Chapter 23
The opera house was a cacophony of sound. Alexandra entered the box unable to conceal her delight. Great chandeliers hung from a vaulted ceiling, and below in the gallery, and like so many blossoms, women dressed in rainbows of color gathered in the tiers of elegant and spacious boxes.
Alexandra pulled her gaze from Nicholas and glanced around at the young dandies in their bright satin waistcoats in the mezzanine below, trying to gain the interests of the young ladies. Instead of admiring the compliments of their nearby suitors, the young ladies stared at Nicholas. Like a painting created with an eye for drama, the lighting revealed his ruggedly chiseled face, underscored by impeccably tailored midnight black attire, his air of smooth refinement, making the ladies gawk and practically swoon from their seats.
Except for one woman in the box opposite them. Alexandra reared back. The woman in the beautiful gown, surrounded by anxious suitors and staring daggers at her, was Nicholas’s former fiancée. Had he noticed her?
Nicholas took Alexandra’s cape from her shoulders and a slow admiring gaze swept across his features. The dressmaker had promised a marvelous creation and had produced a sensation out of a dress that had been promised to another customer but readied for Alexandra instead. She wanted to twirl around for his inspection. Her gown of emerald satin accentuated her narrow waist and clung provocatively to her full breasts, and then fell gracefully to the floor.
“I dreamed of you on the island in such a gown,” he said leaning over to whisper in her ear, “…just so I could remove the garment later.”
Alexandra blushed. “I did not realize the dress would produce such vice and depravity.”
“Exactly.” A lazy grin swept across his tanned face. “I have a fond memory of long sultry nights beneath undulating palm trees. You cannot, Lady Sutherland, begin to imagine the wickedness I’m entertaining.” His voice rich and deep, so dear and familiar to her, wiped away any uncertainty she had of his feelings for his former fiancée.
“You must stop, my Lord. All the women watching you will guess your thoughts. My reputation will be in ruins,” Alexandra teased in a laughter-tinged voice.
Nicholas’s smile vanished. “I am jealous, Lady Sutherland. Those young bucks are staring at you, the most beautiful woman in the room.”
Nicholas had paid her the highest compliment. She glanced at her audience. He was right. They were staring at her.
Alexandra smiled but Nicholas was not pleased. He passed an impassive glance over her male admirers until they were forced to look away.
“I do not agree with the coming out period nor the idea of sharing you at all,” he said, bluntly. “I should dispense with this charade and haul you off to Gretna Green.”
Alexandra angled her head to the melee below. “Are you telling me there is not one suitable companion?” she teased.
“Not one. And if one of those vipers has more than one dance with you at balls we are to attend, I shall heave them out on a doorstep.”
His blunt answer made her laugh. He eyed her breasts with a bold, speculative gleam that left her breathless. “What a perfectly unchivalrous thing to say!”
“Chivalry is for callow youths and old men,” Nicholas informed her with a serious inflection in his voice. “However, I shan’t put up with this inconvenience for long. You sitting next to me will be a statement sent to all of London that you are mine.”
“Don’t be a boor and keep this enchanting lady all to yourself,” chastised Anthony. He bowed to Alexandra, made apologies for being late, and then seated his wife. “I don’t know why you dragged me here this evening, Rachel,” he said over Nicholas’s head. “To listen to a bunch of Italian eunuchs squawl like a bunch of cats.”
Rachel shushed her husband and Alexandra placed her fan over her mouth to hide her smile. To sit through an opera must be difficult for a man with Anthony’s prodigious and scientific mind.
A tall man entered their box. He possessed an unblinking eye, black as obsidian and made of glass. Alexandra did a double take and remembered Nicholas’s story of his uncle that he told her on the island.
Nicholas stood and said, “Alexandra, this is my Uncle Cornelius, the Duke of Westbrook.”
The man’s elegant clothing fit well, his wig perfectly brushed and powdered, yet there was an expression of forced civility in his comportment.
He took Alexandra’s proffered hand, bent over and kissed it. His touch owned the infiltrating cold of a serpent. She shivered. She drew her fingers back, but he held fast, scrutinizing her like she was a misplaced ghost. Countless emotions flashed across his face. Adoration? Resentment? Why? He held her overlong for what was appropriate. She tugged her hand.
At her movement, the Duke of Westbrook came to life and, eye refocusing, he released her fingers, and then turned, clapped Nicholas on the back. “Been trying to catch up with you since your return, but you’ve been on the run. Know that I’m always available to help you, Nicholas, and I understand there is to be a wedding.”
“Yes, Sir. Alexandra has agreed to honor me as my wife, but that is not for public review yet. Not until a coming out has properly taken place.”
“Well done,” said the Duke of Westbrook, his gaze assessing Alexandra over from head to toe.
“I came to pay my respects to you, Nicholas, and must leave. But I do want to hear every detail of your journey.”
