Wicked Company (84 page)

He slammed his fist against the nearest wall. One day he would judge for himself whether the babe looked anything like him. But how could he endure the uncertainty? What if, in the end, the babe’s visage reminded him of no one so much as that nobly born scoundrel, the Earl of Llewelyn!

Robertson, when will you cease to be a crackbrain, m’lad?

***

In early November, as if in answer to his prayer, Mrs. Reynolds, the tavern keeper’s wife, handed him a watermarked letter posted from London the previous July. Ignoring his fellow players’ urgings to join them for a tankard of ale, he carried the missive back to his chambers, breaking its seal with a trembling finger. His eyes misted over as he read her familiar hand.

…I watch wee Rory slumber in this dawn’s light, but my heart is sore. Oh, Hunter, I was so frightened to face his early birth without you here! I know now Mrs. Phillips and Lorna surely thought he’d die. I even prayed to God to keep us safe for you! Me, Sophie, the cleric-hating harridan!

I feared to tell you of his puny spider’s body and weak squall in case he should perish and you would have the added sadness of having lost a son. But a miracle happened! The babe began to thrive and now is so dear, my heart stops when he looks at me with that mischievous smile so like his da’s. The pain of his birth… the fear for my own life as well as for the babe’s, are nothing compared with what I endured during those months of not knowing if you were dead or alive.

I beg you, Hunter, write often as you can, for I fear half your letters may go astray if the rumors of conflict in the Colonies are true. Each day I long for word of you across the sea that separates us. I must confess, ancient fears I harbor that Mavis could bewitch a lad far from home come over me sometimes, but I cannot but believe there is forged between us now a bond of enduring love that will link us forever. My greatest anxiety, however, is that you might meet some terrible fate in that strange land. I find I cannot work, or sleep with any peace, until I know you have received this letter and rejoice in the birth of your son.

Peter has learned of the bairn, it seems, but appears more intent on soliciting a few shillings than protesting his honor. He tried to flush a bit of blunt from me when he accosted me near St. Paul’s a fortnight ago. The poor blighter has never looked more parched for spirits or disheveled… but he allowed me to pass for a shilling and sixpence once satisfied that I’d given up writing plays to tend to my bairn.

The same excuse for the absence of plays by Sophie McGann has been given to that wretch R. D. Now that he has inherited the earldom, he will no doubt attempt to use his influence to thwart our advancement where he can. Thus far, he tarries in Wales, though his false charges against you remain at King’s Bench.

As much as it pains me to urge you to endure where you are, you daren’t risk returning until I deem it safe enough. Please, please, Hunter, heed this warning! I grow increasingly wary of this Patron of the Arts and fear some darkness in his soul could do us both great harm.

What has sustained me these long months is the dear face of our bairn, who, with the tiny cleft in his chin and his laughing blue eyes—not to mention his remarkable size for a lad of his age—are the only remnants I possess of my dear childhood friend, loved so devotedly tonight by

Your Sophie

As Hunter scanned the lines once again, his breath began to feel hollow in his chest. Besides the harrowing description of their son’s premature birth, he was humbled by the words that contained Sophie’s outpouring of love and concern for his welfare.

A tiny cleft in Rory’s chin… the baby’s blue eyes. His large size. His mischievous nature.

Of course he is my child!
Hunter thought, more ashamed than he had ever felt in his life.

He realized only too well that he had had pride and conceit and a deeply-ingrained inclination to distrust women as surely as Sophie once distrusted men. Yet, she was willing to voice her fears regarding Mavis’s wiles and have faith in his constancy, nonetheless.

Gratitude and remorse swept over him for the thousand foolish doubts that had plagued him since his conversation by the river’s edge with Mavis, that devious wench! Distractedly, he stared out of the window of his rented quarters on Bloomsbury Street, gazing past the tops of the poplar trees toward the harbor at the bottom of the hill, seeing nothing. He would do as she had pleaded and remain in this outpost of British civilization, but oh, how he longed to jump aboard one of the brigantines anchored in Chesapeake Bay!

***

“That wretch Capell may have granted Sydney Ganwick’s work a license, but he’s
gutted
my play!” Sophie said morosely, tossing the Lord Chamberlain’s copy of
The London Heiress
back on Garrick’s desk. In the two and a half years since Hunter fled London, Sophie was grateful to have earned her and Rory’s keep by her pen. Even so, Deputy Examiner of Plays Edward Capell was growing increasingly difficult to please, regardless of which author submitted plays for his approval. Sophie’s latest effort under her male pseudonym was defaced with prominent black
Xs,
and the word
Out!
had been scratched by Capell on nearly every page.

“Our worthy royal servant enjoyed the theme in
The Macaronis,
but grows testy, it appears, when it comes to ladies outwitting gentlemen of means,” Garrick replied wearily. The actor-manager had his swollen foot elevated on a stool, and his face appeared drawn and pasty. The poor man had recently suffered a painful sore throat and yet another attack of gallstones. “I shall cast your farce with our best players, Sophie, and trust your remaining witticisms will carry the day,” he sighed. “And now, my dear, I must face those warring queens of Thespis over their designated roles in
The West Indian
. One day, these harpies will inspire me to retire from this wretchedness, and I shall live the life of a country squire!”

And what would happen to Sydney Ganwick without Garrick
’s
protection?
Sophie wondered silently, alarmed by his prediction. She watched sadly as her mentor hobbled down the stairs to soothe the contentious actresses who awaited him in the Greenroom.

I am one man away from literary destitution,
she thought somberly.
’Tis like being a gentleman’s mistress!

***

The lackluster run of Sophie’s
The London Heiress
in early March did not leave its author exactly destitute, but she blamed Capell’s neutering of her play’s biting humor for the production’s paltry three-night run. It had garnered a mere fifty-seven pounds for her solitary Author’s Benefit.

