Joan Wolf (10 page)

“It will be different from the usual portrayal,” Jessica had said, “but it has to be, I think. We are both of us much younger than the actors who usually do
Macbeth.
Not that Kean is old, but somehow he never manages to look very young, does he?”

Garreg thought of Kean’s Romeo and chuckled.

“No.”

“Well, I certainly can’t play Lady Macbeth as the fiendish devil that Mrs. Siddons made so famous. It wouldn’t look right. I shall play her as a young woman who loves her husband and who wants, desperately, to see him king. Her weakness is that she does not understand the consequences of the murder she pushes him to commit.”

“You don’t think she dominates him, then?” he had asked carefully.

“I think there is a balance to the play, Lewis,” she answered. “I do not want to dominate it. Macbeth must be a strong man or her love for him makes no sense—she, certainly, is a strong woman. She is able to influence him due to the fact that he loves her also. I see them as two ambitious, proud people who, tragically, destroy each other.”

His hazel eyes had blazed. “Let us get started then.”

But rehearsals had proved frustrating. Jessica liked to have all of her movements worked out before she went on stage, and her actions, for this play, depended on another actor as they never had before. It was the relationship between Macbeth and his wife that interested her, and she felt as if she were working in a vacuum. She and Lewis Garreg finally sat down together to decide on their movements, but the carpenters were working in the theatre and it was noisy, so Jessica suggested they go to Montpelier Square where they could work without interruption.

They worked all of Wednesday afternoon and made excellent progress. By Thursday they were ready to rehearse the first three acts. They had not gotten through Act One when, unnoticed, Linton walked in. He watched in silence as a burly young man put his arms around Jessica. “My dearest love,” a deep, rich voice intoned. The young man looked down into her face. “Duncan comes here tonight,” he said, and Jessica’s eyes, looking past him, widened.

“Philip!” she said in astonishment, and the burly young man jumped.

Linton looked steadily back at their two startled faces. “I appear to have come at an inopportune moment.”

“Well, you did, rather,” Jessica replied candidly. “We were rehearsing. May I present Lewis Garreg, Philip, who is to play
Macbeth
with me next week. Lord Linton, Lewis.”

Lewis Garreg was extremely uncomfortable. He knew, of course, about Jessica’s relationship with Linton, and he did not at all care for the expression in Linton’s very blue eyes. “We have been working on the play, my lord,” he hastened to second Jessica. “I hope you do not mind?”

“Did you want me for some reason, my lord?” said Jessica in a deceptively gentle voice. She did not care for Linton’s look either, and she felt her temper rising.

“I came to see if you cared to go driving with me.” There was an audible note of anger in the usually soft tones of his voice.

Their eyes met and locked, and Lewis Garreg instinctively dropped his own gaze. When he looked up again he saw two people whose faces were calm, assured and devoid of passion, but he had seen the anger in those two pairs of eyes now so veiled and cool, and he closed his book with an audible thump. “I’ll be going, Jess,” he said to her. “I’ll see you at the theatre tomorrow. Good day, my lord.” With considerable dignity, considering its haste, Lewis Garreg made his departure, leaving Jessica and Linton alone together.

Chapter Thirteen

Love is a great and mighty lord

—
GEORGE
PEELE

There was silence in the room until they heard the front door close behind him. Then Linton said, “Your
Macbeth
will be a sensation if that was a sample.”

“Would you care to explain what you mean by that remark, my lord?” she asked in a brittle voice.

“I mean that you and that actor looked very cozy,” he said, a grim look about his mouth.

A deep, familiar coldness came over Jessica as she looked bleakly back at him. Just so had she stood many times before, alone and in bitter opposition to her stepfather. As she stiffened her back against Linton he took two steps closer to her and halted. A shaft of pale sunlight from the window fell on his thick blond hair and illuminated his grim, white face.

Her eyes widened for a moment, arrested, and it suddenly was as though the veil that had blurred her vision for so long had ripped away and she was standing, naked and defenseless, before the frightening truth. She took a deep, shuddering breath. Her throat ached. All her anger died away, to be replaced by a despair so absolute that it withered her soul. It was pain to look at him. Her eyes fell. “I’ll pack and be gone by morning,” she said tonelessly.

