Jane set down her cup. “The sooner every party breaks up the better,” she responded, the irony lost on Lady Oliver.
Lady Dalrymple rang for Collins.
The earl was appraising Lady Dalrymple’s relation. Quite a lovely and charming creature, he thought to himself, and uncommonly—delightfully—intelligent. Truly an original. Particularly her interest in politics. Highly unusual for any female. Bluestockings never irked him the way they did other gentlemen of his ilk. Darlington allowed that he was looking forward to the next opportunity to enjoy the young woman’s company. His hope was that he would not have to wait too long. He bowed to Cassandra and with a gloved hand brought her own hand to his lips and kissed it.
“Percy! You have the manners of a Turk!” His aunt was aghast. “What the deuce can you be thinking to kiss that girl’s hand? Ungloved and unmarried! And not the hint of an understanding between you.”
The earl ignored her. “I outrank her,” he whispered to Cassandra with a twinkle in his eye. He leaned down to Lady Dalrymple and kissed her rouged cheek. After all, he had known the countess practically all his life, so his aunt had no cause to carp at any lack of propriety in that connection.
“I am honored to have met you, Lady Oliver. And your lordship,” C.J. said as Darlington bent down to kiss her hand once more, if only to further appall his aunt. “And to have had the extreme pleasure of meeting you,” she emphasized, bidding Miss Austen good-bye.
Such an intimate exchange did not pass undetected by that most astute of observers. Jane clasped C.J.’s hand in hers and drew closer, tipping a conspiratorial wink in the direction of her handsome cousin. “With men he can be rational and unaffected,” she whispered, “but when he has ladies to please, every feature works.”
IT WAS STILL DAYLIGHT when their visitors departed, and C.J. persuaded Lady Dalrymple to permit her to take an unchaperoned constitutional. She embraced her benefactress as tightly as the older woman’s girth would allow, an expression of thanks that even Euphoria found excessive. What the dowager did not know was that C.J. had every reason to believe that they might never see each other again. Her ladyship had been remarkably munificent in rescuing her from what might have been a lifetime of misery with Lady Wickham; but delightful as the afternoon had been, C.J. had resolved to somehow find the way back to the twenty-first century.
This would be her first opportunity to return to the Theatre Royal since her Easter Sunday arrival in Bath. During her weeks of servitude on Laura Place, she had never been left alone. Even in the dead of night, she could not have left her bedchamber without waking Mary. And perhaps, too, there was a part of her that had been unwilling to abandon the girl, feeling acutely responsible for her welfare.
C.J. regretted leaving those who had shown her kindness—and forgoing the pleasure of making the further acquaintance of the Earl of Darlington, not to mention relinquishing the opportunity to befriend Jane Austen. But she needed to return to the life she had been leading more than two hundred years ahead. There lay the possibility of the perfect job—everything for which she’d studied, sacrificed, and strived for years to attain. How ironic that what lay ahead of her was what she had so unexpectedly—and perhaps irrevocably—left behind.
C.J. returned to the blue room, unlocked the highboy, and re-donned her yellow muslin, using her palms to press out the wrinkles and smooth away the smudges as best she could. Extricating herself from Saunders’s gown was mercifully simpler than putting it on. Grabbing the dilapidated red shawl, her bonnet, gloves, and reticule, she locked the door to the blue room and placed the key inside the little purse. She left Lady Dalrymple’s gleaming white town house and began the descent toward the Theatre Royal on Orchard Street. If she’d found herself in the middle of its stage upon her bizarre arrival in 1801, perhaps she could somehow return the same way. It was certainly worth a shot. What had she to lose in the effort?
She managed to slip in through the theatre’s side door—the one that opened onto the alleyway. Hearing voices coming from the stage, she hid in the wings behind a heavy black curtain.
A handsome woman in elaborate medieval costume was waiting backstage to make an entrance; and from the extravagance of her gown, it was no doubt the play’s leading lady who was standing atop the huge staircase descending from the upstage wing. C.J. clapped her hand to her mouth to stifle her excitement. Good God! She was looking at the great tragedienne herself. Tonight, Siddons was back in De Montfort, the same production that had been on the bill the day of C.J.’s supernatural appearance.
C.J. peered around the velvet curtain to see what was happening onstage. Crowds of supernumeraries dressed in long cloaks milled about, creating atmosphere. A young boy dressed as a page addressed one of the actresses onstage.
“Madam, there is a lady in your hall who begs to be admitted to your presence.”
“Is it not one of our invited friends?” the actress replied.
The page shook his head. “No, far unlike to them. It is a stranger.”
“How looks her countenance?” the actress onstage questioned the boy.
C.J. sidled along the curtain like a crab, trying to get closer to the stage.
“Is she young or old?” the lady asked the page.
“Neither, if I right guess,” came the reply. “But she is fair. For Time has laid his hand so gently on her, as he too had been awed.”
C.J. watched the actors clad as servants crossing the stage as the conversation progressed and looked about for a spare costume that she could simply slip over her head.
“What is her garb?” asked the lady of the
