Chapter 5
Chapter 5
Once a play took the stage before an audience, there was very little left for a playwright to do but wait for reviews. What was done, was done. Now, during rehearsals, was the moment to make adjustments, to improve things.
Graham’s aversion to London meant he didn’t often take such an opportunity, however. And even from his current position in the pit, a few rows back from the stage, he couldn’t quite see how to pull it off.
For one thing, he was reminded—as he had been reminded twice during Othello’s run—that sitting alone, while congenial to his mood, was not the ideal vantage point from which to view a performance. With no hint from another person’s expression, no sound of someone’s murmuring or laughter or even breath, he was having a great deal of trouble imagining how theatergoers would react to his reviewer character’s first victim—a poet, because a playwright had seemed . . . too scornful, somehow. Or at least, too on the nose.
He was not a sympathetic character, particularly given George Fanshawe’s rather limp depiction of him. Then again, people did not go into a Ransom Blackadder play expecting anyone in it to be genuinely likeable.
But it went against Graham’s purpose for writing the damn thing if everyone wished a bad review really might be capable of killing a man.
When Fanshawe called a stop to the day’s rehearsal, an audible sigh eased from Graham’s lungs. Not that anyone was nearby enough to hear it.
“I hope you’ll give Mr. Blackadder a good report, my lord,” said the actor as he swung down from the stage and hustled toward Graham, who had explained his presence by claiming to observe on the playwright’s behalf.
The tattered state of Fanshawe’s script put Graham in mind of the first issue of the Magazine for Misses he had seen. In the wake of that memory came the recollection of his reaction to the reviewer’s audacious pity. And then his subsequent concern that if more people began to see through his gambit, Ransom Blackadder’s popularity would fade.
The profits from his first play, modest though they had been, had saved Castle Dunstane from toppling over a precipice, quite literally. The second and third had allowed Graham to claw his way out of most of the debts his elder brother had left behind. And the fourth, had it arrived a few weeks earlier, would have—
He shook all of it away with a visible shudder that the other man clearly misinterpreted. Graham didn’t correct the misunderstanding. He wanted this play to do well, to draw crowds, even if they came—as the majority always had—to jeer.
He did not intend to let Miss on Scene have the last word.
“I’ll give Blackadder an honest report, Mr. Fanshawe,” Graham told him, his tone cool. “And you can expect he will be equally forthright in his reply. He’ll want to see some changes, I have no doubt. And if my support of your work here is to continue—” He raised his voice enough that all the actors still milling about the stage could hear, though he needn’t have bothered. The mention of money always made people’s ears perk up. “You’ll want to do as he says.”
Fanshawe blanched. “Of course, my lord. Tell him—if you please—tell him it’s early days yet, sir. We’re all just getting a feel for the thing. No need to fret.”
Graham arched one brow. Fret?
At his expression, Fanshawe began to babble more excuses, new regrets, the incoherent sounds of which followed Graham as he turned on one heel and strode out of the theater via a less-public door nearer the stage.
Absorbed in his thoughts, he paid little attention to the handful of people who crossed his path: scene painters and carpenters daubed and dusty with the marks of their trades; actors half out of costume; a wiry lad sent to fetch a pot of coffee or, more likely, a bottle of gin. The comingled odors of greasepaint and sweat hung heavy on the stale air.
Behind the scenes, and especially at midday, Covent Garden was a different world entirely, stripped of illusion, devoid of magic. Nothing fit to be consumed by most patrons of the theater, to be sure. The stomach that craved a well-prepared roast or even a simple chop would inevitably be turned by a visit to the knacker’s yard.
For Graham, the pockmarks and perils of the theater had always been inseparable from its pleasures. He had made his first trip backstage at the ripe old age of eleven, despite his elder brother, Iain, having forbidden him to tag along. He had peered through the narrow crack of a door left ajar, the door through which his brother had disappeared, bouquet in hand. He had goggled as the lead actress—too old for Iain and positively ancient in Graham’s eyes, which was to say perhaps thirty—had tossed aside the flowers with a wicked laugh, pushed the fresh-faced Earl of Dunstane into a chair with just the tips of her fingers pressed against his chest, and then hiked up her skirts to straddle—
Graham had looked away, then. Or else had scrubbed his mind of the memory. But he knew perfectly well what had transpired between his brother and the actress. If he had been innocent before the curtain had risen on Tartuffe, he was innocent no longer.
Whether he loved the world of the theater or hated it had long since ceased to be a relevant question. He was transfixed by it, from that day forward, first pinned on the edge of his seat in the balcony as the action unfolded below, and later trapped in that dingy corridor, where he’d waited . . . well, it had seemed at the time like hours. But knowing now what he did about the prowess of green lads when presented with a willing woman, it had probably been all of five minutes. Long enough, in any case.
Long enough for the theater to get in his blood.
Like blood poisoning from a dirty knife.
