Still, even with their newfound physical pleasure, something bothered him about it that he couldn’t quite define, or ignore. Something between them was missing, and after careful consideration these last few days, he’d come to the conclusion it had to be Charlotte’s reluctance to accept him, as her husband, before her fame and her desire to sing abroad. True to his word, he’d done his best not to get her with child, and she seemed to enjoy the fact that they could be intimate without him having to be inside of her. But now the idea of her leaving to tour the continent didn’t much appeal to him. He supposed he’d been stupid enough to assume he’d tire of her as he had other lovers, but he and Lottie were different together. The longer they were married, the more he wanted her by his side, and not just in his bed. If he got her pregnant, would she stay for the baby? Giving him an heir had been her card to play in exchange for his so-called financial sponsorship, and yet in the last few weeks he’d truly begun to question his own idiocy in thinking he could easily let her go. He wasn’t sure he could do that now at all.
Her sudden appearance on the stage at that moment brought his thoughts to the present. Even without costume, wearing a rather conservative day gown and no cosmetics, she still managed to dazzle him. He never tired of hearing her sing, as the center of a major production, or at home in the privacy of his study. Sometimes even just the sound of her voice running scales made him pause, close his eyes, and imagine the beauty of such a gift. Now she and Porano appeared ready to sing a duet, as the men cleared the stage and the women had yet to appear.
Colin yawned. It wasn’t as if he’d grown bored coming to her rehearsals, but listening to the same music over and over each day, while knowing one or more people in the cast wanted her priceless musical score and would do anything to get it, made him increasingly agitated and tired of waiting for answers.
For the last three weeks, as he worked in the evening on the forgery, by day he had been carefully watching and listening and getting acquainted with those at the theater. And he’d been able to all but eliminate everyone but a few who worked closest with Charlotte.
First, he’d come to the conclusion, after a great deal of thought, that the person responsible for dropping the beam, and of course the other unfortunate “accidents,” wasn’t actually trying to injure her permanently, or kill her, or rid her of the lead role, but was simply attempting to get her out of the way because the Handel piece was thought to be here at the theater. With Lottie gone for a few days because of an injury, her dressing room, and all the boxes of old and dusty music it contained, would be free to investigate. The only flaw in that reasoning was the fact that she could very well take the score with her, though the more he thought about that, the more it seemed unlikely. She couldn’t just shuffle it back and forth due to its age and delicate condition. Whoever wanted the masterpiece would know this. And because she’d never been followed to and from home, that he knew of, whether to his townhouse or Brixham’s, and that neither he nor her brother had been victims of robbery, the culprit had to think the music was, indeed, somewhere in this building. It was, for the time being, a logical assumption, although whoever had vandalized her dressing room hadn’t obviously found the piece in question, leading to even greater concern over the treasure’s whereabouts. It was also quite possible that the would-be thief hadn’t intended to leave the unimportant music scattered on her floor at all but had been nearly interrupted, by Charlotte or someone else, and needed to leave her dressing room quickly without putting everything back as it was.
During these past several weeks, using the excuse that he was a patron of the arts and therefore wanted to attend rehearsals to be certain where his monetary gift would be used, he’d become better acquainted with both the director and theater manager. Naturally everybody assumed Lottie was his mistress, or would be soon, and although the theater crew and cast basically ignored his presence, they were also all aware that he had married the shy sister of the Earl of Brixham. Everybody who read society pages or kept up with the idiosyncrasies of the peerage knew that. But he didn’t think anyone here had drawn the conclusion that Lottie and the Duchess of Newark were one and the same, which, he supposed, happened to be the first time his rakish reputation could be put to good use.
