LITMIR.BIZ

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room on that side, in any event, and so we’re not obliged to join them—oh, ye beneficent gods and spirits of the place! Well, then …” He tilted his head to one side and frowned. “Not that I should have known Gladys straightaway.”

      He turned back to Leonie, his green eyes glinting. “She isn’t in rancid colors for once. Is that your doing?”

      Leonie nodded proudly.

      He turned back again to look. “And there’s Valentine, roped in for escort duty, poor fellow.”

      Lord Valentine Fairfax was one of Lady Clara’s brothers. Unlike Lord Longmore, who was dark, Lord Valentine was a typical Fairfax: blond, blue-eyed, and unreasonably good-looking.

      “He’s been here the whole time, unfortunate mortal,” Lord Lisburne said. “Whiling away the hours weaving luscious fantasies of killing himself, I don’t doubt. Or, more likely, Val being a practical fellow, his dreamy thoughts are of ways to kill Swanton without getting caught.”

      “If the men dislike the poetry so much, why do they come?” she said.

      “To make the girls think they’re sensitive.”

      She smothered a laugh, but not altogether successfully or quickly enough. A young woman in front of her turned round to glare.

      Leonie pulled out a handkerchief and pretended to wipe a tear from her eye. The girl turned away.

      The audience wasn’t as hushed as it had been earlier in the evening, when Leonie had peeked through the door. Though many occupying the prime seats on the floor sat rapt—or asleep, in the men’s case—others were whispering, and from the galleries came the low hum of background conversation that normally prevailed at public recitations.

      The increased noise level didn’t seem to trouble Lord Swanton. Someone had taught him how to make himself heard in a public venue, and he was employing the training, his every aching word clearly audible:

       … Aye, deep and full its wayward torrents gush, Strong as the earliest joys of youth, as hope’s first radiant flush;

      For, oh! When soul meets soul above, as man on earth meets man,

       Its deepest, worst, intensity ne’er gains its earthly ban!

      “No, dash it, I won’t hush!” a male voice boomed over the buzz of the audience.

      Leonie looked toward the sound. Not far from the Fairfaxes, a well-fed, middle-aged gentleman was shooing his family toward the door.

      “A precious waste of time,” he continued. “For charity, indeed. If I’d known, I’d have sent in twice the tickets’ cost and stayed at home, and judged it cheap at the price.”

      His wife tried to shush him, again in vain.

      “Give me Tom Moore any day,” he boomed. “Or Robbie Burns. Poetry, you call this! I call it gasbagging.”

      Lord Lisburne made a choked sound.

      Other men in the vicinity didn’t trouble to hide their laughter.

      “It’s a joke, it surely is,” the critic went on. “I could have gone to Vauxhall, instead of wasting a Friday night listening to this lot maunder on about nothing. Bowel stoppage, I shouldn’t wonder. That’s their trouble. What they want is a good physicking.”

      Gasps now, from the ladies nearby.

      “I never heard anybody ask your opinion, sir,” came Lady Gladys’s musical voice. “None of us prevented your going to Vauxhall. Certainly none of us paid for a ticket to hear you. I don’t recollect seeing anything on the program about ill-educated and discourteous men supplying critiques.”

      “Glad to supply it gratis, madam,” came the quick answer. “As to uneducated—at least some of us have wit enough to notice that the emperor’s wearing no clothes.”

      Lord Valentine stood up. “Sir, I’ll thank you not to address the lady in that tone,” he said.

      “She addressed me first, sir!”

      “Blast,” Lord Lisburne said. He rose, too. “Leave it to Gladys. Valentine will be obliged to call out the fellow, thanks to her.”

      Men were starting up from their seats. Lord Swanton became aware of something amiss. He attempted to go on reading his poem, but the audience’s attention was turning away from him to the dispute, and the noise level was rising, drowning him out.

      Leonie became aware of movement in the galleries. She looked up. Men were leaving their seats and moving toward the doors. A duel would be bad enough, but this looked like a riot in the making.

      Images flashed in her mind of the Parisian mob storming through the streets, setting fire to houses where cholera victims lived … her little niece Lucie so sick … the tramp of hundreds of feet, growing louder as they neared …

      Panic swamped her.

      She closed her eyes, opened them again, and shook her head, shaking away the past. She counted the rows in the hall and estimated the audience size, and her mind quieted.

      This was London, an altogether different place. And this was a different time and circumstance. These people were dying of boredom, not a rampaging disease.

      “Ladies and gentlemen, if I might have your attention,” Lord Swanton said.

      “You’ve had it these three hours and more!” someone called out. “Not enough?”

      Other hecklers contributed their observations.

      By this time Lord Lisburne had reached his cousins and the irate gentleman, who was growing more irate by the second, if the deepening red of his face was any clue.

      Meanwhile, the audience grew more boisterous.

      Leonie reminded herself she was a Noirot and a DeLucey. Not nearly as many of her French ancestors had got their heads cut off as deserved it. Hardly any relatives on either side had ever been stupid or incompetent enough to get themselves hanged. Or even jailed.

      Marcelline or Sophy could have handled this lot blindfolded, she told herself.

      She swallowed and rose. “Thank you, my lord, for your kind invitation,” she said, pitching her voice to carry. “I should like to recite a poem by Mrs. Abdy.”

      “More poetry!” someone cried. “Somebody hang me.”

      “Hold your tongue, you bacon brain! It’s a girl!”

      Lord Swanton cut through the commentary. “Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Noirot—that is to say, Madame, of Maison Noirot—has kindly agreed to contribute to our poetic mélange.”

      Leonie had dressed for the occasion. She knew she’d get the men’s attention because she was young and not unattractive, and the women’s because her dress was beautiful.

      She was aware of the argument continuing to her right, and more aware of how hard her heart pounded, and how she couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. She told herself not to be ridiculous: She performed every day, for extremely difficult women, and she got them under control.

      She began, “‘I’m weary of a single life—’ ”

      “Why didn’t you say so?” someone called out. “Come sit by me, my poppet.”

      “Oh, stifle it!” somebody else said. “Let the lady say her piece.”

      Leonie started again:

      I’m weary of a single life,

       The clubs of town I hate;

      I smile at tales of wedded strife,

       I sigh to win a mate;

      Yet no kind fair will crown my bliss,

       But all

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