Matthew glanced a shade guiltily at his friends and began by way of apology, "Afterwards Thomas Cranmer became Archbishop of Canterbanter..." He saw their eyes light with good humor at his purposeful blunder and knew he was forgiven even while the Bishops were plotting his demise. "Canterbury, that is," he continued, "and the marriage between Henry and Catherine of Aragon was declared...."

  Matthew Forrester, the Viscount Southerton, warmed to his subject. He did so love an adventure.

  Chapter 1

  September 1818

  Laughter erupted from the private theatre box. Hearty. Rolling. Sustained. It came at her like a succession of wavelets and played hell with her timing. She waited for it to recede so she could speak her next line. Even before she finished, there was another ripple of laughter from the same box. Wavelets be damned. What was coming toward the stage now threatened to pitch her under and press her down.

  She paused mid-phrase and pointedly stared past the candle footlamps in the direction of the disruption. The four actors sharing the small Drury Lane stage with her did the same. The audience, largely male, fell silent. They turned in their seats if such was required for a clear view of the box that had stopped the players cold. It was not that the audience was as ignorant of the private box's occupants as the leading lady. Quite the opposite was true. It would have been difficult to find someone in the packed house this evening who did not know that the Marquess of Eastlyn and his boon companions were in attendance.

  From the wings came the loud aside: "Line! You cannot expect that I will always save you, Hortense!"

  "I know the line," she said without rancor. "What I cannot know is if I will be permitted to speak it."

  This had the effect of raising sympathetic chuckles among the general audience and finally wresting quiet from the private box as those occupants realized they had become center stage.

  "Now you've done it, East. I believe she is speaking to us." The Earl of Northam indicated the stage, where Miss India Parr was standing with her fists resting on the wide panniers of her gown and her elbows cocked sharply outward. Her painted lips were pursed in a perfect bow, and her darkly drawn eyebrows were arched so high they fairly disappeared into the fringed curls of her powdered wig. This exaggerated demonstration of impatience would have been more amusing if it had not been so clearly directed at them.

  The Marquess of Eastlyn turned from his friends and once again gave his attention to the figure in the footlamps. He made a good show of appearing much struck by this turn of events. "Why, so she is. Odd, that. Doesn't she have a line?" His deeply pleasant voice carried easily across the craned heads of the audience below his box.

  It was Evan Marchman in the chair beside East who answered, "You can't expect me to save you, Hortense."

  This prompt, offered as it was in dry, uninflected accents, lifted more chuckling from an appreciative audience. Looking toward the stage as almost no one else was doing now, South knew the lady was in danger of losing her support and her momentum. He shook his head as he slowly came to his feet. It remained for him to make amends. It was his ribald aside, after all, that had sent East into a paroxysm of laughter that turned out to be as contagious as it was ill-advised and ill-timed. South braced his hands on the box's balustrade, curving long fingers over the side. He leaned forward, grimacing only slightly when he realized that behind him North had made a fist in the superfine tails of his coat. Did Northam seriously think he was in danger of falling overboard? The notion was absurd. Half asleep he could still climb a ship's frosted rigging in a pitched North Sea storm. In clear, commanding tones, South announced, "You cannot expect that I will always save you, Hortense."

  On stage, the lady's eyes narrowed. She lifted one hand to block the candlelight and peered more intently in the direction of the scrupulously modulated voice. "Thank you, my lord," she said politely. "You have it exactly. Shall you go on or must we?"

  South thought she looked perfectly at her ease now and even willing to seat herself comfortably on the stage and allow him to finish all the parts if he wished it. He certainly did not wish it. "I most humbly beg your pardon," he said, inclining his head in an apologetic gesture to her, then to the audience. "For myself and my friends. Pray, continue."

