Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Graham’s study in the house in Half Moon Street was a square, modern room, with painted woodwork, papered walls, and upholstered furniture, everything light and bright and as unlike Castle Dunstane as it was possible for a room to be. Two large windows faced the street, framed by blue silk curtains edged with gold fringe. Shepherdesses frolicked across the toile-covered walls.
If he hadn’t been so absorbed in his reading, their vacant smiles—at the sheep, at the occasional bumpkin leaning against a stile, at one another—would have set his teeth on edge.
“Have you seen this?” he demanded, slapping the back of his hand against the page open before him.
At the noise, Simon Keynes started, sending the tip of his pen juddering across the letterbook in which he had been recording Graham’s correspondence. He was seated at a delicate Chippendale table beneath the nearer of the two windows, and when he turned toward Graham, the light behind him made his scalp gleam through the wisps of gray-brown hair that still clung to his crown. “I beg your pardon, my lord. To what do you refer?”
“Miss on Scene’s new review.” He gestured with the latest issue of the Magazine for Misses.
That very morning, the housekeeper, Mrs. Beatty, had overheard a gaggle of housemaids chattering over something other than their work, swatted each of them with the rolled-up periodical when it had been produced, and then been on her way to dispose of the trash in the nearest fire when Graham had happened upon her and relieved her of the duty.
“In Mrs. Goode’s Guide to Misconduct?” Keynes pushed his spectacles a fraction of an inch higher on his nose; if Graham hadn’t known better, he would have suspected his secretary of attempting to hide a smirk. “No, my lord. I haven’t had the pleasure.”
Graham wasn’t exactly sure that reading the review had been pleasurable—or rather, he was quite sure it wouldn’t have been, if he were not the kind of man who took occasional delight in others’ misfortunes.
For the first time in his life, he had been glad not to be Shakespeare.
Rising, he stepped across to Keynes and laid the open magazine atop the letterbook, jabbing at the page with his forefinger. “Find out who wrote this.”
Keynes glanced upward and askance, sighed as he laid aside his pen, but did not offer any other protest. As unpleasant tasks went, Graham had demanded worse. “Any leads as to the reviewer’s identity, my lord?”
“Judging from both the harshness of the review and the timing of its publication, it would have to be someone who was in the audience for opening night.”
One of, oh, three thousand or so people, then.
Mentally, Graham scanned the crowds, wondering which of those who had been present wielded such a sharp pen. A grande dame, perhaps, someone with a lifetime’s practice in issuing cuts both direct and indirect. Or more likely, a man, despite the alias. Periodical work wasn’t terribly lucrative, but if a writer cobbled together enough bits and pieces, he might keep his creditors at bay, eking out a sort of living in some frigid garret, with the manuscript of his magnum opus stuffed beneath his lumpy bed. Few writers in such a position would turn down an opportunity to write for a popular magazine.
“Personally, I’ve come to doubt whether it’s written by a young lady,” Graham added, “regardless of the magazine’s claims to be written by, as well as for, misses.”
“You don’t think a young woman would produce such a scathing review?”
“Heaven knows they’ve opinions enough,” Graham admitted, “and saucy tongues eager to share them. But they lack the necessary . . . experience, I suppose, is the kindest way of putting it.” Not that he generally concerned himself overmuch with kindness. “They have too little knowledge of the world.” Sheltered and shielded, kept from education, they could hardly be expected to judge well. “Now, if I had sisters—”
Keynes, who had been attempting to read the review as instructed, darted another glance in his direction, this one pointedly delivered over the top rim of his spectacles.
Graham knew that look, knew it was meant to conjure a memory. And it did, though perhaps not the memory Keynes intended. Graham thought of the enormous family portrait in oils that hung over the fireplace in the drawing room at Castle Dunstane and then turned his head, wishing he could avert his mind’s eye as easily. But the subjects followed him. A husband and wife, stiff, unsmiling, posed with four of their children: the eldest, a boy of eight or nine; a babe in arms; and between their ages, standing beside their mother’s chair, two little girls. He had no recollection of those towheaded girls, save the painting. They had died that very winter, snatched away by a ruthless fever that had, for reasons unknown, spared their baby brother—spared him.
“Very well,” he snapped at Keynes, who had returned his attention to the review. “I had sisters.”
And if they had lived, and if he would have had some say in the management of their education, he chose to believe they would have been rational creatures, not like the silly things who read . . .
At that moment, Keynes closed the magazine. The cover’s claim that the pages within would promote rational conduct and improve wisdom among young persons of the fair sex presented themselves to Graham’s eyes. Before he could snarl over the unfortunate convergence of his thoughts and those of Mrs. Goode, whoever she might be, Keynes held the magazine out to him and said, “I presume Ransom Blackadder will have something to say in response?”
Graham shifted his gaze to the gray London scene outside the window. Why hadn’t he thought of that himself? He’d written a whole play to squelch presumptuous reviewers—and what could be more presumptuous than this?
