Who Wants to Marry a Duke - Sabrina Jeffries Page 0,26
“I go to the theater from time to time. What do you think I am—a know-nothing?”
Thorn arched one brow. “I can count on one hand the number of times you’ve gone with me to the theater. And even then, I had to drag you there.”
“I don’t like all the shouting,” Greycourt said defensively. “If the audience would behave themselves, I would enjoy myself better.”
“Oh, I quite agree with you there,” Olivia chimed in. “I don’t like the shouting and throwing of oranges and the like, either. But Mama tells me it’s far better now than in her time. She said that back then, whenever Malvolio used to take the stage, the jeering and catcalls grew so loud that no one could even hear his lines.”
“Ah, yes, Twelfth Night, another of my favorites.” Thorn cocked his head. “Were you perhaps named after—”
“No!” she and Beatrice said in unison. Then they laughed together.
“I already asked her that,” Beatrice said.
“Everyone asks me that,” Olivia added. “Everyone who likes Shakespeare, anyway.”
“Oh, I understand, believe me,” Beatrice said. “The irony of everyone assuming I was named after the character in Much Ado about Nothing is that I’ve never even seen or read the play.”
“You’d like it, I assure you,” Olivia said. “And Beatrice is a wonderful, sharp-tongued heroine.”
“That does fit our Beatrice, to be sure,” Thorn said. When Beatrice swatted him with her reticule, he laughed, then returned to questioning Olivia. “So I take it you prefer Shakespeare’s comedies to his tragedies?”
“I prefer anything that makes me laugh. As your brother so deftly demonstrated, chemistry can be a very dry subject. I love it . . . but sometimes I also need something to take me out of it for a time. Lately, my favorite playwright is a fellow named Konrad Juncker. I think he’s German, although the name could be Danish or Swedish.”
She met Thorn’s gaze, surprised to see that his smile had abruptly faded. “Anyway,” she went on, “his stories about a foreigner named Felix living the life of a rakish buck in London always make me laugh myself silly. Have you seen them?”
“I doubt it,” Thorn said. “Although recently I went to a wonderful new play at Covent Garden that—”
“You did see at least one of the Juncker plays,” Greycourt broke in. “I remember because you were the one who dragged me to it.” He mused aloud. “It wasn’t The Adventures of a Foreign Gentleman Loose in London—that one I’ve never seen—but a later one. Perhaps More Adventures of a Foreign Gentleman Loose in London?”
With a long-suffering look, Thorn crossed his arms over his chest. “Whatever it was, it must not have made much of an impression on me. I don’t recall it.”
Olivia turned her attention to Greycourt. “Might it have been The Wildest Adventures, et cetera, et cetera? That one packed the theater. I would never have been able to see it if Papa hadn’t had a box.”
Greycourt tapped his chin. “That might have been it. Was that the one with Lady Grasping and Lady Slyboots?”
“Actually,” Olivia said, “they’ve been in all the plays so far. I know, because the pair are my favorite comedic characters bar none.”
“Even over Shakespeare’s?” Thorn asked, with a skeptical arching of one brow, though he also seemed terribly interested in her answer. Which was flattering, she supposed.
“Well . . .” She had to think about that one. “Yes, I believe so. Because they’re so much more real to me than Shakespeare’s, even though written by a foreigner.”
“I don’t think Juncker is a foreigner, actually,” Greycourt said. “Just his name is German.”
“That would explain his extraordinary knowledge of English society,” Olivia said. “You can meet matchmaking mamas and scheming young ladies like Grasping and Slyboots in any London ballroom. He describes them masterfully and mocks them so well that I laugh until my sides hurt.”
“In the play I saw, whatever it was titled,” Greycourt said, “Lady Grasping gets the idea to have Lady Slyboots, her daughter, demonstrate her skill at needlepoint to impress an aging marquess who’s seeking a wife. But Lady Slyboots gets so distracted by the handsome Felix who’s flirting with her that she sews the marquess’s breeches leg to her embroidery. Then, of course, the marquess is trying to leave but he can’t, and he pulls hard enough to rip the fabric over his backside, exposing his drawers, and her mother faints. . . .”
“Ooh, ooh, I love that scene!” Olivia said. “It’s in The Wild Adventures of a Foreign Gentleman Loose in