"Are you all right?" Clarissa's voice was barely above a whisper. She was facing the stage, but her words were clearly aimed at him.
"I beg your pardon?"
"You were breathing normally, and then you weren't." She still hadn't looked at him. "It seems as though… No, that is— I didn't mean to pry. But you were at ease and then you weren't, and now it seems as if you're hardly here at all."
She said all of this under her breath, in one long exhale.
She was observant, he'd give her that. And while every instinct told him to laugh it off, another part of him simply…didn't want to. He fought a very real urge to tell her everything on his mind.
Perhaps her guileless honesty was contagious.
He resisted the urge. "It's nothing."
Her gaze flicked toward the back of the box. "That's what my brother says when it's very much something."
He opened his mouth, then shut it. Then finally, "Your brother sounds like a wise man."
"He is, but not because he doesn't speak about matters of the heart. Those are two separate traits entirely." She ended this with a quick little sidelong look in his direction. "It seems to me you're just avoiding an answer."
The soprano hit a particularly anguished note. Kit used it as cover for his silence.
After a moment, Clarissa seemed to accept that he wasn't going to elaborate. She settled back in her chair and returned her attention to the stage.
He should have been relieved. He was relieved.
But he was also disappointed. Some irrational part of him had wanted her to push. Not because he would have answered, but because the pushing would have meant she cared enough to try.
Which was a ridiculous thought, and he discarded it immediately.
The first act dragged on. The soprano wept, the tenor declared his love. A villain appeared, wearing a cape that was, in Kit's opinion, excessive.
"She should just leave," Clarissa murmured.
Kit glanced at her. "Who?"
"The heroine." Her voice was low and quiet, but there was no missing the frustration there. "She's been standing there for three arias letting that man make decisions about her life. She has perfectly functional legs. She could simply…walk away."
His mouth curved. "Where would she go?"
Her head tilted to the side as she considered. "Anywhere. She could steal a horse. Or find a ship." She turned to him with a wicked little smirk. "The villain has a very nice cape. She could take that and sell it."
He feigned horrified shock. "You'd have the heroine rob the villain?"
Mrs. Lennox shifted loudly behind them, if such a thing was possible. It was a very subtle way of shushing them.
Clarissa didn't seem to notice. She was too caught up in her fun. "I'd have the heroine take decisive action instead of singing about her feelings for another twenty minutes."
He leaned toward her. "If you were writing this opera, what would happen next?"
She cut him a sideways glance, as if checking whether he was mocking her.
He was not. Her opinion on the opera was far more interesting than the opera itself.
"Well," she said slowly. "First, she'd stop crying. All this weeping is getting rather tedious."
"Agreed," he said with a nod.
"Then she'd take stock of her assets. She has a decent singing voice, clearly, so perhaps she could earn money performing at coaching inns while she—" Her eyes flickered with amusement. "No, that's absurd."
