Tomorrow's Dreams (7 page)

With what she hoped was a nonchalant shrug, she gave him the same lie she'd given the opera company the night she'd announced her resignation, “I changed my plans a little, that's all.”

“A little?” He made a derisive noise. “Now, there's the understatement of the century.”

“Life in the theater can be very uncertain. Things happen, changes are made.”

Seth folded his arms across his chest and fixed her with his flinty stare. “So tell me, Princess. What ‘thing' happened that made you accept an engagement in this god-awful saloon?”

Blinking once, she looked away, knowing that it was hopeless to lie and impossible to tell the truth. Taking the only avenue left open, she replied, “I didn't write that letter to you. Therefore I don't owe you an explanation. As for what I'm doing here, well, I don't see why that is any of your concern.”

“As your brother's best friend, I consider it my duty to make it my concern.” His lips flattened into a grim line. “And regardless of your low opinion of me, I have too much respect for Jake to allow his sister to carry on like a common trollop.”

Penelope flinched as if struck. “How dare you! Jake will kill you when I tell him you called me a trollop!”

Seth emitted a bark of laughter. “Jake is a sensible man, and as such, he's not likely to kill me for stating the obvious.” He stared pointedly at her immodest attire. “No doubt he'll thank me for calling your lapse of morals to his attention.”

“You wouldn't dare risk his friendship by making such vile accusations!”

“Watch me.” Seth rose to his feet and stood looming over her like a dark specter of doom. “I remember seeing a telegraph office down the block. By train, it shouldn't take him more than a week to get here.” He gave her a final warning glance before turning to leave. “I'd hate to be in your shoes when he arrives. Perhaps he'll give you the beating you so richly deserve.”

Penelope hated the thought of being in her own shoes if her brother caught her within a hundred miles of a place like the Shakespeare. Not that Jake would beat her; he'd never laid a hand on her, though God knows her behavior had often merited it.

No. What made her sick with dread was the prospect of facing his disappointment. Having raised her after the death of their parents, she knew that he would blame himself as much as her when he discovered what a mess she'd made of her life. And she loved him too much to bring him such pain.

As Seth began to descend the stairs, she jumped to her feet and grasped his arm. “Wait.”

He paused to stare at her hand on his arm, his expression as revulsed as if it were rotted by gangrene. After a long moment, his gaze slid up to her face. With a grimace he looked away.

Acutely aware of the sordid picture she made with her heavily made-up face and garish attire, it took all her courage to say, “You once swore that you would do anything for me. You said that all I had to do was ask you.” Her expressive voice became soft, pleading. “Please, Seth. I'm asking now.”

“Only the illustrious Penelope Parrish”—he paused to stab her with his contemptuous gaze—“or should I call you Lorelei Leroux?—would have the audacity to remind me of my lovesick promise at a time like this.” His glare burned through her. “Sorry, Princess. You forfeited the right to that promise when you took a lover.”

“You know Julian wasn't my lover! He was my friend, nothing more. You simply didn't choose to understand the situation.”

“Nor do I care to now,” he retorted, shaking himself free from her restraining grip. “So don't ask for understanding, because I have none to give … least of all to you.”

Sharp, irrational pain gripped Penelope's heart at his words, and she was stunned to find tears in her eyes. “I guess I never realized just how much you loathe me,” she whispered.

“You still don't.”

Drawing her few remaining shreds of dignity around her like a tattered shawl, she made one final appeal. “Please, Seth. Can't you put your feelings for me aside for one moment and think of Jake? I know you care for him, and he you. Don't you see how it would devastate him to have to take sides against one of us?”

Lacking a skirt, she pleated the fabric of her full bloomers between her fingers, desperate to suppress her urge to latch on to his arm again. “And he would be forced to choose should you level such terrible accusations against me.”

“Do you think it would devastate him any less if I were to leave you here and you were to come to harm?”

“Of course not,” she admitted miserably.

“Then, it appears that I'm damned no matter what I do.”

