playfully and headed for the door, stopping to look back at him. ‘Come play my tables, Lord Tannerton. Come join your friend Pomroy. I believe he is here tonight.’
‘Pomroy is here?’ said Tanner with interest.
Before the gentlemen could sit again, Katy stood, stifling a yawn that did not look quite real. ‘I hope you will forgive me,’ she said in a ladylike voice. ‘But I must bid you goodnight as well.’ She curtsied to Tanner. ‘It was a pleasure, sir.’
He gave her a charming smile. ‘I will see you in a few hours, Miss Green.’
Katy grinned back. ‘You will, won’t you?’
Rose also got up from her chair. ‘I should retire as well.’
Tanner looked disappointed. ‘Must you?’
She nodded. ‘I must get some rest if I am to perform.’
‘May I escort you to your room?’ Tanner asked, somewhat hopefully.
Flynn flinched, preparing for her to say yes.
Rose barely looked at Tanner. ‘I do not live here, sir.’
‘That is so.’ Tanner responded. ‘Flynn said you live with your father. Do we return you to your father or do you stay here this night?’
She glanced at Flynn, not Tanner. ‘I should prefer to return home.’
Tanner’s face fell, but he recovered quickly. ‘We will take you home then, will we not, Flynn?’ he said in a cheerful voice.
‘Indeed,’ Flynn responded, trying very hard to keep his voice bland.
If Rose had allowed Tanner to come with her to a room here, her acceptance of his interest would have been secured, and only the financial arrangement would remain for Flynn to manage. The matter would be at an end.
So how was it he was relieved she had not accompanied Tanner to a bedchamber abovestairs?
He followed Tanner as he walked with Rose out of the parlour. As they passed the game room, Tanner hesitated. ‘I should like to greet my friend who is here.’ He turned to Rose. ‘Would you care to come in the game room a moment, Miss O’Keefe? Or would you prefer to have Flynn see you home directly?’
‘I prefer to go home,’ Rose replied. She extended her hand to Tanner. ‘Goodnight, sir.’
He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the air above it. ‘I shall look forward to seeing you at Vauxhall.’
‘At Vauxhall,’ she said.
Flynn descended the stairway with Rose and collected their things from the footman. Neither of them spoke. Flynn ought to have manoeuvred Tanner to take Rose home. He could have done so with a judicious word. Dear God, why had he not?
He had done this to himself. He wanted to be alone with her in the dark confines of the carriage.
Rose felt a flare of excitement as Flynn assisted her into the carriage. She had been pining to speak with him, to thank him for this wonderful night. To share with him her reaction to the opera. She had so many questions.
He did not sit beside her, but rather took the back-facing seat. She could barely make out his features in the dim light that filtered in from the carriage lamps outside.
As soon as the carriage moved, she leaned toward him. ‘Flynn, thank you for this night. I do not know how to express my gratitude.’
‘My duty,’ he responded curtly.
His stiffness took her aback.
He went on in a dry voice, ‘I take it Lord Tannerton was pleasing to you.’
‘Lord Tannerton?’ She shook her head in confusion. ‘I was not speaking of him, but of the opera! Of King’s Theatre. I know that was your doing. You knew what it meant to me.’
He did not immediately respond. ‘I thought only of what would best facilitate my employer’s wishes.’
‘That’s foolishness you are talking,’ Rose retorted. ‘You gave me the opera. I know you did.’ She hugged herself with remembering it. ‘It was so grand! I’ve never heard such singing! The voices, Flynn. How did they make their voices so big?’
‘Big?’
‘You know, their voices seemed to come from deep inside them. The sound filled that huge theatre. How did they do that?’ Even the mere memory of it excited her. ‘I want to learn to do that. Do you think I can, Flynn?’ She sang a note, experimenting. ‘That is not it, is it? I long to understand how it is done.’
She wanted to practise right now.
‘I am sure it can be learned.’ His voice turned softer.
‘I long to learn it,’ She went on. ‘I wish I could return to hear them again. I wish I could remember the music and the words. I could not understand the words. Was it Italian? I do not know languages. Just a little French and Latin, but very little.’
‘It was Italian,’ he said.
‘Think how it must be to know what all the words meant.’ Some day she would learn Italian, she vowed. ‘I wish I had the music. I would memorise every part of it.’
‘Lord Tannerton will be gratified that he pleased you.’
He’d not been listening to her. She’d been talking of the music, not Lord Tannerton. She closed her mouth and retreated to her side of the carriage, making herself remember the music.
He broke the silence. ‘Did you find Lord Tannerton agreeable, Rose?’
‘Everything agreeable,’ she answered dutifully, trying to recall the melody Elvira sung.
But he’d broken the spell, and she remembered that she’d agreed to see Tannerton again that evening. ‘At Vauxhall tonight. How shall I find you?’ she asked.
‘I will collect you from the gazebo when your performance is done.’
‘Letty will be there. Come alone to fetch me, not with Lord Tannerton.’ She did not need Letty speaking directly to Lord Tannerton.
‘I will come alone, then,’ he agreed. He talked as if they were discussing some manner of business, like paying Tannerton’s bills. It was business, really. ‘Will you see that Miss Green is also there?’
‘I will.’
They rode in silence the rest of the way. When the coach came to a stop in front of her lodgings, Flynn helped her out and walked her to the door.
‘I will walk you inside,’ he said.
There was only one small oil lamp to light the hallway, and Rose heard mice skitter away as soon as their footsteps sounded on the stairs.
In front of her door they were wrapped in near-darkness, a darkness that somehow made him seem more remote and made the music in her
