Chapter 3
Every so often, I miss London. You’ll laugh at that, no doubt, remembering how nervous I was about it in the beginning, how hard you had to work to convince me that all would be well.
When we first moved there I felt as if hobgoblins lurked around every corner, ready to devour me.
So many people! So much noise. Colors were too bright or too dim; the air coated my tongue with the taste of coal.
My eyes always burned. London hammered my body and battered my spirits until I could hardly think.
In those early days I was such a timid country mouse, and the city such a wolf.
After a month of it, I was ready to bolt, did you know that? Perhaps you did. I was going to sneak back to Winter Queen and beg and weep and plead to stay—I think Papa might have listened, at least. I had a half-mad fantasy of marrying some local lad and hiding away forever.
But then you did the most clever thing. The most clever, unexpected thing.
LONDON, ENGLAND
Backstage, the Catharine Theatre smelled of sawdust and mice, and the pungent scent of horse and smoke whenever the shop door was opened, inviting in spirals of snowflakes.
Beyond the occasional gray flash of bright from that door, shadows upon shadows smothered the area, all the way up to the curtains; the only steady illumination was a distant pool of yellow light from the rigging above the apron of the stage.
The lanterns in the rafters above Marguerite’s head were dark, silent steel shapes clamped to long iron bars.
The snow had started last night, and the cold inside the building was already crackling through her marrow.
Perhaps that was why the flock of young women waiting with her (thirteen of them; she’d counted) clustered so close together, dressed in their best, pale chiffon and velvet, the brims of their hats brushing, their whispers rising in slender frosted tendrils past their rouged lips.
Who is she?
No idea. She wasn’t here for the first two calls, that’s for bloody certain.
Someone’s bit of fluff, is my guess. Jim or Harvey.
One of Jim’s, I’d wager. He’s an eye for them exotic types.
Marguerite lingered at their edge, observing her surroundings with interest. It wasn’t the first time she’d visited the labyrinthine corridors of a professional theatre, but it was her first time in this one.
The Catharine faced Shaftesbury Avenue with a facade of carved limestone and rails of wrought iron.
It welcomed its patrons with red-and-gold carpeting and red-and-gold curtains, red velveteen seats, but back here, where the craftspeople sweated and worked and listened for their cues, it was as bare bones as could be.
No furniture, no candles, no lamps. No place to sit.
Everyone stood as they waited for their names to be called.
She met the eyes of the girl nearest her, a flaxen-haired blonde with a narrow gray gaze, and smiled. The other girl thinned her lips and turned away.
Someone’s bit of fluff.
Well, Marguerite supposed she rather was, although not in the way the others thought. She was surely the only one here, for example, who had a hansom paid well enough to wait outside for her in the snow.
The play was called Good Girls Stay Home, a comedy by some American playwright she’d never heard of.
It required three ingénue leads and was guaranteed a four-week run, minimum, and Marguerite was only here because her mother, that quiet force of tilt and change in her life, had made good on her connections and wrangled her daughter an invitation to the third, and final, call.
The initial two auditions had transpired over the past month, back when Marguerite and Inez had first arrived, lost in the wondrous chaos of the city, in the haze of unpacking their trunks and settling into their apartment in Bloomsbury.
Pauline had traveled with them, inspected their newly leased lodgings—the quality of the locks, the cook who came with the kitchen, the maid who came with the cook, and the housekeeper who came with the entire flat—and announced herself moderately satisfied.
“A little compact,” she observed, hands on her hips. “But it will do.”
Compact or not, the flat felt like liberation to Marguerite.
The tight back-and-forth stairways, the grape velvet curtains, the Aubusson rugs that covered the floors from the parlor to the living room to the dining room.
The view from her bedroom behind clear glass panes: a wide, gracious street filled with horses and carriages and well-bundled people hurrying along through their days and nights, hurrying to conquer their next precious second, and the next, and the next.
I’ve done it. I’m here. At last, I’m here.
Maman had lingered a fortnight, then headed back to Winter Queen to tend to what was left of her flock.
Papa needed to travel to Paris for business, and there was no room for Albert in this henhouse, as Maman had called it, so she would spend the next few weeks in Medmenham with her son.
She’d written to various cousins, and then cousins of cousins, about the possibilities of chaperoning the London flat, but so far had heard nothing definitive in return.
