A Reckless Desire (26 page)

The pale silk of her gown floated around her as she walked, or perhaps she truly was floating. Rivers couldn't say for certain; she was so achingly desirable that he couldn't say much of anything, and beside him Spot thumped his tail on the floor with approval of his own.

Her dark hair was swept up and away from her face, with glossy curls falling at her nape. She wore no powder nor other paint, for she didn't need them. Her cheeks glowed with a natural vivacity, and her large, dark eyes with their thick lashes and arching brows were filled with the kind of intelligence and beguiling amusement that could make a man forget everything else.

At least that was the effect she had on Rivers as he automatically rose to his feet to hold his hand out to her. She didn't take it at first, but curtseyed instead, exactly as Mrs. Willow should have done to the son of the Duke of Breconridge, and exactly the degree of curtsey that was proper for a third son. Then, finally, she took his hand, letting him guide her back to a standing position with a smile that seemed to have forgotten their earlier disagreements.

Happiness surged in his chest as his fingers gently pressed hers, only to be tamped down once again as she slipped her hand free. She might have thought that one touch was enough to show she'd forgiven him, or she might have been behaving as Mrs. Willow would, politely accepting his support as she rose and no more. Damnation, he could not
tell.
How much was acting, he wondered, and how much was the truth?

She turned toward McGraw, and at once the man seized her hand, not bothering to wait for Rivers to present her.

“Mrs. Willow, your servant,” he said, bowing and kissing the air over the back of her hand. “I am enchanted to make your acquaintance at last. I have heard so much about you.”

“This is Mr. McGraw of the Russell Street Theatre, madam,” Rivers said brusquely, introducing them even though it was now unnecessary. “Mr. McGraw, Mrs. Cassandra Willow.”

“I am honored, Mr. McGraw,” Lucia murmured. Her accent was impeccable in those few words, and even Rivers would have sworn she'd been raised in Portman Square. “You are most kind to come so far from London on my account.”

“Not at all, Mrs. Willow,” McGraw said. He was freely ogling Lucia's breasts, and it took every last scrap of Rivers's willpower not to strike the man senseless. “The honor and the pleasure are entirely mine.”

“Indeed,” said Rivers curtly. “Pray do not forget our earlier discussion, McGraw.”

At once the manager released Lucia's hand, and he smiled blandly at Rivers. “I recall it, my lord. My memory for such things is surpassingly good.”

“I trust it shall continue that way,” Rivers grumbled. McGraw had no right to stare at Lucia like that, and yet Rivers himself had no real right to regard her as his to defend, either.

He should be concentrating on her audition, looking for any little ways he could assist her and letting her show herself off to the best advantage. He'd anticipated this moment as one more important step in her education and the culmination of his teaching, as well as the wager. He'd expected it would be a triumph they'd share. He'd expected to enjoy it, too, and celebrate like any proud tutor would with a prize student.

Yet instead he was behaving like a bad-tempered, defensive, selfish boor, out of sorts and possessive and generally miserable. He'd always prided himself on doing and saying the right thing, but today, where Lucia was concerned, he couldn't seem to do anything right.

Frustrated and disgusted with himself, he looked down, and felt her hand lightly on his arm. Swiftly he glanced at her, her dark eyes bright with the familiar anticipation and eagerness that was hers alone.

“Shall we begin, my lord?” she asked softly, the flicker of uncertainty in her voice unmistakable, and enough to melt his own misgivings. “That is, if it pleases you.”

“It does,” he said, and it did. If he loved her, he could do nothing less. He forced himself to smile, the warmth of her gaze making everything better. “Begin whenever you please, Mrs. Willow.”

Lucia smiled in return, her heart racing. For a few awful moments, she'd felt sure Rivers had intended to stop her audition before it had begun. After they'd parted earlier this morning, she'd worried that he might lose interest in this part of the wager and not bother to welcome McGraw when he arrived.

