Constantine made an extraordinarily handsome couple. 'My congratulations to you, Lord Merton,' the lady said, 'on your recent inheritance. And to you, Lord and Lady Lyngate, on your recent marriage.
I wish you all the happiness you deserve.' She had a low, musical voice. She was smiling at Elliott and wafting a fan languidly before her face. It must be very pleasurable, Vanessa thought, to be that beautiful. 'I say,' Stephen said, 'have you ever seen a more impressive performance than this?' They talked about the play until it was time to return to their respective boxes.
Elliott did not take her hand again, Vanessa noticed. His eyes were like flint, and his jaw was hard set. He drummed his fingers slowly on the velvet armrest of the box. 'What were we expected to do?' she asked him softly. 'Ignore our own cousin when he was civil enough to come around to greet us?' He turned his eyes on her. 'I have not uttered one word of reproach,' he told her. 'You do not need to,' she said, unfurling her fan and cooling her face with it. 'You look thoroughly bad-tempered. Whatever would Mrs.
Bromley-Hayes have thought if we had given them the cut direct?' 'I would not know,' he said. 'I am not privy to the lady's thoughts.' 'Is she a widow?' she asked him. 'She is,' he said. 'But it is quite unexceptionable, you know, for married ladies to be escorted to social events by gentlemen who are not their husbands.' 'Is it?' she said. 'Must I cultivate the acquaintance of some obliging gentleman, then, so that you may be saved the bother of taking me to the museum and Gunter's and the theater and other places?' 'Who said it was a bother?' He removed his hand from the armrest and turned to her. He set her hand on his sleeve again and patted it with his own. 'Are you trying to provoke me into a quarrel, by any chance?' 'I prefer your irritability to your coldness,' she said, and smiled at him. 'And I have only the two moods, do I?' he asked her. 'Poor Vanessa.
However are you to make such a man happy? Or comfortable? However are you to give him pleasure?' He was looking very directly at her with what she thought of as his bedroom eyes. His eyelids were half drooped over them. She felt a thrill of sexual awareness, which had seemed somewhat pointless since the end of their honeymoon. 'Oh, I will think of ways,' she said, leaning a little toward him. 'I am endlessly inventive.' 'Ah,' he said softly just before the play resumed.
She enjoyed the rest of the performance. She watched it with avid attention. But she was no longer as absorbed in it as she had been earlier. She was terribly aware, though she did not once turn her head to look, of her husband's fingers stroking lightly over the back of her hand and sometimes along the full length of one of her fingers.
She desperately wanted to be in bed with him - though bed since their honeymoon had lasted for five minutes from start to finish, if that.
Had he been flirting with her just now?
It was a ludicrous idea. Why would Elliot of all people flirt with /her/?
But what else could he have been up to except flirtation?
18
AFTER dismissing his valet for the night, Elliott stood for a long time in his bedchamber, looking out through the window onto darkness, the fingers of one hand drumming on the windowsill. A night watchman made his round of the square, his lantern swaying as he walked. Then he passed on elsewhere and again there was darkness.
Elliott wondered if it had been deliberate. It was just the sort of thing Con /would /do. It was the sort of thing they might have done together once upon a time, during Elliott's irresponsible youth.
Afterward they would have derived enormous amusement from the memory of the discomfiture of their victim. Though he could not remember anytime when they had been deliberately malicious, involving an innocent who might get seriously hurt. /Would /Vanessa be hurt? He suspected that she might.
How could Con have known, though, that they would be at the theater this evening? Elliott had not known himself before making the impulsive suggestion at the end of the morning's outing.
But of course Con had /not /known for sure. He could have made several educated guesses, however, of places Elliott and Vanessa were likely to appear over the next week or so. It certainly would have been no secret that they were in London. If they had not been at the theater this evening, then they would surely be at this function or that soon.
Yes, it had been deliberate. Of course it had. Had there really been any doubt?
Had it been deliberate on Anna Bromley-Hayes's part too, though? That was the more pertinent question.
But if it had not been, why had she come during the interval to meet his party and be introduced to his wife? If it had not been deliberate, would she not have avoided such a painful encounter?
Yes. It had been deliberate. He would have expected better of her but had no right to demand it. He had undoubtedly hurt her. He had disregarded her feelings and presented her with a fait accompli quite without prior warning.
And good Lord, was this Vanessa's influence, this new tendency of his to analyze everything, to wonder about people's /feelings/?
However it was, his wife and his ex-mistress had not only come face-to-face but had also been introduced. It had been an excruciatingly embarrassing moment for him and doubtless equally intriguing to a number of the onlookers.
All of which Con would have known in advance. And Anna too.
Revenge had been of more importance to Anna, it seemed, than good taste or personal dignity.
She had been looking her loveliest and most ravishing. Con had been at his most charming and his most mocking - both very familiar facets of his character to Elliott. He had never expected during his youth, though, that one day he would be one of Con's victims.
Vanessa would surely be waiting for him, he thought suddenly, bringing his mind back to the present. He was probably keeping her awake. If he was not going to go to her tonight, he ought to have told her so.
Was he really not going to her then?
He had actually enjoyed the day - morning and evening - right until the moment when young Merton had called their attention to the presence of Con in the box opposite and Elliott had looked and seen not just Con, but Anna too beside him. His eyes had met hers, and he had read a challenge there despite the distance between them.
He had been enjoying himself until then. For some odd reason he had been enjoying his wife's company. There was something inexplicably fascinating about her.
His fingers drummed harder against the windowsill for a moment.
He moved away from the window and wandered through to his dressing room, leaving the door open so that the light from the candle would shine in.
What he ought to do was walk firmly into Vanessa's room and tell her what she wanted to know. She wanted him to give her a good reason for his quarrel with Con, a good reason for her to avoid him. He should simply give it to her. Con was a thief and a lecher. He had robbed his own brother, who had trusted him totally but had not been mentally capable of knowing that his trust was being abused. And he had debauched servants of the house and other women of the neighborhood, something no decent gentleman would ever do.
But how could he tell Vanessa, any more than he had ever been able to tell his mother or his sisters - even though he had sometimes reasoned that they /ought /to know for their own good? How could he betray his /own /honor as guardian to Jonathan? How could he breach the confidentiality of such a trust? Besides, he had no incontrovertible proof. Con had not denied the charges, but he had not admitted to them either. He had merely lofted one eyebrow and grinned when Elliott confronted him, and had invited him to go to the devil.
How could one blacken someone's name to another person when one only had suspicions, no matter how certain one was that those suspicions were well founded?
Dash it all, it was /still /hard to accept that Con was capable of such villainy. He had always been up for any mischief and tomfoolery and devilry - but so had Elliott until fairly recently. He had never been a rogue, though.
And it was hard to accept that Con could hate him so much - and that he could be willing to risk hurting
