MY THEODOSIA by Anya Seton

with her and felt rather than saw his lips form a question, 'Where?'
    'Theo, are you ready?' Aaron's voice came from the back of the box. Desperation seized her, and with it a plan. She
whirled, cried gaily at the top of her voice. 'Yes, Father—quite ready. But do not let us go home yet. Let's go to the Vauxhall Gardens. It will be delightful. They have excellent music, and we can cat ices beside the fountain.'
    She emphasized 'Vauxhall Gardens,' knowing that
be
listened and would understand.
    Aaron bent on her a keen look. 'What a gadabout you have become, my dear! I think it time for all respectable people to seek their homes.'
    'Oh no, Papa, please. It's too early to go home, and Joseph has never been there. He would enjoy the Gardens so much'. She cast on that young man a look so compelling and unexpected that his head whirled.
    'By all means let us go if Theo wishes it,' he stammered. Aaron's eyebrows shot up. He turned to Natalie. 'Are you also interested in this singular little expedition?'
    Theo held her breath while Natalie considered the question carefully from all angles before she said: 'Why not? It would be amusing, no doubt, and many vairy nice people go there, I think.'
    Aaron bowed. 'I give way to the ladies' wishes as always. But I cannot accompany you. I have business to attend to at home. You four may take the chaise, and I will hire a carriage to drive me back to Richmond Hill.'
    He waited for Theo's protest, knowing that his absence always diminished her pleasure in any undertaking. There was no protest. She lowered her lashes quickly, but not before he had seen a flash of unconcealed relief. Not by the flicker of a muscle did he show the dismay this caused him. But, as he stood on the paving blocks and helped the girls into the chaise with his customary courtesy, his active brain collected all the scattered incidents of the evening, searching for a clue to Theo's behavior.
    At dinner and during the ride to town she had been her normal self, clinging close to him, turning to him for approval or understanding even when she spoke to others, diffusing the atmosphere to which he was accustomed, that he was the only object of importance to her. Something had happened in the theater, then. But what? How was it possible for anything so transforming to have happened in the narrow confines of their box and under his eyes? And yet it had. He had seen hostility in her and a desire to escape from him. Even her looks had changed, burst suddenly into an unearthly glow.
    In any other woman he would have understood this. Only one thing produced this effect: the awakening of passion: a lover. Yet that was impossible in this case. Theo had seen no men but those of her own party.
    He considered the possibility that she might have suddenly discovered in herself a response to Joseph. Rejected it impatiently. He knew her, and he knew women far too well for that. But then what—who?
    When he reached Richmond Hill and shut himself in the library, he found that for once his disciplined mind refused to obey him. He could not work. Dozens of letters demanded careful answer. A communication in cipher from Timothy Green in South Carolina awaited decoding. It was important. It would tell him how nearly the South had been won over by the work he had required from Joseph, how much remained to be done when Joseph went home next week, ostensibly to prepare his family and plantation for the reception of a bride, but also to further the campaign.
    Rhode Island and Vermont, too, needed careful handling. They had satisfactorily growing groups of Burrites, but they needed guidance, one of those subtle yet tersely frank letters that he knew so well how to write. Usually he flung himself into these matters, savoring the secret pleasure of manipulat
ing factions, admiring as though it were a separate entity the smooth power of his brain.
    And tonight it would not function. He paced up and down the library, his light steps soundless on the