Joan Wolf (12 page)

 It couldn’t be, he thought involuntarily.

 
What
couldn’t be? another part of his mind asked objectively as he followed Linton across the floor.

  Lord George did not answer himself. He only knew he was conscious of a wish that Lady Maria Selsey was not indisposed at the moment. He had a horrible sinking feeling that Linton was in deeper than was safe and might very well have to be rescued.

 Jessica, unaware that she had alarmed Lord George, greeted him with friendliness. And she laughed at Bertram when he said, “You scared me to death, Jessica!”

“Indeed you did,” a smooth voice said next to her elbow, and she turned to find Lord Alden looking at her with a mixture of speculation and desire that she found peculiarly repulsive.

“Did
I, my lord?” she asked stiffly.

He smiled and her eyes narrowed. Bertram’s attention had been momentarily distracted, and for a brief minute she and Lord Alden might have been alone. “Linton can’t possibly appreciate a woman like you,” he said softly.

“And you think you can?” Her voice expressed nothing but a kind of wary contempt.

“I am sure of it.” His voice hardened. “Whatever he is giving you, I’ll double it.”

Slowly she shook her head. “No, you won’t,” she said, and now her voice was under its familiar control, aloof and contained. Linton put a hand on her shoulder and she turned back to him with relief.

“I’ve asked Mr. Garreg to accompany us to a champagne supper at the Grillon. Some of the rest of the cast are coming and a few of my own friends.”

She smiled with genuine pleasure. “Thank you, Philip. This is really Lewis’s triumph, you know.”

“No, it is not,” he replied soberly. “Garreg was marvelous, that I agree. But you were more than that. And you know it.”

Her lips curved a little, but she made no reply. In fact she said nothing about the performance until the large company was seated around a table in the Grillon’s private dining room and toasts were being made.

 “To many more performances like the one we saw tonight,” said Thomas Harris, raising his champagne glass to Jessica and Lewis Garreg. After the toast was drunk Jessica got to her feet.

“I thank you very much, all of you, for your kind words. I have an announcement to make that I am afraid will make some of you unhappy. Tonight was my last performance. I am retiring from the theatre.”

Cries of protest and of incredulity rose from every pair of lips. Of all the table, only Jessica and Linton remained silent. She sat down, impervious to the noise and the pleas around her, aware only of the man who sat so quietly at the opposite end of the long table. He was looking at the tablecloth in front of him as if it contained the answer to a secret he had long wanted to unlock. Finally, aware of her gaze, he looked up, and the sudden lift and turn of his head was as direct as a touch. Her face relaxed a little and he raised a reassuring eyebrow.

“I will not change my mind,” she said then.

“But
why?”
Thomas Harris almost wailed. “For God’s sake, Jessica,
why?”

“I am tired of acting,” she said simply. “I don’t want to do it any more.”

He stared at her, first with exasperation, then incredulity, then astonishment. She meant it. Jessica O’Neill, who had all of London at her feet, was leaving the theatre. And he thought he knew why. He directed his gaze, filled with reproach, at the Earl of Linton.

Linton’s face was inscrutable. With seemingly little effort he got the upset dinner party back on its proper path again, although it was distinctly more subdued than it had been before Jessica’s announcement.

It had been raining steadily all evening, and while they had been at supper the rain had turned to sleet. Jessica and Linton made a dash for the carriage, she with the hood of her velvet cloak pulled over her head. His head was bare and once they were safely inside the carriage she cast a reproachful look toward it, unmistakably bright in the darkness next to her. “You are going to contract pneumonia one day the way you go around bareheaded in all sorts of weather. It isn’t even fashionable.”

“A little damp isn’t going to hurt me,” he said with slow amusement.

She raised her hand to his hair. “That is not a little damp,” she said severely.

“If I contract pneumonia you will have the pleasure of saying,
‘I told you so,’ “ he replied serenely.

She leaned back and looked at him, but he was only a shadow in the darkness of the coach. “When I first met you I thought you were the most gentle, patient, good-natured man I had ever known. You are also, I have since discovered, obstinate as a pig.”

