A Scandal in Battersea (Elemental Masters #12)(65)

He dragged his attention back to the task at hand. He had decided that he would take his ticket up in the first or second balcony; he was just as likely to find a bookish girl up there as down in the more expensive seats, and far more likely to find one that was here by herself.

The one thing he didn’t want was another bohemian. He was under absolutely no illusions as to the probable state of their “purity.” But it was vanishingly unlikely that a musician, painter, or writer would turn up at a Shakespearian matinee performance in a normal gown. Half of the fun the bohemian set got out of turning up in public was in scandalizing people with their wild, unfashionable garb.

So he took a seat at the back of the first balcony, the end of the middle row, where he got a good view of everyone else in it—and since he had arrived as early as possible, he could observe them as they came in and took their seats.

There was a party of half a dozen schoolchildren with what he assumed was a teacher. They were wildly excited and at the same time on painful best behavior—he assumed this must be a treat for good behavior or good marks in their literature studies. They took the middle of the first row and draped themselves over the balcony rail, absorbing everything.

I shall have to be careful of them, he decided. I should do nothing to attract their attention. If police track my victim back to this theater, and come to find out about a gaggle of children, they might remember me better than an adult would.

After that came a fairly steady parade of the usual sort of theatergoers for a Saturday matinee: one or both parents with child or children, older couples without children, young couples without children, old men alone, old ladies alone, a handful of Serious Young Men by themselves, and to his relief, a handful of Serious Young Ladies who also arrived on their own. He concentrated his attention on these, considering what (if anything) of their personality was on display.

Finally, just as the house lights dimmed, he made his selection. Getting up silently, he paused at the back of the balcony for a moment, then made his way down to his victim, who was sitting on the aisle of the right-hand row, halfway down the section. Tapping her on the shoulder, he whispered, “I beg your pardon, but I believe I have a seat just past you, miss. If you would like, I can switch with you to avoid any inconvenience.”

She got up, all aflutter, but moved down two seats. He took the one she had vacated. And there they sat, all through the first act.

The Hamlet was an understudy, and apparently he was under the impression that a good Shakespearian actor chewed as much scenery as he could, because his overacting was—at least to Alexandre’s practiced eye—appalling. He rolled his eyes so wildly in the Ghost scenes that they could even see the whites of his eyes in the balcony. And while it was certainly easy to hear his lines, he bellowed them so, he had so much vibrato at the ends of his words that he sounded more like an opera singer than an actor.

He knew he had a hook with which to catch this little fish when he heard her stifling giggles after the first ten minutes or so. When the house lights came up at the end of the first act, and she didn’t immediately rise, he leaned back in his seat and groaned.

“If I had known this was the Christmas Panto version of Hamlet, I wouldn’t have come,” he said aloud, but in a voice just loud enough to carry to her seat and no further. “They should be paying us to sit through this atrocity.”

She glanced over at him, and smiled. “He really is dreadful, isn’t he?” she said. “But the others are rather good and the Ophelia is quite fine, so I am determined to suffer through this Hamlet.”

“Even though my ticket was a gift, I would flee this place, but it is warmer here than in my garret, and in the face of your bravery, I shall keep you company.” He made a little half bow. “Alexandre Harcourt, at your service, milady. We shall whisper rude things to one another under his howls.”

“Katherine Dalton,” said his victim, with a wry smile. “Are you a poet, an artist—no you cannot be an artist, there is no paint under your fingernails—”

A clever one, this. I won’t cozen her with words. It will have to be the entity. “A poet, with a single slim volume to my name. You won’t have heard of it,” he said.

And he didn’t expect that she would answer otherwise, but it still stung when she replied, frankly, “No, I’m afraid I don’t recognize your name. But I shall order it at the bookseller, on the strength of our mutual detestation of bad acting.”

She could have pretended she knew it. That would have been polite and ladylike. Just out of pure spite, he was about to prod the entity to exert its power over her and get her under his control right then and there—

—but just as he thought of that, he heard the thing’s cold voice in his head. There is danger. Convince her to go outside.

And at that point it was too late to go outside. The bell rang for the second act, and people began filing back in to take their places. So he was reduced to trading whispered quips with her every time Hamlet spoke a line. He almost had second thoughts when she said at one point, “I do believe Ophelia drowns herself to get rid of his voice in her ears,” but reminded himself that he had no more business getting fond of his chosen target than a wolf had in getting friendly with a lamb. She’s just a girl with pretensions of intellect.

When the lights came up after the second act and she showed no signs of moving, he said, “I really cannot bear this any longer. I must flee, before I begin hurling my boots at the stage. Would you consent to join me for tea? My pockets may not be deep, but they will extend to tea and cakes for two.”