What she hadn't expected, however, was that he'd suddenly become so overprotective, even territorial; her thoughtful, genial golden lion had shown his teeth when McGraw appeared, and the transformation shocked her. In the tiring room she'd seen what happened when men became like this, blustering and posturing over a woman, and it never ended well. It made no sense to her for him to behave like this now, especially when so much was at stake, and his tight-lipped smile did not comfort her.

“You are certain, my lord?” she asked, striving to keep the anxiety from her voice as she pressed her hand lightly on his arm. She had planned to keep physically apart from Rivers in McGraw's company, wanting things as formal as possible between them for the sake of the audition, but she couldn't help herself now. She wanted to reassure him as best she could, and herself, too. “You are ready for the audition to proceed?”

He covered her hand with his own, and his smile thawed a fraction. “Whenever you are ready, Mrs. Willow, and the best of luck to you.”

“Yes, Mrs. Willow, let us begin,” McGraw said, impatiently clapping his hands together. “According to his lordship's letter, you have prepared the tragic role of Ophelia, from
Hamlet.
I assume you know both the monologues and the dialogues for the part, yes?”

“Oh, yes,” Lucia said. She slipped her hand away from Rivers's arm and turned toward the manager. She must focus on her audition now, and concentrate on everything McGraw said to her. “I have learned the entire play by heart, sir, and not just my own lines.”

“Very well.” McGraw pulled a battered, unbound copy of the play—the antithesis of Rivers's elegantly bound edition—from inside his coat and smoothed the curled edges flat over his knee. “A small test of your memory. I'll say one line, and you say the one that follows.”

“That's hardly a useful test,” Rivers protested. “She'd never be called upon to speak lines that were not hers.”

“I can do it, my lord,” Lucia said quickly, determined to prove it not only to McGraw, but to Rivers as well. “You know I can. Try me, Mr. McGraw.”

McGraw nodded, flipping through the pages.
“ ‘How can that be, when you have the voice of the king / himself for your succession in Denmark?' ”

“ ‘Ay, sir, but, While the grass grows,—the proverb / is something musty,' ”
Lucia said without hesitation.

McGraw grunted. “Here's another, then.
‘What act / That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?' 
”

Lucia smiled, recognizing the line in an instant, and knowing what followed, too. “ 
‘Look here, upon this picture, and on this, / The counterfeit presentment of two brothers.'
Shall I continue, Mr. McGraw?”

“That shall do, Mrs. Willow.” McGraw nodded with approval. “I wish all my company could do as well, but most, particularly the actresses, are too idle to bother.”

Lucia dipped a small curtsey in acknowledgment, grateful that the first test had been so easy—or at least easy for her.

“Now let us see how you fare with your own lines,” McGraw continued. “Pray go stand a distance away, by that window, if you please, and speak Ophelia's speech beginning
‘O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!' 
”

She made a small curtsey to the two men, and walked slowly across the room to the window, as McGraw had requested, using the time to compose herself. She didn't miss the irony of the speech the manager had chosen, for it was the same one that Rivers had first given her to learn in the carriage from London. That had been less than a month ago, and how much she'd learned since then.

It hadn't been just the tricks of acting and accents and standing properly, but of the magic of poetry, of drama, of passion. Only Rivers could have taught her those, and only she could have learned them so well from him. Now when she took a final breath, raised her head, and turned toward the two seated men, the familiar words reverberated with that same poetry, drama, and passion, and, as Ophelia would have done, her entire small frame trembled with the meaning.

“O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

The Courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword,

Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

Th' observ'd of all observers, quite, quite down!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That suck'd the honey of his music vows,

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason

Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh,

That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth

Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me

T'have seen what I have seen, see what I see.”

She finished the last line, and forcibly returned to being Mrs. Willow. The speech ended the scene for Ophelia; there was nothing more she could or should say, and so she waited for McGraw's reaction. She didn't dare look at Rivers, fearing the emotions of the role could spill over into her own.

