A Regency Romance

Lucy Bartlett sat in her box high up at the opera, her eyes fixed delightedly on the stage. Around her people were talking languidly, but she tuned them out (a habit she had formed many years ago) and focused on the tragic story unfolding below. The evil Count Malicio had laid his plan cunningly and the beautiful and innocent Valencia was about to be entangled in his spider web. She leaned forward eagerly as the Count rounded off his song with a chilling chuckle. "Soon she will be mine!" he gloated, disappearing from the stage with a grand flourish of his cloak.

"Are you interested in such predictable tales, Miss Bartlett?" enquired a voice behind her, and Lucy started. So far the grand society ladies and the debonair men had left her alone after addressing conventional remarks to her, but now someone she had probably been introduced to at some dreary ball had come to make meaningless small-talk, and she would be forced to reply with civility, grace and wit. Schooling her expression into the bright, fake welcoming smile she had been taught to assume, she turned to greet her interlocutor.

He looked rather familiar, but she had no memory of being presented to him before. He slipped into the empty chair beside her and surveyed the company in the box opposite, giving her enough time to study his profile closely. He was a fair-headed young man, probably around twenty-seven years of age, she judged, strong-jawed and garbed in a military coat with several badges pinned on. No doubt they had been introduced, or he would not have dared to address her so boldly, but until he chose to reveal his identity, she had to pretend that she knew him. She answered his question with one of her own. "Do you think this plot is predictable? I confess I cannot think what might happen next! Valencia must be rescued, of course, but how Vandermark can do it when he is at the moment drugged and trapped in that huge dungeon I cannot fathom."

He was amused. He had the bright blue eyes that often go with fair hair, and they were now twinkling. "Oh, I could tell you that easily enough. But I won't, " he added quickly as her expression became protesting. "You probably want to find out yourself."

She nodded and wondered how long her visitor would sit beside her. The next scene had already begun, she knew, for though her face was turned politely towards her guest she could hear Valencia's sweet voice lifted in a lilting melody as she walked among the corn grain without any suspicion of the malevolent plans being laid for her.

Her unknown visitor, though, almost as if he had read her mind, civilly asked her to continue watching her opera and not mind him. "I'll gain my pleasure in watching your rapture as you find out how Valencia is saved from her fate. It is rather contrived, but I daresay you'd like it." Lucy, though feeling that her duty lay in politely declining this offer, gratefully accepted it and turned to the stage. She forgot all about her companion in the next few minutes as she watched the events onstage. Vandermark's faithful servant was come in search of his master, and Valencia, though trapped in the Count's castle, had befriended a little ragged urchin page who, on pain of death, was valiantly helping her escape. Would the Count return before she had made away to safety? Lucy knew that he could not, of course, but her eyes were wide with expectation and apprehension as they followed the Count, rubbing his hands together and bragging in his deep baritone, around the stage.

"My, what big eyes you have," said a quiet voice next to her, and she started for the second time that evening. She stared with a sudden suspicion at the man next to her, whose smiling features suddenly became known to her . "Jack?" she asked, disbelieving. He neither accepted nor denied it, but she gave a squeak of excitement. "Jack, it is you. It's been seven years since you said that to me. Mama, oh I must tell Mama! She said that you went away to join the army. I was so disconsolate when I heard that I cried so long, you wouldn't believe! Why didn't you tell me?"

Jack admitted that he had been afraid of her reaction. Upon Lucy severely admonishing him to be an awful coward, he meekly accepted it, adding that he did not think she would remember him after he left. "You were, after all just ten years old then, and you did tell me that I was important to you only after your doll, Cynthia. I did not think you would miss me as long as you had Cynthia with you."

Lucy, considering this thoughtfully, pronounced decisively that he was just making excuses, and added, seeing that he looked appropriately contrite, "Besides, even if that was true, I did miss your stories, and so did Nurse. She thought your flights of fancy quite wonderful. What impossible situations you entangled your heroes and heroines in! They seemed always to be in some scrape or another."

"It took all my ingenuity to come up with enough adventures to meet your insatiable demands for a story. I remember your two words 'And then?' used to strike terror in my heart," he said ruefully. "You used to stare at me just like you were looking at that stage now - with huge, wondering, credulous eyes. I half-believed in my stories myself when you gazed at me like that."

"You'll be glad to hear I know now at least the difference between stories and reality," Lucy laughed, "Yet the tales are so gripping they always draw me in completely like yours used to. You were the first and best storyteller I know, Jack."

Jack was about to reply suitably to this when Lady Theresa Bartlett, who had finally disengaged herself from the very determined cousin who had monopolised her for the past half hour, announced that she would now take her daughter home, and came forward to do so. When she saw who Lucy was sitting with, she stopped, frowning, for a moment, and then her blow cleared as she recognised him.

"Hello, Mr. Banning," she said graciously, holding out her hand to him. "You must be glad at the success of your play."

Lucy frowned in puzzlement from one to the other. "The success of your play? What can you mean, Mama. Not this one surely?"

"Certainly, my dear." Playwrights were not generally recognised in society, of course, but a young Major of good birth and handsome fortune could do what he liked. Every young person had some sort of eccentricity nowadays.

"It's sentimental tripe, of course," muttered Jack so only Lucy could hear. "But if you liked it I suppose it wasn't as revolting as I thought it was." He was smiling, but Lucy jumped hotly to its defence. "I did like it, and I think it was much better than those horribly depressing modern novels you get nowadays. But I missed the ending and I don't know what happens to Count Malicio!"

"If you would allow me," said Jack, bowing gallantly, "I would be happy to visit one day to clear up that issue. I also would be honoured if you would listen to the new tale I have drafted. Life in the army would be rather dreary if one did not make up stories to liven it up a little."

"Oh, yes, please do," said Lucy, turning to Lady Theresa, her eyes sparkling. "Jack must visit as often as he can, mustn't he, Mama?"

Lady Theresa asserted that indeed he must, and after engaging him to dine on Friday, swept off with her daughter. She was well satisfied with the young man. Seven years ago, he had treated her daughter like a little sister, patiently devoting many hours to her amusement, but now she was grown up, and she could see that Jack had noted the change. Her mind automatically jumped ahead to certain plans, and she nodded extremely affably to all her acquaintances.

Meanwhile, Jack stood where he was, staring at Lucy till she disappeared from sight, a tender look in his eyes, and a warm smile on his lips.