  The lady inclined her head in a like gesture; then she stepped back into the circle of light, lowered her hands, and covered herself in the mantle of her character. This transformation, done so expertly as to seem both instantaneous and magical, was greeted by thunderous applause. From the back of the theatre where there was only standing room, the men stomped their feet and cheered. In the Marquess of Eastlyn's box the response was equally appreciative, if more subdued.

  The four friends did not leave the theatre immediately upon the play's final curtain. They remained in East's box as the audience filed out toward the street or, as was the case with many of the hopeful young Corinthians, toward the dressing room.

  Marchman pointed to a small group that was headed for the stage doors. "They don't all think they can get a glimpse of her, do they? What a stiff-necked business that would be."

  "Don't fancy yourself craning to view the lovely from a more agreeable distance?" asked East. He stretched his long legs in front of him and made a steeple with his fingers at the level of his midriff. A lock of chestnut hair had fallen over his forehead, and he made no effort to push it back. His eyes were heavy-lidded, their focus vaguely sleepy.

  Mr. Marchman shook his head as he considered East's question. It sounded like a ridiculous effort. "I don't fancy making myself a clear target for what would surely be physical retribution on the part of the lady."

  Reviewing the possibilities raised East's smile. "Polite slap, do you think? Or a blow?"

  The Earl of Northam saw immediately what direction this conversation was taking. As the only one of their group who was married, albeit recently, he believed he had an advantage in determining the outcome of a confrontation of this sort. "Three shillings that it's openhanded."

  "Openhanded," Marchman agreed.

  East shrugged. "I was going to say the same. No wager there unless South takes an opposing view. What say you, Southerton? Will she use an open hand or a fist?"

  Southerton's cool gray eyes regarded each of his friends in turn. "I'd say it depends a great deal on which one of us invites her to do it."

  North held up his hands palms out, eliminating himself from consideration. "I fear I cannot be the one. Elizabeth would hear of it before the night was over, and I am not up to explanations involving actresses. It is not the kind of thing that is generally well accepted."

  Marchman snorted. "You have only to say that you were with us. She knows that any manner of things can happen."

  "My wife is with my mother," North said dryly. He raked back a thatch of hair the color of sunshine. "I can appease one but not both. It is the very devil of a fix when they join forces. Like Wellington and Blucher at Waterloo."

  The others nodded sympathetically. It was uncharacteristic of any of them to find empathy for the defeated Napoleon, but Northam's description was not off the mark.

  Eastlyn moved to extricate himself as well. "I'm afraid I must also refrain," he said. "I'm in a damnable coil as it is. No sense in tightening the spring."

  Marchman grinned wickedly and a dimple appeared at the corner of his mouth. "You're referring, I take it, to your engagement."

  "I am referring to my nonengagement, West."

  The marquess's statement had no impact on Marchman's grin. It remained unwaveringly stamped on his fine features. "Nonsense." He easily caught the playbill East tossed at his head and used it to lazily fan himself. "The announcement in the Gazette was pointed out to me by... well, by someone among my acquaintances who attends to such things. The wags have the story. There is betting at White's. There must be an engagement. Your mistress says it is so."

  "My mistress—my former mistress—started that particular rumor." East actually felt his jaw tightening and the beginnings of a headache behind his left eye. "The only thing Mrs. Sawyer could have done to make it worse would be to have named herself my fiancée."

  "Then you will not mind being leg-shackled to Lady Sophia."

  "There is to be no leg-shackling to anyone," East said in mildly impatient tones. "You only have to look at North to see all the reasons why I choose to avoid wedlock."

  North's scowl had no real menace. He couldn't pretend that he hadn't been distracted this evening. His marriage was too new, the circumstances of it too unusual, and the nature of the alliance too uneasy to give him much comfort or confidence when he was away from his countess. Instead of being at his country estate in Hampton Cross, where he would have had a chance to court his bride, at her request they were in London, where he discovered that the fiercest competition for her attention often came from his own mother and his best friends.