So, after considerable conjecture, he’d all but eliminated the orchestra players, lesser cast members, and backstage hands as the would-be thief. Those who worked on the sets and costumes probably wouldn’t know a priceless Handel from a recent copy of the national anthem. The cast members with small singing parts hadn’t been at the theater the day the beam fell, nor had they yet arrived for the day—the few who were scheduled to sing—when he and Charlotte found her dressing room vandalized. The same applied to the orchestra as only the pianist had been available, and he nearly always remained on stage. True, neither Anne nor Sadie sang grand parts in the production, but Sadie in particular always seemed to be lurking, out in the open or behind the scenes, as if she had nowhere else to be. Just as he generally did, he mused.
The key to the puzzle, he concluded, was Charlotte’s assurance that she had told no one she owned such a treasure, including even her brother. The Earl of Brixham had no contact with the theater, cast, or management for fear of ruining his reputation by giving Lottie’s identity away, and as far as he knew, hadn’t even been in contact with Charlotte since their wedding day.
In his final analysis, Colin came to the conclusion that the person responsible had to be one of four people: The director, Walter Barrington-Graham; Anne Balstone; Sadie Piaget; and the theater manager, Edward Hibbert.
Hibbert didn’t often attend rehearsals, and after quietly inquiring at the Home Office, he’d learned the theater itself was in good financial condition. It was also very true that if Lottie English left the production, the opera house would be out of a great deal of money. Therefore, it would be to Hibbert’s great advantage to keep her healthy and performing. He wasn’t a musician, either, and although the man worked with the musically talented, he might not be as savvy when it came to a priceless manuscript and how and where to go about selling it. At least not by himself.
Barrington-Graham, he decided, seemed unlikely as well, simply because of his position at the theater. From what he’d learned, the man was held in fairly high esteem by colleagues, society, and even the peerage due to his longtime association with London opera and the arts. The only thing remotely suspicious about the man was his rather secretive private life, though that in itself could mean nothing. He’d been married for more than two decades, his wife a quiet woman who bred terriers for show. Little was known about his finances. He undoubtedly made a decent salary, and he’d never been reported to be in debt, though he would certainly know where and how to sell a valuable musical score, both legitimately and illegally. The trouble with this theory, Colin mused, was the director’s ability to move about the theater unnoticed. Everyone noticed him, and he remained more often than not on stage during practices. If Barrington-Graham were indeed involved, he very likely had to have someone helping him, someone he could trust to keep his or her mouth shut in the years to come.
That left Anne and Sadie. Both would know the value of an original Handel score, and both could certainly use the money it would bring to travel and sing abroad. Anne, however, was married, and well into middle age. The advantage in that was her ability to stand up to a man, even her director at the theater, use her experience to pressure him, or comfortably deny him. Sadie, on the other hand, was young, unmarried, beautiful, sensual, and French. And in Colin’s considerable experience with women, he knew without question that sexual expertise always won over matronly demands. In his best estimate, Sadie was probably, in some manner, involved.
He could also be absolutely wrong about everything.
Colin rubbed his eyes. Charlotte and Porano were deep into practice, the rest of the cast either lounging in the audience chairs or backstage and out of view. There wouldn’t be any better time, he supposed, to begin a plan of act
ion, to start investigating Sadie, the person whose involvement seemed most reasonable. He hadn’t said a word of any of this to Charlotte because the only way he could think of to approach the Frenchwoman was to pretend to romance her. The greatest surprise to him was in realizing how very little he wanted to do such a thing, even in pretense, now that he had Charlotte to warm his bed. He grinned to himself at the thought. If Sam and Will knew he lacked interest in other ladies, the joking would never end.
Standing, and without being noticed, Colin turned and moved with ease through the curtain behind him, then walked quickly down to the backstage entrance. Sadie hadn’t been sitting in the audience area, and as Lottie still sang with Porano, he felt confident he’d find her behind the scenes, in her dressing room or somewhere nearby.
Almost immediately, he heard faint female laughter from behind the huge black drapes that separated them from the stage proper. Although rather dark, he knew at once that the voices were those of Anne, Sadie, and one of the girls who worked on costuming called Alice Newman. But being just sixteen or so, and from a family of modest means, he was sure that she was no threat at all to Charlotte.
