She gazed up at him, balanced between fascination and fear. He quirked his eyebrows, waiting for her answer, and she found it in herself to smile back at him, easily.
“I think I can forgive you, my lord. I look forward to the evening’s performance. We must remember it well, so we can share it with the others, and especially relate it to poor Madame Poulin. Thank you for thinking of me even as your friends were unable to attend. I’m honoured.”
Thoughts awhirl, she didn’t hear his reply as he escorted her to his carriage.
6
The opera held nothing of interest, compared to the man at her elbow. Belinda watched without seeing, aware of its majesty and the skill of the players, and recorded the pageantry into memory for discussion later while remaining herself unmoved. Javier put on a show as excellent as the one below them: leaning forward, eyes intent on the stage, a smile playing over his mouth from time to time, as benefited the production.
It was all a lie. Now attuned to it and focused, not overwhelmed by an onslaught of emotion as she had been at the Maglian pub, she could feel the prince’s true intentions, hidden beneath the veneer of grace and nobility. Not that he lacked those things in any fashion, but now they were distraction, a surface performance for the benefit of others. Below, triumph had faded into burgeoning interest, smugness into curiosity. At the edges of emotion Belinda thought she could almost pull individual thoughts free, but they slipped between her fingers and disappeared. She glanced at her hands and allowed herself a faint smile through the stillness. Metaphorical fingers, at least; she doubted she could slide her very hand into Javier’s head and capture those thoughts in their entirety.
His curiosity was tempered by something more: apprehension. Fear was too strong a word, his own confidence too great to truly fear the woman at his side. But she was a new thing in his experience—from the conflict of interest and caution within him, Belinda could read that.
It hardly surprised her. The stillness she knew as a part of herself was alien to anyone else she had ever met. Especially—especially!—the moments in her childhood when the shadows had held her safe within their arms. Her father had meant her to forget, but the memory came on strong now, sitting in the darkened hall. It was unlike any theatre she had ever known, roofed over to keep in heat and to bring the full force of the singers’ voices reverberating around the walls. Even the floor had seats, rather than the crowded, standing-room only areas she knew from Aulun’s open-air playhouses. This was not a place the poor came into for an afternoon’s entertainment, paying their ha’penny to a drunk who kept the gate. The darkness of it protected her, letting her drift in memory even as she tried to puzzle out a way to broach an unspoken brotherhood with Javier. The will of not being there which she’d drawn so tightly around herself all those years ago, she could remember that. The triumph of knowing she was hidden from all eyes, and the shock of Robert discovering her. She could remember all of those things. How, then, could the moment of hiding be so fully erased from her memory?
Had she faded? Belinda rolled her shoulders forward, making her chest concave as she closed her eyes. Was it memory or imagination that encouraged her down that path, telling her that fading was right, something important about fading…
“It ends badly,” Javier murmured by her ear. Belinda caught her breath and lifted her chin, called back to the theatre and the music with a pulse of irritation.
“My lord?”
“The story ends badly, in death and despair for all the principal actors. Perhaps we should retire early, so you might be spared the anguish?”
Belinda arched an eyebrow as she tilted her head toward his. “I am all but certain,” she breathed, “that the actors will rise up anew from their death throes and live to perform another night. I think I am bold enough to sit through another half hour of make-believe. They will notice if you leave, my lord. Your exit could end this show tonight, even as it opens.”
Javier quirked a smile, his head angled with interest. “You’re a gentle soul, aren’t you? You think of things that I never would. Nobility suits you, lady. The world might be a better place if all gentry were as well-heeled