  "Marriage hasn't precisely put a period to my freedom," he said, feeling compelled to make that point. "If you will but recall, I was the one who suggested we go out tonight."

  Marchman shook his head. "No. It was South's idea when we found you alone at home. At sixes and sevens, you were."

  "Well, I had been thinking about going out," North said somewhat defensively. He allowed his friends to enjoy a moment's laughter at his expense before he joined them. "I am pathetic." He started to rise. "Perhaps I should be the one to beard the lioness in her den."

  South laid a hand over Northam's forearm and exerted a bit of pressure to reverse the direction of North's movement. "Sit down. If you care nothing for remaining in your wife's good graces—or your mother's—there are those of us who do. East is right. He shouldn't go. Not with a mistress and a fiancée to consider. His plate is already full. We can't send West. Have you noticed no one ever hits him anymore?"

  Marchman's grin deepened as he tipped his chair back on its hind legs, balancing it carefully while he considered South's observation. "It's true, isn't it? I'll have to think on that."

  Southerton used the toe of his boot to nudge West's chair back into place."Don't exert yourself overmuch. The explanation does not strain credulity. For the Corinthian crowd it has something to do with your reputation and that blade you always carry in your boot. For the Cyprians, I believe, it has something to do with how well you wield your sword."

  Marchman gave a low shout of laughter. "You flatter me."

  "I do," South said dryly and without missing a beat. He stood. "Allow me a few minutes to reach her through the pandering gaggle at her door. "He rubbed his jaw as if anticipating the blow. "You may as well give me your money now. No one ever pulls their punches with me."

  * * *

  Though she pretended not to, she saw him as soon as he reached the periphery of men crowded in and around her dressing room. She realized he could not be sure that she would know him again. Her glimpse of him in the theatre had been hindered by the candlelight in her eyes and his distance from the stage. During their brief exchange she had only an impression of dark hair, light eyes, and a mouth tipped at the corners in secret amusement. None of it may have been accurate. She could not know with any degree of certainty that it was he until she heard his voice.

  But somehow she did know. There was no mistaking this small flutter beating against her rib cage. It was not her heart. That was steady, as was her breathing. She had no name for this part of her body that shifted or tensed or, in this case, fluttered when she had a certain sense of things. Just as she had no name for it, she also had no understanding of its exact workings. She only knew that it did and that she had come to trust it.

  Inside her, feeling had become fact.

  This man standing quietly at the back, patiently waiting his turn for admission, was someone she wanted to know. And then know better.

  The flutter became a steady thrum.

  India Parr smiled politely in response to what was being said to her now. It could have been praise or condemnation and she would have accepted it with the same public face. "You are very kind to say so," she whispered demurely. Then she turned her attention to another and went through the same motions, giving no hint that she wavered between exhaustion and excitement, expressing nothing so much as unflagging grace in the face of the onslaught of admirers.

  While the crowd did not precisely part for the Viscount Southerton in the same way the Red Sea parted for Moses, there was some stirring and jockeying and ground was surrendered. The natural curiosity of those acquainted with him, whether familiarly or by reputation, assisted his advancement. His apology had already been made to Miss Parr and accepted by her. It seemed to many that it was unwise to raise the thing again.

  South could not decide her age. Onstage she had seemed older and playing at someone who was young. Standing a few feet from him, trying to peel away the layers of powder and paint that placed her character in another century, she seemed much younger and playing at someone with considerably more years. He watched her eyes for any hint they could give him. They were dark, so deeply brown that the pupil and iris almost blended seamlessly to a shade that was very nearly black.

  A shutter suddenly closed firmly across her eyes, making South blink. Had she been so aware of his scrutiny? Threatened by it? He had not meant to be obvious, and he was not sure that he had been. He glanced around for another cause or to see if anyone else had noticed this faint distancing. India Parr was further from all of them now than she had been when she was behind the footlights. She was better protected by this invisible shield she had thrown up than she was by the transparent fourth wall of the stage. Rather than being put off, South was intrigued.

