Chapter 8
Chapter 8
For the second day in a row, Julia woke to bright, clear skies and muddled, turbulent thoughts. The interest Lord Dunstane had shown at the theater played right into her plan to use him to learn more about the mysterious Ransom Blackadder.
But what had inspired his strange, sudden desire to learn more about her?
Whatever Lord Dunstane intended by such attention was unlikely to be either serious or proper. His granite-faced expression and proud posture as he’d surveyed his box the night before last had conveyed his disdain for those assembled there more clearly than words. He’d accepted Lady Clearwater’s invitation with obvious reluctance, as if the baronet’s family was unworthy of his company.
Julia knew better than to be flattered by the notice of a taciturn, mercurial man who considered himself above her touch—even after Mrs. Hayes’s nattering had revealed that Julia’s family connections were not so lowly after all. Julia had overheard her brother’s title dropped more than once. He must realize, she was hardly friendless.
But given the present inequality of their stations, would Lord Dunstane scruple to share stories about her with Blackadder? If she were not careful, would she find herself in yet another of his awful plays, this time as a caricature of a na?ve country clergyman’s daughter and lady’s companion?
She had no desire to be the target of the playwright’s satire twice over, once as Miss on Scene and once as Miss No Sense at All.
Still, the fact remained. Something about her intrigued Lord Dunstane. And the staff of the Magazine for Misses was counting on her to make use of his interest, even if she would rather not.
Throwing back the coverlet, she swung her legs out of bed and inserted her feet into her waiting slippers. The day promised to be fair, but the morning air was cool—a blessing, really, when her blood was prone to boil every time a certain Scotsman intruded into her thoughts.
Before she could determine how best to behave toward him tonight—for, of course, Mrs. Hayes had accepted Lady Clearwater’s grudging invitation, though the intimate gathering of friends had surely been invented on the spot to attach Lord Dunstane—she must devise some excuse for another afternoon jaunt. Lady Stalbridge had sent word that her stepson, Lord Manwaring, wished to speak with her in person about the rumors he had heard concerning Blackadder’s play. They would meet her at one o’clock on Clapham Common.
As Julia dressed and arranged her hair, she racked her brain for a solution. If Lady Stalbridge and Mrs. Hayes had been acquainted, it would have been an easy enough matter. But Lady Stalbridge had spent half her life the near prisoner of her late husband, Lord Manwaring’s father, and had remarried and returned to society only recently. She and Mrs. Hayes did not move in the same circles.
And a mention of Lord Manwaring’s invitation to take her out for a stroll would not increase the likelihood that Mrs. Hayes would grant her her freedom for the afternoon. The young viscount was, to use the phrase she heard most often bandied about, outré in both appearance and manner. Everyone who was anyone disapproved of his refusal to settle to anything serious. He dressed flamboyantly and wore his hair in unfashionably long curls. Some said he spent all his time with low women. Others whispered that all the ballet dancers and opera singers were mere decoys, to disguise the fact that he preferred the company of men.
Whatever other secrets he kept, the ton would be most scandalized to know that the viscount wielded the pen behind the famous domestic doyenne, Mrs. Goode.
Even if Mrs. Hayes were inclined to try to marry off her companion—and thus far, she had shown no such inclination—she was not likely to throw Julia in the path of Lord Manwaring.
So, Julia would just have to concoct her own excuse. Not another trip to the theater, or the bookshop. She had visited both too recently. Daniel retrieved the post. A pity Mrs. Hayes didn’t have a large dog that required regular walking. Or a pet parakeet that could conveniently “escape” every now and then.
Perhaps the apothecary? Mrs. Hayes did indulge in various remedies for her rheumatism, and Julia might be able to persuade her that the contents of one of those precious jewel-toned vials had dwindled dangerously low.
With a sigh, she rose from her dressing table, hoping that some better plan might occur to her over the course of the morning.
The next few hours were taken up, as usual, with correspondence and whatever gossip could be gleaned from the newspapers. Neither task required her full attention, which ought to have given her ample opportunity to devise a better excuse for meeting Lord Manwaring and Lady Stalbridge.
