Page 7 of The Lady Plays with Fire

“Julia,” scolded her aunt, who was giving the exchange far more attention than she had given the performance.

“I only said aloud what his lordship was clearly thinking,” Miss Addison defended herself.

But Graham’s thoughts had already taken another turn. Or rather, returned to their previous, forbidden track.

Julia. Julia Addison.

“Forgive me,” he said, rising. The rail at the front of the box was too low to give a man of his height much security. He rounded his chair and stepped into the narrow channel between the two rows of seats, closer to the older woman, before making his bow. “Since the worthless Mr. Pope did not think to do the honors, allow me to introduce myself. Dunstane, at your service, ma’am.”

She snapped open a jeweled lorgnette and looked him up and down before answering, with a surprisingly regal nod, “Mrs. Hayes.”

Mrs. Hayes did not apologize for barging into his box. He had not really expected it of her. After all, she had been wronged, just as he had. Graham intended to see that the box manager regretted his double-dealing.

“My niece, Miss Addison,” Mrs. Hayes added with a wave of her hand.

Miss Addison unhurriedly came to her feet. “My lord.” Her curtsy was graceful, despite the confined space. But also grudging. Whatever timidity and deference she had exhibited—or he had fancied her exhibiting—upon entering the box had flown. If she had said as much, it could not have been clearer that she suspected him of arrogance.

Perceptive chit.

“May I fetch you some refreshment, Mrs. Hayes?” he offered, intending not to prove Miss Addison wrong about him—she wasn’t wrong, after all—but to rattle her certainty. To put her off balance, so to speak. Metaphorically, of course. He was not quite awful enough to wish her to take a tumble into the pit and break that lovely neck.

“Thank you, my lord,” Mrs. Hayes said, the gracious dip of her head pairing rather incongruously with a poke of her now-folded lorgnette at her niece. “Go on, then.”

Miss Addison’s—Julia’s—eyes widened, and for just a moment, he thought she meant to refuse to accompany him.

Not, of course, that he would have minded one whit if she had. He had made the offer as much to garner himself a temporary reprieve from their company as out of any sense of gentlemanly obligation.

But after a momentary hesitation and with an almost imperceptible squaring of her shoulders, as if it required effort to comply with her aunt’s request, she moved to leave the box. He did not offer her his arm.

The long saloon was every bit as crowded as one might expect, and Graham hated crowds. At the edge of the room, he hesitated, anticipating with a shudder the feel of strangers jostling against him. Again, he sighed, the sound lost beneath the rumble of conversation surrounding them.

Undaunted by the throngs, Miss Addison stepped forward, prepared to thread her way through. She would have been lost to him in a moment if he had not reached out to touch her elbow.

She stopped, a stone to trouble the stream of humanity flowing around her, and looked up at him. “Yes, my lord?”

How had she been so certain the fingertips pressed briefly against her arm had belonged to him, and not the hand of some careless passerby?

“Wait here.” He jerked his chin toward the nearest statue and then set about the task of procuring Mrs. Hayes’s refreshments on his own. Despite his reluctance to enter the fray, he made his way with relative ease; his size was an advantage, and he was not above using it.

When he returned a few moments later, two glasses of wine in hand, he scanned the top of the crowd for the familiar statue. A quasi-Greek figure of a woman, half-clothed in her marble—or more likely, plaster—drapery. It put him in mind of one of the caryatids on the cover of that damned ladies’ magazine, which had occupied a larger share of his thoughts over the last few months than the publication had any right to do.

Beneath the statue stood Miss Addison—right where he had left her, much to his surprise. She glanced about her, taking in the spectacle without seeming to be much affected by it. As if she were one of the rare sort who came to the theater to do something other than ogle the other theatergoers.

Her hands were folded primly in front of her, but the plain hem of her muslin gown rippled tellingly where she tapped her toe.

“Impatient to return to the play?” he asked when he had made his way unnoticed to her side.

She started. Evidently, she had not been awaiting his return with bated breath. Her bright eyes looked him up and down. He noted the exaggerated sweep of her gaze, as if she had not before realized how he towered over her. She darted a glance over her shoulder, toward the curtained entrance to his box. “I don’t want Mrs. Hayes to worry.”

He took no step in the direction she so obviously wanted to go. “Are you enjoying the performance?”

She paused before replying. “The role of Iago is creditably done.” He had the distinct impression even that partial answer had required careful weighing. “I suppose on the whole, I find it generally entertaining.”

Damning with faint praise. He hadn’t expected it of her—or rather, he hadn’t expected it of the girl who had sat beside him not half an hour ago, to all appearances riveted by everything that passed before her on the stage.

But perhaps he had misread her enthusiasm. Misread her.

Perhaps she, too, had been determined to ignore the distraction posed by her unexpected companion for the evening.