Chapter One #2
That was what Ted was saying, anyway. “It’s just—well, with everything—and we didn’t expect you this early, y’see… And I thought, tell you later, when it was quiet like—”
“Please do not worry yourself, Ted,” Rose said kindly to the gangling stage manager, who appeared to be getting himself into quite a flap. “You did not need to inform me that Annabelle was assisting with the costume fitting. As long as it is ready for me on opening night—”
“But that’s just the thing, y’see—”
“And I can see that you’re testing the shoes too. And the coronet, my, my,” said Rose lightly as she turned to examine the young woman. “And… And has someone done your hair, Annabelle?”
The girl flushed. Ted’s stammers petered out into nothing.
Rose looked between them slowly, her pulse starting to race as though it knew something she did not.
There was something…wrong here. Something definitely wrong, though she could not entirely put her finger on it. Annabelle was not dressed up like Rose, she was dressed like…like Titania. And Ted was still gibbering, and he was not a man to lose track of his words.
And their expressions. Furrowed brows, pinched lips. Their expressions looked very worried, indeed, which was odd, because she was here now. Their greatest star had arrived. Rose would have presumed that their worry would have diminished now that she was here, not intensify.
Something was not right…
Annabelle, her cheeks flushed crimson, managed to say, “I-I thought they had told you.”
Rose frowned, some of the warmth of being back in a theater diminishing. “Told me what?”
The young woman looked at Ted. Rose followed suit.
Ted was sweating, rivulets of perspiration trickling down his temples, and he was still wringing his hands together before him as though he were standing in the dock for murder.
As though he were guilty.
Rose took a slow step toward him and he backed up immediately, taking three steps for her one.
Very guilty. And there was only one crime that one could commit against an actress of such prestige and talent such as herself, Rose knew. She knew because she herself had committed it against the great Italian talent, Miss Margolotta. And the woman had never forgiven her.
Rose had not understood why at the time. She understood now.
“Am I to understand,” she said coldly, driving ice into every syllable, “that I have been…replaced?”
Annabelle gave a whimper of nerves behind her, but that did not interest her. No, Rose had fixed her steely expression upon Ted and poured into it as much loathing and imperious disgust as she possibly could.
And she was an actress. A good one.
The man looked as though he was about to wet his drawers. “N-Now replace, replace now, that is a strong word. I wouldn’t say replace—”
“You did not say anything,” Rose said sweetly, though no tenderness reached her eyes. She made certain of that. “You did not speak to me at all about any problems or concerns about my performance.”
“It’s just, well, Titania, Queen of the Dairies, you know. She must be—”
“Regal,” Rose said impressively, ensuring that she projected the word around the large dressing room. “Impressive. Majestic. Experienced in the arts of the stage.”
Even as she’d said the words, she could see that it would make no difference.
It never did. How many times had she seen this scene play out, but she was the one wearing the costume?
She had been the one staring awkwardly, surprised that the older woman had not been told—but then, Rose recognized with searing guilt, she had always presumed that the older woman would have realized she was no longer suitable.
She had thought those older women… When she had been as fresh-faced as Annabelle, as idiotic, as na?ve, she had believed those older women should have examined themselves in a looking glass and realized they were past their prime.
They had seemed so…so old. Miss Margolotta had seemed ancient, now that she came to think of it, at eight and fifty.
And now Annabelle was looking at her not just with discomfort, but with…pride. It was that slight thrust forward of her chest, the straightened back. Pride, Rose could see, that she had been chosen to replace her.
Her.
“You must have seen this coming,” Ted was blabbering. “I mean, you are a spot old—”
“I am five and twenty!” Rose hissed, the pretense of calm swiftly abandoned. “Dear God, man, you cannot tell me that is old!
“Five and twenty!” Annabelle’s head recoiled as Rose cast her an irritated glance. “Goodness, and you are still acting!”
“I will still be acting when you are in the grave, you child,” Rose shot over, unable to keep down her anger any longer. “What, you think you will not age? You think you will never reach such heady heights of experience as five and twenty?”
Annabelle drew herself up, which Rose had to admit—in the privacy of her own mind—looked rather striking in the Titania costume. “I shall be married by then,” she said commandingly. “One day, I will be in the Society pages!”
The words echoed around the small room, but mostly, they echoed within Rose’s mind.
Dear Lord…had she not thought that exact statement mere minutes ago? How was it possible that her dreams could so quickly be subsumed by a younger woman? A woman, moreover, barely out of the nursery?
“—must have predicted this,” Ted was saying incoherently behind her. “After all, we could not cast you as one of the young women in the play, could we?”
Rose turned to him, directing her ire at the man who had made the decision. Yes, that was whom she should be angry at. “What do you mean, you could not? I chose to play Titania!”
“Titania was the only role that would suit a woman of your…your advanced years,” Ted said awkwardly, swallowing rapidly, no doubt truly worried she would fly at him with a stage sword.
She hadn’t completely discounted the notion. “‘Advanced years’?”
The man was an imbecile. How could he think that a woman still in her prime, not even close to thirty years of age, was advanced in years?