He had seen her eyes before the lids came down. “What is it, Jess?” he asked, his voice gentler than it had been. “What is the matter?”

She shook her head hopelessly. She could not tell him. She could not even blame him for thinking of her and Lewis Garreg as he did.

“Do you understand the consequences?” he had asked her on their first night together. She had not, she thought now, with pain a hard knot inside her. Never in a million years had she dreamed that she would fall in love with him. She made a small gesture that was like the cry of a lost child. “I’ll go,” she repeated doggedly.

He came closer. “Where will you go?”

Her mind went blank at the question. Where? Home? But she still did not have the money for the mortgage. To another man? Blindly she shook her head and wrapped her arms protectively around herself. She could not answer him.

He put his hand under her chin and tilted her face up. Her eyes, wide and distraught with unhappiness, met his. The cool composure that had been her shell for so long was destroyed. “Do you love this Garreg fellow?” he asked painfully.

“No!” She stepped back, away from him, away from the temptation to throw herself into his arms, to tell him it was he she loved. It was no good, she thought. Love was not in the bargain they two had made.

Linton was silent, his blue eyes strangely impersonal, looking into her eyes as if he were trying to find the truth that was hidden there. She stared back as if hypnotized by that steady and intent gaze.

 “Jess,” he finally said quietly, “why won’t you wear my necklace?”

She tore her eyes from his and turned to walk to the window. She rested her forehead against the cold glass and closed her eyes. “Because it makes me feel like a whore,” she said wearily. “Which is a very stupid reason, I know, since that is exactly what I am.”

There was a stunned silence, then he said in a voice that was barely audible, “Oh my God.”

She didn’t move and he came across to where she stood at the window. “Do you think that is how I regard you?” There was a note in his voice that pierced the fog of despair that was engulfing her, and she turned slowly to face him.

“How do you regard me?” she asked simply, all defenses shattered.

“I regard you as the woman I love,” he answered, and reached out to pull her into his arms. The relief she felt was so intense that her knees buckled. He held her close and she pressed against him. She was shaking.

“Philip,” she said. “Philip.”

“I gave you that necklace because I love you,” he was saying. “I’d spin the moon out of the sky to give you if I thought you wanted it.”

“I just want you.” Her voice was muffled by his shoulder.

She felt so slim and light in his arms. ‘Tm sorry, Jess. I’m sorry, darling.” His lips were against her temple. Then, suddenly, his hands were hard on her shoulders, holding her away from him. She looked up to meet his eyes. “Don’t ever say that about yourself again. Do you hear me?”

Mutely she nodded.

He smiled a little, and she managed a faint smile in return. “Do you still want to go driving?” she asked huskily.

“No,” he replied, his hand lightly touching her mouth. “I have another idea.”

They went upstairs to the bedroom and stayed there until noon the next day.

* * * *

For Jessica the world had changed. When she had embarked on this enterprise her intentions had been solely monetary. It had never once crossed her mind that she might fall in love. But she had never imagined that a man like Philip Romney existed in the world.

He was a man she could trust. She had known that, instinctively, from the moment they first had met. With everyone else she had ever known she had had to play a role; she had had to be strong and resolute, fearless and independent. For some reason only he had the power to force her outside her defenses. He had caused her to strip away all her protections, layer by layer, until she was left vulnerable and defenseless before him.

And she was happy as she had never been before. She let go her hold on herself, she relinquished herself to him. All her doors at last were open. “I love you,” she whispered to him deep in the night. “You own me, body and soul, do you know that?”

His mouth was on her, feeling her silken smoothness as she lay there, open to him as a flower lies open to the sun. His voice, when it came, was husky and unsteady. “The things a man owns, my darling, hold him far more securely than he holds them,” he replied.

* * * *

When they woke for the last time the sun was slanting into the room through the drawn blind. She stirred in his arms. Her eyes focused dreamily on the bedpost, and she lay still, listening absorbedly to some inner voice. “I’m hungry,” she said finally in a surprised tone. Then, more strongly, “I’m starving. What time is it?”