Alexandra did not like the private nature of the innuendo, nor the fact that Cornelius kept staring at her. His voice troubled her. Almost as if she had heard it before. She fiddled with her glove and blew out a breath. Since Nicholas wasn’t bothered by Cornelius’s strange behavior then she should not be either.
“I wouldn’t think of it,” Nicholas said. “Why sit alone in your box when you can share ours?”
Alexandra fanned herself. The two men were deep in quiet conversation, but beneath veiled lids Rachel watched Cornelius. So did Nicholas’s father. A whisper of unease goaded Alexandra’s senses again. Memories assailed her from the island and their discussion of who might have been behind the attack on the Rutland’s. As Nicholas seated her, nerves rattled down her spine, warning her she had not been wrong to suggest to Nicholas that his uncle may not have the purest of intentions.
Rachel gave Alexandra a slight nod, confirming a silent communication that Alexandra’s uncertainties were not irrational.
In a flat tone of voice, Rachel said, “We must talk later…” She indicated Cornelius with a discreet nod. “…about accessories for your new gowns.”
“That would be lovely,” Alexandra said. “Your opinions matter to me.”
As she spoke, Nicholas sat on one side of her and gestured to the Duke of Westbrook to sit on the other side of her. Sandwiched between the two men, she leaned over and peered down at the pit, anywhere she would not meet Cornelius’s eyes. “Looks like we have arrived just in time since it appears the opera is about to begin,” she said, lowering her voice.
“Is something wrong, Lady Sutherland?” the Duke of Westbrook whispered into her ear.
“Why do you ask, sir?” Alexandra said.
“You are tapping the blades of your fan on your knee in iambic pentameter.”
Alexandra gulped. “How careless of me,” she said, mortified that she was nearly flogging herself. “I offer my sincere apologies, Lord Westbrook.”
“None to be given,” he said, his expression filled with warmth. “Although I like your rhythm.”
Alexandra cringed.
She opened her fan and stirred the air around her face. “I often have too much energy to sit idle, and I tend to dispel it in peculiar ways.”
“I can empathize,” Lord Westbrook said, leaning so their faces were inches apart. “When I’m distracted, I’m inclined to hum.”
“Oh,” she said, pretending interest.
“Badly,” he added, and Alexandra laughed at him. The man was disarming.
The Duke of Westbrook whispered another humorous anecdote in her ear. His shoulder brushed hers in an intimate fashion that did not seem accidental. “Lucretia, I’m so happy you are here this evening.”
Alexandra narrowed her gaze. “Pardon me?”
Cornelius pulled back. “Please, accept my apology. You look so much like Nicholas’s late mother, your coloring, your eyes, your energy, that for one moment I was in another time and place.”
She blinked. Was Duke Cornelius caught between hallucinating and the world of reality? He gave her the same feeling she experienced of a forest pool she had come upon in Deconshire, half-hidden by an edging of deadly nightshade and leaning prone across it at a despondent angle was a lifeless willow, strangely halted from falling into the foul waters.
Alexandra leaned into Nicholas. Had he seen the Duke of Westbrook’s odd behavior? Nicholas’s smile washed away her anxiety.
The rumbling D-minor cadence of the overture filled the theater, commanding silence from the spectators. Alexandra took a deep breath and switched her attention to the stage in anticipation of enjoying the opera.
Handel’s Rinaldo was magnificent, staged with a dramatic setting of an enchanted palace with blazing battlements and with monsters spitting fire and smoke. Alexandra was so moved by the vocally elaborate long arias that were designed to display the virtuosity of the castratos. Soon, the excitement churning in her faded to the suffocating heat and oppressive smoke emitted from candles.
Everyone was watching the opera except Nicholas.
More than once, she had felt his gaze linger on her.
“Are you unwell, Alexandra?” he said.
She closed her eyes. If only she could feign sleep so she did not have to answer him. The insides of her stomach rioted a silent tattoo.
“I know you’re not sleeping,” he continued, pitching his voice low so he did not disturb the others. But that didn’t happen and to her embarrassment, Cornelius watched her too. Nicholas stretched his leg so his boot brushed against the side of her slipper. “You haven’t answered my question.”
Alexandra opened her eyes, half begging him to leave her alone. If only he wouldn’t pay so close attention to her. “What question?”
He muttered something under his breath. “Your pallor concerns me. I asked if you were unwell.”
It was their first time in public and she didn’t want to disgrace herself or Nicholas. Quiet. That was all she needed…and to lay down. Would the room ever stop rotating? “I am fine, my lord.”
“Liar.”
Her eyes flared at his rudeness. She ignored the small fact she was lying to him. Let me suffer with my dignity intact.
The muscles in her throat constricted. Alexandra clamped her hand over her mouth and ran from the box. Where could she seek privacy? A footman whirred past her. She moved down a long dark corridor. Bile rose-up her throat. Too late. She emptied the contents of her stomach in an urn. Knees shaking, she placed her hand on the wall willing the spinning to cease so she wouldn’t faint dead away. A handkerchief was handed to her.
