Love’s a Stage Read online

  He had not quite reached the door when Frances called out, “Mr. Rivington?”

  Whatever Mr. David’s reason (for Frances was unwilling to credit him with a shred of gentlemanly reserve) he seemed not to have shared what had passed between them with his cousin. If Mr. Rivington knew about the insult she had received, surely there would have been the vestige of strain in his manner toward her, at least a hint of sympathy, or amusement, or disgust—depending on his disposition. Miss Atherton assured herself that whatever curiosity she felt about what had been said between Mr. David and his cousin concerning her was due only to a very natural dislike of becoming the subject for crude jesting between two young men of fashion.

  She gave herself a mental shake and determined to push the whole episode from her mind. Her paramount consideration must remain with her pursuit of Edward Kennan. Let Mr. Rivington become her first source of inquiry!

  “If you have a moment?” asked Frances, trying to keep her tone casual. “I should like to know . . .” No, that wouldn’t do, much too direct. She had better offer some sort of explanation first. It would sound more natural. “This is my first visit to London and there are so many things that I’d like to see! For instance, the world of the theater has always fascinated me.” Never in her life had she felt more awkward. Frances could only hope that, in time, lying would come more easily. “One hears so much of the great Edward Kennan. Where would I be able to see him?” There. It was out. A little too abruptly, perhaps, but there was nothing she could do about that now. Still, Rivington seemed to find nothing odd in her wish.

  “That’s easy enough to do,” he replied promptly. “Kennan’s company is at the Drury Lane Theatre—they’ll open a new play in a fortnight with Kennan in a leading role.”

  A fortnight! Each day’s delay marked one day longer of her father’s confinement. “I can’t wait that long,” said Frances with dismay. “That is,” she added quickly, “I can’t wait because I may have to leave London by then!”

  A smile returned to his crisp blue eyes. “If it’s so urgent then, I could introduce you.”

  “You could?” gasped Frances, horrified that she might have gabbed her interest in Kennan to one of his friends. She mustn’t take the chance, not the slightest chance, that Kennan would be put on his guard. “Do you know Mr. Kennan well?”

  Frances was not a swooner, but so intense was her relief, she felt something approaching one when Rivington said:

  “No. I see him at parties once in a while. He’s not someone I’d care to spend a lot of time with. His head’s more swollen than a goose belly on the day before Christmas. I do know him well enough to introduce you.”

  “An introduction is not quite what I would like, Mr. Rivington,” said Frances, after mulling the idea in her mind. “What I need is to meet Mr. Kennan without his becoming aware that I want to meet him.”

  The blue eyes shone with laughter. “I think that David was right about you.”

  Miss Atherton froze. “Indeed?” she inquired, her back poker-stiff. “In what way, may I ask?”

  Observing without comment the effect David’s name had on her, he strolled to Frances and gave one long brown curl a gentle tweak. “Merely that you are a very unusual girl.” He studied her for a moment and then said, “This is important to you, isn’t it? Very important? Not just a fascination with the theater, either, is it?”

  “That’s all true,” admitted Miss Atherton, vexed at being so easily seen through. “I hope I can trust you, because this is a matter of the utmost gravity.”

  Grinning, he said, “The utmost?”

  “Yes, the utmost,” returned Miss Atherton, nettled. “If you can’t help me, it’s all very well—but I wish you would not stand there making fun of me. I am quite aware that the more seriously I take myself, the more people like to tease me. I can’t help that, because I’ve had a great many things on my mind lately. Under more normal circumstances, I’m as ready to enjoy a joke as the next person.”

  He heard her out with an appreciative smile. “Why is it that I’m getting the notion that whatever it is you’re planning, you’re in over your head? Tell me, how far are you willing to go to implement this scheme of yours?”

  Frances considered this. “I’d do almost anything.” After a moment she added, “Except murder someone. I wouldn’t do anything like that, of course.”

  “My, my, you are determined, aren’t you? Very well. Let’s see if this appeals to you. Tomorrow afternoon the Drury Lane Company will audition for a new cast member—they need a female to fill their ingenue roles since Jeannie Milford eloped last week with Baron de Borchgrave. Kennan may come. It’s worth a try. Do you think you’d be able to pretend you wanted to audition?”