“Though it would seem from the latest invoices to cross my desk that The Poison Pen is already in rehearsal,” Keynes continued, laying aside the magazine when Graham made no move to take it from him.
“Well, it’s hardly unheard of for a playwright to make an eleventh-hour revision to a script,” Graham answered gruffly, though at the moment, he wasn’t sure what form that revision ought to take. “But the review—did anything strike you as peculiar? A turn of phrase, for example. Something you could use to figure out who writes the blasted column?”
“To be quite honest, my lord . . .” Here Keynes paused to dip his pen and resumed his recording of the day’s correspondence in the letterbook. “I thought it sounded not unlike something you would say.”
Graham had seen the performance of Othello twice through in its entirety since opening night and found it improved each time from what it had been at first. Nevertheless, like Miss on Scene, he still judged Mrs. Siddons ill-cast in the role of Desdemona, far better suited to the power and determination of a Lady Macbeth or a Queen Catherine—or even the philosophizing indecision of Hamlet, a part she had performed many times, though always away from London.
Miss on Scene’s idea of an angry Desdemona struck him as too simple, however. Too primitive. But he agreed that the production as a whole had lacked some spark. Each subsequent viewing, he had felt the absence of something, something missing from the performances or the costumes. Something missing . . .
“Do you still happen to have Mrs. Hayes’s note to hand, Keynes?” he asked, peering over the man’s shoulder at his work.
“Mrs. Hayes? Mrs. Hayes . . .” Once more, Keynes laid aside his quill. He ran a finger swiftly down a column of names, then turned back a page, to those letters received earlier in the week, and began again at the top. “Ah. Here we are.” He paused, and his fingertip tracked across a single entry. “Oh, yes. The unfortunate mix-up with your box at Covent Garden.” With his other hand, he tugged off his spectacles and looked at Graham. “I’m afraid not, my lord. It did not seem to be a matter of great importance, so once I recorded its receipt, I disposed of it.”
Julia had written that note. Graham had been sure of it—and not just because the handwriting had obviously not belonged to an elderly woman. If Keynes had not been looming over his desk as he’d perused it, he might have given in to the temptation to trace the elegant swoop of the in the salutation. Curved and pretty, yet bold—just like Miss Addison.
But it had been something more than pen and ink that had revealed its author to him. Something about the style, the—the turn of phrase, just as he’d said earlier about the anonymous reviewer.
Of course, Mrs. Hayes might well have dictated the thing, word for word. In which case, he was still at liberty to imagine the spark in Miss Addison’s eye as she was made to express sentiments she would rather not, to express regret and humble thanks—to him. The irritation she must hide behind her mask of good cheer.
It’s very little different from a night at the theater.
The memory of her words gave him an idea . . .
At Graham’s expression, a trace of apprehension slipped across Keynes’s features, as if he sensed he’d made a mistake in tossing out the letter. Graham flicked his hand to wave it away.
“No matter. You still have her direction?”
Keynes squinted at the information underlined by his ink-stained nail. “She lives in Clapham, my lord.”
Clapham?Good God. Poor Miss Addison. No wonder she had not wanted to miss a night out.
Graham reached across the table, picked up the discarded magazine, and tucked it under his arm. “Write and tell her that upon further consideration, I—no, no. That sounds too much like a letter of business. Just say—you’ll know best how to do it—that she is welcome to my box whenever I’m not using it. Aye, that’s right,” he said in answer to the unsubtle lift of Keynes’s brows. But it wasn’t mere generosity on Graham’s part—or, really, generosity at all. An empty box, night after night, was an affront to the men and women on the stage. “And to hell with Mr. Pope.”
If anything, Keynes’s eyebrows rose a notch higher. “The, uh . . . the poet, sir?”
“What? No. The box manager at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden. You needn’t involve him.”
A sharp nod, though not quite a nod of understanding. “Of course, my lord. And will you—?”
“No time, Keynes. I want to catch today’s rehearsal of The Poison Pen.” Graham spoke over the other man as he moved toward the door. “I must fig—er, find out what Blackadder means to do about this.” He shook the Magazine for Misses in the air. “Once you’ve sent off that letter, set your mind to uncovering the identity of this reviewer, Keynes. I need to know before opening night, because I intend to issue ‘Miss on Scene’ a personal invitation to the show.”
* * *
With a benevolent smile, Mrs. Hayes poured Julia a second cup of chocolate; that smile turned almost guilty as she filled her own cup for a third time, then added a dollop of cream.
Julia would have preferred tea. Her throat was parched with reading aloud the French romance Daniel had procured for them, a wonderfully ridiculous tale set in a distant castle, where Veronique, obligatory damsel in distress, awaited rescue by her knight, who was taking his own sweet time about the business.
Practicing her French was the only remotely edifying aspect of the experience, and as far as Julia was concerned, that was just as it should be. She preferred novels to more serious fare and often enjoyed the farce far more than the play that preceded it.
As she laid aside the book and reached for her chocolate, Daniel entered, bearing a letter on a salver.
“Bit early for the post, isn’t it?” Mrs. Hayes asked as he approached.
