleman. Mirth, but also the idea that perhaps feelings of romance never really died, even though society would like to think so.
Lord Alvanley expertly steered Caroline through the gathering, with Lord Easton on her other side.
“Just this way, Miss Upton,” Lord Alvanley said.
He guided her to where the Prince held court, surrounded by people who wished to converse with him. Caroline had seen such things before—when a duke turned up to the races, men flew toward him like moths to a flame. The Prince’s flame burned brighter than even a duke’s, and so it seemed that all that stepped into the pavilion wished to place themselves nearby.
“Make way—coming through with a looked-for delivery,” Lord Alvanley said.
The crowd did make way, which surprised Caroline. She supposed Lord Alvanley’s own flame must burn bright too.
