Drury Lane Darling (3 page)

Her hostess was saved the exertion of being polite in the face of such levity by the arrival of the tea tray. “You may pour, Pamela,” she said, to show the actress who had pride of place in her saloon.

“Do you get to the theater very often, Mees Calmstock?” the marquise asked.

“Pamela doesn’t attend the theater. She was very well raised,” Lady Raleigh replied, and passed a plate of biscuits to the actress.

The marquise accepted one with a gracious smile. She turned her head to Breslau and winked, covering her smile with a biscuit.

“Oh, I say, Mama!” Nigel objected. “Everyone attends the theater. It’s not like the old days.”

Pamela gave a conspiratorial smile in the general direction of the marquise. “I should love to see you perform sometime, madam—onstage, I mean,” she said daringly.

“I shall send you tickets for my debut in tragedy,” the marquise promised, with a long look at Breslau, whose interest had wandered to Miss Comstock. Was it possible there was a spark of wit in Nigel’s little lump?

“Well now, that should satisfy you, Lady Raleigh,” he said. “Miss Comstock will have a long wait to attend the theater if that is to be her first visit. Your next play is to be Crowell’s comedy,
The Amazing Invalid,
Fleur, as you very well know. He’s a new writer of great talent.”

“I think not, Wes,” Lady Chamaude replied, and accepted a cup of tea. “When you, who haven’t approved of any writer since
Beowulf
was written, start praising an unknown, I know what you are about. You have found a silly farce for me. My next performance will be a tragedy. I have quite made up my mind.”

Lady Raleigh’s nostrils tightened to see the actress on such intimate terms with Breslau. Breslau’s name was Westbrook Hume, but even his close friends called him Breslau. It was only family who were allowed the intimacy of Wes. She never used that nickname herself.

“But I bought the
Invalid
for you. It’s a marvelous role,” he exclaimed.

The marquise gave him a coy look. “I hear they’re trying to find someone to play Desdemona in
Othello
at the Garden.”

“That’s hardly a starring role for a lady. The Moor is the star.”

“Desdemona gets to die, and that can be the making of a tragic actress,” the marquise countered. “It’s a story much to my liking. Secret marriage, schemes and intrigues, jealousy, and, of course, in the end the men make a great mess of it all, just like real life. A lady would have handled it more adroitly. We are much better at intrigue, don’t you agree, Lady Raleigh?” she asked.

Lady Raleigh gave a snort of disgust. “It is precisely the sort of play I most despise. Why should I pay to watch the dissipation I avoid in my own live, and that of my family?”

The marquise gave her a glittering smile. “One might manage to free her own life of intrigue, if she has a taste for dullness, but how, pray, do you keep it from your family? Perhaps I should pose that question to the gentlemen,” she said, and cast a sly glance at Sir Aubrey.

He frowned and said evasively, “Some plays are well enough. I prefer a comedy myself.”

“Sheridan, the playwright—so clever—says tragedy is just comedy with the characters dying in the end instead of getting married.” Her infamous eyes flickered swiftly from Sir Aubrey to his dame. “Even marriage, I daresay, is not necessarily a guarantee of a happy ending.”

Pamela bit back a smile. Her hostess was silently fuming. Sir Aubrey looked as if he had swallowed a hot coal, and Nigel was fidgeting uncomfortably.

Only Lord Breslau appeared immune to the undercurrents at work in the room.

“But on the stage,” he said to the marquise, “we allow our disbelief to hang suspended and pretend all will be well. In any case, even a bad marriage leaves more hope than a set of corpses.”

The marquise considered this a moment. “Perhaps you are right, Wes. It’s true that husbands and wives seem unwilling to leave a marriage, however unhappy it is. They will go to great lengths to preserve the form, when the content is gone.”

Sir Aubrey was subjected to another penetrating shot from the marquise, and stirred restively in his chair. Lady Raleigh found the conversation not only unsavory but pointless. She was aware of her butler hovering beyond the doorway, which was a clue he wished to speak to her.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I must speak to Wetmore.”

“The butler,” Nigel explained to Lady Chamaude. “That would be about your wanting the downstairs bedchamber. The marquise always likes to sleep downstairs when she can,” he explained to the others. “Since we have a guest suite downstairs, I told her she might have it.”

