evening again.
“Thank you,” she said, putting the comb down quickly and knocking several loose hairpins onto the floor. She ignored them.
He looked at her with anxiety. “Are you all right?”
“Yes! It is simply an indecision as to what to wear.” She dismissed it with a slight gesture.
He regarded her carefully. His eyes traveled from her shoes, which were visible beneath the hem of her gown, all the way to the crown of her head. She felt the heat burn up her face at the candid appreciation in his eyes.
“You made the right decision,” he pronounced. “Diamonds would have been inappropriate here. They take their drama very seriously.”
She drew in breath to say that she had no diamonds, and realized he was laughing at her. She wondered if he would have given a woman diamonds, if he loved her. She thought not. If he were capable of that sort of love, it would have been something more personal, more imaginative. A cottage by the sea, however small, perhaps; something of enduring meaning that would add joy to its owner’s life.
“I’m so glad,” she said, meeting his eyes. “I thought diamonds were too trivial.” She accepted his arm, laying her fingers so lightly on the fabric of his jacket that he could not have felt her touch.
Fiachra McDaid was as elegant and graceful as the previous evening, although on this occasion dressed less formally. He greeted Charlotte with apparent pleasure at seeing her again, even so soon. He expressed his willingness to help her to understand as much of Irish theater as was possible for an Englishwoman to grasp. He smiled at Charlotte as he said it, as if it were some secret aside that she already understood.
It was some time since she had been to the theater at all. It was not an art form Pitt was particularly fond of, and she did not like going without him.
Here in Dublin the event was quite different. The theater building itself was smaller; indeed there was an intimacy to it that made it less an occasion to be seen, and more of an adventure in which to participate.
McDaid introduced her to various of his own friends who greeted him. They varied in age and apparent social status, as if he had chosen them from as many walks of life as possible.
“Mrs. Pitt,” he explained cheerfully. “She is over from London to see how we do things here, mostly from an interest in our fair city, but in part to see if she can find some Irish ancestry. And who can blame her? Is there anyone of wit or passion who wouldn’t like to claim a bit of Irish blood in their veins?”
She responded warmly to the welcome extended her, finding the exchanges easy, even comfortable. She had forgotten how interesting it was to meet new people, with new ideas. But she did wonder exactly what Narraway had told McDaid.
She searched his face and saw nothing in it but good humor, interest, amusement, and a blank wall of guarded intelligence intended to give away nothing at all.
They were very early for the performance, but most of the audience were already present. While McDaid was talking she had an opportunity to look around and study faces. They were different from a London audience only in subtle ways. There were fewer fair heads, fewer blunt Anglo-Saxon features, a greater sense of tension and suppressed energy.
And of course she heard the music of a different accent, and now and then people speaking in a language utterly unrecognizable to her. There was in them nothing of the Latin or Norman-French about the words, or the German from which so much English was derived. She assumed it was the native tongue. She could only guess at what they said by the gestures, the laughter, and the expression in faces.
She noticed one man in particular. His hair was black with a loose, heavy wave streaked with gray. His head was narrow-boned, and it was not until he turned toward her that she saw how dark his eyes were. His nose was noticeably crooked, giving his whole aspect a lopsided look, a kind of wounded intensity. Then he turned away, as if he had not seen her, and she was relieved. She had been staring, and that was ill-mannered, no matter how interesting a person might seem.
“You saw him,” McDaid observed so quietly it was little more than a whisper.
She was taken aback. “Saw him? Who?”
“Cormac O’Neil,” he replied.
She was startled. Had she been so very obvious? “Was that … I mean the man with the …” Then she did not know how to finish the sentence.
“Haunted face,” he said for her.
“I wasn’t going to …” She saw in his eyes that she was denying it pointlessly. Either Narraway had told him, or he had pieced it together himself. It made her wonder how many others knew, indeed if all those involved might well know more than she, and her pretense was deceiving no one.
“Do you know him?” she asked.
“I?” McDaid raised his eyebrows. “I’ve met him, of course, but know him? Hardly at all.”
“I didn’t mean in any profound sense,” she parried. “Merely were you acquainted.”
“In the past, I thought so.” He was watching Cormac while seeming not to. “But tragedy changes people. Or then on the other hand, perhaps it only shows you what was always there, simply not yet uncovered. How much does one know anybody? Most of all oneself.”
“Very metaphysical,” she said drily. “And the answer is that you can make a guess, more or less educated, depending on your intelligence and your experience with that person.”
He looked at her steadily. “Victor said you were … direct.”
She found it odd to hear Narraway referred to by his given name, instead of the formality she was used to, the slight distance that leadership required.
Now she was not sure if she was on the brink of offending McDaid. On the other hand, if she was too timid even to approach what she really wanted, she would lose the chance.
