The Fashionable Spy by Emily Hendrickson

face.
    “What is it, Elizabeth? I know that look all too well.” She opened the door to their box and fixed a steely look on her sister as she sidled past her.
    “Nothing, really. It merely occurred to me that if one wished to avoid seeing another, the country would be an excellent place to retreat. That is, if one were wishing to avoid another person, which I am not necessarily wishing to do, that is.” Elizabeth gave her sisters an airy smile after this confusing speech, and settled in her chair to watch in apparent fascination as the crowd gradually filled the theater.
    Behind her, Victoria and Julia exchanged bewildered looks. “What on earth do you suppose she meant by that peculiar bit of nonsense?” Victoria whispered to Julia.
    “Heaven only knows,” Julia whispered in return from behind a large fan painted with delicate yellow roses. The fan was a particular favorite of hers, coming from an unknown admirer. Tonight she elected to wear a silk gown the identical yellow, with a dainty matching satin hat on her head. Elizabeth had declared that Julia looked like a buttercup and Victoria had agreed that she did.
    Elizabeth wore her favored aquamarine in a soft mull with rows of fine lace, while Victoria had dressed herself in a flattering shade of melon, and thought the gown, with its panel of delicate embroidery down the front, most becoming.
    It was sometime later that Victoria caught sight of a now-familiar face almost directly across from her, one tier below, and in a slightly better location.
    “There he is, Julia,” she whispered as she nudged her sister with her fan. “Second box over and down one. He is the one who collided with our chaise, and now has generously offered to replace it.”
    “I dared not peek when he visited the house, but what a handsome man, as well, Vicky. And you say nothing happened? What a pity.” Julia twinkled an amused look at her sister.
    “What are you two whispering about?” Elizabeth demanded to know in a quiet voice.
    Julia explained, quite discreet behind her painted roses.
    “Well, I never,” breathed Elizabeth as she studied the man she had dubbed the Dull One. “He scarcely fits the image you gave us. I thought him to be much older, and far less good-looking. Why, my dear sister, you have been hiding things from us.”
    Victoria swallowed carefully and smiled as though nothing were amiss. If her dear sisters knew the extent of Sir Edward’s actions, they would be in his box demanding he wed Victoria, their fans pointed at his head like two pistols.
    The interval relieved the necessity for whispers, and Julia leaned back in her chair, a bemused look on her face. “I must say, this is a fatiguing drama—all that melancholy sighing and agony of mind. I find it hard to believe that anyone could stand about to deliver such a long speech in the midst of terrifying apparitions. I would flee for my life!”
    “Julia,” scolded Elizabeth, her eyes crinkling with mirth, “you simply do not understand. He is expressing the deep passion of hatred.”
    “Oh, pooh.”
    Then Elizabeth fell silent as she caught sight of someone not seen earlier.
    “What has turned you to stone, Lizzie?”
    She absently replied, “You know how I dislike to be called that. I just saw someone I could learn to hate, that is all.”
    “Goodness, if you harbor such emotion, be forewarned that hate sometimes turns to love,” Victoria teased her.
    Elizabeth gave her a smug look. “Not in this case.” Then she looked around again, and inquired of Julia, “Who is that interesting man who keeps staring at our box? He is next to Victoria’s gentleman of the chaise. Sir Edward.”
    “That,” a disconcerted Julia observed, “is the man whose eye I am to paint.”
    Giggling, Elizabeth said, “I wonder how you will feel to be so near to a stranger, and such a handsome one at that. For you must know that you cannot paint an eye from a great distance.” She peered closely at her sister from