Wicked Company (50 page)

“Do you wish to?” he queried.

Sophie squared her shoulders. Despite her fatigue, she was burning with curiosity as to how Hunter had adapted her comedy to music.

“Yes, I rather think I might!” she replied thoughtfully.

“Then let us use my courtesy coin,” Garrick chuckled, holding up a metal entrance token granted all managers by their rival playhouses. “I’m not playing tonight either. Therefore, might I have the honor of your company in Box Five?”

The celebrated David Garrick and his pregnant companion attracted stares as they took their seats in Covent Garden Theater’s vast auditorium. Soon, however, the curtains parted, and Sophie had her first glimpse of Hunter in black clerical garb, prancing comically around the stage. The audience begin to titter, and then to laugh enthusiastically.

“Clever lad…” Garrick whispered in her ear, “if he doesn’t prove to be in league with our thief, I might try to engage him m’self.”

Sophie smiled weakly. How different her life would have been if only Garrick had urged his temporary replacement, George Colman, to hire Hunter on the spot before Garrick left for the Continent.

Two acts later, the comic opera arrived at its amusing conclusion and the chattering spectators made their way out of the theater.

“May I see you to a conveyance, my dear?” Garrick said solicitously, having bid adieu to a gaggle of visitors paying their respects.

“Please allow
me
that honor, sir,” a deep voice said from the low doorway to the box.

Hunter, still clad in black clerical clothes, advanced into the low-ceilinged chamber.

“Congratulations on your performance, lad,” Garrick offered calmly. “Your friend Sophie and I came to see what you would make with… ah…this
particular
piece,” he commented dryly.

“I saw you from the stage, and I can understand your curiosity, sir,” Hunter replied, “as I have already explained to Lady Lindsay-Hoyt, I do not know from whom Mr. Beard bought this play…”

“But you
do
know who the intermediary was,” Sophie said tiredly, “so your hands are far from clean.”

“That is true,” he replied evenly, “but I am sworn to secrecy by my employer.”

“The man shows loyalty,” Garrick commented lightly, “and as a manager myself, I must say, ’tis refreshing to hear you say that.” He smiled wearily. “I will leave you young people to discuss this further, if you wish, as long as you promise to see Sophie safely home.” He bowed to both and exited the box.

Hunter sat down beside her.

“Well?” he asked somberly. “What did you think?”

“Good writing begets good theater,” she replied.

“I saw you smile,” he ventured. “Several times.”

Sophie shifted uncomfortably in her gilt chair as the baby gave her another of its sharp kicks.

“Yes… I admit I smiled,” she answered. “And now, I beg to take my leave. I am very tired,” she added, struggling to pull herself to a standing position.

Hunter supported her under her arm until she steadied herself.

“You’re a very clever lass,” he said suddenly. “I enjoyed working with your creation. Perhaps… perhaps we could collaborate on another… piece sometime…”

“If you feel guilty, Hunter, there are other ways to make amends,” Sophie responded pointedly.

“That’s
not
what I’m doing,” he protested. “I
meant
what I just said. I do wish we could work together some day.”

Sophie pressed her hand to the small of her back, staring at him coolly.

“No apology? No hint of conscience for collecting fees from someone else’s work?”

“Jesu, Sophie!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t
know
it was your play! That’s why I wished to see you tonight. To give you this,” he added, pressing a leather pouch filled with coins into her hand. “’Tis your share of
my
share.”

Chastened, she answered at length, “I will accept what’s due me, but Hunter… even if you didn’t have a hand in obtaining my play, you went forward with it after you knew it to be stolen.”

“I told Beard what happened and the man just shrugged,” Hunter said defensively. “This purloining goes on more than any of us would like, so there was little I could do, except share what I’ve made from it. There may be additional monies if it plays three more nights.”

Sophie sighed and nodded, turning toward the door. Hunter accompanied her to the front of the theater where he hailed a sedan chair. He helped her aboard and handed the front bearer some coins.

“Lindsay-Hoyt’s address?” he asked brusquely.

“Cleveland Row,” she said, a lump rising in her throat.

He repeated the address to the bearer and bid her adieu, walking swiftly toward the theater entrance to Covent Garden without a backward glance.

Twenty

Peter wandered into the chilly sitting room and stared for a long moment at Sophie sitting at his desk, bent in concentration over a pile of manuscript pages. Another stack of papers were scattered next to her.

“Well… making progress at last,” he declared, searching among several half-filled bottles on the sideboard for something to counteract his dismal mood.

Sophie looked up, startled. “I thought not to see you till evening.”

He ignored her reference to his current habit of staying out all night and sleeping most of the day. Empty tumbler in hand, he sauntered over to her side and picked up a page of
Double Devils.

“What do you mean, ‘by a lady’?” he demanded, pointing to the title page.

“This is
my
work,” Sophie said matter-of-factly, easing her swollen body from her chair with supreme effort. “I have told you, I shall never again write another word with you credited as sole author, and
Double Devils
is a perfect case in point. You’ve contributed nothing but the title, and you half-stole
that
from Elizabeth Griffith’s new play.”

Peter glanced at her sideways, pursing his lips in thought.

“Well then, my witty wife,” he replied, returning to the sideboard to pour a finger of whiskey from a near-empty bottle, “we shall have to strike a bargain, wouldn’t you agree?” Sophie shrugged and remained silent. “What matter whose name goes on the deuced thing?” he continued. “If Garrick likes the piece, your author’s fees will be mine by right as your husband. I offer you this compromise: put
both
our names on it and be done with it!”

