A masculine voice answered. Not Bates. Flinton? That timid fellow, who lived in terror of his great aunt? Talking to Gladys?
Swanton turned his head this way and that, trying to locate the speakers.
The voices seemed to come from behind their supper box, but Lisburne couldn’t be sure. So many voices. And the orchestra was playing. Gladys’s voice wasn’t really louder than anybody else’s. It simply carried, or soared, like a songbird’s.
Which was a strange image for Gladys, admittedly.
“Yes, thank you, Lord Flinton,” Gladys said. “ ‘The Aerial.’ That was the name I wanted. Sometimes styled as ‘The Great Unknown,’ as you said. He believed his beauty was without equal in all the world. He would prance among the audience right there, in front of the orchestra, handing out cards, and challenging the spectators to produce anybody who could match him.”
Bates’s voice responded this time. Then Lady Alda Morris said something.
Gladys laughed. “That would have been more amusing, certainly,” she said. “And only think, my dear, if I had been there, to see the expression on his beautiful face when I took up his challenge!”
Yet another masculine voice entered the conversation. The fellow uttered only a word or two, not enough to enable Lisburne to identify him.
The voices began to drift away.
Swanton jumped up from his seat, looking wildly about him. “Where is she?” he said. “That voice!”
“It’s only Gladys,” Lisburne said. “A pity she couldn’t go on the stage. She projects so—”
“Is it she? That voice!”
“Yes, perfectly audible,” Lisburne said.
“I must find her!”
“I recommend you don’t.”
“She defended me!”
“Only to vex Lady Alda, I’ve no doubt. Confront Gladys, and you risk becoming the target of her wit. Be warned: She has a fine, skewering way with words.”
“Then let her do her worst,” Swanton said. “I half wish somebody would.” And away he went.
Leonie watched him go. “Is he insane?” she said.
“He’s overwrought,” Lisburne said. He rose. “It’s unwise to let him go on his own. He’s completely distracted.”
She waved a gloved hand. “Go,” she said. “I’m not keeping you.”
She was overwrought, too, though she hid it well.
He looked in the direction Swanton had gone, then back at her. “You’d better come with me. You can’t stay here alone.”
Her smile was cool. “I strongly doubt I’ll be alone for very long.”
Too true. At least a hundred men here tonight would happily take his place. Maybe two hundred.
He sat down again. “To the devil with him, then.”
“I doubt he’ll come to harm,” she said. “If he wants to talk to Lady Gladys, he’ll have to push his way through her throng of admirers. You might have been too preoccupied to notice how many gentlemen accompanied her.”
“I counted only three masculine voices,” he said. “She had Lady Alda and Clara with her as well. The three men could be anybody’s followers.”
“Tomorrow’s Spectacle will tell us,” Leonie said. “If, that is, there’s room, once they’re done demolishing Lord Swanton, Maison Noirot, and the Milliners’ Society.”
Though she spoke coolly, he detected the undercurrent of anger and grief.
“We’ll make it up to you,” he said. “I give you my word.”
“That and the Botticelli, if you please.”
He was trying to decide how to respond to this when she glanced about her, then leaned in, wafting toward him a tantalizing scent of lavender and Leonie. That didn’t help in the Intelligent Reply Department.
Dropping her voice, she said, “He doesn’t remember?”
Lisburne leaned toward her, careful to avoid the things sprouting from her coiffure. “He was distraught,” he said, keeping his voice low, too. “After my father died.” It was hard to get the words out. He hated speaking of that time. “When we first arrived in Paris, we sought distraction in the way young men often do. Swanton hasn’t the stamina for dissipation. He fell ill. When he recovered, he had only a confused memory of the previous weeks.”
She sat back again. She lifted the tips of her fingers to her temple.
“I know it sounds ridiculous,” he said. “At best. You’ll wonder at the depths of depravity to which we must have sunk.”
“When it comes to men, I rarely wonder at anything,” she said.
“We tried to be completely dissolute,” he said. “We began by attending certain exclusive parties, where gaming, drink, opium, and women—expensive women—were in plentiful supply. Two weeks of that nearly killed us. Maybe the opium destroyed his memory. Or maybe it’s just him. His mind’s like a roiling ocean, and some things sink to the bottom, like ships lost in storms.”
“You’d think he’d have some recollection, however dim, of seducing an innocent young woman,” she said.
“Especially since it’s so foreign to his nature,” he said. “It could only have happened during those two weeks, and I’m having trouble imagining where and when he would have encountered any innocents during that interval.”
“But we don’t know,” she said. “I will not call the woman’s credibility into question unless I’m positive. Too many women end up with the Milliners’ Society or on the streets because it’s always the woman’s fault. And now we mayn’t have a Milliners’ Society for th-them.”
He was appalled. He’d never seen her so near breaking, or even approaching breaking. He remembered how confident she’d been, the grace with which she’d taken the stage, the way she’d held the audience in the palm of her hand, her radiant expression when she returned backstage, confident she’d triumphed.
In a moment she’d lost all she’d won.
No, the damage extended farther than undoing this night’s achievement. He’d looked into the Milliners’ Society. He knew when it had been founded and how it was supported. He knew she and her sisters had put money into it when they hadn’t much to spare from the shop’s earnings. He remembered her expressing hopes of expanding into the building next door. If the support they’d so painstakingly built fell away, they could lose everything they’d achieved. And if the shop lost customers as well . . .
No point now in reviewing the ifs. It was a nightmare, as Swanton had said, and he didn’t know the half of it.
“I’ll get to the bottom of this,” Lisburne said. “I promise. And I’ll make it right.”
She turned away, blinking, and gave a short laugh.
The waiter appeared with their supper.
The waiter’s arrival jolted Leonie back to her present surroundings.
She looked up and saw, behind him and everywhere about him, a land of fantasy. Stars twinkled in the heavens and lights twinkled among the trees and on the buildings. Coming down the covered walk to the supper box, she’d seen the orchestra building with its multicolored lamps, a structure that might have been conjured from The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments. From it came the sound of real music. An orchestra played and people danced. It wasn’t homemade music or organ grinders on the street.
Her girls would hear real music this night, perhaps for the first time in their lives. They’d see Vauxhall’s wonders, too: the paintings and sculptures, the Gothic and Chinese temples, the Eagle fountain and the Submarine Cave, the hermit telling fortunes, the jugglers and dancers and acrobats. And the fireworks. Above all, these were gardens, a pretty place out of doors, instead of dingy streets and poky rooms.
She thought of the cramped building she and her sisters had taken pains to make into a comfortable and attractive home for unwanted girls. She thought of Cousin Emma, who would have been so proud of what they’d done. A weight pressed on Leonie’s chest.
She watched Lisburne peel off his gloves. For some reason, the sight of his bare, aristocratic hands made her want to cry.
She stared hard at the food on her plate and took off her gloves, though she didn’t see how she could swallow a morsel.