Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Graham knew he should put a stop to it. Tell Sawyer enough was enough. Block their way to the steps, if necessary.
But the part of him that knew what was right was rapidly losing ground to the part of him that wanted to see what Julia would make of her moment in the limelight. He wondered whether this moment, this chance, had been in her thoughts when she had asked to watch the rehearsal. Determined actresses had always found ways to catch his notice, which sometimes, yes, had involved an offer to, er, trade favors.
Surely that was not the case this time, however. She’d given him no sign that her interest in the theater extended to acting.
Then again, if not the chance for a moment onstage, what had motivated her request?
“This friend of yours,” Sawyer was saying to her as they passed, his head tipped so he could speak low in her ear, though not so low as to keep his words a secret from Graham, “the one his lordship’s taken an interest in? She cannot be a good friend, if you are willing to let her associate with Dunstane.”
Julia’s eyes darted to the side, not quite meeting Graham’s, though it was obvious to whom her next words were directed. “Is he so very bad, then?”
Sawyer laughed. “Not as bad as Blackadder, if the stories one hears are true. Then again, the two of them are like peas in a pod—”
“Dried-up, bitter peas in a rotting pod,” muttered Mrs. Cole.
“Have you acted before, Miss Hayes?” Mr. Sawyer hastily continued over the interjection.
The false name startled Graham, though he had been the one to supply it. Why did he care what became of her reputation?
“No, never,” she confessed as she reached the boards with Sawyer’s hand hovering too close to her waist for Graham’s comfort. “I don’t suppose I shall be very good.”
“No,” agreed Mrs. Cole acidly. “I don’t suppose you shall. But the play’s shite anyway, so what does it matter?”
Graham gritted his teeth together, refusing to rise to the bait. She was a shrew, but, unlike Fanshawe, she was generally regarded as an excellent actor. She would be next to impossible to replace at the last minute. Contrary to Julia’s notion of Perpetua Philpot, the part called for someone with steel in her spine and acid in her veins, not an ingenue afraid of hurting people’s feelings.
“Here,” Mrs. Cole said, dragging the chair back from the escritoire and motioning for Julia to sit. She jabbed her finger against the scrap of paper on which he’d scratched out the new lines. “See what you can make of it.”
Julia glanced at the paper before pushing it aside and picking up the pen. “Thank you. But I have an idea of my own.”
Whatever Mrs. Cole replied was rendered inaudible by Sawyer’s exclamations of approval. “Excellent, Miss Hayes. Breathe some life into the part. Look sharp, Fanshawe.”
Fanshawe had been following Julia’s movements without seeming to watch her. At Sawyer’s command, though, he glared at the other actor. “From the top,” he called and began to read his dreadful poem.
Too dreadful? That was always the danger with satire—too much, too far, and audiences might not follow.
Pulling a pencil from her reticule, Julia quickly wrote something down and then struck a contemplative posture as he recited his lines, in a convincing performance of listening. When her turn came to speak, she got to her feet and began to pace behind her chair as she read her “review,” occasionally pausing to twirl her quill.
She had admitted she had no experience with the theater beyond the audience. The lines she’d dashed off ought to have been terrible. Her performance ought to have brought him to his senses, made him remember what he was about.
Instead, she was a natural.
Oh, there were flaws, of course. No one had ever taught her to project her voice. But her instinctive movements brought a certain visual interest to the part. As a writer, he recognized that sense of urgency, the sometimes-futile hope that activity would stir the brain and drive some useful idea to the fore. And as for the words themselves? Well...
Though too quietly spoken, the newly written lines demonstrated her innate command over the situation. Over him. Her gentle innocence, so different from the older, more jaded Mrs. Cole, was compelling. Riveting.
It was the kiss all over again.
A murmur of praise passed his lips before he could stop himself. And this time, someone was near enough to hear.
“Oh, Miss Hayes,” exclaimed Sawyer, who had dropped back a step after escorting Julia to the top of the stairs and now stood with one foot on the stage, his elbow resting on his bent knee as he watched. “Lord Dunstane approves!”
“I said nothing,” Graham insisted hotly. He might have dismissed Sawyer on the spot if he had thought he could find some knave better suited to play—well, himself.
Sawyer straightened and turned to face him. “Do you deny you made a noise? A sort-of . . .” He circled one wrist in the air, searching for the word. “A hum. Sounded a damned sight more positive than any other sigh or groan that’s issued from you these two weeks.”
“Oh, this is preposterous,” declared Mrs. Cole from stage left, where she stood with arms akimbo. “Surely you do not mean to tell me—”
Julia, whose cheeks were positively crimson, managed an airy laugh. “I assure you he does not, ma’am. He’s only humoring me to get in my good graces.” She laid aside the lines she’d written as she darted a quick glance Graham’s way, the first hint of uncertainty he’d glimpsed in her since she’d put her hand in Sawyer’s. As if she, too, would like to know what he was about. “For my friend, you recall.”
“Does this friend have a name?” Mrs. Cole narrowed her eyes as she awaited a response, clearly skeptical of Julia’s ability to supply one on the spot.
