Then Gillian had marched up to him, and said something. And he was looking down at her, and then he was laughing.
He never used to laugh, back when he was drinking. Chuckle, definitely. But Gillian had him laughing.
Imogen turned away.
14
The Consequences of Dancing in the Sheets
Regency Theater, Charlotte Street
London
“You’ll end up married to the duke,” Jenny said wistfully. Jenny Collins and Loretta Hawes were preparing to go on the stage. Jenny was blackening her tights with shoe black so that the worn parts wouldn’t show. Loretta was sitting rigidly upright, doing the facial exercises that she had been told would prevent wrinkles. Not that she had to worry at age nineteen but Loretta believed in thinking ahead.
“I have no wish to marry a duke,” she said, massaging her cheekbones.
The wondrous thing, to Jenny’s mind, was that Loretta probably actually meant it. Jenny would have loved to marry a duke. That is, if her dear Will had been a duke. She reached up to touch the sprig of rosemary she’d tucked behind the glass; Will had given it to her when she was last home.
“Why not?” she asked. “If I didn’t love Will, I wouldn’t think twice before marrying a duke. Why, you’d have all those things that dukes have, Loretta!”
“Such as?”
“Such as—as a footman, and a carriage, and butter, lots of butter!”
“I never eat butter. It makes a woman plump.”
She didn’t glance at Jenny’s middle, but Jenny felt the rebuke. “You needn’t be so high-and-mighty about it,” she said sharply. “It’s not as if I swill myself in butter. I haven’t had a taste for months.”
Loretta looked up in surprise, and Jenny sighed. Loretta was a different sort of person than anyone Jenny had ever met. As far she could tell, Loretta never thought about anything other than how to become a great actress. Even when she stepped on people’s toes it was only because she had forgotten that they weren’t privy to her thoughts.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Loretta said penitently. “You know that I couldn’t touch butter, not after that unfortunate episode last year.”
Jenny was the only one who knew that the unfortunate episode was a baby. Loretta had lost her place at the Covent Garden (a small role, but it might have led to something), and now here she was, playing intervals at the Hyde Park. Jenny alone knew what had happened.
“No one would ever guess,” Jenny said, eyeing her friend. Loretta’s straw-colored curls bounced on her shoulders with all the silky energy of her trim little figure. Her skirts swirled around ankles that were as slim as they were visible in her short milkmaid’s costume.
Loretta shuddered. “I’ll never forget how plump I looked. It was truly awful.”
“But why don’t you wish to marry a duke?” Jenny persisted. “You’re so pretty. I bet the man will fall in love with you at once. What’s his name? Arphead, isn’t it?”
“I never heard of a duchess who was a famous actress,” Loretta said, clearly thinking that statement was explanation enough.
“You can’t be an actress all your life. You have to marry someday.”
“Perhaps,” Loretta said with a stark lack of interest in her voice. “It seems a disagreeable state, and I don’t want to think about it. Do you think there’s any chance that Bluett will allow me to try for the understudy role for Queen Mab?”
“Of course he won’t,” Jenny said. “He never allows a junior member to try for an understudy role, Loretta, you know that.”
“Bluett will beg me to try for an understudy after I play Mrs. Loveit. It’s the Duke of Holbrook’s theater, Jenny, not Arphead.” There was nothing overly ambitious in her tone: it was calm and matter-of-fact. “But you’re right. Bluett will give the role to Bess, and she’ll mangle all the lines if she ever takes the house.”
“Everyone is saying that she did him a favor.” Jenny giggled. The stage manager, Bluett, was not a man for whom a woman would do favors unless there was a certain reward attached.
Loretta wrinkled her nose. “How disagreeable.” Loretta did not like to dwell on disagreeable subjects. As she saw it, to think about unpleasant issues was to waste valuable time that could be spent in consideration of important issues, the most important of which was her future as a brilliant actress, dominating every stage in London.