He offered the letter first to Mrs. Hayes, as was proper, and when she fluttered her fingers to wave him away, he turned to Julia. “Came by messenger, this did.”
At that, Mrs. Hayes sat up a bit straighter and returned her cup to its saucer. “Oh? Well, go on, then. See what it says.”
As she fished the letter from the tray, Julia nodded at Daniel to indicate that he could go. A lad of fourteen or so, handsome but not yet tall enough to live out his ambition of becoming a liveried and powdered footman, he backed his way out of the room—but lingered just beyond the doorway to listen. She suspected he would do quite well in one of the grand houses in Mayfair, when the time came.
She slipped a fingernail beneath the seal, absently noting the Latin motto surrounding a rather scraggly-looking flower. No, not a flower, she realized belatedly as she unfolded the note. A thistle.
“It’s from Lord Dunstane,” she said to Mrs. Hayes.
He hadn’t written it himself. Highly unlikely that such a man would have copperplate handwriting flawless enough to do a law clerk credit. Nevertheless, it must express his wishes. It was signed with his name and sealed with his seal. She ran the pad of her first finger over its imprint in the circle of scarlet wax.
“He’s offering the use of his box. On the nights he’s not there, of course.”
That strange, hollow sort of feeling in her chest at the news they would not only have the box, but also have it all to themselves, must be elation.
Yes. Yes, of course, she was thrilled to think that she and Mrs. Hayes would be viewing every performance from a private box at stage left, just as planned. How marvelous to be able to invite their friends, to enjoy even the farces without a grumpy Scotsman leaning over her shoulder, puncturing her happiness with his little grunts of disapproval.
Only a ninny like Veronique would be disappointed at the thought of being spared the company of the villain of the piece.
“Oh, excellent,” declared Mrs. Hayes, clapping her plump hands, the sound muffled slightly by her crocheted lace mitts. “Didn’t I tell you? Does he say when we may take advantage of his generosity?”
Generosity?A scoffing noise nearly escaped Julia’s dry throat. Was it not a gentleman’s duty to right the wrong perpetrated against a poor, old widow and her innocent companion?
Oh, dear. That sounded like a line from the last chapter she’d read. She glanced toward the thick volume lying beside her on the damasked sofa. Perhaps Lord Dunstane had been right. Perhaps she ought sometimes to read better books.
“He doesn’t,” she explained to Mrs. Hayes. “At least, not directly. We’ll need his ticket, of course.” Mrs. Hayes’s ticket to the box, being an unauthorized duplication, was little better than counterfeit. “There’s a bit here about dealing with Mr. Pope, or rather . . .” She squinted at the sentence again; it was written rather awkwardly, despite the flowing handwriting. “Anyway, I suppose the box office knows when it is to be free.”
“I’d rather not have to speak with Mr. Pope,” Mrs. Hayes said, a sour expression wrinkling her lips. “Particularly not after that letter I sent.”
Generally, she left the details of her less personal correspondence to Julia, concerned only with the substance of the matter at hand. But on the occasion of dressing down the box manager, she had chosen every harsh word herself.
“I’ll take care of it, ma’am. Why, if I go now,” Julia offered, rising, “we might be able to attend the theater tonight.”
A visit to the playhouse would be the perfect opportunity to plan out the subject of her next column. It would also provide welcome cover for her absence when she slipped out to the magazine meeting at half past two. She would simply tell Mrs. Hayes she had been delayed.
With Mrs. Hayes’s permission secured, she donned her pelisse and bonnet and set out for Covent Garden. Daniel called her a hackney. As far as Mrs. Hayes knew, he accompanied her on every outing, an acknowledgment of her status as the younger sister of a viscount. But in general, Julia preferred to give him an hour’s freedom, his silence purchased with a portion of her wages from the magazine. She considered it proper preparation for his future career, when the young ladies of whatever grand house at which he was eventually employed begged him to look the other way when they got up to mischief.
“I’m only a lady’s companion,” she reminded Daniel when he looked askance at the destination she gave the cabbie. Little more than a servant in the world’s eyes, in other words, and perfectly capable of moving about independently.
A damp morning had given way to a marvelous October midday, sunny and crisp. The leaves on the trees were mostly still green, though here and there a hint of gold could be seen. She felt fortunate that Mrs. Hayes insisted on staying in Clapham, where, despite its sleepy appearance, radicals and freethinkers congregated. Together they attended the most interesting lectures and heard the most stirring sermons. Julia had heard it said this was the only part of Town where one could speak the phrase Rights of Woman without being mocked. Occasionally, she wondered whether Mrs. Hayes would even disapprove of her involvement with the Magazine for Misses if it were discovered.
As the cab rattled over the bridge, she glanced out the window with what most certainly was not a wistful sigh. She had an extraordinary degree of freedom for a well-bred young lady of almost twenty. She had work she enjoyed and the friendship of intelligent women.
And very soon, she would have tickets to the theater, to be enjoyed without ever again having to cross paths with Lord Dunstane.
Really, what more could she want?