Chapter 13
Chapter 13
Julia listened to his booted tread thump across the stage and down the steep, narrow steps. A moment later she heard the opening and closing of some nearer door she had not previously noticed. When she gathered the courage to turn and look behind her, he was gone.
Quickly she shuffled through the remaining papers on the desktop, some blank, some marked with lines and flourishes that would look, from a distance, like handwriting. At the very bottom of the stack lay Mrs. Cole’s script.
The script whose dog-eared pages contained the fate of Perpetua Philpot—which was to say, Ransom Blackadder’s plans to ruin Miss on Scene and the Magazine for Misses.
Knowing that someone might return at any moment, Julia picked up the script, hid it in the crook of her arm, and hurried away from the theater. Only when she was safely ensconced in a hackney cab, summoned for her by one of the urchins who hung about Covent Garden, did she allow herself to page absently through the script as she contemplated the enormity of what had transpired that afternoon.
She had not just witnessed but participated in a rehearsal for The Poison Pen!
She had come only with the intention of watching, gathering information about the play, the actors, anything that might be useful in preparing a defense against the aspersions Blackadder intended to cast on Miss on Scene and the magazine.
Certainly, she had never imagined taking the stage at the Theatre Royal herself. Still less had she contemplated the possibility of speaking lines of her own invention and earning a measure of praise for them. A part of her knew she ought never to have allowed herself to get swept up in the moment. But she had longed to try her hand at acting for so long, how could she possibly have said no?
Now she had an invitation to return to the next rehearsal, not merely to observe, but to contribute. She had in her hands not just Blackadder’s damning words, but also the power to change them.
And it seemed Lord Dunstane did not intend to demand anything from her in return.
How foolish it would be of her to feel anything like disappointment at such an outcome.
She recalled that moment, as his fingertips caressed her face, when she had felt far from sure about how things would end. No one who knew the man behaved as if he were above debauching a clergyman’s na?ve daughter. Mrs. Cole had warned her. Mr. Sawyer had all but called Dunstane a rake.
She ought to be grateful for his restraint, rather than annoyed at his presumption in making the choice for her.
In the end, she had come away from today’s rehearsal with far more than she could have hoped—even if she wasn’t precisely satisfied, as he had promised.
Beneath her trembling fingers, the paper wrinkled and nearly tore.
“Drat these cobbled streets!” she exclaimed to no one in particular, ready to blame her agitation on the condition of the roadway, the careless cabbie, or the lack of carriage springs.
Anything to avoid confronting its true source: her ill-advised attraction to a certain Scottish nobleman.
She renewed her attention on the page in front of her. She had read plays before. Her father’s library, though modest, had contained all of Shakespeare, and not the schoolboy versions with all the scandal scrubbed away and the tragic endings made happy. But she had never seen an actor’s script, which was, she soon discovered, incomplete. Mrs. Cole’s copy contained just Perpetua Philpot’s part, with half lines from the other roles provided as cues. Here and there, Mrs. Cole or someone had penciled in a few words, a stage direction or some indication of the tone with which a line was to be spoken.
Julia wondered whether this was the ordinary state of things, or whether it was an attempt by the playwright to control the dissemination of his work, by ensuring that none of the actors knew the whole of the play. Only Lord Dunstane seemed to be privy to all the details.
It would require more work than she had expected to sort out Blackadder’s plot from such sketchy information—to say nothing of determining how best to foil it.
The words leaped as the coach jounced and jerked along, making the text doubly difficult to decipher. Eventually she closed the script and her eyes. But no sooner had she done so than her mind was flooded by memories of her strange afternoon: Mr. Sawyer’s puckish grin of encouragement, the creak of the boards beneath her feet, the unexpected warmth in Lord Dunstane’s light eyes.
Why had she told him about that day on the village green more than a dozen years ago? She had kept that foolish dream tucked away like a flower pressed between the pages of a book no one ever read. After all this time, it should have been brittle and faded. Instead, it had retained its freshness, its alluring scent.
She knew better than to fall under its otherworldly spell.
Once she had told Laura, the woman her brother had later married, that it wasn’t fair to decry actresses’ reputations and deny respectable women a place on the stage. All women played parts, she had insisted. Every young lady occasionally hid behind a costume, a well-rehearsed line, a mask.
Never had those words felt more true.
She, for instance, was accumulating new roles by the hour. Miss Hayes. Miss Philpot. Miss on Scene.
Julia.