  Miss Atherton’s eyes sparkled with enthusiasm. She brought her fist against her palm with a decisive smack. “Easily! Because I wouldn’t be pretending! I do want to audition. It would be the very thing! If I joined the company, I’d be able to see Kennan every day, would I not?”

  “Most days. All cast members are required to attend every rehearsal. But will it do you any good to join the company when you have to leave London so soon?”

  Frances looked at Rivington from under serious brows. “That, I’m afraid, was a lie.”

  Frances found a promising ally in Mr. Rivington; sufficiently interested to offer some salient suggestions, sufficiently disinterested (or perhaps too well mannered) to demand explanations. She had taken the precaution of swearing him to silence. He had responded with the cordial proclamation that ravens were welcome to pluck out his eyes if he should utter a syllable of Frances’ interest in Kennan. Despite her reassurance on this head, however, it was inevitable that the weeds of doubt would begin to grow in Frances’ hastily cultivated plot, especially after Aunt Sophie’s forceful representations against it. Certainly there were respectable people connected with the theater! Aunt Sophie would not deny it, but she didn’t hesitate to add that by and large they were a fast group, immoderate in their use of laudanum and hard spirits. It was not the atmosphere for an impressionable young lady! Ignoring Frances’ protest that she was not impressionable, Aunt Sophie went on to say that, still worse, the theater was the hunting ground for the wolfish bucks of the aristocracy, who could be depended upon to evoke temptation in the most virtuous of feminine breasts. Since it was Frances’ considered opinion that if she could resist the temptation of a man as captivating as Mr. David, she was hardly likely to yield to what would surely be the inferior attractions of any other male that Fate should throw her way, Frances was able to dismiss this objective to her plans, telling her aunt simply that forewarned was forearmed. When Aunt Sophie pointed out that no upright youth was likely to take to wife a young woman who had mixed freely in so degraded a circle, Frances wondered aloud that her great-aunt could think so self-interested a consideration could inhibit her from her duty to dear Papa.

  That was enough for Aunt Sophie! She said cordially that she guessed she’d done what she could to dissuade Frances from exposing herself to the Corrupting Influence of the stage and offered to drop her niece by the Drury Lane Theatre the next afternoon on her way to the corsetier.

  * * *

  The next day, when Frances arrived at the theater, she discovered the spare neoclassical façade that Mr. Wyatt had designed not many years ago in the wake of a disastrous fire to be rather disappointingly covered in the layer of dark chimney soot that disfigured the other public buildings she had seen in London. Aunt Sophie told her that the parish had the perilous task of scrubbing down St. Paul’s on an annual basis; most other architectural monuments, no matter the time and expense spent on their construction, were allowed to grow blacker and blacker. It was the way of a great city.

  Frances dodged a brewer’s dray as she followed a tight side alley to the back door through which Rivington had advised her to enter.

  She was admitted by a husky youth in knee breeches, who directed her up a wide circular staircase to the stage. Once at the top, a
landing rank with the odor of tallow candles led to a large pair of open doors. Stepping through them, Frances found herself in the cramped stretch of the wings looking out toward the stage. To her right was the heavy iron curtain, widely touted as the latest in fire prevention. To her left and at the rear of the stage, a trio of carpenters were building a high scaffold, hammering and sawing thunderously under the direction of a harassed-looking man who was staring stark-eyed at an unrolled sheet of stage direction.

  A group of some ten young women stood just outside the wing. They were a willowy, animated group, talking to each other with vivid sweeping gestures and affected voices, pointedly indifferent to a lively girl with auburn hair who was auditioning on the stage apron, giving a cheerful rendition of the popular ditty “Birds Can’t Fall and Fishes Don’t Drown.”

  The other young women on the stage must be auditioners also, decided Frances. Their poise bespoke The Professional. And their appearance? It bespoke a word Frances was much too inhibited to have ever uttered. Red-tipped toenails peeped from the glittered thongs of their sandals, though the theater was cold and haunted by sucking drafts. Rouge was smeared gaudily across the young women’s cheeks and their eyelashes were suspiciously profuse.

