Page 8 of The Gentleman’s Leading Lady

“Which ones?” drawled Lady Disdain.

By the bones, did she have to be part of this conversation? Couldn’t she giggle and gossip with the other girls who were standing apart, studying the assortment of young gentlemen and making eyes at their favorites? Instead she stood here debating with him as if she had a part in the decision-making process. Arrogant girl, too big for her boots.

But Dante had her measure now. The successful actresses played aristocrats on the stage—it was one of the biggest objections the moralists leveled against them—and so carried their airs into real arenas. Here was living proof of it. He refused to be raked down by a girl who earned her bread by looking down her nose at the world. He made his living by bringing the world beauty and shelter.

“The Lower Assembly Rooms,” Dante said, because those were the haunts of the more fashionable crowd. And recently redone to quite grand effect, another project he had had his hand in, though another had taken the credit.

Dorsey shook his head. “No good for theatricals. No stage.”

“The Upper?” Dante tried.

“Why should those be any more accommodating, if the Lower won’t do?”

The harpy delivered a glare as cutting as her words. She had thick brows, which made her eyes appear all the larger and lent her an innocent look. But she didn’t have the trim, pert nose of an aristocrat, and the contrast turned her looks from piquant to arresting.

If she didn’t possess a dainty and easily offended nose, she oughtn’t go turning it up at people. Though he wasn’t making the best account of himself, an architect wondering why Dorsey hadn’t found an existing building to lease.

He tried ignoring the pretty harpy again, addressing her manager instead. “I can design you a theater. Exactly to your specifications. Nay, better.”

Dorsey rubbed his hands together, grinning broadly. “Just the man I’d hoped to find, then. Wouldn’t you agree, pet?”

“No,” said the girl, fire in her eyes, but now she sounded panicked. “He can’t help us, Dorsey. We’d best find someone else.”

CHAPTER THREE

“Ibeg your pardon.” Dante returned a glare that should have set her running. That glare always managed to scare his sisters and subdue even his indomitable mother.

Not this girl. She merely lifted her chin. The spring sun slanted across her cheek like the caress of a lover, glinting on the slivers of peridot green in her eyes. The breeze nipped beneath her hat and teased out a strand of silky dark hair. It slapped across her cheek, and she pushed it away.

“For one thing, we haven’t secured an investor yet,” the girl said.

He turned his glare to a true glower, bringing eyebrows into play, trying every tactic he knew to set her back on her heels. Surely this Dorsey was in charge of things, although now that he looked closely, Dante saw the signs of a man who indulged freely in drink. The blurred line of the jaw, the puffiness about the eyes, the distinct undertone to a cologne attempting to disguise an alcohol smell—he knew the signs.

But what about the matron? Why didn’t she have a handle on this young kestrel? Dante looked around to discover that the matron, upon flirting heavily with Thompson and a painted fan, had secured herself an invitation to smell the famous Real Cheltenham Salts from the bottle Thompson produced. She waved her fan, batted her eyes, and pronounced the effect wholly invigorating.

“There’s no point in paying for designs, is there?” The girl, all disdain vanished, turned to Dorsey. “We haven’t secured an investor to build the place. We must have the funds first.”

“We have a bit in our pocket, as you were clever enough to retrieve, and we’ll find investors to finish the rest once we have designs in hand. That’s the way it usually works, gel.”

“I can come up with several different sketches, which you might show to investors. And I have builders I can recommend.” The ones building his house, for instance. Dante’s enthusiasm was growing.

A theater was a grand and public project, and their need was real and immediate, not a fancy project requiring years in the making like Thompson’s villas or Sherborne’s spa. A design of his own, where his talents could be displayed— This could furnish the cornerstone of his reputation in Cheltenham, and the work would grow from there. He, and his family, would be secure.

“Of course, it would be a simple matter to provide models taken from the designs of others.” The lilac harpy glared at him. “But I am sure Mr. Dorsey would like something original.”

“No building is entirely original,” Dante retorted. “Every good design builds on inspirations from what came earlier, as well as taking into account a building’s environs and purpose. Originality means improving on something that is already known to succeed. Otherwise you are inviting disaster.”

She blinked, then narrowed her eyes at him. Glints of green snapped from beneath her dark brows. “Thank you for the lesson. But I am certain that for our undertaking we should want someone a little more…”

Dante crossed his arms over his chest, waiting for her to finish that thought. “More what?”

Her gaze dropped from his face, where she had been directing all her contempt. She skimmed his plain neckcloth, then followed the stretch of his shoulders, where the cloth strained over the bulk that so dismayed his tailor. Her gaze traced the lines of his chest, following the cutaway of his coat, then landing on his pantaloons. More specifically, the front of his pantaloons.

His tailor absolutely insisted that Dante could not carry off the looser trousers with their puffed waist and refused to put them in his wardrobe. Only tight pantaloons would do, for the slimming effect. As a compromise, he’d added embroidery to the waistline in an attempt to narrow the expanse of Dante’s thighs and draw the eye away from the bulge of his quite obvious masculinity.

But the girl took note, and her gaze flew up and away. Crimson flushed across the high slope of her cheekbones, deepening the warm tones of her skin.

An entirely different kind of heat flashed through his chest and down his spine.