Penelope looked up from the red flannel bunched between her fingers, shaking her head. “But it doesn't have to be like that.”

“Really?” He was looking down his nose at her in a way that told her that she, too, would be damned no matter what decision he should ultimately make.

Unnerved, she disentangled her fingers from her bloomers and raised her hand to her mouth to gnaw on one well-bitten nail. Between pacifying nibbles, she suggested, “You could let me return to San Francisco quietly and resume my old life. I promise I'll behave like a perfect lady. Nobody will ever be the wiser.”

“After all your experience, ‘lady' is hardly a term I would use to describe you,” he commented sarcastically.

Penelope bit her cuticle hard enough to make it bleed. “Damn it, Seth!” She dropped her hand to her lap to dab at the wound with a handful of bloomer fabric. “I'm no more experienced now than I was in New York. Back thenz, you acted like a gentleman.”

“Or like a gutter rat trussed up like a gentleman, as you so eloquently put it,” he shot back.

“You know I didn't mean that.”

“Sure you did. But I can't fault you for telling the truth.”

The tears stinging in Penelope's eyes gave way and cut zigzagging paths down her cheeks. “I only said those things because you were being such a bastard.”

“I'm going to be an even bigger bastard if I decide to agree to your proposal. And whether or not you like it, you're going to answer my questions.” Grasping her chin in his palm, he forced her to meet his stony gaze. “You're going to be so firmly under my thumb that I'll know if you so much as tremble. Understand?”

Penelope sniffled and nodded.

Tightening his grip on her chin, Seth pulled her face close to his. He seemed to be judging her, weighing his options. After a moment, he nodded. “I accept your proposition. But only because I want to save Jake from being hurt by your selfishness.”

She gave him a watery smile.

Which he ignored. Seizing her arm, he commanded, “We're going downstairs now, and you're going to tell the company that you're leaving. Tonight.”

“B-but I can't just up and l-leave,” she stuttered, struggling to free her arm. “Not right now!”

His grip turned bruising. “You can and you will.”

“But you don't understand!”

“We're back to that worn-out excuse, are we?” he growled impatiently. “All right. Then, explain what I don't understand?”

She squirmed. “I c-can't.”

“You mean you won't. Well, I hope you like trains, Princess. Because I intend to have your backside enthroned on the next one back to San Francisco. There is one due the day after tomorrow.”

His eyes took on an unholy gleam as he pinned her with his gaze. “Oh. And don't expect an open-armed reception from your brother. I intend to telegraph the news of your disgrace ahead.”

Hating him with the same kind of impotent hatred a prisoner feels for his warden, Penelope at last admitted to herself that he had her trapped. Frantic to escape, with nowhere to turn and no way out, the threatening storm of her emotions burst.

“I'm not the type of man who dissolves at the sight of a weeping female, so you can stop your caterwauling,” Seth snapped as her tempest of tears became punctuated by thunderous sobs.

She expelled a heartrending whimper.

Seth countered with an impatient grunt. “Damnit, Penelope. I told you I would accept your proposal.”

She choked and gave her head a despairing shake.

Heaving a long-suffering sigh, he pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her. “I don't see what the hell you're so hysterical about. Do you enjoy performing half-naked?”

“O-of c-course not! It's n-not that at all!”

“Then, what is it?”

Not what
, she wanted to shout.
Who
. Instead, she gasped, “Y-y-you w-wouldn't—”

“Understand,” he finished for her with a pained expression.

She blew her nose and nodded.

“Damn it to hell!” He looked ready to strangle her.

“I-I—” she wailed, before choking on her tears once again.

Cursing graphically, Seth sat down on the stairs and pulled her onto his lap. “Sit,” he commanded when she gave a token sob of protest. Awkwardly patting her back, he mumbled, “I can't imagine anything being as bad as all that.”

Feeling impossibly wretched, Penelope melted against the reassuring strength of his chest. Mindless of everything except her need for solace, she wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face into the warm hollow at his throat.

His body turned stiffer than an undertaker's measuring stick. “Penelope,” he growled, seizing her arms and pulling her away. Scowling, he stared down into her tear-streaked face.