But this morning, the tasks were also insufficient to occupy Mrs. Hayes. Julia had all she could do to steer the conversation away from Lord Dunstane, where lately her own thoughts had also been all too inclined to wander.
“When he appeared in his box last night, you could have knocked me over with a feather,” Mrs. Hayes said, tossing aside a letter. He required no further identification.
“Indeed, ma’am, it was a surprise to see his lordship there.” Especially when he knew the box had already been taken.
Lord Dunstane had ascribed his presence to curiosity.
The question was, curiosity about what?
“And so attentive, too. He seemed content to hang on my every word. One hears him called standoffish, but I saw nothing of it.”
Julia recalled his scowl, his ramrod-straight spine.
Perhaps Mrs. Hayes was not as perceptive as Julia sometimes gave her credit for being.
At long last, shortly past midday, Mrs. Hayes called for her usual light luncheon to be served and asked Julia to fetch the blue bottle of tonic.
Julia knew she must seize the opportunity she had been given. Reaching across the table to tipple a drop or two into Mrs. Hayes’s goblet, she allowed the glass vial to slip from her hand and spill its remaining contents onto the cloth.
The apothecary around the corner would whip up another draught for his best customer on a moment’s notice. So when Julia returned home from her walk on the green, she still might have to devise some explanation for a longer-than-expected absence. Perhaps, if she were lucky, he would be called away to visit a patient. Or he would have to procure some ingredient from another shop. In any case, she could tell Mrs. Hayes as much.
It was far from a brilliant excuse, but it would have to do.
“Oh, dear,” she exclaimed, hurrying to soak up the puddle of liquid with her napkin so that nothing of it might be saved. “Look what I’ve done. I’ll go right after luncheon and have Mr. Watkins put up a new bottle of the same for you.”
Mrs. Hayes looked remarkably unperturbed and continued spreading butter on her bread. “ ’Tisn’t necessary, my dear. I’m not convinced that bottle has done my rheumatism a bit of good.”
This was an unforeseen complication. “Nonsense, ma’am,” Julia quickly countered. “Don’t you feel that our afternoons have been more pleasantly spent of late?”
“Oh, yes, dear. But it’s all down to that new book, I think. You have just the right voice for it.”
“You are too kind, ma’am. I date the matter somewhat differently. I noticed an improvement well before the book—from the time, in fact, that Mr. Watkins sent round the blue bottle for you to try.” Julia’s cheeks heated at the lie.
Mrs. Hayes tipped her head. On anyone else, Julia would have described her expression as skeptical. But Mrs. Hayes was such a trusting soul, she believed every fib Julia told. After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded. “Very well. I wouldn’t want to interfere with your preparations for Lady Clearwater’s party, though. I’ll send Daniel for the medicine.”
Julia fumbled as she tried to recork the now-empty bottle. “Oh, no. It’s no trouble, ma’am. I, um—if you send Daniel, he’ll surely tell his mother why. Before you know it, all the servants will be wondering about the state of your health and, uh, fretting about the security of their positions.”
It was a tale crafted to appeal to Mrs. Hayes’s particular worries, and Julia felt more than usually guilty about deceiving the poor woman, who had been so good to her, albeit often unwittingly. Occasionally, Julia wondered whether it wouldn’t be better just to tell her the truth—about her solitary adventures through London, about her work for the magazine, even about her longing not merely to review plays, but to perform onstage in them. To act.
But confessing any one of those secret desires might be scandalous enough to cost her her place as Mrs. Hayes’s companion and force her to return to country life, forever under her mother or brother’s watchful eye.
So she palmed the blue bottle and curtsied. “I shan’t be gone long, ma’am.”
Only as long as it took for Lord Manwaring to reveal what he’d learned and for the three of them to devise some plan to protect Miss on Scene and the magazine.
Clapham Common was a wedge of wilderness, surrounded on its three sides by the homes of wealthy City merchants and the Holy Trinity Church. Though it lacked the posh appeal of Hyde Park, it was often busy; on this day, when sunshine beckoned and Londoners recalled the impending approach of gloomier days, it fairly bustled. Nurses gathered in clusters to gossip while their charges ran free, chasing after balls and butterflies. Old men strolled in pairs, reliving their glory days. Near the church, a pair of modestly dressed women and a man in a battered beaver skin hat were handing out leaflets about some cause or other.
