Wicked Company (89 page)

“And you thought you’d have to watch from the rafters!” Lorna scolded Sophie, fastening the hooks on an exquisite pale green gown her friend had spirited out of Drury Lane’s wardrobe after a wink from the costume mistress. “There! Turn around! Look, Rory! Don’t you have a beautiful Mama?”

“I want to go too!” the lad pronounced, his lower lip trembling.

“Oh, Rory, ’twould be dull as sin,” Mrs. Phillips chimed in,
offering her hand to the little boy. “Besides, I’ve a mind to teach you to
play whist tonight, if you think you’d like that. Perhaps later, if you’re
very
good, we could pop over to the Half Moon for a dish of syllabub… how would that suit you, lad? Then, you could have a wee sleep on my sofa here, till Mama returns…”

His protests forgotten, Sophie’s five-year-old kissed her dutifully on her cheek and trundled toward Mrs. Phillips’s outstretched hand.

It was approaching the hour of six when Sophie turned the corner to Drury Lane. The light slanting across the Great Piazza bathed the square’s arched buildings in the amber tones of the setting summer sun. Sophie held another invitation in her reticule, one that had arrived by messenger two days earlier, requesting her presence at a fancy dress ball at Number 10 St. James’s Street. The elegantly lettered card announced that the event was to be given in honor of the evening’s momentous occasion and hosted by the Right Honorable Roderick Darnly, the Earl of Llewelyn. Mavis Piggott’s newly forged liaison with the nobleman was no secret around Covent Garden, a turn of events that filled Sophie with nothing but relief. In Mavis, the earl had found a suitable substitute for Sophie’s services in this mistress skilled in the carnal arts and playwright of some note. What’s more, his invitation to the ball signaled that he apparently bore her no grudge.

“Aren’t we the fine strumpet, my lady wife!” a voice said from the shadows as Sophie trod down the narrow lane that lead to the playhouse’s front facade.

“God’s bones!” she gasped. “Don’t startle me like that!”

She peered at Peter Lindsay, lounging against the shabby entrance to a seedy tavern. His bark brown suit was threadbare, and he appeared rumpled and disheveled, though reasonably sober.

“Turnabout’s fair play, wouldn’t you say,” he said, falling into step beside her. “You certainly startled
me
several years ago… producing a brat that everyone says is Robertson’s get.”

“My son is five years old and his father departed for the Colonies in ’70 and never returned,” Sophie replied wearily. “You and I have not been together for ten years. Surely, you cannot claim your honor’s been besmirched! You had scores of wenches before I abandoned your bed and an equal number since. ’Tis only blunt you’re sniveling after, and as I’ve told you many a time before—I don’t have any!”

“From the look of your silks and satins, I’d say you could get some from whoever’s keeping you these days?” he sneered.

Sophie halted on the edge of the throng heading for the theater and put her hands on her hips. “My finery is borrowed, and I’m as penniless as you appear to be,” she said with exasperation. “I thought my Lord Darnly was to give you a writing commission?”

“He gave me a commission, all right,” Peter groused. “Forced labor’s what I call it! I tried to make something of that mishmash he calls a comedy! Says it was for his club, but I think he intends to push it on Sheridan next season so he can boast that he’s the cultivated genius who wrote it!”

“Well… perhaps you could make a living as his anonymous scribe,” Sophie suggested, hoping she could withdraw from Peter’s company gracefully and avoid a scene.

“I did my best with it and then he went and applied my fee toward an IOU.”

“And do you owe him blunt?” Sophie asked quietly.

“’Twas from years ago. ’Twas so large and impossible for me to pay, I thought he had forgot.”

“Oh, Peter,” Sophie sighed. “Unlike Roderick Darnly, you have some talent in you! Why not apply yourself? Why not take up your quill in earnest and make your way honestly, instead of falling in with titled thieves and gamblers?”