  One could be forgiven for supposing that was her game.

  There was a slight commotion at the back of the room as India's dresser pushed her way in. With the brisk determination of one who wants to see her duty done, she began moving the admirers aside. Her spine was stiff if slightly curved, and her shoulders sloped forward, hunched as though against her will, as if she had not yet surrendered to the realities of her age. She carried an armload of material with her, but from beneath that mound the sound of her clapping hands could be heard as she started to shoo the crowd. "Out wi' ye now," she said firmly. "Miss Parr's a rare one, it's true, but she cannot lally here. Go on wi' ye."

  Tipping her head back in the direction of the door, she exhorted the squeeze of men all around her to use it. Her lips pursed tightly so that vertical creases deepened around her mouth. A large brown mole sporting three frighteningly aggressive hairs actually twitched on the corner of her right cheek. Her nostrils flared, and even the stalwarts among Miss Parr's legion of devotees shrank back in anticipation of flames roaring from those dark openings.

  There was a rolling wave of bobbing heads at the door, then the hall, and very slowly the room began to thin. South stayed his ground, though he would not have been surprised if his rumpled coattails were now singed. From somewhere behind him he heard the familiar voices of his friends trading easy barbs as they worked their way against the exiting tide.

  He stepped into the breach when the dresser began another harangue and his closest competitor for Miss Parr's attention was carelessly diverted.

  He inclined his head toward the actress much as he had from the marquess's box. "Viscount Southerton," he said by way of introduction.

  "My lord."

  Her eyes were most definitely brown, he decided. Like windows at night, they had become dark mirrors, reflecting his image back to him and hiding what was just beyond the glass.

  "Your servant, Miss Parr."

  She smiled slightly, and the coolness of it touched her eyes briefly. "My heckler, you mean."

  He did not apologize again for it. "Ah, so I am unmasked. It is not to be as I hoped, that I was safe from your scrutiny in the low lights."

  "Safe enough," she said. "But your voice gives you away. It is unquestionably distinctive."

  "Really?"

  "To my ears."

  South considered those ears in turn. They were small, delicate pink shells, perfectly symmetrical in their placement on either side of her head. A veritable chandelier of paste diamonds hung from each lobe and glittered brightly as she fractionally lifted her chin. "Truly wondrous, your ears."

  Her lush mouth still creased with its slim smile, she casually unscrewed each earring and pressed them into her fist. "So they have been remarked upon. "She regarded him patiently as he simply stared at her, and when he didn't speak, she prompted, "If there is nothing else, my lord..."

  "What? Oh, yes. The reason I have come. Pray, do not look, but just beyond my shoulder, hovering in the hall, are three wholly disreputable..." He sighed, his voice dropping huskily as her glance shifted in the exact direction he had asked her not to look. "Don't look," he said, drawing her attention back to him. "They are hardly worthy of your notice."

  "I believe they are your friends, my lord. I recognize their laughter."

  Indeed, they were chuckling again and working out the details of another wager. This time it was the dresser whose antics had their mirth and money engaged. The old woman was none too gently using physical persuasion to remove the hangers-on from her employer's dressing room. Safe as East, West, and North were in the hallway, they were no doubt waiting for the dresser to turn her attention in his direction.

  "Pretend I have given you a grave insult," South said quickly. "And chuck me on the chin."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "Go on. It's all right. I'd rather not insult you, and I am not concerned a blow dealt by your hand will hurt overmuch."

  India Parr said nothing for a moment. "You are a bedlamite, aren't you?" It was the only plausible explanation for his behavior. She was more curious than alarmed. One cry from her lips, and any number of the men Mrs. Garrety had herded out would simply stampede back in. She was likely to be hurt in the crush before she was harmed in any way by the oddly engaging viscount. "Is there nowhere you can go this evening? Perhaps Mrs. Garrety can arrange for a room here for one night."