She could hardly ignore the occasional events that threatened this rosy future. Being struck down by a carriage last year was one of those. The theater manager at Covent Garden had been most unsympathetic when she appeared, late for the performance, and limping. When Mr. Spenser’s consoling sympathy had led to a most enjoyable evening—if a most unpleasant outcome—the manager had terminated her employment with little more than a grunt and a wave of his head. The very memory made Loretta narrow her eyes. He would be sorry later, when she was the star at Drury Lane. Of course, she would be gracious.
Loretta believed in being gracious unless absolutely necessary. She had cut her teeth in the Covent Garden Theater traveling company, and there had been one or two episodes in which another actress needed to be shown her place, and Loretta had done so. But, for the most part, she maintained a sunny ability to turn her back on unpleasant people as quickly as unpleasant events.
If she hadn’t learned that skill, she wouldn’t have survived her childhood, given her father’s proclivities. But childhood was one of the things that she never, ever thought about. Some years ago, she had constructed in her mind a loving father, who had been so indulgent that he left his estate to his only daughter. There was nothing whatsoever to be gained by letting it be known that she was Jack Hawes’s daughter.
There were only two good things that anyone could say about Hawes: the first was that he took his hanging with remarkable cheer, wearing a new suit of pea green and his hat bound with silver strings. Of course, the suit was stolen, but by the time the former owner heard of its fate, his garments had been buried a week. The second was that he left all his profits from thief-taking to his daughter.
Perhaps he didn’t directly leave them to her, but since she was the only person who knew of her father’s false-bottomed wig box, she entered the house the morning after his arrest and removed the box.
One could suppose it was payment for enduring her childhood. Even thinking of that made Loretta feel queer and hot, so she never did think of it. She had first came to her father’s attention at age eight, and she perfected the art of not-thinking by the time she finally escaped the house at age fourteen.
By then she knew where the hatbox was. In fact, the hatbox served as a good example of what Loretta might have called her philosophy: when awful things happened—like that little episode with the baby last year—good things often resulted.
If she hadn’t been knocked down by the hackney, Mr. Spenser wouldn’t have escorted her home. And if he hadn’t escorted her home, she wouldn’t have decided that she would like to be comforted in an intimate fashion. Loretta did not begrudge herself entertainment now and then, although she did resent her own lapse of judgment when it came to preventing conception. But even that disaster had turned to good, because now she was going to play a role in the biggest amateur theatrical production of the year.
Bluett, who ran the Regency Theater, had raised an eyebrow when she said she needed time off from her current part for rehearsal at Holbrook Court. He not only let her off, but the news spread like wildfire, and soon all the girls were asking enviously how she got the place.
Since she could hardly say that it had to do with that unpleasant five-month respite she’d taken in the country, and the screaming little bundle she had thankfully handed over to Mr. Spenser, she made up a lovely tale about the Duke of Holbrook. Probably no one believed it, but Loretta had never seen the point of worrying about what people believed and what they didn’t.
“I just don’t see why you don’t wish to be a duchess,” Jenny said dreamily, taking down her rosemary and sniffing
at it. “I would adore having a maid, and people calling me Your Grace. I would wear huge diamonds around my neck, morning and night. I would sleep in them.”
Loretta laughed. “There’s only one thing I would adore, and that’s to have three thousand people shouting my name, the whole stage littered with flowers, and Mr. Edmund Kean eager to share the stage with me.”
“Oh, you’ll have that,” Jenny said, with absolute faith. “You’re the best actress of all of us by far, Loretta, and you’re the only one who’s memorized parts that aren’t even your own. Do you suppose you could just step into the role of Queen Mab tomorrow?”
“I could do any role in the play,” Loretta said without hesitation.
“You didn’t memorize the whole script!”
“It’s not hard to memorize, and how can you really know a play if you didn’t? How could you know its bones, and its roots and—”
“You’re daft,” Jenny said. “Daft. We’re opera dancers. We come out in the interval and sing a tune and kick up our heels. The only applause I ever hear is when my dress goes a little farther up than it was supposed to.”