“It is a foolish habit left over from the terror in France,” the lady said. “My dear husband was pulled from his bed in the dead of night and taken to the Bastille. I always felt if we had been sleeping downstairs we would have heard them come, and perhaps Henri might have escaped. To this day I still feel unsafe in an upstairs bedchamber. The past has a way of hanging about us,” she said sadly, just before she fixed Sir Aubrey with another of those peculiarly meaningful looks.

“You needn’t fear for your life at Belmont,” Nigel said heartily, and moved down to the end of the sofa to be closer to the marquise.

“I know it is foolishness on my part,” she agreed. “We actresses are a superstitious lot. I surround myself with good-luck charms. This shawl,” she said, holding up the elegant paisley garment, “is my good-luck piece. I never travel without it.”

The gentlemen smiled fondly at this evidence of ignorant superstition. Pamela regarded the shawl and noticed it looked remarkably new for a shawl that had done much traveling. The threads of the long silk fringe each hung separately. They would have bunched into unsightly clumps if the shawl were old. Its color, too, in shades of green and rose, matched the lady’s suit superbly, but would look quite at odds with other colors. An affectation, Pamela decided, and ascribed it to the marquise’s love of drama.

When Lady Chamaude wrapped the shawl over her shoulders, Nigel sprang up from the sofa to help her.
“Merci, chéri,”
she murmured with a soft glance. Pamela was extremely glad Lady Raleigh wasn’t there to see that look.

“I shall wear my good-luck charm when I go to the Garden to discuss playing Desdemona,” the marquise continued, directing her words to Breslau now. “I hear they are paying their leading ladies fifty pounds per performance. That was what Siddons made, at any rate.”

“We’ll discuss your salary at another time, Fleur,” he replied. “In any case, tragedy pays no more than comedy, if that is what you are implying.”

“A lady has to think of her future, when she has grown too old to perform.”

Sir Aubrey waited for her head to turn in his direction. On this occasion he was spared, but he knew in his bones the words were uttered for his benefit. She had come to hold him to ransom.

“Pardon me,” he said, and rose from his seat. “I see Dot is beckoning me from the hall.”

A short silence fell over the remaining company. “More tea, anyone?” Pamela asked.

Breslau strolled languidly toward the tea tray and held out his cup.

“Well, Miss Comstock,” Breslau said, with that heartiness reserved for invalids, poor relations, unattractive lumps of girls, and other social misfits, “I was happy to hear you are not averse to the theater.”

Pamela carefully filled his cup, and when she handed it to him, he noticed the lump had rather pretty eyes. They reminded him of his favorite cat’s eyes—a tawny topaz shade, wide-spaced in her pale face. Her nose, too, had a kittenish touch to it that set ill with his preconceptions of Miss Comstock.

“I don’t get many opportunities to attend, but I adore it.”

Breslau hesitated between a meaningless condolence and a joke. “That shows a lack of initiative on your part,” he said, opting for the latter.

She knew by this time that his conversation was unusual, and showed no surprise. “Does it? I thought it only betrayed my rustic abode. We don’t get many traveling players in the country.”

“This is true,” he nodded, assessing her quite openly.

“To show you we are not completely out of it, however, I can assure you I attended the theater just last week. Tuck’s Traveling Players gave us an excellent performance of
The Beggar’s Opera.”

Breslau stood holding his cup, undecided where to sit. He now took up a seat beside Pamela. “If you endured the entire performance, you are indeed an irreclaimable lover of the theater.”

“Have you actually heard of Tuck’s?”

“Worse, I’ve seen them perform, but with the excuse that it was in the line of duty. I cull performers from the traveling groups. Tuck’s has never yielded anything resembling the Flawless Fleur.”

“She’s wonderful, isn’t she? I never could understand the story of Helen of Troy till I saw her.”

“Fleur’s an intriguing cross between Helen of Troy and Lucrezia Borgia,” he said, with the unworthy aim of shocking her. She only looked confused. “You really ought to bestir yourself to attend the London Season.”

“If I had the sort of initiative you’re recommending I’d move to London, but my parents are so unimaginative. Papa feels he must be home to look after the farm. Sugar, cream?”