When she looked up, their gazes met. Hers was vulnerable and pleading for understanding; his was angry and confused.

Murmuring something about Jake never forgiving him if he let his troublesome sister drown in her own tears, Seth crushed her into his embrace. The feel of his breath softly ruffling her hair served as a potent reminder of the tenderness they had once shared. For a moment Penelope allowed herself the luxury of forgetting the terrible reality of her life and let herself revel in the soothing intimacy of his touch. Gradually her sobs eased.

When her tears were at last spent, Seth nestled his lips close to her ear and whispered, “Better?”

His unexpected kindness almost undid her. Ruthlessly harnessing her urge to burst into tears again, she nodded.

“Good.” He actually smiled as he smoothed a damp curl from her cheek. “Now, why don't you tell me what we can do about your obvious, but as of yet nameless, dilemma?”

Penelope dabbed her eyes with the handkerchief. What she needed was time. “Three months,” she replied after a quick calculation. “Give me three months to finish my engagement here. Then I swear I'll go home without so much as a word of protest.”

Seth cocked his head to one side as he considered her words, unconsciously stroking the curve of her jaw. “One month,” he finally decided. “I'll have completed my business here by then.”

“Lorelei!” called a strident female voice, promptly echoed by a masculine one.

Oh, great!
Penelope thought miserably, recognizing the voices as belonging to Adele du Charme, the owner of the company, and Miles Prescott, Adele's son and the company's leading man. Just what she needed, two more people railing at her. Crossing her fingers that it would be long enough, she countered, “Six weeks.”

“Lorelei!” The voices were drawing nearer now.

Penelope cast a desperate glance toward the foot of the stairs. Adele had promised to deal harshly with her should she catch her being overly familiar with any man. And nestling in Seth's arms could definitely be construed as overly familiar. Alarmed, she tired to scramble from his embrace.

Ignoring the calls, and Penelope's efforts to squirm away, Seth began to deny her request. But as she looked up, her beseeching gaze captured his, and the words froze in his throat.

Damn those eyes
. He groaned inwardly. Like winter frost glazing the branches of a Christmas fir, those eyes were still the silvery-green hue he had always found so captivating, and they were still seductively tip-tilted at the outer corners.

It was those eyes that made up his mind.

“Princess, you've got yourself a deal,” he murmured as the man whom he recognized as being the hero from the operetta spotted his quarry and came bounding up the stairs.

Stopping three steps below where Seth and Penelope sat, the actor raised his fists and began bobbing around in a pathetic imitation of a pugilist. “Fiend! Unhand Lorelei this instant!”

Penelope rolled her eyes toward the heavens, exasperated. “For pity's sake, Miles! I'm fine!” she exclaimed, resuming her efforts to wiggle from Seth's arms.

Easily immobilizing her in his grip, Seth tilted his head to one side and contemplated the other man's performance. The actor's movements were as stiff and exaggerated as if he were rehearsing the fight scene from a poorly staged melodrama.

Eyeing the man critically, Seth pointed out, “I'd suggest that you either stick to your mealymouthed milksop roles or find someone to give you some acting lessons.”

The actor gaped like a fool with his breeches on fire, the red of his flushed face visible beneath his white greasepaint. “Why, you—you—” he sputtered.

“Forgotten your lines, have you?” Seth arched one brow in amusement. “I believe you're supposed to look at Lorelei and bellow ‘I'll save you, gentle maiden,' or some such absurdity.”

The man's rouged lips began to quiver. “You bastard!” he shrieked, his voice coming out in an infuriated falsetto.

Seth heaved a sigh and shook his head. “A soprano? Hardly an effective delivery for that particular line. You need to deepen your voice and enunciate the word
bastard
more forcefully.” He glanced down at Penelope, who was trying to pry his arm from around her waist. “Why don't you show him how it's done, Princess? Nobody growls the word
bastard
better than you do.”

“Seth!” Penelope cast him an irate look.