“Julia,” she answered with an immediacy and honesty that almost made him choke. “And I won’t say more than that, so you needn’t bother asking. No need to tarnish her reputation.”
“Yet,” Sawyer supplied with a knowing chuckle.
“I say,” Fanshawe broke in peevishly. He was still seated at the writing table, now employed in scratching designs into the candle stub with the tip of his pen. “Are we done, then?”
“Somewhere you’d rather be?”
Not for the first time, Graham regretted hiring Fanshawe, who was widely regarded as past his prime. But having discovered the subject of Blackadder’s new play, the fellow had pleaded for a part, no matter how small, desperate for a chance to rehabilitate his name with the critics.
Graham’s question—or the tone in which he’d asked it—had the desired effect. Fanshawe sat up a little straighter, Sawyer sank onto a lower step, and Mrs. Cole’s hands slipped from her hips to cross behind her skirts in a posture that was almost demure.
“No, sir,” Fanshawe ground out.
“Go anyway.” Graham dismissed the lot of them with the wave of one hand. “I wish a private word with Miss Hayes.”
Fanshawe scuttled away, not mingling with the other actors. Sawyer sent a glance toward Julia that was almost wistful, then shrugged and went up the steps as he’d come down them, two at time, crossing the boards with long strides to catch up with the rest of the cast as they left the area around the stage.
Only Mrs. Cole remained, fussing over the papers that were spread across the escritoire, though with the exception of the torn sheet on which he had written the revised lines and the one on which Julia had penciled hers, they were meant to have nothing but nonsense scrawled on them, mere props. Once she had the pages gathered in a bundle, she laid them neatly on the center of the desk, sent a look toward Graham over her shoulder, and said to Julia in a voice intended to carry, “Watch yourself, miss.”
Julia looked taken aback, as well she might. “I’m not going to steal the role from you.”
“Of course not,” Mrs. Cole said brusquely, as if such an outrageous notion had never crossed her mind. “Watch yourself around him.”
It was as close as the woman might ever get to a sisterly gesture, those words of caution about an unscrupulous gentleman, given to a na?ve younger lady headed toward danger. He couldn’t very well object to them.
He was, however, increasingly convinced that Julia was less na?ve—and far more dangerous—than he had at first believed.
As if to confirm him in the notion, she slanted a glance in his direction, familiar mischief twinkling in her blue eyes. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said, diverting her gaze to Mrs. Cole once more and mustering a small smile. “You are too kind.”
At that, Graham found himself choking back a laugh, the sound of which—poorly disguised as a cough—made Mrs. Cole spin on one foot to glare at him. “Right, then.” She offered him a half-hearted curtsy. “I’ll leave you to it.”
As the soft scuff of Mrs. Cole’s footsteps faded into silence, he stood watching Julia, who had once more lowered her eyes and resumed the project of neatening the surface of the escritoire. “How long?” he asked when he was certain they were alone. “How long have you wanted to act?”
Her chin jerked up. He expected a protest, a denial. Instead, she stepped around the corner of the desk, putting herself an arm’s length closer to him.
“I was five, or a little more, when a traveling troupe stopped in our village. They stayed two days. Gave three performances on a makeshift stage on the green. I attended every one.” Her head tilted further, and her eyes softened with a faraway expression. “By the end of the first scene of the first show, I’d fallen under the actors’ spell.” Then she stiffened almost imperceptibly and rubbed her hands together as if brushing away the memory. “By the end of the second scene, I had been told in no uncertain terms that actresses were women of low morals and ill repute. That I must never think of doing such a scandalous thing, must never speak of it, never even allow myself to dream.”
“Clearly, you didn’t listen.”
That brought her gaze back to his face, her blue eyes cooler now. Wary. “Oh, but I did.”
“Really?” He closed half the remaining distance between them with a single step. “Dreams are not usually so easy to constrain.”
“Gentlemen’s imaginations may be allowed to run free,” she countered. “Young ladies, however, are expected to regulate their thoughts. The author of every conduct manual and sermon demands it.” She spoke without rancor, though he could guess how such opinions must chafe.
The mention of sermons reminded him of the strictures that her father—his profession, as well as his death—had placed on her upbringing. “I daresay at the ripe old age of five, you were not reading conduct manuals. Who told you such things about actresses, then? Who taught you that thoughts could be penned in like so many dim-witted, docile sheep?”
The simile made one corner of her mouth twitch. “Mrs. Nathan. The wife of the local squire and the most respectable lady in Papa’s parish, not even excepting Mama, who smiled too much for Mrs. Nathan’s liking. She often looked after me, when Papa’s spells of illness required Mama’s undivided attention.”
It irked him beyond reason, the notion that some interfering busybody had been allowed, perhaps encouraged, to implant such foolishness in Julia’s head—though the evidence at his disposal suggested that Mrs. Nathan’s lessons in propriety hadn’t all stuck.
“Yet she took you to watch the players twice more?”