“Just sugar, please.” Breslau didn’t continue immediately. His eyes lingered over Miss Comstock’s lively face. The chit was no Incomparable, but she had a certain charm. He always preferred conversation to less animate pulchritude. “Nigel often speaks of you,” he said. What Nigel had failed to mention was that his intended was not in the first blush of youth. For himself, Breslau preferred a little maturity.

“You have already warned me. What does he say?” she asked bluntly.

Expecting some token of pleasure, Breslau was thrown for a loss by her question. “All manner of compliments. I shan’t repeat them, or—”

“Afraid I’ll dash this hot tea in your face?” she said, and smiled at his discomfiture. That had removed his haughty expression. “Never mind, Lord Breslau. The only thing he might have said in my favor is that I have ten thousand pounds, and am his mama’s goddaughter.”

“I shan’t repeat them, or your head will swell,” he continued, as though she hadn’t interrupted. Breslau examined her with disconcerting frankness, and noticed her head would have a hard time growing, confined as it was by that hair, all skinned into a bun. That gamine little face was crying out for curls. She was still young enough to make a charming ingénue.

Miss Comstock lifted her cup and sipped daintily. “It’s going to be a lovely weekend, don’t you think?” she said, setting her cup down.

He glanced toward the window, where a sullen and sunless sky bathed the landscape in gloom. “Are you speaking of the weather?”

“Hardly! I refer to the company.”

“You have bizarre taste, Miss Comstock. Like the weather, the party threatens to be stormy.”

“That’s exactly what I mean! Something exciting will happen, at last.” She lowered her voice. “You can’t imagine how boring these visits usually are. I had no idea the Flawless Fleur would be here.”

“And here I dared to imagine
my
presence added something to the pending excitement.”

She considered this a moment. “I shouldn’t think so. Actually your presence detracts from the intrigue, but I’m sure Lady Chamaude will enjoy your company excessively. Nigel won’t have her all to himself.”

“Nigel?” he asked, surprised.

“Oh,
you
thought of that, too. No, Sir Aubrey wouldn’t dare tackle her when his wife is on guard.”

Breslau felt a pronounced urge to exclaim, Miss Comstock! in the outraged accents of his spinster aunts. Then he saw the gleam of laughter in her topaz eyes, and feared he was going to speak as one shouldn’t to an innocent country lass.

“How old are you?” he asked instead.

“Twenty-two. What has that got to do with anything?”

“The parents are slow in bringing this match between you and Nigel to fruition.”

“Not really. Nigel is only twenty-two as well. It’s pretty ancient for a lady, of course, but the pragmatics of matchmaking decree that a gentleman of two and twenty is scarcely breeched. I expect we can stave them off for two more years, and by then I hope to have—” She stopped and bit her lip. Why was she rattling on so freely to this stranger?

“Found someone more to your liking?” he suggested.

“I’ve seen enough of marriage; I’m not eager to incarcerate myself. At twenty-four, I come in charge of my dowry. It was left to me by an aunt, and Papa can’t keep it from me.”

“Will it be a farm in the country, like the ladies of Llangollen?”

“Certainly not! I’ve had enough of that. I want to broaden myself in London. The theater, balls, the shops.”

“An intellectual,” he nodded. “Will you be setting up a bluestocking saloon?”

“I don’t own any blue stockings. Never mind smirking, Lord Breslau. I know what a bluestocking is,” she added sharply. “I have no intellectual pretensions. No, what I should like to do is live with my older brother, Harley. He’s an M.P., you must know.”

“I didn’t. Nigel failed to relate that in your favor. Would his wife condone such a
ménage à trois
?”

“He doesn’t have one at the moment, though two recent letters have mentioned a Miss Greenwood in such casual terms that I’m considerably concerned. In any case, I could always have my own apartment in their house, for I wouldn’t like to live all alone, with only some wretched spinster relative to keep me company.”

“You know, of course, what happens to young ladies who don’t nab a parti? They eventually grow into that dread species, the spinster relative, themselves.”

Pamela’s attention strayed to Nigel and the marquise. He was gazing into her eyes, besotted. “Would you mind rescuing him, Lord Breslau, before Lady Raleigh returns and catches him making a cake of himself?”

Breslau took up his cup. “With the greatest reluctance, Miss Comstock.” A quick frown of incomprehension flashed across her mobile face. “That was a compliment. I am fond of Fleur’s company.”

“Oh, but you prefer mine! How flattering!”