With This Curse: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense (3 page)

“Clara,” he said softly, “the furthest thing from my mind was to cause you distress. You have, as you say, lost something irreplaceable.”

I would not look at him. Could not, when my heart ached at the sight of him, so like Richard—even sounding like him now, with his voice low and intimate.

“But don’t you see,” he continued. “That means that the curse, if it exists, has no more power over you.” Before I could summon a response, he pressed a card into my hand. “I’ll be in London all week, and I hope you’ll consent to discuss the matter further. Send word to me at the Athenaeum Club, and I’ll call any time you wish.”

Still I refused to look at him. I sensed rather than saw his quick half bow, and then the sound of his footsteps receded down the uncarpeted passage, the gait with its slight unevenness accompanied by the tap of his stick.

“Who was that delicious man?”

Sybil Ingram’s voice preceded the rest of her. The ringing mezzo-soprano tones struck my ear first, then her fragrance—a powerful amalgam of tuberose and violet—and finally the actress herself swept into view amid a rustle of taffeta skirts. She had the wide china-blue eyes and spun-gold hair of an ingénue, although I knew that she had passed her thirtieth birthday—a fact that would have been worth my life to divulge to any of her gentleman followers.

For once, none of these was in evidence, and this was perhaps the reason she felt free to question me at such indecorous volume. “What did he want?” she continued, sweeping past me into the dressing room and handing me her sealskin mantle without pausing. “I know he saw me, but he only tipped his hat and kept walking. Was he looking for Clement?” Clement Griffiths was her leading man, a far distant second in importance in the troupe hierarchy.

“No, Miss Ingram.” The idea of anyone considering Atlas Blackwood “delicious” fairly stunned me. But then, she was not acquainted with the reality.

“Who, then?” It seemed her curiosity would not be satisfied without my going into explanations. I stifled a sigh as I hung up her wrap and helped her out of her dress, giving it a quick inspection as I did so. My employer was indifferent to such details as a drooping bit of lace or a loose button, so I had learned to stay vigilant for such small problems before they became large ones. But the smart chartreuse taffeta gown with its facings and edgings of lilac shot silk looked as pristine as it had when it first left my hands; the cartridge ruffles at the square neck and three-quarter sleeves were crisp, and the hem showed very little soiling. A few minutes with the clothes brush would prevent it from staining.

As I attended to this task, Miss Ingram slipped on a bright silk dressing gown and sank down onto the seat before the dressing table, unpinned the tiny saucer of a bonnet, and set about making up her face for the evening’s performance. With its coating of face powder, its litter of bottles and jars, and the blonde wig on its stand, the dressing table was the only part of the room that was less than exquisite. “You haven’t told me who the caller was,” she reminded me. “Such a handsome fellow—one might run quite mad for eyes like those.”

“It was Baron Telford’s son, of Gravesend Hall.”

“How interesting! If he didn’t come to see me or Clement, what was his business?”

“He was here to see me,” I admitted. “A small matter—a mistake, in fact. Nothing of importance.”

“Indeed?” The actress looked more intrigued than ever as she picked up a rabbit’s foot to daub rouge onto her cheeks. “I didn’t know you had acquaintances of such standing, Graves.” There was reproach in the words. My employer liked to believe that she was the most highly placed person in the troupe’s world, the only one who had sufficient celebrity to be a household word among gentlefolk, and for the most part this was the case. The assemblage of actors, stagehands, attendants, and hangers-on that formed the theater troupe were all Sybil Ingram’s vassals.

I most definitely counted myself among them. Ten years before, I had been working a sewing machine in a factory, a place of deafening noise and stifling heat, taking home finishing work to carry out by insufficient light in the rented room I shared with two other girls from the factory. One evening as the three of us were walking home, a glamorous figure had detained us. As one we gawked at the actress’s shining golden hair, fine silk gown, and dainty features.

“What a charming frock,” she said to me, reaching out boldly to grasp my collar. “Who made it for you?”

“I made it myself, ma’am.” The piped scalloped trim that she was fingering had been a trial attempt before I cut into the more expensive goods of the dress I was trimming for a lady of fashion. “I’d be happy to make you one like it,” I added daringly, for I was always seeking more opportunities to relieve the monotony of factory work with more interesting tasks—and to supplement my meager income.

“Hm.” She did not answer at once. “And the color? Was that your choice as well?”

The bold greenish-blue woolen goods had cost me many a missed meal, but it was a color that lifted my spirits. “I wouldn’t advise such a color for you, ma’am,” I said, more daring every moment, for it was obvious from the woman’s dress that she had plenty of money to spend on her own adornment. “With your complexion, I think a robin’s-egg blue, trimmed in primrose and salmon. Or perhaps lavender with sea-green.”

She laughed, not displeased. “You certainly do have a great many opinions about a stranger’s ensemble.”

“Oh, but you’re not a stranger,” said my friend Martha, whose eyes had gone as round as an owl’s. “You’re Sybil Ingram! I saw you in
The Prodigal’s Return.
You were wonderful!”

Miss Ingram beamed at her, gratified at being recognized. “You’re too kind,” she said, in a tone of voice that indicated that it was her due. Though scarcely twenty, she was already firmly established as one of the most popular actresses in London. “I must admit I was fond of that particular role. But my gowns were sadly out of tune with the character. You, girl”—this was to me—“what would you say to coming to supper with me and giving me your thoughts on my gowns for the new tour? You seem to have a good head on your shoulders, a tumbled one though it be.”

