Page 91 of Unforeseen Affairs
“What is?” Charlotte asked, her eyes focused on the stage.
“It’s not far from the theater of the spirit circle, is it? The gong, the lights… even the curtain recalls the cloth upon the table.”
“I see what you’re after.” She squinted, as though she were trying to make out every detail of the trim upon the curtains shielding the stage. “Though theater curtains are monstrous things. Truly massive. Far heavier than hundreds of silk cloths, not even counting the weights sewn into them.”
Colin was undeterred. “But it’s a threshold, isn’t it, in a way? A barrier between what is real and what the performers intend for us to see?”
Charlotte sat up slowly and turned to look at him.
“What?” His face warmed all the way to his ears.
“Sir Colin Gearing,” she murmured, “I did not mark you for a philosopher.”
Neither had he, not ever. But in her presence, he felt he understood more about the world than he ever had before. She inspired him to look at everything differently. And he knew she would listen to him.
She was still looking at him, so beguiling, so secretive. She took his hand and squeezed it just as the lights dimmed.
The gesture sent a current of happiness running through him. His heart was full. And his head, miraculously, felt normal. No muzziness, no spinning. It wasn’t difficult to see why, for following the events of the afternoon he felt certain: She felt more for him than mere casual affection. Colin had always enjoyed a bit of a gamble, and he suddenly felt he was looking at the best odds he’d ever had, whether at a whist table or otherwise. The odds that Charlotte Sedley could be courted—perhaps in a somewhat, er,unconventionalmanner, given that the bedsport usually came after the marriage—but courted all the same. That Colin could perhaps convince her to be a part of his future.
The most important part of it. As his wife.
All they had to do was put this Thaddeus Taggart Bass business behind them, so they could quit walking this tightrope of secrecy. He’d already come close to telling her he loved her, nearly doing himself in with his cursed honesty.
He did love her, though. The back of his neck felt hot, and he fought against reaching for her, drawing her into his lap, and taking his fill of her luxurious kisses. Yet despite how freely she enjoyed his company in private, he knew she would not take well to such familiar handling in public. She’d admitted a fondness for him, yes, but there were leagues between fondness and love.
As urgently as he wished to turn and look at her, to search for a hint of deeper feelings in her cool, calm expression, Colin resisted and kept his eyes on the stage. He would simply have to restrain himself.
Mr. Bass came out onto the stage to thunderous applause, and he began his show with the same pomp and musical cues as he had in London. He began with small tricks, weaving them into long, mysterious stories that Colin suspected were wholly bunk. He sat back, waiting for Charlotte’s insight, knowing they might not have until tomorrow’s matinee to make their move. Tonight could be their only chance to finish this.
Her family was surely missing her already; Colin’s stomach dropped at the thought. He had to commit to her soon, before they were tracked down and found. He could not bear bestowing a black mark upon her name. He frowned, and began thinking of just what he would say when formally asking her to marry him. Mired in his thoughts, he wondered how he’d make amends to her father and stepmother, plus the other Sedleyshe’d met at parties and balls. There was the handsome woman with the golden hair, though for some reason Colin thought she might not give them too much trouble. He had, however, met that sanctimonious MP, Marcus Hartley, at one of Dr. Collier’s parties;thatman seemed the sort to care quite a bit about this kind of thing. Colin did not want to be viewed as a man who took advantage—a man like Beaky.
“Watch now, Colin,” Charlotte said suddenly, grabbing his arm excitedly without looking away from the stage. “It’s phosphorus oil,” she said. “I’m certain of it.”
A gasp from the audience drew his eyes away from her and to the slight form of Mr. Bass, who was standing front and center on the stage with flames leaping from his hand. Colin’s jaw had been on the floor when he first observed the feat at the Egyptian Hall in London, though it was less astounding to him now, since even though he did not understand the mechanism of the phosphorus oil, he believed Charlotte.
Mr. Bass walked casually back and forth as the flames spat forth, making a show of yawning into his other hand, much to the jubilation of those in attendance.
Colin frowned. “Even if we were able to find and produce his phosphorus oil for the audience, it wouldn’t accomplish what we want. It’s just a magic trick—since he didn’t do it during either my mother’s or Mrs. Kitson’s séance, revealing it would do nothing to expose him as a fraud of a medium.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” she replied. “I still think my initial inclination is the correct one. Our best course of action is to enter the stage during the elongation trick—it’s the only way to connect this performance to his spirit circles.”
Her voice was restrained and serious, her resolve as plain as ever. She was determined to succeed here, and she trusted him to help her do it. He’d won her confidence.
By god, he loved her. He hadn’t suspected himself capable of such a monumental feeling—not even when he’d presumed his future to be with Alice—but there it was. He knew he could never love anyone as he did Charlotte Sedley.
“That’s just before the finale, right? When he floats above the stage?”
She folded her hands in her lap. “Assuming the program has not been rearranged since London. Let us hope our luck holds on that front.”
She turned to look at him, her eyes sparkling with life. Colin’s courage soared, and he sat up tall, his back straight.
“Right. I’m ready when you are.”
Charlotte felt oddly at ease.
It wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling; she had experienced it many times, most frequently during the afternoons she’d spent in the library of her father’s Yorkshire home. There she would delicately free his precious manuscripts from their glass cases—a lovely, illuminated book of hours, a herbarium, and her favorite, the oldest item in Ajax Sedley’s collection of rare books: a vellum-bound bestiary that had belonged to the stronghold’s original family. She would then loll about on the couches or lie upon the carpets, stretching out in the sun while the hours slipped by and she pored over the fragile pages of the ancient tomes.
But this—being with Colin as they stumbled their way halfway across the country on their shared mission—was that to an entirely new degree. He made her feel at ease in a far deeper way, as if she were in the place she should be not only for an afternoon, but forever and always. She felt it all the way down in her soul.
