“I reckon, even if they’re bred to it, they fall on their heads a number of times before they get the hang of it,” he said. “But they must start young, when they’re less breakable.”
“Not like dressmaking,” she said. “Sooner or later would-be equestrians have to get on the horse. But we mayn’t cut a piece of silk until we’ve been sewing seams for an eternity and made a thousand handkerchiefs and aprons. What a pleasure it is to see a woman who’s mastered such an art! The equestrians are mostly men, aren’t they?”
“That does account in part for Miss Woolford’s popularity.”
“But she’s very good—or does my total ignorance of horsemanship show?”
“She’s immensely talented,” he said. “A ballerina equestrienne.”
“This is wonderful,” she said. “My sisters are always telling me I need to get away from the shop, but Sunday comes round only once a week, and then I like to spend time with my niece, or outdoors, preferably both. Sometimes we go to the theater, but this is entirely different. It smells different, certainly.”
“That would be the horses,” he said.
“Beautiful creatures,” she said.
He caught the note of wistfulness. He considered it, along with her reactions to Miss Woolford, and filed it away for future reference.
The second part of the equestrian performance began then, and she turned back to the stage.
He looked that way, too, outwardly composed, inwardly unsettled. She’d changed before his eyes from a sophisticated Parisian to an excited girl, and for a moment she’d seemed so vulnerable that he felt … what? Ashamed? But of what? He was a man. She was a woman. They were attracted to each other and they played a game, a very old game. Yet along with the thrill of the chase he felt a twinge of something like heartache.
And why should he not? Hadn’t he endured an hour of death and dying in rhyme? And was he not obliged to go back to it?
It seemed to Leonie a very short time before she and Lord Lisburne were in a hackney again, traveling along Westminster Bridge Street, back to the “obsequies,” as he had put it a moment ago.
He’d been true to his word.
But then, she’d felt certain he would be, else she wouldn’t have come with him.
Yes, she’d been aware of his watching her during the performance when he thought she wasn’t paying attention to him. As though one could sit beside the man and not be aware of him, even if a host of heavenly angels floated down to the stage or a herd of elephants burst into the arena. And when she’d turned and caught him at it, he’d looked so like a boy caught in mischief—a boy she wanted to know—that her logic faltered for a moment, and something inside her gave way.
But only for a moment.
Now he was the charming man of the world again, and she was Leonie Noirot, logical and businesslike and able to put two and two together.
“You don’t care for his poetry, yet you came back with Lord Swanton to London for the release of his book,” she said. “That’s prodigious loyalty.”
He laughed. “A man ought to stick by his friend in hours of trial.”
“To protect him from excited young women?”
“That wasn’t the original plan, no. We’d prepared for a humiliating return. The reviewers were savage. Didn’t you know?”
“I’m not very literary,” she said. “I look at the reviews of plays and concerts and such, but mainly we’re interested in what the ladies are wearing. I rarely have time for the book reviews.”
“He’d had a few of the poems published in magazines before Alcinthus and Other Poems came out,” he said. “The reviewers loathed his work, unanimously and unconditionally. They lacerated him. They parodied him. It was a massacre. Until he saw the reviews, Swanton had been on the fence about coming back to London when his book was unleashed on the general public. After that, the choice was clear: Return and face the music or stay away and be labeled a coward.”
“I had no idea,” she said. “I was aware that his lordship had returned to London when the book came out because everybody was talking about it. Certainly our ladies were. I haven’t heard that much excitement since the last big scandal.” The one Sophy had precipitated.
“We’re still not sure what happened, exactly,” he said. “We arrived in London the day before it was to appear in the shops. We had a small party, and Swanton was a good sport about the rotten reviews—he doesn’t have a high opinion of himself to start with, so he wasn’t as desolated as another fellow might have been. We made jokes about it at White’s club. Then, a few days after we arrived, we had to order more copies printed, and quickly. Mobs of young women were storming the bookshop doors. The booksellers said they hadn’t seen anything like it since Harriette Wilson published her memoirs.”
Harriette Wilson had been a famous courtesan. Ten years ago, men had paid her not to mention them in her memoirs.
“Lord Swanton seems to have struck a chord in young women’s hearts,” she said.
“And he’s as bewildered as the critics.” Lord Lisburne looked out of the window.
At this time of year, darkness came late, and even then it seemed not a full darkness, but a deep twilight. Tonight, a full moon brightened it further, and Leonie saw that they must have crossed Westminster Bridge some while ago. She saw, too, the muscle jump in his jaw.
“Sudden leaps to fame can be dangerous,” he said. “Especially when young women are involved. I should like to get him back to the Continent before …” He trailed off and shrugged. “That crowd tonight troubled you. The one at the lecture.”
“When I see so many people crowded together,” she said slowly, “I tend to see a mob.”
A moment’s pause, then, “That’s what I see, too, Miss Noirot. I should have remained and stood guard. But …” He paused for a very long time.
“But,” she said.
“I had a chance to steal a pretty girl from the crowd, and I took it.”
Leonie and Lord Lisburne arrived in time for the concluding event of the poetic evening when, according to the program, Lord Swanton would debut one of his recent compositions.
As Lord Lisburne had predicted, the crowd had thinned. Though the hall remained full, the men had moved out of their cramped quarters along the walls and into seats in the back rows. The galleries no longer seemed in danger of collapsing.
While she and Lord Lisburne paused in the doorway, looking for a place to sit, what looked like a family group bore down on them. He drew her back and, either out of courtesy or because he wasn’t in a hurry to join the audience, made way for the departing family. When the other gentleman thanked him, Lord Lisburne smiled commiseratingly and murmured some answer that made the other man smile.
That was charm at work, charm of the most insidious kind: humorous, self-deprecating, and disarmingly frank and confiding.
Leonie