“When were you going to tell me?”
Nicholas. Oh, he had witnessed her humiliation. Dabbing her lips, she took her hand off the wall, turned, lifting her gaze to him.
Dear heavens, the tropics could be frozen beneath his narrowed cobalt eyes. Had he assumed she had kept the pregnancy from him? She wrapped her arms around herself, loathing the trembling of her limbs, and waiting until her breathing evened. “I just found out.”
He crossed his arms in front of him, waiting for an explanation.
“I have been ailing for weeks, believing I had caught a ship-born malaise. This afternoon, I was ill in front of Rachel, so she arranged to have her physician examine me. He confirmed I was to be a mother, and I wanted to wait until we were alone to surprise you with the news. And now I have disgraced myself and you are angry.”
She wanted to cry, to be anywhere but here. “I-I don’t understand why. I thought you wanted a child.”
Nicholas stood thunderstruck. “I thought you couldn’t have children.”
“The physician said the doctor in Deconshire was either addled or superstitious and that a fall wouldn’t prevent me from having children as evidenced by my condition.”
Nicholas hauled her into his arms.
“What if someone sees us?” A door opened further up the corridor and she pushed from his arms. Duke Cornelius. Thank goodness, he headed the other way.
Nicholas murmured into her ear. “To hell with everyone else. We are going to have a baby and we are going home. You must rest.”
His quarrelsome bellow teased a smile from her lips. “Nicholas, I’m not dying. I’m having a baby and the doctor said I was to maintain a normal routine until I started to show.”
“How long?” he demanded.
“We have seven and a half months before our child is born.”
“You should be in bed.”
She giggled from Nicholas’ magnanimous pontification and allowed him to escort her back to the box, to make their goodbyes, happy the Duke of Westbrook had not returned.
Rachel tapped her closed fan on her lips and arched an eyebrow. “Nicholas knows?”
“You are leaving so soon?” asked Nicholas’s father, standing and shooting a suspicious glance over Alexandra.
Heat rose to her face.
Anthony sat with his eyes closed, his mind immune from the opera and the commotion.
Aunt Margaret leaned forward. “Knows what?”
Oh, good Lord. If Aunt Margaret and Duke had guessed, they would think her the worst kind of woman. Hearing a whispering sound, she glanced behind her. Attention from the audience was drawn to her and not the opera. She gasped, wrung her hands together and turned away. If she were to die a thousand deaths it would not be too many.
Aunt Margaret patted her gloved fingers on Alexandra’s. “There has been too much excitement for you, dear. You must go home and rest.”
The Duke clapped Nicholas’s back, and then smiling, bowed to Alexandra. “You are a very welcome addition to our family, Miss Sutherland.”
Alexandra cringed from the unwanted attention, yet with the well-wishes, she let go a breath. Perhaps they had not suspected anything untoward.
Rachel elbowed Anthony awake.
He assessed Alexandra, and then shook Nicholas’s hand. “Six hundred and nineteen divided by perimetros?”
Nicholas chuckled and Alexandra frowned, unable to grasp Anthony’s cryptic message, and finding the mathematical formula odd. Nicholas placed her cape around her shoulders. She attempted to work out the formula but her mind was far too muddled.
Outside the theatre, Nicholas hailed a footman to get their coach. With his arm tightly around Alexandra, he felt her breathe in the night’s damp air. A mist drew a bright sheen on the wide street beneath the lantern light and neat lines of pollarded trees, and quiet honey-colored buildings with slate roofs settled in silence. Apart from for the coaches parked down the street, people were non-existent, the opera in the third act. He used the quiet to digest the news.
They were going to have a baby. He was the happiest man on earth and nothing could dispel the wonderful feeling of becoming a father.
“What did your brother mean by six hundred and nineteen divided by perimetros?” Alexandra asked.
“He was assessing the gestation period for when a baby is born which is nine months and two days.” How he loved seeing the color rise to her face and the question forming in her eyes. “My brother is a scientist. His theories are born on observations,” Nicholas said.
Horses clomped over cobblestone. Full gallop. Harnesses clanged. Was it the Rutland coach? A runaway carriage? Hooves thundered.
“Look out!” yelled a footman from behind them.
The driver cracked his whip on the horses. He hurled curses. The carriage veered onto the walkway, heading straight toward them. No time. Nicholas grabbed Alexandra and rolled with her into the street, horses and carriage wheels whizzing past them, a cat’s whisker breadth away.
Nicholas pulled Alexandra up and she swayed into him. “That was deliberate. We could have been killed.”
Nicholas wanted to run after the ruffian but the effort would be useless, the gloom swallowing up the rig up.
The footman rushed up to them. “Are you hurt?”
“Did you see the driver?”
“No, sir. It was too dark and happened too quickly.”
Nicholas’s jaw hardened. He moved Alexandra inside and instructed the footman, “Go to the Rutland box and tell my family there was an attempt on our lives and to leave immediately. We will wait.”