Page 61 of The Gentleman’s Leading Lady

“I’d the impression she gave Andover no choice.” Diana did not rise, but she assumed a regal posture in her chair. For all her age, she was the picture of genteel elegance in her silk gown, encased in the luxurious parlor with its tasteful, expensive furniture and rich colors.

Diana bore the blood of earls, even if her own father had not taken the title until a few years before his death, and she would make sure that a common woman who had managed to marry a baron would remember that. “Lady Baeccon, good of you to call. Have you heard what people are saying about our play?”

Bathsheba stood as if debating where to seat herself, or to give everyone in the room an opportunity to admire her figure. She wore a full-length pelisse in rose merino wool, fastened down the front with frogs set into intricate embroidery. It reminded Cerys of her own lilac pelisse, but more elaborate.

“Everywhere I went last night, they could do nothing but discuss how daring a choice it was to let Hamlet be acted by a woman.” Bathsheba settled on a mahogany chair with scrolled arms. Her back didn’t touch the cushion as she sat. “Some were amused, I grant you, though a great many thought it terribly vulgar. I daresay you have not captured everybody, Miss Evans.”

“One rarely does,” Cerys said.

“The question on our minds is whether Lord Baeccon is persuaded to stand by his offer to invest in a new theater.” Diana had no qualms about being seen as vulgar; it wouldn’t harm her station in the least. “He seemed as rapt as anyone.”

“His lordship is known to be thrifty,” Bathsheba answered. “He might need more persuading.”

Mame smothered a delicate cough. Cerys bit back a smile. One needed only to circulate through town for an afternoon and some venture of the profligate Lord Baeccon would be described. He seemed as bent on sinking himself as his lady seemed determined to raise them both.

Diana tilted her head in that canny way of hers. “Is his lordship prone to making promises and then reneging on them?”

“He is no more capricious than any man,” her ladyship said. The sour press of Bathsheba’s lips implied that Lord Baeccon, indeed, was a source of many disappointments. Cerys marveled that any woman would have chosen a Baeccon, titled or not, when she had Dante Manelli at her feet.

As if she guessed the subject of Cerys’s thoughts, the other woman’s gaze rested on Cerys, narrow, calculating. “And what promises has Mr. Manelli made to Miss Evans, I wonder?”

The probe stung, for Dante had made no promises. No vows. Other than the assurance of sexual desire, which made the flush rise again beneath her collar.

She had chosen to play the ingenue with Bathsheba Baeccon before. She would continue in that vein. Cerys widened her eyes. “One, he had promised to build us a magnificent theater, if the funding for the building can be found.”

Mame snorted and looked at the rosette carved into the ceiling to contain her laugh. Bathsheba’s lips tightened, bringing out lines around her mouth.

“I hope you have not already found his affections are waning. He is very warm, for a short time. It’s quite overwhelming.”

Cerys studied her opponent. First, she had sworn Dante had eaten his heart for her. Now she called the man changeable. “I wonder how well you know Mr. Manelli, milady. He is ardent in his passions, I grant you. But he is the most steadfast soul. I would say his constancy to one purpose is admirable. As is loyalty to those who have won his affections.”

Bathsheba stiffened her shoulders. “I knew him quite thoroughly.”

“In London?”

“Yes.” Bathsheba watched her warily. The deep rose of her pelisse went well with her dark hair and eyes, giving her complexion a warm glow. She was a beautiful woman, but she was clutching at that beauty as her last piece of armor against the world, and she knew she would drown if she lost it.

Bathsheba Baeccon had only ever been valued for her charm and beauty, and now she looked on the days when those would no longer serve her. The petulant husband she had gambled everything to have was disentangling himself from his infatuation with her, she did not seem to have family to rely on, and she had no genuine friends.

Cerys wasn’t certain she herself had any value to offer the world, but at least she didn’t rely on a support so fragile as looks. Having been born with this hair, she’d learned early not to.

“You were close, then,” Cerys said.

Bathsheba lifted her chin. “As close as it is possible for man and woman to be.”

Mame and Diana watched this exchange curiously but made no effort to enter the conversation. And why was she probing this wound? Cerys already knew Dante had loved this proud and insolent woman, enough that she had made ribbons of his heart. Did Cerys want spelled out for her all the depths and channels of his devotion?

No. She wanted to understand why Bathsheba had not loved him back. Cerys had known the man less than a week, and she was already in danger of losing her heart to him.

“So he confided in you,” Cerys said.

The other woman’s fingers curled in her fine kid gloves, as if she were holding an invisible cord. “Of course.”

“And you in him?”

Bathsheba scoffed. The sound held a note of regret. “You are naïve along with your youth, Miss Evans, if you have not already discovered the wisdom of keeping your own counsel around men.”

This was puzzling. Cerys happened to know that her mother told Evans everything, including, sometimes, things about Cerys that she would rather her stepfather not be acquainted with. They had quarreled about it once or twice, and her mother had only said that one day she hoped Cerys would know the relief of having another person completely understand her heart.