  Mme. Dominique—ignorant that Frances would wear one of her creations to audition for London’s most prominent theatrical company—had dressed Frances more à la jeune fille than femme fatale. Frances’ own gown of lemon India muslin with a skirt embroidered in white was pretty in its way, but it was neither so startlingly low cut nor so gracefully clinging as the gowns of the women before her. Some of the young women had gone so far toward the display of their charms that they appeared to have worn nothing at all beneath their gowns! Frances was forced to avert shocked eyes. The young actresses had carefully fashionable coiffures that were styled with crimped curls stacked high at the crown, testimonials to the talents of their hairdressers. Frances knew her own long soft brown hair tied neatly with a yellow satin ribbon must look dowdy and childish in comparison.

  It was not surprising that Frances began to wonder what naïve confidence had encouraged her to hope that she could gain admittance to so rarefied and alien a world as the London theater. A few of the actresses had turned to direct curious hostile glances at her, and well they might! Who was she? A parson’s daughter from a fishing village whose most outstanding public appearance had been caroling on Christmas Eve. She had nothing to offer this intense breed of artistic sophisticates. In over her head, Mr. Rivington had said, and he had been right.

  A loose-limbed man in his early thirties crossed the stage from the opposite wing. He talked to one of the actresses, bending forward to hear her replies and nervously stroking his lank dark hair off his forehead. After a moment, he gave the girl a familiar pat on an area objectionably low on her back and walked over to Frances.

  “Everyone I expected to come has already come,” he said. “So. I’m Charles Scott, assistant manager. Who are you?”

  In yesterday’s unmerited spirit of optimism, Frances had planned to use a false name on the theory that if it somehow came to pass that she was introduced to Edward Kennan, he wouldn’t (if he were, in fact, the Blue Specter) be able to connect her with the man that he had caused to be falsely imprisoned. Brightcastle was the name she had chosen, Miss Brightcastle being the maudlin heroine in the serialized romance from Lady’s Monthly Museum that Pam read to keep her sisters amused during Tuesday evening mending. Easy enough to think of a pseudonym yesterday. Today under the skeptical gray eyes of Charles Scott, Frances felt like a fool and an imposter to give it utterance. Still, she screwed her courage to the sticking point and said:

  “Frances Brightcastle.”

  “Well, well. Brightcastle. Never heard of you, my dear,” he said shortly.

  “John Rawson sent me.” John Rawson was the theater manager who had been, according to Mr. Rivington, recuperating from influenza at his country home in Surrey. It was safe enough, surely, to give his name.

  Scott raised his eyebrows cynically. “I had a letter from him this morning and he didn’t mention you.” His tone made the words a challenge.

  Rivington, predicting some variant of this reaction, had advised her to shrug. She did so, feeling awkward.

  “Little liar,” observed Scott. “But I don’t care. It’s nothing to me, if you want to parade your stuff on the boards. You can go on last. Don’t get your hopes up, though. We’ve about made up our minds to give the part to Theresa Sea—the redheaded piece who’s singing.”

  He left her abruptly. Frances took several steps forward along the curtain edge until she could see into the sunken area in front of the stage. The singer had been playing toward a group of men and women seated there. Frances could see no one among them who might have been Edward Kennan, but her attention was momentarily caught by a beautiful woman standing at the end of the row. The woman was reed-slender with gypsy-black curls lifted off a high, proud neck. A gown colored the tone of a pale alexandrite was draped off her sloping shoulders and molded carefully over her shapely form on its way to the floor. She was standing behind a seated man, her elbows resting lightly on his shoulders, her long hands loosely clasped. Even at the distance, Frances saw the sparkle of the diamonds that adorned her fingers. The man in front of her had golden hair, a uniquely rich color that caught the light from a taper burning at the stage corner. As Frances watched, the woman leaned forward and blew gently on the golden hair, sending it rippling like a rye field kissed by the summer breeze. Turning so that Frances saw his face, he shared a lover’s smile with the woman behind him. David, thought Frances, almost gasping the name aloud. David, David, Mr. David. There was no mistake. He was the man who had helped her find her way to Aunt Sophie’s house.

