Kenyon untwisted the page, then turned it over, then upside down. "Bad light in here, don't you know," he said, reaching for his reliable quizzing glass on its ribbon.
"Oh, just let me have it, you clunch. I swear you are as vain as a swan." She took the page and held it closer to the one candle left burning in its sconce at the rear of the box. "It's written lightly in pencil; that's why you had a problem."
He had a problem because he couldn't see a blasted thing. "But what does it say, my dear?"
"It says, 'Things are desperate. Come to the Green Room after the performance. It's a matter of death or death. Lola.' "
"Lola's in the cast? She must be the only soul in London who hasn't read about the marriage." Kenyon fixed his opera glasses on the stage, scanning the actresses. "Yes, she's the one in"
"She's the one in blue who has been gazing forlornly up at this box for two acts," Aurora noted dryly. "The one who is waving to you, now that she has your attention."
He moved the fingers of his right hand in return. "It's not what it seems. We had dinner a few times, that was all."
Aurora was smoothing the paper across her lap. "I may be green as cabbage, my lord, but I am not as stupid as one. Nor is it any of my business what you did before I met you, much less married you. What are you going to do about Miss, ah, Lola?"
Kenyon thought for a minute, thinking that he wouldn't be needing any cold baths, not with the icicles dripping off her words, but he did not have a great many options. If one of his own footmen were in attendance, he could send the chap in his stead, but Needles was only a boy. And he could not simply ignore Lola's plea for help. "I'll have to go see what the difficulty is."
"Of course you do. She's counting on you."
"Likely she's between protectors and needs a loan to tide her over. Or needs a place to stay for a few days. I'll drive you home, return here in time for the last act, hand Lola a few pounds, and still be back at the hotel for our late dinner before the cat can lick its ear."
"If you drop me at the hotel, I shall ask the first gentleman I see to escort me to the dining room. I hope it's that tobacco merchant."
"What, the dirty dish who tried to look down your décolletage as we were leaving? I almost called him out then and there! Besides, supper with that shabster would destroy whatever reputation you might ever hope to have."
"So would my husband's visiting his former mistress in public view not three days after our wedding. We are still married in the eyes of the church, the law, and these thousand people. Unless and until you prove that I am not Aurora Halle, I am Lady Windham, your wife. You did swear to honor me at that ceremony, didn't you? Well, there is no honor in shaming me before all of London."
She had a point, Kenyon conceded. She also had a green streak a mile wide, which secretly delighted him. "Very well, we will go together, but you will stand in the corner and not speak to anyone. Is that clear?"
It was clear that the man accosting Lola was not going to abide by any rules of gentlemanly conduct. He had a firm grasp on the front of her gown and was pulling her from the room when Kenyon and Aurora and Ned got there. No one seemed inclined to stop him, since the man was as tall as the door frame and nearly as wide. He made the earl look puny.
Kenyon groaned.
"I paid for you tonight, and I'm gettin' you tonight, you cheatin' doxy. No one diddles Nick Chubb."
"But I thought you were giving me a gift, is all. I sold the bracelet to buy coal, like I told you. You never said I had to pay you back in any way."
"Every gift has its price, duckie, and you're about to pay the piper."
Kenyon stepped forward and cleared his throat. "I'll be happy to pay the lady's debts, Mr. Chubb, is it? Lola seems reluctant to share your company."
Chubb swung around. "Who the devil are you to be sticking your long nose into Nick Chubb's business? I want what I paid for, and no dandified toff is going to do me out of it. 'Sides," he said, looking back at the corner, "you got your own dollymop. Go plow your own field, like a gentleman farmer, iffen you know how. Unless of course you want to trade?"
So Kenyon hit him. It was a flush hit to the jaw, one Gentleman Jackson would have approved, and nearly broke the earl's knuckles. Chubb did not even let go of Lola's dress. He simply picked Kenyon up with his other hand and tossed him against the door, headfirst. Lola screamed. Aurora screamed. Three other actresses screamed, and one fainted. Two actors fled, one stage-door beau hid under the table, a reviewer from the newspaper started writing furiously, and the manager called for the constable. Kenyon dragged himself up, shook his head to clear it, and landed Chubb another facer, this one to the nose. Chubb shoved him into a tea cart, which toppled.