The memory of his rough voice as he’d all but groaned her name sent a shiver of longing through her. He could be such a disagreeable man. And she knew better than to desire his attention.
But still she found herself wishing he had kissed her once more . . .
Determined to dispel such thoughts, she rolled the script into a tube, as Mr. Fanshawe had done. But instead of gesticulating with it, she used it to peer out the window, like a pirate through a spyglass. The treetops of Clapham Common were just visible in the distance. Then, laughing at her own childishness, she smoothed the script over her knees until it lay flat again. Once she had gleaned everything she could from the document, she would have to return it, ideally without Mrs. Cole even realizing it was gone.
A few moments later, the hackney rolled to something like a stop near Mrs. Hayes’s front door, and Julia leaped nimbly to the pavement. Inside, she met Mrs. Whyte escorting the apothecary, Mr. Watkins, down the stairs.
The housekeeper’s ordinarily mild expression was lined with concern and darkened a bit further as she greeted Julia with a well-disguised scold. “Ah, Miss Addison. I wondered where you’d got to.”
“I had an errand to run,” she explained. “On behalf of Mrs. Hayes.”
She told herself it wasn’t quite a lie. As far as she was concerned, every woman in London stood to suffer some degree of loss if the Magazine for Misses was destroyed.
“The last for a while, I daresay.” Mr. Watkins placed his apothecary’s bag beside his hat on the demilune table positioned against the wall near the front door, then slipped his arms into the sleeves of his greatcoat.
Julia looked from one to the other, suddenly worried. “Is everything all right?”
“A rheumatic flare,” Mr. Watkins said with a sigh of compassion. “I’ve insisted on a fortnight’s strict bed rest and left Mrs. Whyte with a poultice and instructions for bandaging her limbs, which I hope will alleviate some of her discomfort. A warmer climate for the winter really would be best, but alas, with the war . . .” He shook his head as his voice faded away. “It’s good you’ll be here to keep her amused, Miss Addison.”
She managed to nod. “I’ll go to her now, shall I?” With a quick curtsy, she hurried past Mrs. Whyte on the stairs, not waiting for an answer.
After pausing to shed her pelisse and bonnet in her room, she tapped on the door of Mrs. Hayes’s chamber. One of the housemaids responded to her knock.
“Has she been asking for me, Nelly?” Julia had come armed with the French romance they had been reading and the afternoon papers.
A soft snore from the bed answered her question.
“She were that done up,” the girl said. “Mr. Watkins recommended another dose of her sleeping draught to help her settle.”
Julia nodded her understanding and gestured to indicate that Nelly might resume her usual duties. Once the girl was gone, Julia took up the chair positioned near the head of the bed and deposited the pile of amusements she had brought with her on the small marble-topped table beside her.
After several moments, in which Mrs. Hayes showed no sign of wakefulness, Julia twisted the chair toward the window to catch the last of the fading afternoon light and slid Mrs. Cole’s script from the pile, where she had secreted it amidst the gossip sheets and the news of the day.
She had known better than to think that a few hours of unexpected freedom had been a sign. If Fate, or the guardian angel sent by her father, were to intervene in her life, this would surely be the form such an intervention would take: a circumstance tailor-made to ensure she would be stuck at Mrs. Hayes’s bedside for at least two weeks, safe from all but the desire to return to Covent Garden and Lord Dunstane.
If she were diligent, the script would tell her what she needed to know and show her how to respond, without any further risk to her virtue or her reputation.
If she were wise, she wouldn’t return to the theater until she could do so in the company of Mrs. Hayes, for a scheduled performance.
Perhaps not until the end of November, when The Poison Pen was set to debut.
* * *
The next morning, Nelly came to Julia’s bedside. “Mrs. Hayes is askin’ for ye, miss.”
Julia blinked against the dawn. “She’s awake?”
Mrs. Hayes had hardly stirred since the apothecary’s visit. After supper, Mrs. Whyte had ordered Nelly to sit with their mistress, with every expectation that she would pass a quiet night. Julia had thus been settled comfortably in her own bed by half past ten, according to the bells of Holy Trinity Church.
But sleep had been elusive. She had heard the mournful hours of two and three ring out across Clapham Common before finally managing to quiet her restless thoughts enough to snatch a little rest. She had even caught herself wishing for the oblivion of Mrs. Hayes’s sleeping draught, which had been at least temporarily effective once before at blotting out the memory of Lord Dunstane’s touch.
What would Lady Stalbridge say if she knew that Julia had so thoroughly abandoned her good sense?
