Wicked Company (46 page)

“I hope it doesn’t inherit its father’s penchant for reckless gambling,” he replied coldly.

“I warn you, Darnly, you go too far!” Peter exclaimed, fists clenched.

“Come, come, my man,” Darnly chided. “No need to dissemble before
us.
You know as well as I do that this compulsive wagering’s gotten you into a dreadful state. You even welshed on those small bets we made at the Blue Periwig. I checked at White’s and found you had even larger debts outstanding. We share the same tailor… wigmaker, and of course, ruffle maker. Need I elaborate?”

Peter flushed. “A few bad nights at faro, ’tis all.”

“Face it, man,” Darnly said with a shrug, “you’re up to your neck cloth in unpaid bills.”

Peter had lapsed once again into sullen silence. Sophie was feeling total revulsion toward her husband of less than one week. As bile suddenly rose to her throat, she dashed from the room, heading for the privy at the back of the town house.

“If you ever need me,” Darnly called after her, “and undoubtedly you will—don’t hesitate to let me know.”

***

For several days Sophie felt so miserable in body and soul, she could barely lift her head from her pillow. Even after the news that Garrick had scheduled the revised version of
The Provoked Player
for a debut in late September, she remained too ill with morning sickness to attend rehearsals, much less declare to anyone that she had conceived the lion’s share of the farce.

Peter’s mood, in contrast, veered erratically; one minute he was belligerent, the next he was chagrined. He had taken to sleeping in another room away from Sophie, or simply did not return home at all. By week’s end, he announced he’d been invited deer stalking at a friend’s country estate near the Wychwood Forest in the Cotswolds and intended to depart the following day.

“And, pray, what funds are available to you for such a lark?” Sophie demanded, pulling herself to a sitting position in Peter’s large bed as she watched him throw clothing into a small portmanteau.

“’Tis none of your affair!” her husband retorted, making no attempt to maintain his heretofore charming facade.

Sophie lapsed into silence, watching Peter rummage through his armoire. His abrupt gestures were those of a petulant boy who’d been caught out in a tremendous lie, but refused to own up to it. Peter wasn’t evil, he was simply pathetic. She saw with sudden clarity that he was a young man driven by forces set in motion long ago—forces that he didn’t understand himself and that rendered him incapable of taking responsibility for what he did, or even noticing how deeply his actions wounded others. Her anger and anguished sense of betrayal gradually drained away, leaving a residue of disappointment and quiet despair.

“The truth is, Peter, we are linked forever,” Sophie said quietly, attempting to come to terms with the reality of this nightmare alliance. “Every single thing each of us does from now on will affect the other.” She looked at him steadily across the room. “Please… you must answer just one question.”

“And that is?” Peter said cautiously.

“How do you envision this marriage?”

“Meaning what, exactly?” he asked.

“Meaning, what do you imagine our living together as husband and wife will be like?”

“Oh, we’ll rub along all right, I expect,” he replied evasively, “that is, if you’ll do your part by curing yourself of the vapors and earning some blunt.”

But, will you lift a finger to do the same?
she cried silently, knowing in her heart the probable answer.

“And can we at least agree to treat each other civilly within these walls?” she persisted. “What you do on your own is
your affair.”

“I suppose so,” he answered disinterestedly. “Now, where the deuce is my hunting jacket?”

***

Fortunately, when Peter returned from his holiday in Oxfordshire, he seemed to have put the humiliating scene with Darnly behind him and was surprisingly cheerful and pleasant toward Sophie.

“Glad tidings, my lady wife,” he said with something of his former bonhomie. He deposited his portmanteau inside the door of the front sitting room. “I’ve just been round to Old Drury.
The Provoked Player
has survived Edward Capell’s ax reasonably intact and has been granted a license from the Lord Chamberlain’s office! Garrick definitely plans to launch it in September.”

“’Tis wonderful news,” Sophie responded, looking up from the desk and attempting to match his mood. “Let us pray it shall do as well as
The Footmen’s Conspiracy,”
she added fervently, noting that Peter nonchalantly tossed several scraps of paper into his top drawer.