The three of them stood just next to Lottie’s dressing room, its door closed. Since they hadn’t yet seen him, he paused for a moment, rolling up the sleeves of his linen shirt to his forearms. He then raked his fingers through his hair twice and straightened with confidence to confront them.
Anne noticed him first as he strode toward them, her plump face turning from one of joviality to a look of surprise at her first sight of him, all conversation coming to an abrupt halt. She curtsied as the others turned and did the same.
“Ladies,” he drawled, sauntering up to stand before them.
“Your grace,” they all murmured collectively.
He smiled and crossed his arms over his chest. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything important.”
“No, no, of course not,” Anne replied, suddenly flustered. She brushed the back of her hand across her high brow and glanced first to Sadie, then the other woman, whose youth and meekness kept her from looking at anything but the floor.
“The production is coming along well, is it not?” he asked casually.
“Indeed, it is,” Anne agreed with a nod. “We are very fortunate to have the great Italian Porano to play Thaddeus.”
“But of course Lottie is the star,” Sadie added, looking him squarely in the eye.
He grinned, holding her gaze. “Yes, but I thought you were just as dazzling when you sang yesterday.”
She stared at him curiously, her brows slightly furrowed. An awkward moment passed, for all but him, then Anne exhaled a long breath.
“Well,” she said, brushing her palms down her skirt, “Alice was just about to fit me in costume. Will you excuse us, your grace?”
She certainly timed that well, he mused. “Please don’t let me keep you, Mrs. Balstone. Miss Newman.”
Sadie said nothing, though he felt her eyes on him as the two other ladies curtsied, turned, and walked toward the left side of the stage and into the darkness.
He heard Charlotte singing again, alone this time, and so he glanced back to Sadie and smiled wryly. “I suppose we’re all alone.”
“So it seems,” she fairly purred in thickly accented English, looking him up and down with her hands clasped behind her.
God, sometimes he wished he wasn’t so right about women.
He took a step closer and leaned his shoulder on the doorframe of his wife’s dressing room. “And why aren’t you on stage, Miss Piaget?” he asked warmly, his voice low.
She shook her head, grinning. “Please, your grace, last time we spoke, I asked you to call me Sadie.”
She had to be referring to the time Charlotte saw them together, since he hadn’t spoken to her privately before or since. Although he teased his wife about it, their discussion at the time had nothing to do with anything but trivialities. And she certainly hadn’t asked him to call her by her Christian name. That he would have remembered.
“Of course, Sadie,” he murmured. “And I’d like you to call me Colin.”
She beamed and nodded once. “Colin.”
“It’s rather dark and quiet here, isn’t it?” he remarked as he glanced around the backstage area.
“Everyone is very busy elsewhere, I suppose,” she said with a shrug.
Nobody was busy, he knew, but that was beside the point. “Ah. And when do you sing again?”
“Not for a little while,” she replied with a sigh. “I’m not needed until we begin rehearsing the next act.”
“Oh, I see.”
She waited for a moment, eyeing him cautiously. Then she moved close enough to him that her skirts brushed his legs. “You have a wife at home, do you not?”
Colin lifted a shoulder negligibly, playing the disinterested husband well, he thought. “I do, but she is very busy with her charities and helping the Duchess of Durham prepare for her baby.” He sighed. “I’m afraid I don’t see her very much.”
“So you are not in love with her?”
Colin blinked, suddenly flustered by the notion that had not, as yet, occurred to him. “What is love?” he countered with another shrug, forcing himself to keep his mind on the present task.
Sadie tipped her head to the side. “That is a shame,” she murmured. “If you loved her you would know.”
“I suppose so,” he agreed, shuffling a foot back and forth on the wooden floor.
“And now you and Lottie are lovers?” she asked, her voice soft and cunning.