Julia ducked into the apothecary’s shop, confessed that she had spilled Mrs. Hayes’s tonic, and requested a replacement.
“Of course,” said Mr. Watkins, as she sheepishly handed over the empty vial. “Won’t take a moment. It’s helping with the swelling, then?” he called over his shoulder as he retreated among his jars and bottles.
“As much as anything can, sir,” she replied. “But you needn’t hurry. I have another errand to run. I’ll stop in for it on my way back.”
Mr. Watkins waved her off, and Julia escaped into the sunshine, her eyes searching the edges of the green for Lady Stalbridge and her stepson. At last, she spotted them, not by the sight of one of Lord Manwaring’s eye-popping waistcoats, as she had half expected, but because of the distinctive china-blue pelisse the countess often wore.
With hurried steps on Julia’s part, and a more sedate tread on the part of Lady Stalbridge, the three of them met where two footpaths crossed near the center of the green. Lady Stalbridge inclined her head toward a nearby bench, beneath a spreading oak. “I will chaperone from there,” she said with a wry sort of smile.
Lord Manwaring’s answering grin was charmingly lopsided, though bracketed by surprisingly deep grooves. Fatigue had left dark smudges beneath his eyes. Evidence that he had recently passed one of his notoriously wild nights, Julia supposed. She took his offered arm with the slightest tremor of trepidation.
He seemed to guess the direction of her thoughts. “I won’t bite, child.”
Though his linen was remarkable, a degree of brightness and crispness achieved only by the valets of dandies, he was otherwise ordinarily dressed for a gentleman. His waistcoat was a perfectly respectable buff, a shade or two lighter than his breeches, which disappeared into riding boots that were just worn enough to convince her they had actually been used for their appointed purpose. His duster concealed nothing more ostentatious than the jeweled handle of his quizzing glass. Perhaps he was not quite as wild as he was rumored to be.
Julia was on the point of retorting that she was hardly a child, at most only a few years younger than he, when he snapped his white, even teeth together in another, more lupine smile. “Unless asked.”
The flare of her eyes must have been visible to Lady Stalbridge, now sitting several feet away. “Oliver,” the countess reprimanded him, her voice at once stern and amused. “Behave.”
“Very well, Mamabet,” he promised with an exaggerated sigh. “But if Miss Addison can’t bear to be teased, I don’t think she’s ready to hear the sort of naughtiness Ransom Blackadder’s got up to.”
Julia tightened her grip on his forearm. “My lord, please. I must know.”
The viscount’s expression sobered, leaving behind just those traces of weariness and giving her the sudden impression that they might not be the result of debauchery after all. He looked . . . worried. “I’m afraid it’s not good news, my dear. For any of us.”
She had been thinking, first and foremost of her own position, and then of the fate of the magazine. She had not considered that even “Mrs. Goode” might be a target of the playwright’s rancor, or the audience’s rank curiosity.
All of them had something to fear from exposure.
“Mr. Blackadder’s play, you mean?”
“Your review must have struck a nerve, Miss Addison. In the play currently under rehearsal, the character of Perpetua Philpot is certainly no flattering portrait of reviewers. A hack, without taste or scruple, a murderous shrew.”
“Murderous?” she echoed. “You don’t—you don’t mean to say that she kills people? With . . . with . . .” Laughter bubbled in her chest, in spite of the seriousness of the situation. “She kills people with bad reviews?”
Lord Manwaring looked down at her with frank appreciation in his dark eyes and chuckled too, albeit wryly. “Only one person, actually.”
“Let me guess. A scandalous playwright?”
“Oh, no. A poet. A delicate sort, according to my friend. Probably consumptive. Hence his susceptibility to Miss Philpot’s poison pen. Everyone agreed he wrote awful, treacly stuff . . . no great loss to the world of literature.”