“I’ll be on the stage proper someday,” Loretta said. “You never know when it might happen.”
Jenny couldn’t help smiling. Loretta looked like a fragrant, yellow-haired miss, and underneath she was the most driven, determined woman whom Jenny had ever known. Had ever heard of. “I’ve no doubt but that people will be piling roses around your feet, and I’ll be likely still waiting for Will to get off his father’s land and find an acre of his own.”
“I’ll fund you,” Loretta said with determination.
Bluett stuck his stubbly head in their doorway, heedless of whether they were dressed or stark naked. “Time!” he barked.
Loretta checked her lip color; Jenny tucked her little sprig of rosemary back behind the glass, and they both ran off as the first rollicking sound of “I went to an alehouse and what did I see?” came from the pit. The interval had begun.
Queen Mab lurched off the stage cursing and demanding her flagon of beer. She was sweaty and half-drunk, but a ghost of royalty still clung to her garments as she swept by with a flutter of gold lace. Loretta flattened herself against the wall to let her pass. The Queen was followed by her fairy consort, John Swinnerton, who stopped and winked at Loretta.
He was London’s leading man at the moment. His black hair and white skin gave him such a romantic air that ladies fainted at the very sight of him. Not that he was in the least romantic off the stage. “Heard about the performance at Holbrook Court,” he said. “Know the duke, do you?
Loretta smiled up at him. “I’ve never met him.” She liked Swinnerton, who never leered at her. He never leered at any woman, and Loretta thought the better of him for that.
“Keep yourself away from the swells,” he told her. “Those royal dukes have done us actors a great disservice. They all think to dally in the sheets with an actress is a rare treat.”
Bluett hissed at Loretta but Swinnerton waved him silent. “The nobility’s a queer lot,” he added, “with a touching ability to think that they are of erotic interest. Which, invariably, they are not.”
Loretta grinned at that and scampered after Jenny, who was waving at her from the stage entrance.
A second later they linked hands and pranced onto the stage, bobbing their curls and showing a touch of ankle. “I went to an alehouse and what did I see…” they sang.
From the outside, Loretta was all sparkling eyes, tossing curls, and dimples. But inside, she was thinking hard about the nobility. No duke would want to marry her: she knew that. But he might well want to sleep with her.
She wasn’t going to do it. Mr. Spenser had been rather enticing, with his deep voice and beautiful cheekbones. It was probably the shock of the accident that made her collapse into his arms thinking he was even handsomer than Swinnerton. But look how that had ended: with her losing a part and a good five months in London. It was only the grace of God she had ended up without lines on her stomach for all to see the truth of it.
Swinnerton was right. She had to stay away from the occupants of Holbrook Court. She had no wish to find a duke between her sheets.
Nor yet to fall backwards into those sheets just to make herself a duchess.
15
In Memoriam for Good Whiskey and Crimson Skirts
They were having a game of whist, Imogen and Gabriel Spenser against Rafe and Gillian. The pairing was rather obvious, to Imogen’s mind.
“I forgot to mention that the floor of the green room was finished today,” Rafe said, looking up from his cards. “Once we choose a play, we can assemble the cast and begin rehearsals.”
Gillian kept touching his arm every once in a while. Not that Imogen cared, but didn’t Rafe notice? Perhaps he did notice, and it pleased him.
Griselda was sitting on a chair next to Gillian’s mother and sorting through one of the three large cases of theatrical costumes, stage properties, and face paints that had arrived from London that afternoon. “I have read all the various plays,” she said, “and I have to admit that I couldn’t make head nor tail of The School for Scandal. It seemed rather ill spirited. But The Man of Mode was quite humorous. I suppose that Rafe would play Dorimant?”
“That is the leading role,” Gillian said, smiling at Rafe.
“But that means I’m playing a lover,” Rafe said, looking rather disgusted.
Imogen bit her tongue. There was a dangerous spark in his eye that dared her to say something. But it was one thing to taunt a pickled Rafe about the working of his pump handle. It was quite another now. There were a thousand changes to him…his skin had a healthy flush to it, and he looked eminently capable. The thought made Imogen feel rather tongue-tied.