  Frances felt a sharp internal constriction, as though a small earthquake had lodged its epicenter in her middle. Again, as with the first time she had seen the man, Frances was forced to confront the rather frightening revelation that she, that paragon of self-command, could be susceptible to a powerful physical attraction. No one, not her silly sweet-tempered Mama, nor her dedicated, intellectual Papa, had prepared her for the possibility that a young lady of hitherto unassailable virtue could be affected in that way by a gentleman she barely knew and who, moreover, had proven himself to be undeserving of her trust and friendship. Somehow, it could be no comfort that the beautiful woman behind him was obviously a victim of the same ailment.

  The “redheaded piece” finished singing, and after exchanging a few words with Scott, came to stand near the iron fire curtain, tapping her foot impatiently as the next hopeful took the stage.

  “I beg your pardon,” Frances said to her, “I wonder if you know who that man is there, in the pit? The blond man?”

  The actress regarded Frances with an expression that Frances’ brother Joe would not have hesitated to characterize as snooty.

  “That,” she said, in a voice that informed Frances that she found it painful to have to converse with so ignorant a hayseed, “is Lord Landry. I trust you recognize the name?”

  Frances did of course. Lord Landry was the premier playwright of the modern theater. One saw his name in columns of literary review, where he was hailed as the new Molière, the new Sheridan. He was an aristocrat, a man so wealthy that it was unnecessary for him to set his hand to work to command life’s every luxury; he wrote for the sheer joy of it and donated what he earned from his writing to a charitable foundation for retired actors and actresses. It had always sounded so good, in the shallow and fawning news coverage. Frances found herself staring at Lord Landry in blank astonishment.

  “I would have thought,” she said, “that a famous playwright would be an older man.”

  “Stately, with a touch of gray at the temples?” responded the actress. Her smile was a sneer, but as she turned from Frances to look at Lord Landry, her smile became wider and more natural. “Beautiful, isn’t he?”

  Useless to deny it, Lord Landry was beautiful, or whatever its male e
quivalent.

  “And the lady he’s talking to?” asked Frances, promising herself this was the last question she would ask about Lord Landry. “That’s not—good heavens—that’s not his wife?”

  “You are green, aren’t you? He hasn’t got a wife. That’s Sheila Grant. Yes, that Sheila Grant, Drury Lane’s leading lady. She and Landry have been lovers for years. She adores him, but so many other women do, too. No one’s been able to hold him exclusively.”

  “A reprehensible history,” said Frances with some heat. She could connect them now—the man who had helped her find her aunt’s home and Lord Landry. A playwright? Yes, she could believe it. The lively mind, the ready wit . . . she reflected bitterly that he was probably cataloguing her in his artist’s mind for some future satire. Prudence Sweetsteeple, the village bumpkin. And she would have to audition in front of him. It was no good to hope that he had forgotten her. Frances did not flatter herself that she would long hold a place in his memory, but only two days had passed. His clever mind, no matter how promiscuous, would retain her image for that long at least. She could leave the theater, nothing prevented her, yet she had not seen Kennan. Surely that was, must always be, her primary objective. The longer she could make an excuse to remain at the Drury Lane, the greater the chance she could see Kennan.

  But displaying her meager talents before Lord Landry would be a severe trial. Frances had come to London with the resolve to do whatever was necessary to restore her father’s freedom. Never had she suspected, however, that her courage would be challenged in quite so personal or humiliating a manner. Anything for Papa’s sake—but oh, how Landry’s brilliant green eyes would sparkle with laughter at her expense.

  She waited behind the veiling fire curtain, hoping Kennan would arrive, hoping she would be able to have a look at him, before she botched her audition and had no further excuse to remain at the theater. The girls before her went one by one through their paces, with each depressingly adept at comedy, tragedy, the opera. It was not easy for Frances to mount the stage when Charles Scott called her name. She had brought Juliet’s dying speech to read, the morose mood of which was well suited to her current humor. This, unfortunately, didn’t seem to help her speak the part with anything approaching realism. Perhaps it was the effort she had to make to avoid looking in Lord Landry’s direction; her voice sounded artificial and nervous, even to herself, and her emphasis seemed to fall on the wrong words.