A scuffed red leather ball rolled across the path in front of her. Julia’s steps stumbled to a stop just in time to avoid the two lads in short pants chasing after it. “Lady Stalbridge feared the play would draw notice to my column,” she said, once more struggling to make sense of the matter, “and thus to the magazine. But with what you’ve described, I don’t see how. I’m quite sure my reviews never killed anyone.”
Lord Manwaring chuckled, but the humor did not reach his eyes. “The murder, so-called, takes place early on. The trouble begins at the start of Act Two, when the poet’s brother turns up, determined to discover the identity of the reviewer who blasts hopes and destroys promising careers. The brother is the clever one in the family. Though no one suspects him of penning verse, he dashes off a brilliant but shocking volume in no time, which, of course, attracts the notice of the periodicals and in particular a popular magazine for young ladies.”
“Ah,” Julia sighed as understanding dawned. “I suppose his initials are R.B.?”
Lord Manwaring nodded. “And he gets all the best lines, according to my informant. But Blackadder isn’t satisfied with scandalizing audiences in his usual mode, or even in persuading them to doubt the authority of reviewers. His character is determined to lure Miss Philpot to her doom—and I suspect he hopes to do the same with you.”
“How?”
“My friend couldn’t say. He plays a fellow in the sickly poet’s circle, and having no lines in Act Three, he hasn’t even seen the script for it. But he did say Lord Dunstane was in attendance at rehearsals the other day and hinted that Blackadder intends to make some changes.”
That’s why she had seen him at the theater. Moments before their encounter, and only a few yards away, actors had been spouting the mocking lines that would expose her to audiences’ censure and might spell the end of her work at the magazine—or the end of the magazine itself.
“Is it true, Miss Addison,” the viscount asked as he steered them back toward his stepmother, “that you’ve struck up a friendship with the Scottish earl?” His voice dropped to a mocking whisper with those words, an allusion to the way superstitious actors called Macbeth “the Scottish play” to avoid the witches’ curse. “I’ve never met the man, but I’ve heard he’s most unpleasant.”
“He can be,” she readily agreed. “And I certainly would not describe our brief acquaintance as a friendship. Mrs. Hayes’s reserved box at Covent Garden for this Season was, in fact, Lord Dunstane’s box—the box manager resold the ticket, unbeknownst to either party, and his lordship was seriously displeased to find us polluting his sanctuary. But after a bit of grousing and harumphing, he offered her the use of it on the nights when he would be seeking his entertainment elsewhere. So he is capable of something like generosity.”
Though generosity hardly explained his curious behavior of the other night.
“Then no matter how unpleasant the company, you must seize upon that glimmer of finer feeling, Miss Addison.” The earnestness with which Lord Manwaring spoke ran counter to his usually carefree air. “In the theatrical world at least, Dunstane alone has Blackadder’s ear and might persuade the man to redirect his ire.”
Lord Dunstane’s goodwill and influence over Ransom Blackadder seemed to her rather narrow odds on which to pin all their hopes. She wanted to protest even the possibility of success.
But even she, who never gambled, knew enough to realize that one could only play the hand one had been dealt.
She released Lord Manwaring’s arm and curtsied. “I will do my best, my lord. But now, I must go. Any longer, and Mrs. Hayes will wonder what has become of me.”
Lord Manwaring dipped his head, half nod of understanding, half gesture of parting. “I wish you luck, Miss Addison.” Any possibility that she had misread her chances flew when he added, “I fear you’ll need it.”
With a shallow curtsy in Lady Stalbridge’s direction, Julia turned and hurried back toward the apothecary’s shop. Whether Lord Dunstane’s questions for Mrs. Hayes had indicated genuine interest or idle prying, she must find a way to sway him to her cause—without revealing it was hers. And the party at Lady Clearwater’s would be her next best opportunity to attach him.
Before, she had dreaded the evening ahead. Now, a mixture of apprehension and anticipation fluttered in her chest. Though far from the theater, tonight would be her acting debut. She would pretend to be charmed by everything he said. She would convince him to invite her to a rehearsal of The Poison Pen so she could see for herself how to redirect the playwright’s wicked wit and rewrite both Miss Philpot’s future and her own.
Perhaps, if she played her part very well, she might even elicit one of Lord Dunstane’s elusive smiles.