At least she had made the most of her one opportunity to gather information on The Poison Pen.
The script crinkled beneath her pillow as she pushed herself to sitting. She had read and reread as long as the daylight had held out yesterday, and though she still didn’t understand how all the pieces of the plot fit together, it was clear that the poet’s brother, one Reginald Briggs, managed to trick Miss Philpot into saying more than was wise and thus turned public opinion against her. Just as Ransom Blackadder hoped to do to Miss on Scene.
Now she had only to figure out how to turn the tables.
“Please tell Mrs. Hayes I’ll be right there, Nelly,” she said around a yawn. The girl gave a quick curtsy and left her to dress.
Not ten minutes later, Julia tapped on Mrs. Hayes’s chamber door. Not being tightly latched, it swung open to reveal a surprising commotion.
Daniel stood at the end of the bed in his straightest, most footmanlike pose, the effect of which was marred only slightly by his struggle to contain a grin as his mother remonstrated with Mrs. Hayes over her breakfast order.
“Now, ma’am, Mr. Watkins was most clear about the need to abstain from coffee. And chocolate. And I don’t think he’d approve of the kippers, either.”
“I wouldn’t need the coffee or the chocolate if he hadn’t poured half a bottle of that awful sleeping tonic down my throat yesterday.” Mrs. Hayes pulled a face as she twisted her mouth and stuck out her tongue. “Nasty stuff. The kippers are only to take away the taste of it. Not another drop of it, do you understand?”
“I do, ma’am,” Mrs. Whyte replied in a more soothing tone as she exchanged a series of gestures with her son, who chose not to understand them. “But you may feel differently later . . .”
“I will not. And as for this nonsense about a fortnight abed—”
“Mrs. Hayes,” Julia said, stepping into the fray. “How good it is to see you improving. Let’s see, Daniel—how about poached eggs, toast, and some of your mama’s wonderful gooseberry preserves. Oh, and a pot of weak tea. No one was ever harmed by a cup of tea, were they, Mrs. Whyte?” She finished with a smile for the housekeeper to quell any protest she was tempted to make.
“Certainly not, Miss Addison,” Mrs. Whyte agreed, still regarding Julia with a hint of yesterday’s wariness but slightly mollified by her remark about the jam. “But Mr. Watkins was most clear—”
“About the need for rest. Yes, absolutely. Mrs. Hayes ought to be disturbed as little as possible.”
At that, Jess, the other housemaid, who had been vigorously fluffing the pillows behind her mistress’s head and fussing over the linens, retreated a step away from the bed and dropped her hands to her sides.
“Ahh,” sighed the widow as she sank against the mountain of goose down, no longer being churned by the maid’s efforts. “That’s more like it.”
Mrs. Whyte and Jess soon left the room, and Julia returned to the chair she had occupied yesterday evening. “How do you feel, ma’am?”
Mrs. Hayes’s face was still pale, and her lips pinched with pain as she shifted slightly on the plush mattress. “Like I’d been dragged through a stony field behind a team of oxen.” She managed to squeeze out a smile. “But I’ve been worse. It’ll pass. And in less than a fortnight,” she added, another pointed reference to the apothecary’s orders. But there was a hint of worry in her voice, the knowledge that someday, the pain might not dissipate and he might be proved right.
Pity swelled in Julia’s breast, pushing aside her own concerns. “What can I do to help you pass the time more comfortably?”
“Will you read to me?”
“Of course.”
After breakfast—which Mrs. Hayes ate well, as both Julia and Mrs. Whyte were pleased to see—Julia picked up where they had left off in the French romance. Veronique’s adventures, and the frequent need to repeat or translate passages when Mrs. Hayes nodded off and missed something important, occupied her for the remainder of Saturday.
On Sunday, it was a recital of the vicar’s text and sermon, a description of the various bonnets in church, and the newspapers.
By Monday afternoon, Veronique’s tale having twisted its torturous way to a happy end, Julia was left scrambling for something amusing. Mrs. Hayes dipped in and out of sleep. With nothing else at hand, and Mrs. Hayes to all appearances indifferent to anything but the soothing sound of her companion’s voice, Julia opened the script of The Poison Pen.
Right at this very moment, rehearsal for the day was beginning. Would her absence be noted—by anyone? Would Lord Dunstane even remember he had issued another invitation?
