Perhaps he would fall in love with her. He did not know.

As it was, he seemed to spend more time talking with Mrs. Simpson than with her stepdaughter. He would have thought that after five years of meeting her so frequently at Charlie’s, he knew her well. He had always thought of her as a quiet, serene, dutiful woman. He had always liked her, admired her, respected her.

But he did not know her, he was discovering. She was an interesting conversationalist. She had a lively sense of humor. They laughed a great deal over memories of Spain. And she did not dwell on the horrors of life there, he found. She had a gift for recalling the small, absurd incidents that he had forgotten all about. The incidents that helped him to remember his years there with some pleasure, horrifying as they had been in the main.

The evening at the opera was amusing. A little annoying too, perhaps, but basically amusing. Lieutenant Penworth, it seemed, had a passion for Madeline, and monopolized her company, completely cutting out Colonel Huxtable, who did not look at all pleased at being bettered by an inferior officer. He turned in some pique to Miss Simpson.

And so Lord Eden was left to amuse himself with Mrs. Simpson. Very good thing that he liked her, he thought, and found her an easy companion. And it was a pleasant surprise to see her dressed in an elegant silk gown with her hair dressed more softly than usual about her face. She really was a strikingly lovely woman.

“Do you think the tenor has to stand so close to her,” he whispered in her ear at a most serious point in the opera, nodding in the direction of the leading soprano, “in order to stick a pin in her so that she can reach the high notes?”

“Oh.” She slapped a hand to her mouth and looked at him with eyes that held a horrified sort of amusement, and her shoulders shook. “Oh, don’t,” she said with something of a squeal when she had herself a little under control. “I shall disgrace myself by laughing aloud. And just at a time when everyone is dying so tragically all over the stage.”