“What an odd simile,” he mused thoughtfully. “Why, I wonder, should pigs be more obstinate than other animals?”

Reluctantly she laughed. “You are impossible.”

“My sister tells me I am spoiled rotten,” he said
in
a detached, objective tone.

“You are,” she agreed cordially. “And I have no doubt your sister is partly to blame.”

He reached out and took her hand. “No. She blames it all on my mother.” He pulled her toward him, then slid an arm around her shoulders. Her hood slipped back and his lips found the warm spot just below her ear where he knew she liked to be kissed. “Will you spoil me, Jess?” he murmured.

“Why not?” she whispered in reply. “The damage is already done.”

They got back to Montpelier Square at about two in the morning. Jessica had told her maid not to wait up for her, so Linton undid the hooks of her dress. She stepped out of it, smoothed its silk folds, and went to hang it in the wardrobe. He took his own coat off and laid it on a chair. “You gave the finest performance I have ever seen tonight,” he said as he slowly undid his shirt. “Are you quite sure you won’t miss the stage?”

She took the pins out of her hair. “Quite sure.” There was silence in the room; the only sounds were the crackling of her brush as she pulled it through her loosened hair and the sleet pelting against the window. “Why, Jess?” he said at last “Why did you do it?”

She thought for a minute, her head bent a little, her brow grave.
“
I have been thinking of what you said earlier, about the likelihood of someone recognizing me. And the reasons I gave to Mr. Harris are also true. I enjoyed doing
Macbeth
tonight. I’m glad I did it well. But I don’t want to do it again.”

“You won’t miss it?” he asked again.

She turned on the dressing table chair until she was facing him. His hair was ruffled from her hand, his eyes the intense blue emotion always turned them. “What are you worried about, Philip?” she asked, real puzzlement in her voice. “Do you think I’m going to pine away once I’m removed from the excitement and the applause?”

“Something like that,” he replied evenly.

She smiled a little wryly. “All my life I have been a rather solitary person. I grew up in the country. I am not accustomed to being surrounded by a great number of people. I won’t miss it.”

“Would you like to live in the country again, Jess?” he asked, and his voice was deadly serious.

She looked at him, and her heart ached. He would give her whatever she wanted. She knew that. If she said she wanted to race horses he would buy her a stud. If she wanted to live in the country, he would buy her an estate. He would give her anything, except what she wanted most of all. He could not give her that.

 Any chance she ever had of sharing a normal life with him was gone, irrevocably. She was Jessica O’Neill. An actress. His mistress. There was no way in the world she could ever become his wife. So she smiled around the pain and said,  “I am happy as I am.”

He came and knelt before her. “You will stay here with me?”

She cupped his face between her hands. “Yes.”

“I have an idea for the future. Will you trust me to work it out for us?”

“Yes,” she said again. She looked into his face, held so lightly between her two hands. “I plan to keep myself very busy,” she said softly.

“What are you going to do?”

“Spoil you,” she returned, her mouth curving tenderly.

His face took on a look she recognized and her heart began to race. “Are you now?” he said. His hands came up to cover hers and move them to his mouth.

“Yes,” Her eyes were held, drowning, in his.

He kissed the palms of her hands. “Good.” He rose and pulled her unresisting body up, effortlessly, into his arms. “Then let’s go to bed,” he said, and once again she said, “Yes.”

Chapter Sixteen

Yet therein now doth lodge a noble Peer,

Great England’s glory, and the world’s wide wonder,

—
EDMUND
SPENSER

Three weeks later Linton took Jessica with him to dinner at Holland House. Lord Holland had long been one of his favorite friends and whenever Linton was in London he invariably spent a good deal of time at the stately red brick Jacobean mansion in Kensington. The most remarkable men of the time were often to be found crowded around the dinner table at Holland House. There one could find statesmen, writers, artists, and distinguished foreigners.

Holland House was the intellectual center of the Whig culture that was Linton’s heritage. He enjoyed evenings in the long library, where vigorous and cultivated discussions passed from politics to history, from history to literature, with a freedom and intellectual depth to be found nowhere else in England.