Colin grinned, a little surprised that she asked so bluntly. “It wouldn’t be gentlemanly of me to say,” he whispered with a wink, trying to decide if the woman knew Lottie and his wife were one and the same. At this point, he simply couldn’t tell.
She laughed softly, tossing her head back as if he’d completely flattered her.
“Then you keep very good secrets, sir,” she teased, slyly touching her elbow to his chest. “I know her very well, and she’s never been so enamored of anyone. She’s spoken of you and your handsome, charming manner for years.”
His first thought was how she’d accentuated the word enamored, as if he needed to be reminded she was French. But that quickly vanished when he actually considered her point. The notion of Charlotte being crazy about him for years struck him in a manner he couldn’t describe if he chose to. He grew completely warm inside, immensely pleased with himself, though he would never, in a million years, tell that to anyone.
“Has she now,” he replied, rubbing the back of his neck as if the praise embarrassed him.
“I happen to agree,” she fairly purred. “You are very handsome and charming, Colin. I’ve thought so since the first time we met.”
He couldn’t care any less what Sadie thought of him. True, she was a beautiful Frenchwoman, sensual and no doubt experienced in bed. But where six months ago he would have pursued her without question or restraint, considering doing so now seemed childish and silly. It suddenly occurred to him how much he really did adore being married to Charlotte, and how much honesty and trust within that marriage mattered to him.
“And you are very lovely,” he replied, trying not to sound as unaffected by her as he felt.
Sadie sighed with exaggeration, gazing into his eyes as she leaned back against the wall. “Perhaps you’ll tire of Lottie.”
He contained a laugh of absurdity. “Perhaps,” he said huskily. “But I thought you were good friends.”
Sadie rolled her eyes, and the idea that she was far less of a friend than Charlotte made her out to be irritated him.
“We are friends,” she agreed, “but when she leaves for Italy, I will still be here. Lonely.”
Colin stilled, his features going flat. “Leaves for Italy?”
She blinked in feigned surprise. “Oh, my goodness, you didn’t know? She is to accompany Monsieur Porano to Milan when The Bohemian Girl closes. She’s been invited to sing at La Scala next season.”
<
br /> His chest burned as if it suddenly caught fire, his gut wrenched, but he did his best not to show his astonishment, his anger.
“She didn’t tell me,” he said, trying to sound dejected rather than infuriated.
Sadie offered him an understanding smile. “Perhaps she cares less for you than you thought.”
That comment hit so close to home Colin’s first reaction was to slam his fist into her dressing room door, though with noble dignity he restrained himself. He simply couldn’t believe anything this Frenchwoman said as fact without confirmation. And he knew, just knew, that Charlotte cared for him enough to discuss such an enormous opportunity with him before she accepted it wholeheartedly.
“Perhaps she does,” he repeated, though his voice sounded tight to his ears. “When did you learn of this marvelous offer she received?”
He had no idea why he asked that, but the look on her face told him everything.
She frowned as she toyed with the chain at her neck. “I suppose we’ve known for several days, perhaps a week now.”
He nodded, though for the first time in his life he felt utterly betrayed by a woman. His body broke out into a cold sweat as his mind began to boil with complex emotions he’d never before felt as one—frustration, hurt, bewilderment, fury.
His wife planned to leave him, had known about it for a week, and she hadn’t said a word to him. What did that say about their marriage and newly discovered love affair? That she cared more for opera than the two of them? Really, he’d known all along that she did. He just wasn’t prepared to admit it to himself after all they’d so recently discovered about each other, all they’d shared.
Sadie reached out and placed her hand flat on his chest. “I see you are surprised, Colin.”
He shrugged. “There will be other lovers in my life,” he murmured, trying not to look or sound as heartsick as he felt.
“I hope so,” she whispered. And then, before he considered her intentions, she leaned over and wrapped her arm around his neck, pulling his head down to meet her waiting lips.
The Duke’s Indiscretion Page 22