"I am beginning to get annoyed, boy-o," the behemoth bellowed when Kenyon came at him again, this time with a blow to the breadbasket. Chubb grabbed him again and held him off the ground, at which Aurora decided it was time to act. She could feel her stomach lurching and refused to let her husband be vanquished while she vomited. So she picked up the nearest thing to hand, the stage pistol that had been used in the last act, and began beating Chubb about the knees, since she could not reach his brain box, which was too small a target anyway. The pistol went off in a harmless cloud of smoke and dust, but creating more panic in the onlookers. Aurora almost swooned herself, thinking she'd shot her husband. But Kenyon roared, landing a solid clout on Chubb's ear, which caused the giant to drop both the earl, who banged his head against the table, and Lola, who fainted dead away. Aurora kept clubbing at Chubb with the gun. He raised his fist to brush her aside, but Ned leaped onto his back, placing his hands over the bully's eyes. "Kick 'im in the privates, m'lady!" the boy shouted, so she did. While Chubb was doubled over, Windham coshed him over the head with a wooden chair, just in time for the Charleys to come haul him off.
"I thought I told you to stay in the corner," was all the earl could say as he watched the reporter tear out of the Green Room with his pad and pencil still flying.
"That was the bravest thing I have ever seen," Aurora marveled as she wrapped her handkerchief around Kenyon's battered hand, once they were finally in the carriage.
His heart swelled, almost as large as the lump on his head. And it did not matter that he couldn't see her in the coach lamp's dim light, or that he couldn't see out of one eye at all; he could hear the warmth in her voice, the pride, the admiration.
"Why, we all might have been killed if Ned hadn't jumped on Chubb that way." She patted his bruised cheek. "And you did well too, my lord."
Chapter Twelve
» ^ «
For twenty-odd years, almost no one but his lordship's valet knew that the Earl of Windham wore spectacles. It was not vanity, Kenyon always told himself. It was a matter of strength, power, authority. And he looked foolish in glasses.
Now everyone would know unless, of course, they assumed he'd donned the peepers to hide the magnificent black eye he sported, which was only half true. He'd mostly chosen to wear his spectacles on his daily call at the War Office in hopes that no one would recognize him. He'd rather be known as the four-eyed earl than the bridegroom of a ballock-basher. Every scandal sheet, every broadside, held a cartoon of last night's events: Aurora as Boadicia, rosebuds in her hair, defending the family jewels. Aurora as David, aiming her slingshot at Goliath, and himself, not Ned, on the giant's back, yelling, "Aim lower, my dear." The reason Kenyon was so sure it was his caricature was that the dashed swell was looking through a quizzing glass. Bloody hell.
For a man who despised having his name simmering in scandal broth, Windham was not doing a good job of keeping his affairs out of the public eye. His marriage to Genevieve and her French leave, then Brianne's elopement and nonmarriage, were nothing to the continual catastrophe that was Aurora. He could only imagine how many trees would be cut down for pulp when news of her false identity was aired, and another Warriner marriage was dissolved.
The earl intercepted a few winks at the War Office, a few fingers held alongside noses. Damn, a fellow saw too much when he wore his glasses. And glaring at the insolent curs through thick lenses was not nearly so effective in depressing pretensions as peering through his looking glass. He shouldn't have listened to Aurora about wearing the spectacles. Zeus, he shouldn't have listened to her about going to the Green Room. He shouldn't have married the confounded chit.
The War Office had no news for him. The McPhee solicitor had no information for him, either, only copies of Aurora Halle's adoption papersand titters. Gads, who would employ such a twittering toad? But the man appeared honest, and unaware of any possible legal legerdemain.
Could his wife really be the child of Elizabeth and Avisson Halle? Lud, that would leave Kenyon with a flea-wit who fell into one disaster after another, but not a fraud. That would mean, however, that Lady Anstruther-Jones was wrong, and England's Empress of the East was never wrong.
"You did just as you should, child," Hortense was telling Aurora as they entered her presence that afternoon.
So the old crone was not infallible after all, Kenyon thought, seating himself on his pillow as if paying homage to a fairy queen instead of a dab of a dowager.