Vice (20 page)

Quentin touched her shoulder in brief sympathy. Tarquin chose to ignore the comment. There was a moment of awkward silence; then the orchestra produced an imperative drumroll. The curtain went up, and David Garrick strode onto the stage to deliver the prologue to the evening’s entertainment.

Juliana listened, entranced, as the play began. The audience continued to buzz and hum, carrying on their own gossipy conversations throughout, but Juliana was unaware of anything but the stage. It didn’t occur to her as in the least strange that Macbeth should be played in contemporary costume, with Garrick in the tide role dressed in the full regalia of a Hanoverian officer.

At the first interval she sat back with a little sigh of contentment. “How magical. It’s quite different hearing the words from reading them, even aloud.”

“I’m glad it pleases you,
mignonne.”
Tarquin stood up. “If you’ll excuse me for a minute, there’s someone I must visit.” He strolled off, and Juliana returned her attention to the crowd. An argument seemed to be turning nasty in the front row, and a man was threatening to draw his sword. Someone bellowed in jocular fashion and threw a handful of orange peel over the two opponents. There was laughter, and the moment of tension seemed to have dissipated.

Juliana glanced across the pit to the boxes opposite. She saw the duke directly opposite, standing behind the chair of a woman dressed in dark gray, almost black, with a white fichu at the neck and her hair tucked severely under a white cap. She was looking up at Tarquin as he spoke to her.

“Who’s the duke talking to?”

Quentin didn’t look up from his own perusal of the crowd. “Lady Lydia Melton, I imagine. His betrothed.” There was something false in his studied, casual tone, but Juliana was too astonished by this intelligence to give it any thought.

“His betrothed?” She couldn’t have kept the dismay from her voice even if she’d tried. “He’s to be married?”

“Did he not tell you?” Still, Quentin neither looked at her nor at the object of the discussion.

“No … it seems there’s a great deal he didn’t tell me.” All her pleasure in the evening vanished, and the bitter resentment of the morning returned.

“I daresay he thought his betrothal was irrelevant to you … to everyone,” he added softly.

“Yes, irrelevant,” she said acidly. “Why should it matter to me?”

“Well, it won’t be happening for quite a while,” Quentin told her, his voice flat. “The marriage was to have taken place two months ago, but Lydia’s grandfather died and the entire family have put on black gloves. They’ll be in mourning for the full two years.”

“Then why’s she at the play?” Juliana demanded tardy. “It seems hardly consistent with deep mourning.”

“It
is
Macbeth,” Quentin pointed out. “They’ll leave before the farce.”

“Seems very hypocritical to me.” Juliana squinted across the playhouse, trying to get a better look at Lady Lydia Melton. It was difficult to form an impression in the flickering light of the flambeaux that lit the stage and the pit. “How old is she?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“She’s on the shelf,” Juliana stated.

“I should refrain from passing judgment when you don’t know the facts,” Quentin said sharply. “Lydia and Tarquin have been betrothed from the cradle, but the death of Tarquin’s mother three years ago postponed the marriage. And now Lydia’s grandfather’s demise has created another put-off.”

“Oh. I didn’t mean to sound catty.” Juliana gave him a chastened smile. “I’m just taken aback.”

Quentin’s expression softened. “Yes, I can imagine you might be.”

Juliana stared hard across the separating space and suddenly noticed that the lady was looking directly at her. It was clear that Juliana herself was under discussion when
Tarquin raised a hand in a gesture of acknowledgment and Lady Lydia bowed from the waist. Juliana responded in like manner. “I wonder what they’re saying about me.”

“I imagine Tarquin is explaining that you’re Lucien’s bride,” Quentin observed. “The Meltons were bound to wonder what he and I were doing in a box at the theater with a strange lady.”

“But won’t they think it strange that the viscount isn’t with us so soon after the wedding?”

“No,” Quentin said without elaboration.

The orchestra began another alerting drumroll, and Tarquin disappeared from the Meltons’ box. A few minutes later he appeared beside Juliana.

“You didn’t tell me you were betrothed,” she whispered accusingly as the second act began.

“It’s hardly important,” he returned. “Hush, now, and
listen.”