Surely Mrs. Cole would be hampered by the missing script. Or perhaps not. With the performance just a few weeks away, she must have memorized most of her lines already. And with Lord Dunstane delivering regular changes from Blackadder, any printed version must be at least partly incorrect. Perhaps the version Julia held was already obsolete. Which would certainly render the task of extracting useful information from it more difficult, if not altogether pointless.
With a sigh, she flipped a page and continued reading in a soft monotone, the sort of voice intended to keep Mrs. Hayes asleep for as long as possible, so that Julia might think. Would theatergoers recognize Miss on Scene in the character of Perpetua Philpot? Would they agree with Blackadder’s premise that the reviewer’s identity must be exposed to put an end to her unjust power over public opinion and taste? Blackadder’s last play had been sold out every night, obviously not harmed by her review in the Magazine for Misses.
What had she said to make him hate her so?
Could she persuade Lord Dunstane to get him to give up the fight?
In Covent Garden, it had seemed almost possible. But from Mrs. Hayes’s house in Clapham . . . ?
Without realizing it, she’d stopped reading, her head too full of worry to leave room for anything else.
Beneath the quilt, Mrs. Hayes stirred. “Well?” she murmured. “Is Perpetua going to give this Briggs character a piece of her mind, or what?”
Julia jerked, and the script slid off her lap onto the floor. “I, er—I didn’t realize you were listening.”
“Of course, I’m listening,” she insisted, never opening her eyes. “What else have I got to do?”
“I apologize. I would have chosen differently if I’d—”
“Yes, this story isn’t much like our usual—other than a certain melodramatic flair. But I’m hard-pressed to see how she and this poet fellow work things out in the end. He’s insufferable, and she’s a shrew. I suppose if they end up together, we can be glad they haven’t ruined anyone else’s happiness. What’s the title?”
“It’s, um . . .” She bent at the waist to retrieve the script and mumbled the answer to the carpet. “It’s Ransom Blackadder’s new play, out later this month. The Poison Pen.”
Despite Julia’s efforts, Mrs. Hayes heard every word. “Blackadder? That rascal.” Wincing, she pushed herself higher on the pillows and fixed Julia with a look. “However did you come by such a thing?” Julia chewed at her inner lip, trying to muster a reasonable reply. When none was forthcoming, Mrs. Hayes went on in a knowing voice. “Would it have anything to do with where you were on Friday afternoon, and why I had to fib and tell Mrs. Whyte I’d given you a half day?”
Julia recalled Mrs. Whyte’s expression when she returned. Apparently, neither Mrs. Hayes’s explanation nor Julia’s had been very convincing. There was no disguising the inevitable blush that began to warm her cheeks.
“Or with Lord Dunstane’s peculiar behavior at the Clearwaters’ card party?”
Warmth became heat, rising to the tips of her ears. “What could he possibly have to do with—?”
“Because he’s Blackadder’s patron, isn’t he?” Mrs. Hayes countered with a little hmph of satisfaction. “And he can’t keep his fine Scottish eyes off you.”
The blush grew hotter still, threatening to engulf her in flames. But at least if she were rendered nothing but a smoking pile of ashes, she wouldn’t have to face another question.
She parted her lips to speak, though she hardly knew what words to frame. A lie was perfectly useless. It seemed that, after all, Mrs. Hayes did not need to have her lorgnette to hand to stare directly into Julia’s soul.
“Yes,” she confessed in a rush of breath. “Yes. Lord Dunstane allowed me to attend the rehearsal. At my request.”
Birdlike, Mrs. Hayes tilted her head to one side. “And why would you make such a request of him?”
“Because I—” She glanced down at her lap, watched herself flick one curled corner of the script with her first fingernail. “Because I write reviews of plays for a periodical called Mrs. Goode’s Magazine for Misses. I’m sure you haven’t heard of—”
“Oh, but I have.” Her knowing nod was triumphant. “Goode’s Guide to Misconduct, people say. Lady Clearwater was just complaining about it the other night, how she’d forbidden her girls even to glance at a copy. Of course, any fool would know that’s the surest way to make them desperate to read it.” Her lips slanted in a crooked smile. “Then again, she’s not just any fool.”
In spite of herself and her present situation, Julia giggled. “It’s not as scandalous and shocking as people make out. It’s only that society isn’t ready for young ladies to have opinions of their own.”
Mrs. Hayes was eyeing her once more, a curious gaze, but not—so far as Julia could see—a disapproving or disappointed one. “How long?”
“Since the beginning. Almost a year. We meet regularly in the back room of a bookshop.”