“Dorimant is certainly a lover,” Gillian was telling Rafe. “After all, there are three females in his life: Mrs. Loveit is a friend, Belinda is another, and finally there is Harriet, who has just arrived in London and is quite unaffected. She is Dorimant’s new love interest.”
“Look at this splendid mustache!” Griselda said, holding up something that looked like a bunch of black chicken feathers. “There’s a wig here too…” She dug back into the box.
“Which part will Miss Hawes play?” Rafe inquired of Gabe.
“I would expect that Miss Hawes will prefer to play Mrs. Loveit, as there is more room for passion in the role. She strikes me as the sort of actress who would wish to play a tragic role, and Mrs. Loveit indulges in a certain amount of grief when Dorimant casts her off.”
“We wouldn’t be able to manage a true tragedy,” Gillian said. “You need good actors to play a tragedy. I’ve noted it again and again.”
“I doubt I am a good actor,” Rafe said. He raised his heavy-lidded eyes. “And I imagine that Imogen has the same misgivings that I do. I presume she will play Harriet?”
“I am quite looking forward to it,” Imogen said, laying down a card. “Trump called.”
“You must not have understood that you will be playing my love interest,” he said. “You must lure me away from two experienced women, Mrs. Loveit and Belinda. You will have to conceal your cordial dislike, and that may take more dramatic skill than you possess.”
“I doubt it,” Imogen said calmly. “I would say that the demands of your part are the more rigorous. I read the play last night. You, sir, are supposed to be a man with something of the angel yet undefaced in him. Perhaps you could employ the mustache that Griselda found.”
“You don’t think I’m angelic?” he demanded.
She almost laughed but stopped herself. “No! And you, Mr. Spenser, what part will you play?”
“Mr. Fopling Flutter,” Rafe said wickedly. “My brother must needs shed all this gravity of his. ’Twill be good for him.”
“If I must play a role,” Gabe said, “I should prefer to be Mr. Medley.”
“A friend of Dorimant’s,” Imogen said, smiling at him. “I had thought you in a larger role than that, Mr
. Spenser.” She put a hand on his arm. After all, if Gillian were doing the same to Rafe…
He looked for a second at her hand and then smiled at her, and Imogen felt a flutter of excitement.
Rafe looked across the table and narrowed his eyes. She was doing it again, gazing at poor Gabe as if he were a Sunday treat she intended to gobble. The very sight of it sent a pulse of longing for whiskey through him. If he were drinking, he wouldn’t care whether his poor brother were seduced.
And yet it was the first night in weeks that he’d had no headache. He felt better, there was no doubt about it.
He wrenched his eyes away from Imogen and looked at Miss Pythian-Adams instead. Now there was a sensible young woman. She was not only delectable, but she showed no signs of wanting to bite a man’s head off at the least provocation.
“I would have thought that you couldn’t play cards,” he said to Gabe. “Or play the part in an adulterous comedy, for that matter.” He took another huge swallow of water.
Imogen turned from her infernal gazing at Gabe. “Be careful,” she said, “you’ll make yourself retch.”
Bitch, Rafe thought to himself.
“I am not ordained,” Gabe replied. “I study the Bible, but I do not profess to have the mission to do more than learn about its intricacies.”
“Acting doesn’t seem a professor-like thing to do,” Rafe said, wanting to poke at his brother, though he hardly knew why. Other than that he wanted a drink.
“The Man of Mode is not about adultery,” Gabe returned, his eyes narrowing a trifle. “Dorimant and Medley are unmarried, as is Belinda.”
“But Mrs. Loveit?”
“For all I know, she’s a charming widow,” Gabe said, giving Imogen a smile.
Rafe felt a surge of rage at the sight. If only he had a drink…the truth of it was that now that he finally felt better, he was grappling with a burning desire for liquor. He felt as if his throat were parched, no matter how much water he drank.