That party included an elderly dowager and her two unmarried granddaughters, a middle-aged matchmaking mama and her unmarried daughter, and St. Clare’s friend Lord Mattingly and Mattingly’s younger, unmarried sister.
“Sorry, old chap,” Mattingly muttered from his place near St. Clare in the earl’s theater box. “You’re the matrimonial prize of the season, you know, and my mother would insist that I throw Astrid in your path.”
The young lady sitting on the other side of his friend was just out of the schoolroom, and at present, all arms, legs, and blushes. A child, merely.
She looked up from her program, caught his eye, and promptly turned crimson. “Have you seen Mr. K-Kean perform before, my lord?”
St. Clare offered her a smile. “Only last week. And you, Miss Mattingly?”
“Oh, no! This is my first t-time at the theater.”
St. Clare arched a brow in Mattingly’s direction.
Mattingly had the good grace to look sheepish. He mouthed another apology.
St. Clare didn’t regard it. The truth of the matter was that Astrid Mattingly was the least offensive female in the box. The dowager’s granddaughters were a pair of giggling henwits, and the other young lady, a Miss Louisa Steele, had all the charm of a viper that had once crawled into his tent while camping in the Egyptian desert.
According to Miss Steele’s mother, who’d been extolling her daughter’s many virtues since the moment they arrived at the theater, Louisa was humble, sweet, and kind. As skilled at the pianoforte and harp as she was at riding and dancing. And so far superior to other young ladies in both looks and accomplishments that she’d often been the target of spiteful, jealous gossip.
The bulk of this chatter was directed to the old dowager who sat beside her, but St. Clare was in no doubt that Mrs. Steele’s words were meant for him alone.
“A diamond. That’s what the duke called her at her come-out ball. He said that Louisa was the most beautiful girl anyone had seen in five seasons. Can you imagine?”
“No,” said the dowager frostily.
Miss Steele herself, who was sitting at an odd angle in front of him, turned in her chair and whispered, “You must ignore Mama. I’m not interested in the duke.”
St. Clare refrained from asking which duke.
“Although it’s true that he said I was the most beautiful girl he’d seen in years,” she continued. “I don’t know why he would. I see nothing out of the ordinary in my appearance. Do you, my lord?”
What St. Clare thought was that Miss Steele was a remarkably accomplished flirt for a girl who couldn’t be any older than one and twenty. She simpered, she pouted, and she batted her lashes. No doubt her tactics worked on a great many of the men she met. They didn’t work on him. “You look very well, Miss Steele.”
“You look divine,” Mattingly said.
“Flatterer!” She laughed. “I know I do not. Not in this gown. And not with this necklace. I would have worn my pearls, for they look best with my hair, but Mama insisted I wear the diamonds. The duke said I must always wear diamonds because I am a diamond myself.”
While Miss Steele directed her attentions to Mattingly, St. Clare’s gaze drifted around the packed house. He didn’t require a set of opera glasses to see into the tiers of boxes across the theater. It was easy enough to make out the titled and the wealthy, the famous and infamous.
Ladies draped in jewels sat at the forefront, gentlemen in gold and silver waistcoats behind. He recognized women he’d met at balls and parties, and men he’d seen at his club. There was even a famous Cyprian or two.
And then, just as the play began, he saw her.
Margaret Honeywell.
A jolt of simmering recognition shot through him.
She was seated in the front of a box opposite, one tier below his own, in the company of a slender fair-haired gentleman, an equally slender fair-haired young lady, and an elderly female who appeared to be asleep in her chair.
Observing St. Clare’s arrested expression, Mattingly discreetly handed him a pair of mother-of-pearl opera glasses.
St. Clare took them without a word, training them on Miss Honeywell. The lenses were powerful. Through them he could make out every curve and contour of her flawless ivory countenance. The deep blue of her eyes—like melting sapphires. The straight, elegant line of her nose and the delicate cleft in her stubbornly set chin. It was a face one didn’t easily forget. A face to haunt a man’s dreams.