Juliana found it hard to concentrate on the rest of the play. She was wondering when Tarquin would have chosen to tell her about his fiancée. She was wondering what would happen to their arrangements when the new duchess took up residence. Presumably, the mistress and her child would be established in one wing of the house and the duchess and her children in another, and the duke would move between his two families as and when it pleased him.

Perhaps her present charming apartments rightfully belonged to the duke’s wife. Surely with that proximity, not to mention the concealed connecting door, they must. So presumably she would have to move out of them when the new duchess took up residence.

Juliana opened and closed her fan with such violence that one of the dainty painted sticks snapped. Startled, both her escorts looked sideways.

The duke placed a restraining hand on hers, still roughly flicking the fan in her lap. She turned and glared at him with such fury, he could almost imagine being scorched by the flames in her eyes. There was one thing about Juliana,
he reflected ruefully: One always knew where one stood with her. She was so full of passions of every kind that she was incapable of masking her emotions.

“If you wish to quarrel, let’s do so later,” he whispered. “Not in the middle of a crowded playhouse. Please, Juliana.”

Juliana pointedly turned her eyes back to the stage, her mouth taut, her jaw set, her back as rigid as if a steel poker ran down her spine. Tarquin exchanged a glance with his brother, whose response was far from sympathetic.

The Melton party, as Quentin had predicted, left before the farce. They left so discreetly, Juliana didn’t see them go. When she looked toward the box as the torches were lit again to illuminate the pit, she saw it was empty.

Tarquin leaned over the box and hailed an orange seller. She came up with a pert smile and tossed two oranges up to him. He caught them deftly, throwing down a sixpence. She grinned and curtsied, tucking the coin between her ripe breasts bubbling over the neck of her gown, which was kilted to show both calves and ankles. “Want to come and get it back, sir?” she called with a lascivious wink. “No ’ands allowed. An’ if ye double it, there’s no knowin’ where it’ll end up.”

Tarquin laughingly refused the invitation. He took a small knife out of his waistcoat pocket and began to peel an orange. He broke off a segment and held it to Juliana’s lips. “Open wide, my dear.”

“I am not in the mood for teasing.” She closed her lips firmly. But she took the orange segment in her fingers, rather than open her mouth for him to feed her, and offered a formally polite thank-you.

Tarquin gave her the remainder of the orange without further remark, peeled the other one, and shared it with Quentin, who was coming to the conclusion that Juliana was perhaps not quite the victim he’d believed her to be.

Her delight in the farce was so infectious that all previous tension dissipated. Tarquin and Quentin wouldn’t normally have stayed for this low comedy that had the pits in hysterics,
but Juliana was so entranced, found the bawdiest comments so hilarious, that they sat back and simply enjoyed her enjoyment.

As the curtain came down, she wiped tears of laughter from her eyes with a fingertip. “I haven’t laughed so much since I saw Punch and Judy at the fair in Winchester.”

George Ridge had also greatly enjoyed his evening, much preferring the farce to the long-winded, ponderous speeches of the tragedy, although he’d been quite impressed with the sword fights, which had seemed very realistic. And Lady Macbeth had dripped chicken blood, and the ghost of Banquo had been horridly gouged and smothered.

He made his way out of the pit, allowing the tide of humanity to carry him. At the door a crowd of gallants was gathered around a painted bawd and her collection of whores. They were bargaining for the women, with the sharp-eyed madam missing nothing as she auctioned off her girls. George hesitated, fancying a particular bold-eyed wench in a canary-yellow gown. Then the bawd shouted, “Ten guineas to the gentleman in the striped weskit,” and shoved the girl forward into the arms of the man so described, who eagerly handed over ten guineas, which the bawd dropped into a leather satchel at her waist.

George decided he’d spent enough money on women for one day. He’d return to the Gardener’s Arms and take his supper there, then maybe throw the dice a few times. He would set himself a strict limit so that he’d be in no danger of outrunning the carpenter.

He pushed his way out of the stuffy heat of the theater and drew a deep breath of the fresher air outside. He seemed to be getting accustomed to the stench of London, since it troubled him much less now. He was debating whether to take a sedan chair back to Cheapside, or save the fare and walk on such a fine night, when he saw her.