“Oh, no. The second time, I tagged along with my brother, Jeremy, though it kept me out past my bedtime and he had to carry me home on his shoulders. And by the next day, Papa was feeling enough better that he took me himself.” Her voice grew wistful. “Afterward, he told me he hadn’t spent such an enjoyable afternoon in an age. I wished Mrs. Nathan had been by to hear him say it.”
“You knew her to be full of stuff and nonsense, even then, but you heeded her advice all the same.”
“It’s hardly ‘stuff and nonsense,’ my lord. Surely you do not mean to try to convince me that acting onstage in public is a respectable occupation for a young lady? That gentlemen do not regard actresses as little better than . . . harlots?” Her voice dropped instinctively, though there was no one to overhear.
Harsh words, but fair. The effort required to refute them would be wasted, and he wanted his energy for other things.
“You ask me to believe you have not pictured yourself here before?” He swept an arm in a gesture that took in the stage and the empty pit below. “All those nights at the theater, and you never went home and spoke lines into a mirror after Mrs. Hayes was in bed? Never told yourself you could do better if given a chance?” Pink splotches appeared on her cheeks, reminiscent of the exaggerated cosmetics of stage performers. He wondered whether, in her playacting fantasy, she had ever gone far enough to toy with the contents of a rouge pot. “Is that the reason you wanted to come to this rehearsal?”
“No, my lord. I assure you nothing could have been further from my thoughts.”
“Ah, yes.” One last step and the space between them was gone. He reached up to brush a tendril of hair from her temple. “Your thoughts. So easily kept from wandering where they ought not go.”
“I never said it was easy, my lord.”
“Nay.” He trailed his fingertips across her cheekbone and traced the curve of her jaw. “You didn’t.”
He felt her throat bob in a swallow, but she did not retreat from his touch. Her eyes, however, shied from his face and toward the empty, shadowy pit. “Might we negotiate the terms of our arrangement somewhere less public?”
They were alone in the theater. But he understood what she meant. Standing in the middle of a stage surrounded by several thousand seats, empty though they might be, felt anything but private.
Backstage were any number of places where a tryst might take place, with no one the wiser. And Julia appeared willing to go with him, to uphold her end of the bargain.
But when he thought of those spaces—an unused dressing room, a storage closet filled with discarded props or broken furniture—he could not help but think of that distant evening, his elder brother and the actress, the agonizing moments he’d spent in the corridor, longing for somewhere to hide.
That innocent boy had long since grown into quite the rogue.
But pray God Graham knew better than to be as reckless as Iain.
He drew back his hand and put a half step between them, a few inches at most, but enough that he could breathe without being all too aware of the rise and fall of her breasts. “There’s nothing to negotiate, Miss—” He couldn’t do it, couldn’t shape the name that wasn’t hers. But what rose to his lips instead came out as little more than a desperate rasp. “Julia.”
He wanted her. And not just her sweet lips and soft body pressed to his. He wanted her bright, mischievous eyes and her clever retorts and her unexpected gift for untangling the knots he’d made in his own damned script.
“You saw the rehearsal, as you wished,” he went on, in something resembling his usual voice. “You even had your moment in the sun.” At that, he flicked his wrist to gesture toward the enormous chandelier closest to the stage, though it was, unfortunately for his metaphor, unlit. “Now you should go.”
He couldn’t concentrate with her there—couldn’t concentrate at all. Somehow, he had to focus his mind. Remember why he had come to London. He had to put his plan to punish Miss on Scene first.
Her lips parted on a silent oh, and disappointment clouded her gaze.
Disappointment over the play, he told himself. She couldn’t possibly want—
Before the thought had fully formed, she rose up on tiptoe and launched herself toward him, her hands on his shoulders and her lips brushing swiftly over his cheek before pausing to whisper in his ear. “Thank you for today. I’ll never forget this.”
Any rogue worth his salt would have wrapped his arms around her, captured her mouth with his, and put a seal on . . . well, on whatever this was.
Graham watched her settle onto her heels, drop her hands to her sides, and blush as prettily as a rose.
Damn it.
He was utterly, hopelessly lost. He didn’t just want her.
He needed her.
Damn it all.
“Come back Monday,” he said. “Same time. See what Blackadder makes of your changes.”
Her eyes flared, an ocean of vivid color in which a man would willingly drown. “Truly? Do you think he might approve of my suggestions?” Then she snagged her lower lip in her teeth and tilted her head. “But I suppose I ought to ask what such an indulgence will cost.”
Reaching behind her, he snatched up both the scrap of paper on which he’d made his corrections and the page on which she’d written hers. The light scent of her soap, her skin, caught him off guard. No actress of his acquaintance had ever smelled so sweet and fresh, like the Highlands on the first truly warm spring day.
His heartbeat pounded in his head, his chest, his cock. Good God, but he was a fool. How could he hope to work in close proximity with her without revealing his secret?
“More than you can afford.”
The words slipped out, half whisper, half growl, spoken more to himself than in answer to her question.
Then he strode offstage and into the shadows.