He’d earned prizes for his recitations in school when he’d otherwise been too shy to speak. Penned impassioned monologues he’d never shown to another soul. Dabbled with acting at university . . . and dabbled with the occasional actress too.
So, when Iain had died—young by any measure; too soon, according to some—and Graham had become the earl and been forced to confront the state of things, was it any wonder he had turned once more to the theater to find a solution, a way out?
“The play’s the thing,” and all that.
“I beg your pardon?”
He’d been unaware of having passed from the underworld into the open, out of the warren of corridors backstage into the large, elegant vestibule, where theatergoers congregated before a play. And he had been unaware of speaking his thoughts aloud . . . until the young woman spoke to him, though without looking in his direction.
“Miss Addison?”
Julia jerked up her head, and whatever she had been studying so intently fluttered from her fingers to the floor. Until the sound of his voice had intruded, she must have been equally oblivious to her surroundings. Another step or two and they might have collided.
Her cheeks flushed an appealing shade of rose that greasepaint could never hope to capture. Then again, such delicate color would be lost on anyone more than a few feet away.
He took a step closer and retrieved the paper that had fallen: a leaflet advertising the next run of plays, concluding with The Poison Pen in the last week of November.
As he handed it back to her, he glimpsed a thin circle of ivory, his box ticket, clutched in her hand. He nodded toward her curled fingers. “You had my letter, I take it.”
“I, er—Mrs. Hayes did, yes.” The pink in her cheeks darkened a shade. “Thank you.”
Either rehearsal had run longer than he’d thought, or Mrs. Hayes had dispatched her companion with some haste. Surely no more than a few hours had passed since he had told Keynes to write.
Julia seemed to anticipate his thoughts. “You did not specify for which performances the box would be free, my lord, but I knew The Iron Chest was to be next, and I could not imagine that would be of much interest to a gentleman of your”—a mischievous smile twitched up one corner of her mouth—“discriminating tastes.”
Even Graham could not be displeased by such a sally. In the decade since its debut, The Iron Chest; or, the Mysterious Murder had become a playhouse staple, both in Town and in the provinces. Anyone with a passing familiarity with the theater might have seen the thing a dozen times at least by now. And indeed, Julia had the right of it. He had had no intention of sitting through it again.
Curiously, however, he now found himself wondering whether all the seats in his box had been claimed for the evening. Surely Mrs. Hayes could not have invited guests to join her on such short notice.
Mightn’t there be a seat to spare?
“So, I offered to come straightaway,” Julia continued, “and see if we might have the box for tonight. Imagine my surprise at learning that Mr. Pope has been dismissed!”
Graham ruthlessly ironed his answering smile—a response more to her previous expression, to her teasing words, than to the news about the duplicitous box manager, about whose fate he cared very little, hardly enough to bother expressing pleasure. “Shouldn’t selling others’ places without their permission have cost him his?”
“I—I suppose,” she agreed, though her eyes were round. Then she dipped into a shallow curtsy. “Thank you again, your lordship.” Was it his imagination, or was that a hint of disdain in her voice? “I had best be on my way.”
Once more, he let her walk away from him, taking undisguised enjoyment in the opportunity to observe the lightness of her step, the slight sway of her hips. But when the door was opened not by the accompanying manservant he had expected, but by one of the passel of lads who crowded around doorways and crossings to wheedle a few ha’pennies for performing such services, and he heard Julia ask the boy to call for a hackney, Graham stepped forward, closing the distance between them with long strides.
“Won’t you allow me to deliver you to your destination, Miss Addison?” Before she could reply, he tossed the lad a coin and ordered him to bring ’round his curricle, which Graham had entrusted to a similarly eager lad a couple of hours before.
As the boy trotted off, she lifted her eyes to him. “You needn’t trouble yourself, Lord Dunstane.” Her posture had suddenly stiffened, and her voice had cooled by several degrees. Pride, he supposed. A determined independence.
He found her unexpected prickliness almost as appealing as her warmth.
He made no answer, and a few minutes later, a pair of gleaming chestnuts rounded the corner, drawing an emerald-lacquered curricle, trimmed in gold. He thought of it as Blackadder’s equipage, slick and a trifle showy. He heard Julia suck in a breath.
“It’s no trouble,” he insisted as he held out a hand to help her up, though, in fact, he had been looking forward to the solitary drive and the chance to sort his thoughts about the play.
After a moment, she laid her fist on his palm, her fingers still curled around the ticket, as if it were some precious treasure. As she clambered into the carriage, he dipped his head to hide another smile.
When he swung up beside her, the carriage swayed, forcing another gasp from her lips.
“Are you nervous, Miss Addison?”
“Of course not, my lord.” She spoke primly, though her tone did not convey the confidence she evidently intended. “It’s only that I—well, I’ve never—”
“Ridden in a racing curricle?”
“No, my lord. The daughters of country clergymen are rarely afforded such opportunities.”
Ah. A clergyman’s daughter. That explained much—her clothing, her present position, the forbidden allure of an evening at the theater.