To Sophie’s great relief, the waves of nausea that had tormented her disappeared as suddenly as they had started, now that she was in her fourth month of pregnancy. For the first time in months, she felt well enough to leave Cleveland Row and attend the play’s opening night.

She and Peter took their seats in a box in the second tier on stage right. Kitty Clive was perfectly suited in the role of the aging actress and evoked an avalanche of laughter with her ludicrous posturing and comic vanity. Sophie’s spirits soared as she observed the audience’s amusement.

At the conclusion of Act Five, the assembly rose as one and applauded thunderously, prompting the cast to take repeated bows. Cries of “Author! Author!” filled the hall and Sophie swallowed hard when Peter rose from his box seat to acknowledge the cheers of the assembled multitude. Roderick Darnly was seated in a box with Mrs. Garrick and inclined his head to Sophie in an ironic greeting.

Later, in the Greenroom, Peter was surrounded by well-wishers when David Garrick strode across the chamber, arms extended.

“Sophie!” Garrick exclaimed heartily. “How lovely to see you at last! I understand congratulations are in order,” he offered, giving her hands a gentle squeeze. “Darnly informs me you are now Lady Lindsay-Hoyt. I suppose this means you will not be available to sell playbills in our foyer any longer,” he teased.

“
Well
…
n-no,” she replied,
“
but I still employ staff to
run Ashby’s and the printing press,” she added earnestly, relieved that Darnly had been as good as his word and not revealed to anyone that her new husband was a charlatan. Such intelligence would only intensify his creditors’ demands for full payment of his debts—and
that
could land them both in Newgate Prison. “I remain ready to print your smaller playbills, and can also handle the announcements to
The Public Advertiser,
” she said. They would certainly need the funds and Lorna, who had injured her ankle dancing in a performance of
The Beggar’s Opera,
could help Sophie keep her commitments to Drury Lane, as the dancer was only too happy to have an alternative source of income, however meager.

“I think I can arrange that, if ’tis your wish,” Garrick replied, eyeing her speculatively. Sophie glanced down at her abdomen, suddenly aware that her normally trim waist had begun noticeably to expand, now that she was beginning her fifth month of pregnancy.

“You’re very kind,” she murmured.

“Well, we must keep the lady wife of our new playwright in good spirits.”

Before Sophie could reply, Garrick was accosted by one of his admirers and borne away. Suddenly drooping from fatigue, she crossed to Peter’s side and suggested they return home.

“To bed?” Peter replied, aghast, “on this night? God’s bones, but I intend to
celebrate,
my girl!”

“Then find me a hackney… I’m about to develop full-blown vapors,” she replied.

“Allow me,” Roderick Darnly said, appearing out of nowhere. “My coach waits outside. Charles will happily conduct you to your door. Peter, old boy,” he added, as if the pair had never quarreled, “you must allow me to fete you at White’s. All of London talks of your brilliance and wit.” He offered a mocking wink in Sophie’s direction.

“Well… I wouldn’t say no to a spot of brandy,” Peter replied uncertainly, confused by Darnly’s renewed cordiality. “Everyone did seem to enjoy themselves tonight, didn’t they?” he added with more confidence. “I wouldn’t mind having the chaps hoist a few in my honor. Thank you, Roderick. ’Tis damned decent of you.”

“Have another port, old man, while I just see Sophie to my coach,” Roderick said, taking her arm and steering her toward the stage door.

“Thank you for rescuing me,” she murmured.

“You’re feeling better, I take it?” he said, guiding her through the diminishing crowd clustered in front of the theater. He stopped midstream and looked down at her pensively. “I’m afraid my anger at Peter for playing me for a fool quite overcame my concern for your… condition. I can imagine how upset you were to hear my news. I apologize for the abrupt way I informed you of such unfortunate truths.”

“I doubt there was any way to soften the blow.” Sophie sighed. “I too was taken for a fool—and rather behaved like one, I regret to say. Now I must pay the price.”