“So it will be the two of you for now,” she’d said sternly, kissing both girls goodbye on the cheek before climbing into the hired barouche. “Be good,” she’d commanded from inside the carriage, and then paused, eyeing Inez. “Not too good. Be only just scandalous enough.”
“Scandalous enough for what?” Marguerite asked.
Pauline gave a Gallic flick of her fingers, then smiled. “To … score a bull’s-eye in all the fresh games to come. To win, no matter what.”
THIS MORNING AT breakfast, Mrs. Corbyn, the housekeeper, had placed a folded note by Marguerite’s plate.
She was a tall, skeletal sort of woman, long-boned and silver-haired, someone who seemed almost too shaky for the heavy ring of keys dangling from her waist. The measuring way she took in the sisters when she thought they wouldn’t notice told Marguerite that although Maman had approved of Mrs. Corbyn, Mrs. Corbyn had not yet quite approved of the Jolivets.
“Before she left, your mother instructed that I give this to you, miss. I was to hold onto it until today. Until this morning. For the audition, you see.”
She managed the word audition with only the barest tinge of distaste.
“Thank you,” Marguerite had replied and lifted her eyebrows at her sister.
In Maman’s flowing, old-fashioned script, the note read:
I’m not ashamed to have lifted you this far, but now your fate is up to you. You wish to conquer Broadway? Go forth and shine.
Marguerite leaned across the table to hand it to Inez, who scanned it quickly in a splash of light from the window and then handed it back.
“You and Maman make a fine team,” she’d said with smile, almost wistful, and returned to her porridge.
“MARGARET,” BAWLED A voice, and then a pause. “Jo-livet? Hoo-ho! Margaret Jolivet, and hurry up, if you please.”
Marguerite looked up, coming back to the cold and dark of the Catharine. The man calling her onstage had pronounced her surname Jaw-liv-it, spitting out all the syllables, even though she had introduced herself properly to the manager when she’d first arrived.
She’d not dressed in her very best—that would have been something from Lucile or House of Worth, and anyway was reserved for Maman’s mandatory social schedule.
Even so, she was in a gown of very fine melon organza, soft and feminine and bright, exactly the color of summer sunsets.
Of banked ambitions and dreams, and maybe good girls who liked to stay at home.
Unlike everyone else, she’d only received the typed excerpts of the script twenty minutes past. From what she could tell, the play seemed to be about a trio of silly, predictable girlfriends flirting with the notion of careers before deciding to marry their silly, predictable beaux instead.
Marguerite lifted her skirts and swept forward with a smile, blinded for a moment by the lights above. She lowered her gaze to the planks of the stage and moved to its center. Her heart was racing faster than she wanted; she exhaled slowly, a silent release of air between her lips.
This is it, one chance, one reading, don’t muck it up.
She lifted her lashes.
Compared to the spartan backstage area, the front of the Catharine opened up like a gaudy clam to a gilt-and-plastered ceiling and raked rows of seats that climbed toward the entrance of the theatre, well above her head.
A single chandelier suspended above the house had been cinched in a balloon of linen, but for the prisms dangling from its base.
They chimed with a draft, flashing darts of color, splintering the dark.
The assistant stage manager waved her forward impatiently.
“Downstage, luv, don’t be shy.”
“I’m not shy,” Marguerite said, still smiling. “And my name is Marguerite, not Margaret.” She paused and repeated it the proper way. “Mar-gher-eet Sho-la-veh.”
The man looked her up and down. He wore a plain brown shirt with a grease stain near the collar, and suspenders but no waistcoat; his chin was covered in stubble.
As he bent closer, she caught the sour waft of ale surrounding him.
“Yeah? You might want to change that. Foreign-sounding, it is. Do better with something homegrown.”
“Do you think so?” She took another step forward, facing front.
She made a show of removing the pins from her hat, all three of them one by one—arms curved above her head, fingers precise, chin lifted, neck stretched—before bending to place it all carefully upon the stage, pins in the hat, hat upside down, feathers brushing planks.
In her splash of light, the melon dress gleamed like a flame.
The assistant scowled at her. He turned to the audience seats and shrugged with both palms up, a gesture of surrender. “Miss Mar-gar-eet Jo-liv-eh.”