“Well, there’s no getting up to speed on these London streets,” he reassured her as he took up the reins.
Though he suspected it might not be the speed that concerned her, but rather the discovery that the curricle had a seat for two, with nary an inch to spare. She could not help but be aware—as he certainly was—of how their legs pressed against one another at hip and thigh and knee.
Then she tilted her chin just enough that he could see the twinkle in her eyes and said, “What a pity.”
Fallon, the near horse, gave his head a shake, rattling the harness and alerting Graham to the sudden tautness of his grip. He forced himself to relax his hold on the reins. “Perhaps another day, Miss Addison.”
“I know you do not mean that as a sincere offer, Lord Dunstane,” she said. “But I believe I would thoroughly enjoy such an outing.”
As would I.
He nearly spoke the words aloud, though he could hardly comprehend how they had risen to his tongue. He had purchased this curricle for the promise, the momentary pleasure, of outrunning his problems. Alone. He certainly had not purchased it for the prospect of taking young ladies on long country drives.
He didn’t take young ladies anywhere.
“Does Mrs. Hayes know that you go about without a servant to accompany you?”
It wasn’t concern that motivated the question. Not really. Graham made a point of not concerning himself with other people’s affairs, unless he could skewer them in a play. But a country miss, alone in London?
Innocence and enthusiasm were a dangerous combination, as he knew firsthand.
“I am a servant,” she reminded him. “I’m Mrs. Hayes’s companion.”
It wasn’t an answer to his question. “She calls herself your aunt.”
Ah, that pricked Julia’s conscience. He felt her shift on the narrow seat.
“Out of habit, I imagine,” she answered after a moment. “Her previous companion was her niece, who left when she married my brother, which is how I came by the post.”
“You went into service rather than live with your brother?” She likely thought him astonished by her decision, but his feelings were otherwise—something more akin to empathy and, at the very notion of having such a choice, spiked with a dash of envy.
“Jeremy has a taste for country living,” she said, turning to take in the bustle that surrounded them, the unbroken rows of shops and carts with their wares on display, the throngs of people along the pavement, and the tangle of conveyances in the street ahead. “I do not.”
“A clergyman like his father, I suppose.” To that, she made no answer at all. “To Clapham, then?” he asked after a moment, even as he longed, quite unaccountably, to choose another route, a dash to Brighton perhaps, some stretch of open roadway where he could let the horses have their heads.
“You needn’t go so far out of your way,” she said, though he’d given no indication as to where he was headed. “I have business to transact in Bond Street. At Porter’s Bookshop.”
At those last words, she looked away, as if she regretted having revealed so much.
“Again?” he said. “I confess myself astonished that you would require another volume of Hume so soon.”
As he’d hoped, his taunt brought her bright eyes back to his face. Stripes of color flushed across her cheekbones as she laughed, though a trifle self-consciously. “Did you doubt me when I told you that I find history excessively diverting?”
At that moment, an unhitched delivery cart rolled into the roadway, a grizzled man with an eye patch chasing after it. Graham’s horses started and shied, demanding all his attention and preempting his answering laugh.
By the time he had matters under control and the obstruction had been cleared, the moment for a clever retort was long past. Uncertain how to pick up the dropped thread of their conversation—banter, the playwright in him wanted to call it—he opted instead for comfortable silence for the remainder of the journey.
But when the curricle at last rolled to a stop in front of Porter’s, he discovered the sense of comfortableness had been his alone.
Julia hurried down, refusing to await his assistance. “No need, my lord,” she insisted, her feet already on the ground. From the pavement, she looked up at him, her color still high, though now he saw that the bright spots in her cheeks hinted at embarrassment. “I’ve clearly delayed you long enough. I thank you for—” She paused, then laughed again, and this time he heard a certain wryness in it. Perhaps there had been no banter between them after all. “I was about to thank you for your kindness, but I have a notion you would protest if I did.”
“Protest your thanks?”
“No.” Her eyes met his again. They still sparked, but with something other than merriment. “Being thought kind.”
If she meant to tease him again, this time the remark was just barbed enough to sting.
He nodded once and touched the brim of his hat. “Take care, Miss Addison.” The habitual gruffness of his voice transformed those words of leave-taking into a warning.
Not that she required one. She had the right of things already. He wasn’t kind . . . even if he had been on the point of offering to wait while she made her purchase and then drive her home.
She dipped her head in acknowledgment and turned to go into the bookshop, wiggling her fingers in greeting to another young lady headed in the same direction. Her other hand was still clamped around the theater ticket, he noted.
He had forgotten all about Covent Garden.
As she reached the door, Graham shook the reins, unwilling to wait and see whether she glanced over her shoulder at him.
He should be thinking about how to transform George Fanshawe into a more worthy adversary for Perpetua Philpot’s poison pen. How, in other words, to ensure Ransom Blackadder’s triumph.
Julia Addison was no concern of his.
And he would remind himself of that fact as many times as necessary, until it stuck in his brain—or wherever the lesson most needed to be learned.