Roderick Darnly refrained from commenting further, having spotted his driver amongst the confusion of carriages.

“Ah… there’s Charles.” He helped her aboard and gave instructions for the coachman to wait upon him at White’s after depositing Sophie at Cleveland Row. Before he shut the door he said to Sophie, “Congratulations on the play this evening. It shows your fine hand.”

“And Colman and Garrick’s,” she reminded him. “But thank you.”

“Will you write another?”

“I must,” Sophie smiled wanly.

“With Peter?”

“I hope so. ’Tis a great trial to do it all on my own.”

“But you are capable of writing on your own and that’s the important thing, isn’t it?” he said firmly. “Well, my dear… off to bed with you. Good night.”

As the coach pulled away from Drury Lane, Sophie turned Roderick Darnly’s last words over in her mind. Perhaps she
was
capable of writing a play completely on her own. Then she heaved a tired sigh and prayed that wouldn’t come to pass, given her exhausted condition.

She sank against the elegant upholstery and stared forlornly out the window at the luminous September moon. She found herself musing that the same silvery light was also shining over Dublin this night. She wondered how Hunter had fared during his year at Smock Alley and felt nothing but regret. She’d not seen him these sixteen months. It felt like a lifetime.

***

The next morning, Sophie awoke and, peering into the bedchamber Peter now claimed as his own, realized instantly that her husband had never returned home. Sighing with resignation, Sophie dressed and wandered down to the basement kitchen to brew a pot of tea, as Mrs. Hood had turned in her resignation. Cup in hand, she entered the sitting room and forced herself to take stock of her situation and conceive some plan of action.

A notion for a new comedy about the antics of hypocritical churchmen had been simmering in her mind for some days, although she had kept mum about it with Peter. Sitting at his desk, she opened several drawers in search of some blank paper to jot down a few ideas she’d been turning over in her mind, only to confront the latest pile of unpaid tradesmen’s bills. In another compartment, she discovered a series of IOUs contracted in the days following their marriage. The markers, it appeared, were owed to Peter’s gambling compatriots at the faro tables at White’s.

“Blast his bones!” she declared aloud, horrified by the large amounts she calculated were owing. Whatever profits had accrued from their play to date would obviously go to pay these debts.

Angrily, she stomped into the foyer, grasped her cloak from a peg, and hailed a hackney she could ill afford, instructing the driver to head in the direction of Drury Lane. When she entered the murky stage entrance, she paused a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the shadowy confines back stage. Heading for the stairs that led to Garrick’s office, she heard voices emanating from the Greenroom.

Turning toward the sound, Sophie nearly gasped at the sight of Mavis Piggott, evidently returned from her previous engagement at the Smock Alley Theater in Dublin. Sophie quickly ducked behind a curtained wing to avoid being seen. Ashamed to be such a blatant eavesdropper, she observed Garrick rise to his feet, courtly as ever, and thank Mavis for her reading of Juliet.

“As you well recognize,” he said, “it is the end of September and we have nearly a full complement of players. However, if you will be satisfied with second parts, I think, perhaps, we could find you a place in the company this late in the season.”

“’Twould suit perfectly,” Mavis murmured agreeably. Her acquiescent tone had none of the bluster and bravado Sophie so associated with the woman. She appeared grateful, in fact, for whatever theatrical crumbs happened to fall on her plate.

“And now, if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Piggott,” Garrick said, concluding the interview. “… gentlemen… ?”

Sophie watched from the shadows as the manager strode across the rear of the stage and up the stairs leading to his office. Before the rest of the group could disperse, she quickly followed in his footsteps, and knocked timidly on Garrick’s door. Fortunately, he appeared glad to see her and bade her enter. After an exchange of greetings, and taking courage in hand, she began to describe recent events as objectively as possible, omitting to reveal, however, that she had recently discovered her new husband was posing as a baronet. If Peter Lindsay wished to pretend he was the Prince of Wales—that was up to him, she thought bitterly.