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Pa thrust out his chest a little. “Only the best for you, my dear. I had a long chat with the manager and he showed me a great many but I liked this one. I could not get quite such a good one at Covent Garden, unfortunately.”
“I am sure it will be wonderful, dear. Rosie, sit here at the front, my love, where everyone may see you. And Angie beside you. I shall sit here, and there is one more seat at the front for you, Harry.”
“No, no, I shall sit behind you. Let Will sit at the front.”
Will put up a token protest, but when his father insisted, he was not loath to accept. Pa might be content to hide in the shadows, but Will was not. He wanted to be seen, although he knew perfectly well that he would attract little enough attention with his sisters alongside him. Even as he held the chair for Rosie, he saw heads turning, and several opera glasses and lorgnettes trained on her.
While his Stepmother raked the boxes and the pit with her own opera glass, Will was scanning the audience, too, although more subtly, he hoped. There were many people of fashion attending, but there were also any number of frights. It amused him to think that the formidable matron in bright green satin, with rouged cheeks and what he considered a vulgarly excessive display of diamonds might well be a dowager duchess. These people might have rank and a position in society, but good taste was in short supply.
“Lady Plummer,” Stepmother said, with such sourness in her voice she might have been sucking on a lemon. “Mr Michael, too, and Lord and Lady Charles Heaman. Do you see them over there, Will? So they are in town after all, despite not once calling, even to leave a card.”
“We never expected it, surely,” Will said.
“Notexpected, precisely, but we are close neighbours in Hertfordshire and have dined together, so one would think… and then the two families are to be connected very soon. One would suppose that common courtesy would impel Lady Plummer to call upon her son’s future in-laws. But there, she puts herself on too high a form, I have always thought so, when she is only the daughter of Sir Owen’s quartermaster. Oh, there are the Hartnells, down there, Will, do you see? A very inferior box, right beside the pit. I should not likethat. And they are so far from the stage.”
“Look! There is Lady Carrbridge!” Angie squeaked, waving vigorously at a point somewhat to Will’s left.
Stepmother grabbed her hand and hissed, “Decorum! We do not wave in public, andcertainlynot at marchionesses.”
Slowly, not wanting to seem too eager, Will turned his head, and there indeed was Lady Carrbridge, only two boxes away, gently waggling her fingers and smiling at them. And there beyond her was Miss Whittleton, watching him. Even as his eyes caught hers, she looked away again, seeming fascinated by something in one of the opposite boxes.
Will inclined his head in acknowledgement to Lady Carrbridge, but when she turned away he continued to watch the box, in case Miss Whittleton looked his way again. But she did not. Evidently the opposite box was endlessly fascinating. Considerably more fascinating than Mr William Fletcher, anyway. And once again he found himself irrationally piqued by her patent dislike of him. Had he not put himself out to drive her round Hyde Park? And to dance with her at the Iversons’ party? Had he not stood up with every inarticulate, befreckled, blushing schoolroom miss to impress her? Yet her opinion of him had not changed a jot, and what right she had to despise him so thoroughly was more than he could tell. If the Marchioness of Carrbridge could deal graciously with the Fletcher family, surely Miss Nobody-at-all Whittleton should have the courtesy to do the same.
The play began while he was still seething. Now at least she would have to turn his way, to watch the performance. Indeed she did, but her gaze was rigidly fixed on the stage, so all he saw was her profile. Eventually, Will gave it up, but nothing on the stage distracted him from his resentment.
When the first interval arrived, Will jumped up at once. “Do you ladies need anything? Or may I wander about a bit… talk to a few people?”
“Of course, dear,” Stepmother said, beaming at him. “We have your father to look after us.”
The corridor outside the box was already thronged with people, but Will had not far to go, only two doors along. The door to Lady Carrbridge’s box stood open, guarded by a bear-like man with golden hair, in a waistcoat so dazzling that Will could hardly bear to look at it. One of Lord Carrbridge’s brothers, he recalled.
“Good evening, Mr Fletcher,” said the waistcoat man. “Enjoying the performance?”
“Very entertaining,” Will said. “Unless it is a tragedy, in which case — very moving.”
The waistcoat man laughed. “I was not attending, either. Are you visiting us? Connie, may Mr Fletcher come in?”
The marchioness turned, her delicate diamond ear drops flashing. “Oh, Mr Fletcher! Do come in.”
The box was already crowded with well-wishers clustered around the marchioness and two other matrons, but Miss Whittleton sat a little aside, unattended except for a very young lady. Will made his greetings to Lady Carrbridge as best he could, then moved towards his real target.
“Miss Whittleton, your servant, ma’am. I trust I see you well?”
“Very well, thank you, sir. I need not enquire after your own health, for you are as jaunty as ever, I see. Your family is well?”
“Perfectly, I thank you. Are you enjoying the play?”
“It is always pleasant to see such superior acting. The actors at Bath’s Theatre Royal are not so accomplished.”
The very young lady had not taken her eyes off Will from the moment he entered the box. Girls barely out of the schoolroom had never held much attraction for him, but he could not resist giving her a little smile of encouragement. She was soveryyoung and soveryinexperienced in dealing with men. She instantly blushed crimson and lowered her gaze, and he wished he had not taken notice of her after all.
“Tabitha, this is Mr William Fletcher. He is from the north of England. Mr Fletcher, Miss March is a cousin of Lord Carrbridge who is enjoying her first season in London. This is her first visit to a theatre.”
“How do you do, Miss March,” Will said, making her what he now thought of as his ‘minuet bow’. “Are you pleased with London?”
“Oh yes, sir! Thank you, sir! Only, it is very big… and noisy… and there are so many people.”
She was not only very young, but she also had precisely the sort of wispy voice that Will positively detested. He had never understood why some women seemed incapable of speaking as distinctly as a man. Miss Whittleton had no difficulty in that direction, and although her voice was often employed in berating him, at least there was no struggle to understand her.
