Her eyes met Ralph’s, and she was given the distinct impression that he could read her thoughts. There was surely a smile lurking in his eyes and at the corners of his lips, even if it was just a mocking smile.
The Duke of Stanbrook directed Chloe to a plushly cushioned chair next to the balcony rail, and she took her seat—and felt suddenly as though she were in a fish bowl with a large crowd of spectators staring in at her. For the moment she found it impossible to look out, but with her peripheral vision she was aware of the lavishly draped tiers of boxes and galleries, of the myriad colors of silk and satin gowns, of waving fans and jewels glittering in the light of the chandeliers. And she knew without looking that the floor below would be crowded, mostly with men, most of them young and fashionable gentlemen, gossiping among themselves and perusing the occupants of the boxes above them through their quizzing glasses. Ogling the ladies. She remembered them well from six years ago. She remembered the mingled pleasure and indignation of being ogled herself.
Ralph was seated beside her, close enough that she could feel the reassurance of his body heat. She turned her head to smile at him. Soon she was going to have to find the courage to look beyond the box. How would she be able to watch the play otherwise?
“Attending the theater was my very favorite activity when I came to London for the first time,” she told him.
“Not the balls?” he asked her. “Or the soirees and Venetian breakfasts? Or the picnics and evenings at Vauxhall Gardens? Or the masquerades and—”
She laughed and opened her fan. “Oh, all of it,” she said. “I loved it all. I had waited twenty-one years, the last few of them in conscious, impatient anticipation, for my moment to come. And it all far exceeded my expectations and was wonderful beyond words.”
“But the theater was especially wonderful.”
She laughed again. “Everything was especially wonderful. Those were the days of my innocence, and may no one scoff at innocence.”
She closed her fan without having used it and rested it on her lap.
“Do you realize,” the Countess of Kilbourne said, turning her head to address Chloe and Ralph and Gwen and Lord Trentham beyond them, “that we enjoy double the value of the admission price whenever we come to the theater in that we get to view both the play and the rest of the audience? I sometimes think the audience provides more entertainment than the play.”
“It certainly provides most of the food for drawing room conversations the day after,” Gwen agreed. “One does not hear many people discussing the play itself, but the people who attended the play are a different matter.”
“But without the play, Gwen,” Lord Kilbourne said, “the ton would have to find another excuse to gather merely for the pleasure of observing one another and garnering fresh topics for gossip and speculation.”
“Ah, but there is also the daily promenade in Hyde Park,” Lady Lyngate said. “One could hardly say that the beau monde goes there for the mere benefit of riding or walking and taking the air.”
“I see I have invited a party of cynics to share my box,” the Duke of Stanbrook observed.
“I have come to watch the play even if no one else has, George,” Lord Trentham assured him. “I never thought Shakespeare was worth all the fuss people—mostly teachers—make over him, until I saw one of his plays performed a few years ago. Not that I have ever warmed to the tragedies. There is too much gloom in the world as it is without having to watch actors deliver themselves of impassioned laments before stabbing themselves to the heart with their wooden daggers.”
“Cynics and a philistine,” the duke said with a sigh.
“When I attended my first play during my come-out Season six years ago,” Chloe said, “I thought I had died and gone to heaven, though I was far too sophisticated at the time to say so aloud. I probably maintained an expression of bored ennui. And it was a comedy, Lord Trentham. I agree with you on that.”
“It is marvelous, is it not,” the Earl of Kilbourne said, “how one so often loses sophistication as one grows older? Just as one loses the conviction that one knows everything.”
Chloe laughed and fanned her cheeks—and finally summoned up enough courage to turn her head to look out over the theater. The sight that met her eyes fairly took her breath away, as it always did. There was surely not an empty seat left in the whole of the theater—though even as she thought it she spotted one empty box across from their own though slightly farther back from the stage. At first it seemed that every single person in attendance was looking in the direction of their box and specifically at her. It was not so, of course. A more direct look on her part revealed that in fact everyone was scrutinizing everyone else. She remembered that the ton was particularly good at that. Some people were indeed looking toward their box. Many more, though, were not.
It was a reassuring observation, and Chloe felt herself begin to relax. She looked downward and immediately, by some unfortunate chance, saw a familiar and unwelcome figure. Baron Cornell, as handsome and elegant as ever, quizzing glass raised to his eye, lips pursed, was watching a young lady in one of the lower boxes whose bosom was fairly spilling out of her low-cut bodice. And she was watching him.
Chloe waited for the pang of hurt and humiliation that thoughts of Lord Cornell usually aroused in her even though she had known for a long time that he had never been worthy of her affections. But she felt . . . nothing.
She raised her eyes and looked along the galleries opposite, one tier at a time, to see how many people she recognized. There were a few. Two or three of them acknowledged her glance with an inclination of the head or a raised hand. No one glared or looked affronted. And then, just as she was about to turn her head away to ask Ralph if it was almost time for the play to begin, she saw movement in the box opposite—the one that had been empty until now. Two couples stepped inside, an older and a younger, and then a third couple a little way behind them.