Holland House was the only one of the houses he usually visited to which Linton felt he could bring Jessica. Many of the ladies in the highest of London society were notably promiscuous, but there was a subtle line between what society condoned and what it condemned. Jessica had crossed that line when she went on the stage.

Lady Holland, however, was another person who had violated society’s rules of decorum. She was a divorced woman. She had run away from her first husband, Sir Godfrey Webster, and had lived with Lord Holland openly before her divorce became final. Although she was hostess to some of the most brilliant gatherings in Europe, she was still not received by the most rigid ladies who ruled the ton. So the rule for an invitation to Holland House was talent, genius, and wit, not social status.

When Linton had asked her if he might bring Jessica she had looked surprised at first but then she readily agreed. The high-handed bossy manner she adopted with most people was noticeably softened whenever Lady Holland spoke to Linton. “By all means, Linton,” she had said cordially. “Lord Holland and I shall be happy to have such a brilliant addition to our company.”

Lady Holland’s surprise was slight compared to Jessica’s when Linton told her of the invitation. “You can’t be serious,” she said incredulously. “I can’t go there.”

“Why not? You are invited.”

“But I’m an
actress,
Philip. I can’t be received by society.”

“You are not an actress any longer,” he replied. “I want you to meet Lord Holland. He is one of my dearest friends. And he wants to meet you. So where is the difficulty?”

“I can’t go,” she repeated.

“You are going,” he said flatly. His jaw was set in a way she had seen only once or twice before. There was a tense pause.

“All right,” she capitulated faintly, a trifle bewildered to find herself so helpless and pliant before his determination.

He smiled with warm approval. “Good. You’ll surprise yourself and have a good time. I promise you.”

He was right. Jessica had never experienced anything quite like Holland House. The dining room table was jammed and she ate as best she could, her arms glued to her sides. At one point Lady Holland loudly demanded that Mr. Parkinson change places with Mr. Rogers and both gentlemen complied with much good-natured grumbling.

Jessica sat at Lord Holland’s right, and her initial nervousness disappeared quite soon under the influence of his infectious good humor.  They spoke about Linton, who was jammed in halfway down the table from them. “It is a pity Philip is so uninterested in politics,” Lord Holland said to her. “Lord Grey and I have been trying for years to get him to take a hand, with little success I might add.”

“Do you and Philip agree on politics, my lord?” Jessica asked cautiously. She did not think Linton was uninterested in the subject. She did know that Lord Holland headed the Foxite faction of the Whig party. He and Lord Grey had dedicated themselves to the preservation of the ideas and policies of Charles James Fox, who also happened to be Lord Holland’s uncle. Charles Fox, however, had been dead for six years, and the world had changed considerably since his demise. Linton might love Lord Holland as a friend, but Jessica did not think he loved his friend’s politics.

“We have a few minor disagreements,” Lord Holland assured her cheerfully. “Philip’s concern for his agricultural workers sometimes overbalances his native good sense. But then Lord Grey and I certainly are in favor of reform. There can be little disagreement on that issue.”

“I should think not,” Jessica murmured quietly.

He raised his black, bushy eyebrows. “Are you a reformer too, Miss O’Neill?”

“I grew up in the country, my lord, so I am aware of the hardships country people are facing these days. The Corn Laws benefit the landowner and large farmer at the expense of everybody else. Farm laborers who are fortunate enough to have an employer like Philip have cottages and gardens where they can grow their own vegetables and keep a pig and some chickens. Those who are not so fortunate live marginal existences on bread, butter, and half-rotten potatoes.”

Lord Holland was nodding in agreement. “It is disgraceful, certainly, and all too often the result of cits and commercials buying estates and trying to set themselves up as landed gentry. The country is filled with nabobs, contractors, commissioners, loan-jobbers, retired generals and admirals. They have no care for their own people, as we do.

Take Philip for example. He is a nobleman who lives up to his title. He has a great sense of responsibility toward those beneath him or in his charge, and he wholeheartedly protects the people who work for him. He is just, charitable, and generous. To want to hand the government of the country from
him
to the likes of a manufacturer from Yorkshire is what I have no patience with.”