“Ah.” She diverted her gaze toward the ceiling, as if she were trying to recall something. “I suppose that’s why you offer to run so many errands for me—and why they all take twice as long as they should.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Julia agreed, embarrassed and yet relieved to have the truth out in the open. “And a good deal of the letters I claim to write are really drafts of my column, to the magazine’s editor.”
“I suppose you wanted to see rehearsals of the play so you could publish the first review, get the jump on your competitors?”
“Not exactly.” She resumed her restless ruffling of the script’s tattered corner. “It seems Ransom Blackadder took issue with my previous review of his work. The Poison Pen is his rejoinder. It’s about—well, it’s about me. And the Magazine for Misses. Rumor has it, he wants to turn society against us. Expose our identities, if he can.” A shiver passed through her; speaking the threat aloud made it all the more real. “So I used my acquaintance with Lord Dunstane to finagle my way into a rehearsal, to see if it was true.”
“And is it?”
Julia lifted her head and nodded, though the movement was uncertain. “I think so, yes. The script suggests as much. But Blackadder is still making changes to the play.”
Mrs. Hayes sat up a little straighter, ignoring her pain. “He was there on Friday? You’ve seen him?”
“No. He sent new pages with Lord Dunstane. It was clear from the actors’ reaction, it wasn’t the first time he’d made changes, and it seemed unlikely to be the last. Lord Dunstane said I might come back today, and I had hoped—” She gave a little shake, driving away the idea—though not the ache of longing that had accompanied it. “It doesn’t matter,” she insisted, laying the script aside on the marble-topped table. Mrs. Hayes needed her. “Blackadder will do what he wants, in the end.”
Silence hung between them for a moment. Then Mrs. Hayes sighed as she eased herself against the pillows once more. “Of course, it matters. You must go.”
Julia caught her breath. “Ma’am? I—no.” She couldn’t. It would be foolish in the extreme for her to return to Covent Garden. She was in danger of losing her reputation. And—if she were honest—her heart. “It’s too late, anyway. By the time I arrived, rehearsal would be over. And you need me here.”
“I need rest. You said so yourself. When’s the next rehearsal?”
“Wednesday, I believe.”
“Ah. Well, then. We have time to think up a proper excuse to give Mrs. Whyte for your going out. A pity about today, but Lord Dunstane must know that a lady’s companion is sometimes at the whim of her crotchety old employer and unable to get away.”
“Go out?” She couldn’t disguise the incredulity in her voice. “Surely you don’t mean to allow . . . ?”
Though truth be told, encourage might be the better word.
“Allow what?” As Julia watched, the shrewdness faded from Mrs. Hayes’s expression, leaving her looking positively feeble. “How can an old lady possibly be expected to be aware of everything that goes on beneath her roof, all the comings and goings?” And then she winked, and the spark returned to her eyes. “Just ask my niece.”
While ostensibly serving as her aunt’s companion, Laura had often sneaked out to play a dangerous role, acting as an avenging angel for mistreated young women. Laura still believed she had succeeded in pulling the wool over her aunt’s eyes about those escapades.
Julia gasped. “You knew?”
Mrs. Hayes shrugged, as if to excuse herself. “I know what it is to love the theater, the donning of costumes, the playing of parts. I also know what freedom tastes like. A nibble now and again is never enough. And I’ve always thought it a pity that women are so rarely afforded a chance to do as they wish until”—she paused to pluck at the linens, puckering the fabric here and there—“they are too old and feeble to do much of anything.”
Julia sent a sidelong glance at the tattered script. “What if someone finds out?”
The discovery that she, a young lady—paid companion or not—had spent time unchaperoned in the company of actors . . . and Lord Dunstane . . . What a scandal! Even if nothing happened between them, her reputation might be tarnished. And if something did happen?
Then things would go worse for her still. Her family would insist she leave London forever.
If they didn’t disown her entirely.
Mrs. Hayes now smoothed one gnarled hand over the quilt, as if wiping away the wrinkles in their plan. “You must see that no one does.”
Julia leaped to her feet and wrapped the frail woman in a careful hug. “Thank you, ma’am!” she breathed.
“Just be careful not to lose sight of what’s important, my dear,” Mrs. Hayes said, returning Julia’s embrace with surprising strength. “This Guide to Misconduct must go on giving young ladies a voice—no, teaching them they have a voice of their own. And one more thing—”
“Ma’am?” She pulled back enough that she could see Mrs. Hayes’s face.
“I do wish you would call me Aunt Mildred.”