He stared, unable to believe his eyes, his heart jumping erratically. Juliana was on the other side of the street, facing him. She was talking animatedly to her two escorts, men
whose dress made George immediately feel shabby and countrified. It didn’t matter that he’d ordered his suit from a tailor on Bond Street. Compared to the two men with Juliana, he could have been wearing a laborer’s smock and carrying a pitchfork.

And Juliana. He’d never seen her Eke this. In fact, if it weren’t for her hair and the expression on her face and the voluptuous figure he’d lusted after for weeks, he would have thought his obsession had bested his senses. She was dressed as finely as any of the ladies he’d gawped at going into St. James’s Palace or strolling in Hyde Park. Again, there was that indefinable air of fashion and quality about her clothes and the way she wore them that relegated George Ridge to the farmyard. He recognized that Lady Forsett would eat her heart out if she could see her erstwhile charge tricked out in such style. Such a wide hoop, and the most shockingly low neckline to her lavender silk gown.

He moved backward into the shadows so she wouldn’t see him if she chanced to look across the street. Then he stood and continued to stare at the three of them. Who was she with? Had she turned whore? It was the only explanation he could think of—that somehow in the days since she’d arrived in London, alone and friendless, she’d managed to snag a rich and well-connected protector. Or maybe two. She was laughing and talking to her companions with an ease and informality that seemed to imply either long acquaintance or a degree of intimacy.

It was an explanation that made perfect sense to George. He licked his lips involuntarily, imagining how the life of a whore would change the haughty and inexperienced country girl he had known. But how would she respond to the prospect of returning to Hampshire as the wife of Sir George Ridge, when she’d dabbled in the playgrounds of fashionable London?

A chaise drew up on the other side of the street, obscuring them from his view. He darted out of the shadows in time to see one of the men hand Juliana into the carriage.
Both men followed her, and the door was closed. George stared at the ducal coronet emblazoned on the panels. He couldn’t read the Latin motto or identify the arms, but he knew the carriage belonged to a duke. Juliana, it seemed, was flying high. Perhaps too high for a simple country landowner, however wealthy.

He pushed his way to a hackney that had come to a halt by a group of inebriated men, who were arguing about where they should continue their evening. George shoved roughly through them and into the hackney before they realized what was happening. “Follow the carriage ahead. The black-and-yellow one,” George shouted at the jarvey, banging on the roof with his sword hilt.

The hackney started forward with a jolt, and its intended passengers turned and bellowed in startled fury. They made a halfhearted attempt to follow, one of them hanging on to the window straps for a few yards, cursing George for a sneak thief before falling off into the gutter.

George leaned anxiously out of the window, trying to keep the black-and-yellow carriage in sight as they bowled around a corner. The jarvey seemed to be enjoying the chase, took the corner on two wheels, and George was flung back against the cracked, stained leather squabs. He righted himself with a curse and leaned out of the window again.

“’Ere y’are, guv. Ranelagh Gardens,” the jarvey yelled down, coming to a halt before the wrought-iron gates. “Ye want me to go on in after ’em?”

“No, I’ll go on foot.” George jumped down, paid the jarvey, and hurried into the gardens, paying his half-a-crown entrance fee before making his way to the rotunda, where he guessed he would find them.

For the rest of the evening he dogged Juliana’s footsteps, always careful to keep himself out of her line of sight. He watched her eat supper in one of the boxes in the rotunda, listening to the orchestra in the center. She was animated, but he could see no sign of a physical relationship with her two escorts. If she was there as their whore, he would have
expected to see wandering fingers, a kiss or two, definitely flirtation; and yet, despite her elegant gown, the trio reminded him of a young girl being taken for a treat by two indulgent uncles.

Greatly puzzled, he followed them back out of the garden just as dawn was breaking. He set another hackney in pursuit of the yellow-and-black chaise, and when the ducal carriage stopped outside a house on Albermarle Street and its three passengers alighted, he instructed the jarvey to drive on past. He fixed the house in his memory as the three disappeared into its lighted hallway. Then he sat back and contemplated the evening’s puzzles.

Juliana had entered the house with two men. It could only mean that she had joined the oldest profession in the world. And joined it high up the ladder. But she was still his father’s murderess. A whore couldn’t expect to duck such a charge, however powerful her protector.