Rose pushed aside all thoughts that contradicted her, all memories that a woman’s prime in the theater was closer to twenty and that almost all the women who passed that age left the theater.
She had presumed…perhaps foolishly, she had always thought they had chosen to do so. That they had gone on to something better. Married well, or earned so much money, they did not need to work.
The very idea that they had been forced out, not slowly over time, but abruptly, turning up to the theater one day and discovering some chit of a girl in their own costume…
Rose slowly sank onto the chair that held her coat and scarves. “You did not cast me as Helena or Hermia because I am too old?”
“It would have been embarrassing,” Annabelle said haughtily.
“You stay out of this, child,” Rose shot back, temper sparking.
But the girl did not back down as she had expected.
Perhaps it was the coronet that gave her strength.
Perhaps she had realized that now she was the most impressive person in the room.
Perhaps she gained comfort from the knowledge that she would be performing on opening night, and not this has-been woman before her, sitting on a chair.
Rose swallowed. Opening night. She needed that money—she needed any money, but she would not get paid until she had performed on opening night. If she was not performing on opening night, then she would not get paid.
All threats to her vanity and pride disappeared beneath the weight of reality.
She needed money. She needed this job—no. Any job.
“So. Annabelle and I will switch roles,” Rose said stiffly, hardly believing she was saying this. “She will… She will play Titania. I will become a fairy, part of the chorus.”
There was an awkward silence, and it grew more awkward the longer it continued.
Rose turned to stare at Ted. “Tell me you are keeping me in the chorus.”
“Lots of young girls…looking to make a name, lots of them…very pretty, lots of—”
“Damn it, man, you cannot tell me that you are firing me!” The words tasted wrong in her mouth. They could not have been true. And yet why had she said them?
Rose’s mind was spinning, or the room was spinning, and her lungs were tight and they weren’t getting enough air because this could not have been happening.
She had been forced to kiss a disgusting man for her first food in two days just minutes ago.
Surely, she could not fall any farther than that?
Annabelle was looking pleased with herself. “You told me you would inform her, that I wouldn’t have to!”
Ted grimaced. “I didn’t expect her so early. She wasn’t supposed to be here for hours yet.”
“I can hear you, you know.” Rose left the chair and straightened up with as much dignity as she could muster—which, in truth, was not much.
“But I will not be able to hear you for long. If you truly think you can have a chit of a girl with no true acting experience play the momentous role of Titania—”
“Rose!” Ted said wretchedly.
“—then you have proven to me that your theater is in fact not interested in true art. You are interested in farce, mere coin,” Rose said coldly.
The stage manager blinked as though she had started speaking nonsense. “Of… Of course I am interested in coin. Why do you think I run a theater?”
It was not what Rose had wished to hear, but then, none of today had been particularly uplifting. At least, she thought viciously as she pulled on her coat and bundled her two threadbare scarves around her neck, the day cannot get any worse.
“Goodbye,” she said coldly as she turned to leave. Then she paused as a thought struck her, and she walked slowly up to the young woman.
Annabelle leaned back, but she was prevented from escaping by the wall behind her.
Rose grinned as she reached her. “And you. You haven’t noticed, have you?”
Bless the child. She at least attempted to put up a fight. “‘N-Noticed’?”
“Yes,” Rose said sweetly. “You think this is your lucky chance, your moment to shine, your opportunity to become a celebrated actress, don’t you? Society pages and all that.”
The girl jutted out her chin. “Yes. Yes, I—”
“Then why hasn’t Ted,” whispered Rose darkly, knowing she shouldn’t be enjoying this, “cast you as Helena or Hermia? The leads, Annabelle. Why has he given you, as he calls it, ‘the older woman’s role’?”
And there it was; the fear in her eyes. It flashed in Annabelle’s pupils, full of panic, as her gaze flickered from Rose to Ted in growing concern.
Rose smiled, though the expected gratification did not feel nearly so sweet. In fact, it was replaced by guilt as she stepped away from the young woman before she swept out of the dressing room.
She had presumed she would feel…better, somehow. But the barbed words—true though they were—only made her feel even more empty.
The freezing-cold air was her only welcome as Rose stepped out of the Grand Theatre. It was a brutal reminder that she had little coin for firewood for her lodgings—and no hope of food.
What on earth was she going to do?
Panic, and fear, and terror, and anger… They all swirled in her stomach, causing a cacophony of thoughts to overwhelm her and all Rose could think to do was get to the beach as soon as possible and stare out at the waves and the emptiness of it all and remember that she was alone.
Alone, and she would have to think of something.
Not permitting any further thoughts, not even looking where she was going, Rose stepped out in a rush and crossed the road, busy with carriages, and hastened down the pavement before turning a corner and—
A mountain stood in her way, the sudden collision crashing her to the ground. The hard, slightly damp, absolutely freezing ground.
Rose attempted to prevent herself from being unwittingly garroted by her own scarf and glared up at the mountain. “How dare you attack me, you brigand!”
The mountain blinked down at her. “That’s a rather salty tongue you’ve got on you.”