Rivals and Revels (A Regency Romance)

25. Villains at the Opera

The box where Everett took her had a private room identical to Lady Catherine's. As soon as they were through the velvet curtains closing off the entrance, Everett let go of her hand and pointedly walked away.

He stopped by the wall, a few yards separating them, but not so far that he had to raise his voice. The wooden panels, painted to be a colour between bronze and stone, carved with the Chinese patterns to the third of the wall's height. The satin wall coverings went up to the ceiling from there on, in a noble crimson shade. Against that dramatic backdrop, Everett looked like a pistol on display, with beautiful, predatory lines, yet perfectly disarmed.

A twinge of shameful disappointment stirred up in Mabel's soul. She had done the unthinkable, went to a secret assignation with Everett. If she were Hazel, he'd probably paced instead of standing there like a statue with his arms folded across his chest.

He'd bemoan how he couldn't keep his vow; he would have whirled her; pressed her against the satin wall to ruin her... but she was Mabel, so she was treated to a rare performance in the theatre. The play's name was 'Everett, the Perfect Gentleman.' Even his glance travelled past her pale-lilac-clad bosom to an empty corner. He wouldn't even look at her, just like he had promised.

"Our Father," he started his story without a preamble, but Mable interrupted him with a cry of dismay and turned for the exit. "Your father was monstrously cruel. I know that already. Goodbye."

"I do not excuse his faults," Everett said quickly behind her back. "He was cruel to Radcliffe, he was tyrannical. But hear me out, I beg you."

She suppressed a childish desire to stuff fingers into her ears, but her feet froze to the plush carpet. She turned slowly to face him. His gaze no longer lingered on the empty corner.

"We must have been ten and eight that summer. Father shouted at Radcliffe once that he wished him dead, not creeping around the house like a spider, when I should have been the elder."

The raucous music coming faintly from the theatre ill-suited this story, but the image of Radcliffe as a spider struck Mabel. Radcliffe the Spider, a quiet, dangerous man, embittered by his deformities.

No!

Mabel rounded on Everett, the lilac skirt whooshing. "What odious lies! He was just a boy!"

"Yes. So was I."

She scoffed. "It's always about you."

"But it is... I found him, as kids do in their brotherhood against the grown-ups' injustices, put my arms around him to console him and promise I hated Father."

"You did?"

"Believe what you wish. What matters is that Radcliffe was calm. Unnaturally calm for a ten-years-old. So calm, it frightened me more than Father's rage did, for I would have broiled with an impotent anger of a boy, cried, hit something..."

On stage, Mr. Brant gave his best to the jolly opening aria, while Everett's sounded as a haunting dissonance. Mabel's resentment melted like ice under the rays of sun. She needed an umbrella to provide shade for it.

"Radcliffe just said, 'Don't worry, I'm not going to die. The natural order of things is that he dies first, and I'll have everything that is now his. And I'll be better at everything.'"

She clasped her hands together in front of her stomach, interlacing her fingers into a tight knot. Despite these drastic measures, irresistibly, she looked into his eyes. She knew every danger of basking in their startling blue, and she did it anyway. That's how the Greek heroes must have felt around Medusa.

"Radcliffe wasn't boasting idly. He made himself perfect—a perfect son, a perfect gentleman. He would ask for tasks, and Father gave them. The menial ones at first, beneath him, to mock him. Radcliffe endured."