“Impressive,” McGraw said blandly. “Another.
‘How now, Ophelia!' 
”

It was the prompt for Ophelia's most challenging scene, and her last in the play. Lucia had guessed McGraw would request it, which was why she'd chosen to wear this gown scattered with wildflowers, as much a costume as she'd have.

In the scene, Ophelia had lost her wits from grief and had become mad, which as Lucia had quickly learned, was not nearly so easy to do as it would seem. Raving like a lunatic Bedlamite wouldn't do. She had to be poignantly mad, as Rivers had explained, with the kind of madness that makes audiences weep, not wriggle with discomfort.

The hardest part for Lucia were the lines that Ophelia was supposed to sing. The same affliction that made it impossible to dance likewise made her hopeless at following a tune, but she and Rivers had devised a kind of singsong way of speaking the lines that he assured her was far more affecting than if she'd sung them perfectly. Now all she could do was pray that Rivers had been right, and that she wouldn't make a fool of herself.

She spread her hands open, tipped her head to one side, and began the first song.

“How should I your true love know

From another one?

By his cockle hat and staff,

And his sandle shoon
.”

To her relief, McGraw didn't laugh, but read the next lines that belonged to Queen Gertrude, and then, further along, to King Claudius, too. As the scene continued, she forgot her first nervousness, forgot McGraw, and forgot the importance of this audition. Instead she became the pitiful Ophelia, grieving her much-loved father and scorned by the prince who had seduced and abandoned her. The further she went along, the more the old-fashioned words seemed to describe her own situation with Rivers.

“Alack, and fie for shame!

Young men will do't, if they come to't;

By cock, they are to blame.”

Quoth she, “Before you tumbled me,

You promised me to wed.”

“So would I ha'done, by younder sun,

An thou hadst not come to my bed.”

Of course she was no noblewoman and Rivers would never have promised to marry her, but she now keenly understood the loss and betrayal that Ophelia must have felt. By the time she spoke the last lines of her scene and made her exit in a melancholy daze as the part required, she felt both drained and overwhelmed. With a shudder of emotion, she closed her eyes for a long moment to recover, and then turned back toward the two men who were her audience.

Without thinking she sought Rivers's reaction first. She hoped for a nod or a smile of approval, the judgment she'd come to expect. The smile was there, but in his eyes she saw her own emotions reflected: pain, loss, confusion, and love.

Love.

“Mrs. Willow, you were marvelous,” McGraw was saying, the sharp crack of his applause enough to make Lucia finally look away from Rivers. “If you can repeat that on my stage, I shall have crowds weeping in the stalls.”

His praise was far more than she'd dared hope for, and she pressed her hands to her cheeks with amazement.

“Thank—thank you, Mr. McGraw,” she stammered, crossing the room to join the men. “That is, I am most grateful for this opportunity.”

“Nonsense,” the manager said, tucking his playbook back into one pocket of his coat, and pulling a well-thumbed almanac from another. “It's I who must be grateful to his lordship for recommending you to me. I'll admit that I was skeptical, my lord, but this lady has made fools of all my doubts.”

“I did not exaggerate,” Rivers said, his gaze not leaving Lucia. “Mrs. Willow's gifts are worthy of the highest of praise.”

“That they are,” McGraw said absently, flipping through the pages of his almanac. “I do not ordinarily approve a full staging of a play for a single-night benefit, but under the circumstances, I will have the costumes and scenes from our last
Hamlet
brought from storage. Mr. Lambert will be your Danish prince; he could speak the role in his sleep. Will Thursday next be an agreeable date to you, my lord?”

Lucia gasped. Next Thursday seemed so soon.

“Thursday next,” Rivers repeated, the earlier edge that had been in his voice gone, and replaced by his usual well-bred reserve. “That's six days from today.”

“It is, my lord,” McGraw said, frowning down at the almanac. “Thursday evening for the benefit, with rehearsals on Tuesday and Wednesday. In your letter you had mentioned that you wished the performance to take place before the end of the month.”