And that solution to the authorship dilemma was exactly what David Garrick suggested when he accepted the farce and scheduled it for presentation in the new year of 1766. Both he and Sophie realized that the woman-hating, Shakespeare-loving deputy examiner of plays, Edward Capell, might be appeased by the joint authorship. Only recently he had made Elizabeth Griffith rewrite her play,
A Double Mistake,
four times before he deemed the work acceptable.

“Do you think it risky to open the same night as Griffith’s play at Covent Garden with such a similar title?” Sophie asked.

“They pinch our play… we mock their title,” the actor-manager said with a determined look. He quickly seized a quill and wrote a cover note to Edward Capell, requesting the manuscript be granted a license for debut Thursday, January 9.

“Shall I spare the prompter a journey to St. James’s Palace and submit this myself to the clerk at the Lord Chamberlain’s office?” Sophie asked. “’Tis mere blocks from Cleveland Row.”

“Only if you’ll allow me to treat you to a hackney coach,” Garrick said, appraising her enormous girth. Pressing a shilling into her hand, he added, “Sophie, shouldn’t you be home resting?”

“As soon as the playbills are finished for this week’s fare, home to bed I go.” She smiled with forced cheer.

As Sophie laboriously reached the bottom of the stairway that led from Garrick’s office, Roderick Darnly emerged from the Greenroom. She saw him coming and going from the theater often, of late. Perhaps he had loaned additional funds to Garrick’s partner, James Lacy, and now considered Drury Lane part of his fiefdom.

“Ah… just whom I was hoping to see—” He halted midsentence and stared at her. “Good heavens!” he exclaimed. “You risk life and limb gadding about in your condition.”

“I’m fine… just—”

A sharp pain in her abdomen suddenly cut off her words and Sophie gasped aloud.

“You are not at all well… come in here and rest for a moment,” he insisted, taking the manuscript from her hand and guiding her into the dimly lit Greenroom. “That’s better… take a deep breath,” he urged, settling her into a chair.

The pain disappeared as quickly as it had come, and Sophie guessed that Mrs. Phillips’s warnings about the likelihood of false labor had just materialized.

“Thank you,” she said, inhaling deeply. “I’m all right now, I think.”

Darnly studied the title page of the play script he held in his hand.

“Submitting
Double Devils
to the censor, I see,” he noted. “So… it bears both yours and Peter’s names. Did he write a word of it?”

“Two words:
Double
and
Devils…
” Sophie retorted, and then heaved a sigh of resignation. “’Tis probably for the best. The man has pressing debts, as you certainly know. This promise of future fortune may stave off his most obstinate creditors.”

“Do
you
have need of money?” he asked gravely.

“Of course I do,” she snapped, and was immediately apologetic for her shortness of temper. “You’re kind to voice concern, but I have every reason to believe I can earn my keep by my pen—given time and freedom from the profligacy of my noble husband.”

“I have absolutely no doubt that you can,” Darnly replied mildly, “but given the debts I personally am owed, I thought perhaps you might be critically short of funds at a time you’ll be needing to do things like hire a midwife.”

Sophie gazed thoughtfully at Peter’s erstwhile friend. “Why are you being so solicitous, Roderick?” she inquired bluntly.

“Among other things, I admire your writing talent,” he replied evenly. “’Tis wicked how your husband appropriates your work and your hard-earned funds for his own pleasures.”

Sophie gazed at him skeptically. Her husband owed the man who stood before her a large sum of money. Yet, he was offering her assistance. Why?

“Sir,” she said quietly, “is there something you wish of me?”

Roderick Darnly allowed the semblance of a smile to linger on his face. He was a large man, appearing even more imposing dressed in a suit of garnet-hued brocade decorated with black braid and a double row of lace on each cuff. When he smiled, he was quite attractive, Sophie allowed, although she knew instinctively that beneath his pleasant demeanor was a thirty-five-year-old nobleman with an iron will who was accustomed to achieving his goals through influence and persuasion.

“Well,” he acknowledged, “I was intending to ask you to do me a service that would benefit
both
of us.”

“And pray, what is that?” Sophie asked warily.

“As you may remember, I have had a casual association with a young woman named Mary Ann Skene.”

“Yes… the ruffle maker from the Blue Periwig,” Sophie replied, vividly recalling the woman with the voluptuous body and horse-faced countenance.

“I have decided to end this liaison,” Darnly said imperturbably, “but I do not wish to abandon the girl.”

“How kind…” Sophie murmured dryly.

“So, I would like to lease your lodgings above Ashby’s Books for Mary Ann, since you are now living at Cleveland Row.”

“I often go there to write,” Sophie objected, torn between the idea of pocketing a much-needed regular monthly fee for space she rarely used, and the realization she hardly admitted to herself—that she might soon decide to move back to Half Moon Passage, washing her hands of Peter and his increasingly dissolute habits. Thus far, she had avoided making a decision until determining the legal implications of such an action.

“I have warned Mary Ann that you return to the flat often to do your printing work and that you would still have free use of the premises. However, those terms were agreeable to her.”

“Oh,” Sophie said, at a loss for any additional objections.

“So…” Darnly countered, pulling a bank draft for twenty-five pounds, “let me give you this for six months rent.”

“But ’tis the exact amount!”she exclaimed, staring at the elegant handwriting denoting funds for a half year’s lease.

“My noble friend, the Duke of Bedford, who owns the freehold on that street, informed me of the rents you pay when I saw him at White’s,” he replied calmly. “So… ’tis agreed?”

Sophie tucked the bank draft into her reticule. Ironically, this meant that in effect, Darnly’s own money would settle Peter’s IOU, but
she
would be without her privacy above Ashby’s Books. Ah well, she thought. There was nothing to be done about it. At least Peter and she would not be thrown into debtor’s prison, come February, when the note was due.