“I see you’re still the little reformer, aren’t you?” Peter retorted, and then heaved a despondent sigh. “’Tis my powerful need for spirits, Sophie, that makes me so beholden to the likes of Llewelyn… and my fear that, on my own, my words fall short…”

“I know a bit what that’s like,” Sophie replied, feeling a perverse sense of sympathy for her estranged husband, “fearing one’s words fall short, I mean. And I’m sorry your craving for drink has brought you such grief. But, perhaps—”

“Perhaps,” Peter interrupted eagerly, “you and I might—”

“I couldn’t do that,” she interjected, shaking her head. “I am as fearful as you that my words no longer have the power to please,” she added, contemplating her difficulties with the second act of
School for Fools.
“I realize this may sound strange coming from me, but I hope someday, Peter, that you will pen something as good as you are capable of. I promise to offer you a favorable price to print it on the Ashby Press!” The crowds were beginning to surge through the entrance to the playhouse in waves. “And now, I must leave you to take my seat,” she said. Impulsively, she reached over and softly squeezed his ragged sleeve. “I wish you every good luck. Truly, I do.” Then she turned and quickly entered the theater.

As she made her way down the narrow corridor that led to the Garricks’ private box, she found herself wondering how much longer Peter Lindsay could continue to lay waste to his body with his addiction to strong spirits. Beneath the bluster, he had always seemed to Sophie a frightened little boy, spurned by those he most wished to please. ’Twas some sort of blessing that his problems weren’t hers any longer, but, even so, she took no satisfaction from his disheveled state.

She knocked discreetly on the door to the box and opened it.

“Good evening, Mrs. Garrick,” Sophie said quietly, taking a seat at the rear of the familiar box that overlooked a sea of silks and satins occupying the pit. “How is he tonight?”

“Pale… but calm,” Eva-Maria said of her husband.

Sophie had never seen such a gorgeously attired audience in all her years of attending Drury Lane as she did tonight from her choice vantage point. The Garricks’ friends and theatrical colleagues occupied the choice locations, relegating half a dozen duchesses and countesses to seats in the upper boxes. Even baronets and wealthy gentry had fought for lesser seats in the highest galleries in order to witness Garrick’s momentous formal retirement.

“Mr. G. must be pleased that a packed house will benefit the Decayed Actors Fund,” Sophie volunteered.

“Yes, indeed,” Mrs. Garrick responded. “Profits may be more than three hundred pounds tonight. Ah… the Sheridans and the Linleys have arrived!” she exclaimed, rising to greet the new theater owners who filed excitedly into the box. Sophie nodded a greeting to each in turn, and soon everyone settled into their seats, spending the remaining moments before the curtain gazing about the theater in an effort to see and be seen.

Sophie noticed that the Earl of Llewelyn had secured a box nearby, sharing it with Dr. Ford and the brandy merchant. Darnly curtly inclined his head in her direction. Mavis was backstage preparing for her small role in the evening’s presentation, but the actress would undoubtedly serve as Roderick’s hostess at the masquerade ball later that evening.

Garrick had chosen a comedy for his final farewell performance.
The Wonder
was by Susannah Centlivre, a dramatist dead nearly fifty years, but whose works were still extremely popular.

“I prefer they remember me with a smile than with a tear,” the retiring actor had confided to Sophie earlier when discussing Garrick’s selection of the roguish character Don Felix as the last role his legion of admirers would see him perform.

The orchestra had to play four melodies before the audience eventually settled down, but as the curtains parted and Garrick stepped forward to speak the customary prologue, the only sound that could be heard was the resonate, perfectly modulated voice of the master himself.

Soon the comedy launched into its rollicking plot and Sophie began to relax and enjoy its humor, willing herself to avoid dwelling on the fact that this was the last time she would ever see Garrick on a stage. Her eyes swept the tiered horseshoe-shaped balconies where the patrons, for once, weren’t surveying the scene around them, but seemed, as one, to have glued their eyes on Garrick’s every move. Before Sophie was quite ready for the play’s inventive conclusion, the actors were bowing amid thunderous applause. Then Garrick raised his hands and addressed his audience.

