To Recapture a Rake by Christine Merrill

Author:Christine Merrill
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Christine Merrill
Published: 2014-06-04T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

Blackthorne’s box at the Theater Royal was as a comfort to him for he enjoyed the performances there. When he’d had Caro’s full attention, he had not used it as often as he’d liked. Bringing her to such a public place would expose her to the gossip and ridicule of her former friends. He abhorred the shallow ugliness of polite society, and it pained him that their relationship might cause her pain.

But when he’d left her at home and escorted another, he’d felt even worse. When compared to Caro, any female he chose seemed dull company and even an innocent evening without her felt like a betrayal. When he returned to her on the following night, he could not help but tell her where he had gone and who he had been with. It was almost as if he needed absolution.

But none of that mattered anymore. Now that he had lost her, there was no reason not to attend a play. He glanced at his current companion, who must have been a disappointment to the scandal mongers. They’d been expecting an opera dancer, or a notorious courtesan. Instead, he had made the most innocuous choice imaginable. The dowager Countess of Blackthorne occupied the position at his side, her jewels sparkling against satin, her grey hair arranged in a coronet, and her lorgnette firmly fixed on the box to their right. It was one he had been purposefully ignoring all evening, though it seemed to have been chosen in a way that made gazing into it practically unavoidable.

“Is that Caroline Sydney sitting just across the circle from us?” his mother asked, without lowering her glass. “She was your favorite for quite some time, was she not? Now that I can admire her, I know why.”

“Hmmph,” he said, staring fixedly at the stage.

“I have not spoken with her in ages. It is a shame. When you introduced us, she was perfectly charming.”

Now, his mother was being purposely difficult. He had introduced them in Bath, and again during the brief and unfortunate courtship of last season. There had been no recent meetings because one did not take one’s mistress to meet one’s mother. “The performance is on the stage beneath us,” he remarked. “I was told that the soprano is particularly good.”

His mother glanced at the girl on the stage, then turned back to him. “You are interested in her as well?”

“Mother,” he tried a warning tone. Now that he was head of the household, she owed him obedience.

She was having none of that. “Because she is not the equal to Miss Sydney.”

“I did not say she was,” he said, squeezing the program in his hands.

“But I expect you will be choosing another mistress soon. It is all over town that Caro cast you off.”

He balled up the program and tossed it to the floor. “You are not supposed to know of that, much less speak of it.”

She dropped the glass and looked at him with mock sympathy. “Everyone in London knows of it, Vincent.

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