Page 40

Fiennes glanced from face to face. Around the room, applause was first sporadic and then took hold. As if he were a puppet master wielding their strings, table after table jumped to their feet, applauding more and more loudly.

Fulvia stood beside him, smiling shyly, for all the world like a docile, sweet maiden.

Yet Fiennes had her measure now. His future wife was an actress through and through.

At the expression on Ella’s face, a swell of frustration mixed with pure helplessness surged through his body. She was devastated. She hadn’t agreed to marry him, but she had thought he had meant it.

He had meant it.

Now her face was pale. She was clapping, her lips pulled into a smile, but her eyes? He had prided himself on being able to read her eyes, hadn’t he?

What he saw there was betrayal.

Desolation.

And shame.

Her expression made him sick.

He swallowed back a lump in his throat. There was nothing he could do. He was the fool who had heedlessly agreed to a betrothal with a woman he didn’t know.

Breaking that engagement when the young lady in question had all of London at her feet was one thing.

He could never again consider himself a decent man if he deserted Fulvia when she desperately needed him, even if she didn’t realize she had been rescued by a knight in shining armor. Another way to put it: she needed a mere man to be a gentleman.

The Prince of Wales strolled through the door, accompanied by a group of drunk cronies. When informed that he had missed a Shakespeare performance, the Regent burst out laughing and insisted that the future Lady Peregrine would have to perform Juliet for him.

“Oh, I couldn’t,” Fulvia said, fluttering her eyelashes and looking thirteen years old. “I am far too shy for that.”

She was an extraordinary liar, Fiennes registered.

He kept looking about for Ella, but she had left her table.

He would remove her from her uncle’s household, of course.

Give her money. A house. Anything she wanted.

Anything except himself.

“Charming,” the Prince of Wales said with a lusty chuckle, pinching Fulvia’s chin. “Excellent choice for your bride, Peregrine.”

Fiennes bowed. “Your Majesty.” His head ached as if he’d taken a kick to the forehead.

“Everyone will be clamoring to come to your house parties in the summer,” Devin commented after the prince trundled off to greet a friend. “Amateur theatricals are all the rage, but your Lady Peregrine will put productions on a different level.” He lowered his voice. “I think she’s gotten away with it, thanks to you.”

Viscount St. Trevelyon had also missed the supper and the performance. Now he rushed through the door to greet His Majesty. His lordship was following the Regent and his chums out of the room—undoubtedly planning to escort them to the gaming tables—when he was caught by the circle of well-wishers surrounding Fiennes and his daughter.

A pert young matron asked how the betrothed couple met.

“My father met my fiancée some years ago and liked her immediately,” Fiennes explained. He turned to Fulvia. “I believe that you spoke to him of chess.”

“What?” Fulvia said, clearly startled. “Chess?” She flicked a look of rank dislike at her father. “I know nothing of chess,” she told the circle. “The late Lord Peregrine surely met my cousin Ella.”

Fiennes’s face felt as if it hardened into wood.

“Nonsense,” the viscount blustered, “you were such a wee tot that you likely don’t remember.”

So Fiennes’s father had thought that his son should marry the former viscount’s daughter: Ella. A thoughtful young girl who liked chess.