“It has been customary,’’ he began, “with persons in my circumstances to address you in a farewell epilogue.” He smiled ruefully and shrugged. “I had the same intention and turned my thoughts that way, but I found myself as incapable then of writing such a piece as I should be now of speaking it.”

Sophie glanced over at Mrs. Garrick, whose lovely gray eyes were glistening with tears.

“The jingle of rhyme and the language of fiction would ill-suit my present feelings.” Garrick gazed up at the penny gallery and then allowed his eyes to sweep the ring of box seats and the crowded pit. “This is to me a very awful moment… it is no less than parting forever with those from whom I have received the greatest kindness, and upon the spot where that kindness and your favors were enjoyed.”

Garrick’s voice broke and tears began to run down his cheeks. Sophie felt her own eyes fill and dared not look at Eva-Maria sitting to her right. Then he seemed to gather his strength and raised his chin in a gesture of determination to continue.

“Whatever may be the changes of my future life, the deepest impression of your kindness will always remain here,” he said with renewed vigor, placing his palm against his chest, “…here in my heart… fixed and unalterable.”

He stared up at his wife, his penetrating gaze conveying the thirty years of love and triumph and the hardships and triumphs they had shared. He smiled faintly, and then shifted his glance to Richard Sheridan and his colleagues sitting next to Eva-Maria.

“I will very readily agree to my successors having more skill and ability than I have had… but I defy them all,” he said, his voice rising with emotion, “to take more uninterrupted pains for your favor, or to be more truly sensible of it than is your grateful humble servant.”

The master of drama allowed his last words to hang in the air. He bowed respectfully to each section of the playhouse. Then his shoulders suddenly sagged and he retreated a few paces behind the open curtain and disappeared into the wings, never to walk the boards of Drury Lane again.

Sophie raised her gloved hand to her mouth and bit on her forefinger to keep from sobbing. Others in the audience could not restrain their emotions and a strange wail amid the wild applause rang out on all sides of the auditorium. The scheduled afterpiece was abandoned and the orchestra began sawing away as the audience gathered its collective wit and somberly pushed toward the exits on all sides of the playhouse.

Sophie smiled wanly at Mrs. Garrick who was being led by Richard Sheridan down to the Greenroom to greet her husband. Eva-Maria bent down and brushed her lips against Sophie’s cheek.

“I doubt we shall attend the earl’s ball… so this is farewell… for now,” Mrs. Garrick said quietly. “Do come see us when we’ve recovered from all this, my dear.”

The rest of those occupying the box filed out after Mrs. Garrick, but Sophie couldn’t seem to move her limbs. She remained in her seat, her body paralyzed with the suffocating sadness that washed over her from the moment Garrick began his farewell address.

“Well, lassie…” a voice suddenly said in her left ear, “I’m happy to see you’ve neither a swain by your side, nor a ring on your finger.”

Sophie twisted around in her chair and gave a startled cry. Her eyes scanned the length of a black wool traveling cloak and rested on the visage that was an exact image of her son Rory. She jumped to her feet and backed away, stumbling against the chairs that had been scattered around the box as her fellow theatergoers had departed.

“You!” she choked, taking refuge in the shadows behind a small curtain that hung to one side of the theater box. Staring mutely at the tall figure in front of her, she flattened her back against the red brocade lining of the small chamber in which they stood facing one another.

“Yes… ’tis!” the intruder exclaimed, taking a step closer, “that rascal Hunter Robertson… the father of your son! The ground beneath my feet still pitches from riding a ship that braved storms and hurricanes and dodged privateers these seven months to bring me to your side… and all you can utter by way of greeting is—‘You’?”

“You!” she repeated, her eyes widening with shock as the reality of his presence in Garrick’s box sunk in. “What are
you
doing here?”

Sophie glanced frantically across the auditorium from her place of refuge. She received another shock when she saw Lord Darnly pause, his opera cloak over his arm, and stare at the drama that was unfolding in the box opposite. Sophie impulsively reached out and grabbed Hunter’s sleeve, hauling him into the protective shadow of the brocaded curtain.

“Jesu, Lord Darnly! He mustn’t recognize you or he’ll have you arrested!”