“We’re so close to the stage already.” The box was just to the left of the stage, much closer than she had ever been before.
James plucked the champagne from its bucket, gesturing to Nora and Robert to sit as he began to pour. “Oh, hardly anyone comes to the theatre to watch the production,” he said. “They come to see and be seen. You’ll have a hard time peering into the other boxes without the glasses.”
“I would never be so rude,” she said, with a little offended sniff, tipping her nose up at a disdainful angle.
James grinned. “Perhaps not, but everyone else would. I can count half a dozen opera glasses trained on us even now.”
Jilly felt a flush climbing into her cheeks, and it only seemed to make James’ grin grow wider. She reached for a glass of champagne, very nearly toppling it to the floor in her embarrassment.
James reached for a glass of his own, and said near her ear, “It’s why I haven’t lit the lamps. No need to make it easy for them. At least we’ll have a bit of privacy.”
Her eyes flitted to Nora and Robert, seated just a few feet away, incredulous.
He shrugged. “Well, as much privacy as can reasonably be expected,” he said. “But then again, I don’t believe Lady Ravenhurst is precisely the most diligent of chaperons.”
Of course she wasn’t. Nora wanted nothing better than for Jilly to throw caution to the wind, grasp at the possibility of a new love with both hands, and tumble headlong into the same bliss that Nora enjoyed with her own husband. And if the only way that it might be accomplished was for Nora to be less than attentive to her responsibilities as a chaperone, well, she was willing to make that sacrifice.
“Robert is diligent,” she muttered, as a last-ditch effort to throw him off.
James took the seat beside her and considered that. “You might be correct,” he said. “But I can manage him, I think.”
“Oh?” She took a sip of her champagne, let the crisp bubbles slide down her throat. “How?”
“Horses,” he said, and he slanted her a wicked smile, full of teeth and promise. “My stables really are beyond compare.”

∞∞∞