“I don’t know,” he said calmly, as if it was not of the slightest importance, and she sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. The minutes ticked by.

“If I don’t get some food soon I am going to expire,” she said at last in a sepulchral tone, and he chuckled.

“We’ll get up.” They didn’t move. She listened to the beating of his heart, so steady and reassuring. She yawned a little, and he kissed her lightly and sat up. “I’ll ring for one of the servants.”

He went across to the wardrobe and pulled out a green velvet robe and tossed it to her. “You’d better put that on,” he advised, sliding his arms into his own dressing gown.

They had breakfast brought up to the bedroom. Jessica ate hugely.
It seemed to her she had never been this hungry before. By the time they had finished, Linton’s valet had arrived from Linton House in Grosvenor Square. Linton had sent for him to bring a change of clothes. He used the dressing room off Jessica’s room while she dressed in the bedroom. When he was attired in biscuit pantaloons, well-polished Hessian boots, and a blue coat of Weston’s superb tailoring, he went into her room. She was seated in front of the dressing table having her hair done.

“I have to go down to Holland House this afternoon,” he told her. “Would you like to go to dinner at Grillon’s this evening?”

“I would like that very much,” she assured him as her maid put the last pin in her hair. “I’m going to the theatre this afternoon.
Macbeth
opens next week and Mr. Harris is probably having apoplexy about now.”

He grinned. “I hope that Garreg fellow hasn’t reported that
I’ve murdered you.”

“I’m sure Miss Favell is hoping,” she replied, referring to her understudy.

“I’ll drive you there if you’re ready,” he offered, and she rose promptly and accompanied him downstairs.

He was driving his grays. The winter day was cold and clear, making driving in the open phaeton a pleasure. She sat close beside him and neither of them spoke. He watched the road through the ears of the horses, driving with steady attention through the busy London streets. Only now and then did she turn to look at him as he studied the road with grave intent. One of her hands was in her muff, the other, gloved in soft kid, lay relaxed on her lap. Without looking at her he put his own upon it and covered it. She gave a faint smile but said nothing. When they reached Covent Garden she disappeared quickly inside the theatre, and he drove on toward Kensington.

Chapter Fourteen

What’s done is done.

—
WILLIAM
SHAKESPEARE

Jessica worked as hard as she ever had in her life during the following week. Her own happiness with Linton distracted her and she found herself having a very difficult time getting a grasp on Lady Macbeth. She had built the character, as she always did, from the outside in. She knew what gestures she would make, how she would hold her head, where she would move on the stage and when. But that inner spark of concentration, which enabled her to project the essence of the character through this outward guise she had created, was missing.

She rehearsed with dogged persistence, spending the whole day in the theatre and then the night with Linton. She was looking very beautiful, with a silvery radiance to her face that drew men’s eyes like a magnet. She tried to concentrate on
Macbeth
but her thoughts kept slipping away to rest on lazy, laughing blue eyes, strong, long-fingered hands, a mouth full of determination and of humor, that yet could look so tender .. .

“You’re on, Jess,” said Thomas Harris testily, and she pulled herself from her reverie to hear Garreg repeating, “How now? What news?”

With an apologetic glance at Harris she walked on stage and crossed to Lewis Garreg. “He has almost supped,” she said clearly. “Why have you left the chamber?” But ten minutes later her mind had wandered again and she missed another cue.

* * * *

Linton was surprised by the amount of time Jessica put in preparing for the opening. He himself had spent one whole afternoon giving her her cues so that she could get her lines down. “Somehow one doesn’t think of actors having to memorize a part,” he said to her.

Jessica smiled, white teeth flashing in the grave intentness of her face. “How did you think we learned the lines, then?”

“I didn’t think about it at all. One just assumed that you were born knowing them, I suppose.”

“It would be much easier if we were,” she replied fervently. Then, a minute later, as she missed a line in the murder scene, “Damn! I can’t ever remember having such trouble committing a part to memory. And Lady Macbeth has far fewer lines than Juliet or Rosalind.” She closed her eyes, frowning. “Let’s do it again.”