“’Twill have to see me through until I can somehow conjure up another idea and try to get it mounted six months from now,” she groused a month later to Lorna, who had her aching feet plunged into a pail of water. Sophie’s friend was feeling all of her twenty-eight years after a season in the
corps de ballet
at the King’s Opera.

“You’ll think of something to put that pen of yours to work,” Lorna said encouragingly. “You always do. But how do I procure a new pair of arches, will you tell me
that,
Rory Robertson!”

“Feet! Feet! Feet!” crooned Sophie’s little boy.

Rory thrust his short arms into the pail and playfully splashed as much water as he could all over Sophie’s floor.

“Will you
rub
my feet, wee Rory, instead of sloshing water everywhere?” Lorna laughed.

“No, no, no, you little minx! ‘Sophie cried, retrieving her twenty-one-month-old son and diverting him with an old feather pen. She tickled him under his chubby chin and in the crease of his elbow until he was squealing with mirth.

Suddenly, a loud knock at the door startled all of them into abrupt silence.

“If you’ll stop cackling in there, I’ve a letter—and a visitor—for Miss Sophie McGann!” a voice boomed.

Sophie dashed across the chamber and flung open the latch.

“Bozzy! Oh Bozzy!” she cried, staring at the rotund form whom she had not seen in London in donkey years—not since James Boswell’s marriage to his first cousin, Margaret Montgomerie, in the autumn of 1769 following the tumultuous Shakespeare Jubilee. “Your entrances are always so
dramatic!”
she said, throwing her arms around his bulky neck. “Oh Lorna… ’tis Bozzy!”

“Bozzy! Bozzy! Bozzy!” Rory cried delightedly, casting his plump arms around James Boswell’s knees.

“Well, well, well… and who might
you
be?”
he said, crouching to examine the child eye to eye. “Jesu, Sophie,” Boswell said with mock severity. “Each time I leave you alone in London, you produce a bairn… and never by
me!
Let me have a look at you, my young lad. Those eyes… that chin…” James gazed up at Sophie. “There can only be one sire of this fine laddie. Where’s Hunter?”

Sophie bit her lip and struggled to squelch a wave of self-pity.

“America… acting in the Colonies… in Maryland. You haven’t heard about the celebrated altercation between Hunter and Roderick Darnly, now styled the Earl of Llewelyn? The villain’s pressed bogus charges, but Hunter dares not fight the word of such a high born aristocrat in court.”

“Aye, the man has vast influence, I’m told, now that he holds sway over his father’s coal-rich lands in Wales.” Boswell eyed her with a sympathetic glance and then, rising to his full height, he looked over at Lorna. “But how very good it is to see you both,” he said, easing the three of them past the uncomfortable moment.

“And lovely to see
you,
Bozzy,” Lorna said, glancing self-consciously at her bare feet, as she busily dried them with a piece of linen. “But I’m sure you two have much catching up to do. Rory, how would you like to go visit the man with the musical monkey in the Great Piazza? Would you like that?”

“Monkey! Monkey! Monkey!” Rory beamed.

“Yes… you may go and visit the monkey,” Sophie said, adding in a low voice, “Thank you, my friend.”

Lorna and Rory soon departed while James sank into a chair. Sophie stirred the dying embers on the hearth and put the kettle on its iron peg over the fire for tea.

“Sink me… I’ve brought a letter!” James Boswell exclaimed, pulling a missive out of his pocket. He pointed to the return address. “From Annapolis, it says. It must be from our friend. ’Twas just being delivered to Mrs. Phillips at the Green Canister when I called earlier. I said I’d convey it to you and here I’ve gone and nearly forgot it!”

“James! You haven’t contracted Señor Gona—?” Sophie said, taking the letter from her friend.

“Just precautionary, just precautionary,” Boswell mumbled, avoiding any mention of his wife of three and a half years. “I’ve come down to London to persuade my friend Sam Johnson to make the trip to Scotland that he has been promising for years. Our tentative plan is to depart in August.”

“Ah, the Scot-baiting Johnson. I pray a visit to our homeland may change his opinion of it. May I?” Sophie asked, holding the letter postmarked Annapolis
as her heart began to pound.

“Of course,” Boswell assured her. “I think I can manage to brew us some tea while you read it.”

Sophie sank into the chair next to his and broke the plain seal. Boswell watched curiously as a succession of emotions played across his friend’s lovely face while she scanned the lines of Hunter’s latest missive.

“Is all well with the lad?” he asked gently after a few minutes.

“Well enough,” she sighed, allowing the pages to fall to her lap. “He tries to keep my spirits up with tales of his life on the colonial stage.” She smiled wanly, pointing to the letter in question. “He and his fellow players have been touring with the American Company in Philadelphia and New York. Do you remember that jade, Mavis Piggott? She’s had a falling out with yet another manager. Apparently, he refused to mount her latest play.”

“Why are you so glum, then, after receiving such a packet full of news?” he asked in a kindly voice.

“Because he doesn’t remain in one place long enough for me to post a reply from England,” she complained morosely. “I send my missives off to Annapolis, knowing he won’t hear news of Rory and me for nearly a year.”

“He’ll soon come back,” James Boswell reassured her.

“And if he can’t?” she whispered, her eyes growing misty.

“You’ll go to him.”

“But that dreadful voyage…” she replied fearfully. “Rory’s such a wee lad…”

“’Twill all come right in the end,” Boswell reassured her. “I never saw such a pair as the two of you that rainy night in Stratford. Of course you shall be reunited, Sophie. ’Tis your destiny.”

Brushing the moisture from her eyes
with her sleeve, Sophie impulsively kissed her guest on the top of his broad forehead.