He grinned. “I shall.”
Bernadette smiled back, blushing. It was strange. She usually felt scared to say a single word to anyone, especially men, but with Lord Blackburne, talking was easy and interesting. He was bright and informed and talking to him felt good and uncomplicated. It came naturally, like breathing in. She leaned back, relaxing slightly.
“Look. The curtains are lifting. The play’s starting again.”
“It is,” Bernadette murmured. She leaned back in her seat, gazing down. The red velvet curtains were indeed lifting, showing a scene of a throne-room.
The actors appeared, and Bernadette watched for a few minutes, her gaze drifting sideways, unavoidably, to Lord Blackburne. He was watching Hamlet on stage, conversing with his treacherous uncle. He looked so sad.
She glanced sideways. Judy was gazing down at the stage, her attention fixed on the play. Bernadette wanted to smile. Perhaps Judy had never had the time or spare money to go to the theater. She was a wonderful audience, but, Bernadette thought with her lips lifting at the corners, a terrible chaperone.
The play became more tense with each act, the scene approaching where Hamlet would trick his usurping uncle toconfess the murder. The graveyard scene came in the next act as well, and that one was always eerie. She glanced sideways. Lord Blackburne was grim and cold, but oddly reassuring. Sitting through the scary scenes beside him would make them slightly more bearable.
The play progressed, and it was only as the audience applauded wildly and then, slowly but loudly, began to move towards the big doors, the play concluded, that they had a real chance to talk again.
“What was your opinion?” She asked. “Did you think it was well done?”
Lord Blackburne turned to her dreamily as if he’d just woken up. “Yes. I did.”
“I thought Queen Gertrude was formidable,” Bernadette commented.
“Yes.” He smiled. “Like my grandmama.”
Bernadette giggled. “Very like.” Knowing that he found his grandmother formidable helped. She didn’t feel alone. They were both pushed into this. He was as trapped by his family as she was by hers. They were both suffering, but somehow, in the theater, it didn’t feel like suffering.
“You met her?” he frowned. “My grandmother, that is.”
“She came to the house a few hours ago,” Bernadette confessed. “To call on us.”
Lord Blackburne frowned, then inclined his head. “I imagine she would. She’s very proper.”
Bernadette giggled. “She seems to be.” Proper, certainly. Intimidating and commanding were more the words she’d wanted to say, but proper as well.
He smiled and Bernadette felt her heart flood with warmth. It felt so good and so comfortable to be talking with him. He was rather likable. Brooding, quiet, but oddly likeable. She grinned to herself.
What would my friends think? That makes no sense,she told herself with a small smile.Brooding and quiet, but likable?
“I suppose, if we want to have any chance of getting home before midnight, we ought to try to get out of those doors,” he commented, bringing her attention back to the moment.
She nodded and stood up. He stood back for her and she dropped a brief curtsey, cheeks glowing, and went through the door ahead of him. Judy followed them down the hallway. Bernadette walked with her back straight and her cheeks flushed. Lord Blackburne was strange, but he was strange in a nice sort of way.
They walked down into the foyer. At the entrance, Lord Blackburne stopped as though he’d been stunned, and Bernadette craned her neck to see what had halted him so forcibly: it was a woman.
Chapter 11
Nicholas stood in the foyer, unable to think, unable to move. Emily, standing there in the doorway, on the arm of her mother, was smiling at him.
Her words from two years ago played with his sanity. Without warning, he could hear her as she spoke so softly in the garden, telling him news that had shocked him.
“Nicholas, I am sorry if I ever gave false hope, but I have fallen quite desperately in love with your cousin.”
“What?” Nicholas replied in his memory. Horror rooted him to the spot.
“Quintus. It is he who has stolen my heart.”
Nicholas felt rage fill him anew. His cousin had been there so often when he had tried to court Emily. He’d not seen it then and even now, the pain of it cut through his heart. He’d believed Emily could see the true man behind the scars, that she could come to love him in spite of his flaws. She had said that, and he’d believed her.
I can look past your scars,she whispered sweetly to him.No flaw is so big that one cannot learn to ignore it.