My hand went self-consciously to my curly hair, which I still had not learned to subdue. Later, when I had left the factory to work solely for Miss Ingram, she would show me how to tame it. “I’d be delighted, ma’am,” I said. And thus our association began.

Becoming Sybil Ingram’s modiste was the best thing to happen to me since my ignominious departure from Gravesend. It was exciting to be intimately involved in the life of the theater, to move among actors, who were, many of them, as entertaining off the stage as they were on it—but they could also, as I saw very quickly, put an unattached female in a compromising position. Partly for that reason, Sybil Ingram helped me construct the persona of Widow Graves, advising me on posture and vocal inflections to most effectively present a dampening effect on masculine ardor. “And I quite agree that you need some such armor,” she said cheerfully.

“It isn’t as if I were a young woman still,” I had said.

“You look younger than you are, though. That tiny waist takes years off your age.” She could say this without rancor, as her own waist was every bit as slender. Hers was the product of self-denial and tight lacing, mine of a life that had not permitted ample meals.

Now her voice brought me back to the present. “You’re being quite mysterious about your gentleman visitor,” she said as she settled the wig in place over her hair. “Did he wish to whisk you out of this sordid world of play-acting and into the rarefied sphere of his titled existence?”

This quip was so disconcertingly close to the truth that my clothes brush halted for a moment. What spirit possessed her to be so roguish today? Now that I took a closer look, I saw that her color was high—even apart from the rouge—and her eyes unusually bright. “Is something the matter, Miss Ingram?”

She gave a laugh that confirmed my suspicion. Some secret was energizing her, and now she sprang to her feet and darted over to grasp my hands, regardless of the clothes brush. “Graves,” she exclaimed, “I’m to be married.”

I stared at her. Never in the ten years that I had known her had Sybil Ingram breathed any intention of giving up the life of the theater for marriage. “Married?” I stammered. “To whom?” If only it were another actor, or someone well established in the theater world, perhaps she would not be abandoning us. But her next words shattered that possibility.

“To Alcott Lammle. You remember, from when we played last year in New York?”

Remember I most certainly did. Mr. Lammle, a prominent American hotelier, was among the most prosperous of the suitors Miss Ingram had collected during the tour, hosting lavish dinners in her honor and showering her with expensive gifts. “Will you be settling here in London?” I asked faintly. Perhaps her new husband would be expanding his business interests into England, and Sybil Ingram’s vassals would not be disbanded after all.

This faint hope, however, was soon obliterated. “No, Graves, you don’t understand,” she cried, pulling me to my feet to lead me into an improvised waltz. “I’m leaving the theater. No more work for me. I shall grow fat and lazy and contented, and be ‘that nice Mrs. Lammle,’ and Alcott can spoil me to his heart’s delight. I shall host society ladies at tea and throw the dullest dinner parties imaginable. And I shall revel in it!”

“And the troupe?” It felt churlish to question her decision, so elated was she, but I could not help but be anxious about the fate of those of us she would be leaving behind.

Such anxieties were clearly far from her mind, however. “Oh, Clement can take over quite easily. He can find some other leading lady—Narcissa Holm might suffice. The company will scarcely notice I’m gone.”

This was unaccustomed modesty, and misplaced at that. But my most urgent thought was not, I admit, for the company. “And what of me?” I asked.

That finally brought her out of her fantasy. She looked at me with a little moue of dismay. “Oh. Graves, I am sorry, but I cannot take you with me.”

“Cannot?”

“It is Alcott. He is quite determined that I leave all vestiges of my life in England behind once we are married. I believe it’s a point of pride with him—he tells me that he has already hired a dressmaker who is quite in demand in New York.” When I did not answer, she added, “Truly, if it were my decision, naturally I’d want you with me. But I shall need to dress in the style of the American ladies of Alcott’s circle, and my dear, you’re far too original for such drab work!”

I could not help but smile at her attempt to cushion the blow. “I fear that leaves me at a loose end,” I said. “The fact is, the company won’t need to keep me on. I’ve always worked for you rather than the troupe. They did for themselves before I arrived, and without you to pay my wages they’ll not want the expense of a resident seamstress.”

She bit her lip in the gesture she adopted on stage for vexation of thought. “You are right, of course. How too exasperating. What shall you do?”

What indeed? I could return to the factory. The thought of it made my stomach curdle. The long hours, from dark to dark, with only one day in every week to call one’s own; the noise that seemed to batter at one’s skull; the weariness that one wore like a heavy garment; and all for so little pay that a shared shabby room and three meager meals were all it would afford. And without another patron like Sybil Ingram, I would be likely to spend the rest of my life in such servitude. My very soul seemed to cringe.
Not that. Anything but that.

But what else was there for an unattached female? I knew that the established modistes had no desire to take on a seamstress of my age; they preferred tractable younger women who were easily cowed and presented a prettier appearance to customers. Nor was I fit for work as a governess. My education had been a scanty, slapdash affair, doled out to me by my mother during her rare moments of leisure. Thanks to her, I had some fragments of learning beyond what was vouchsafed to many of my class, but it was far from the body of knowledge I would need in order to become a governess. Nor did I have the amiable disposition for such work—or for work in a shop, as I had proven. Was there no other course open to me?

Yes, one: become Atlas’s wife.

I shrank from the thought. He was the worst match I could possibly have chosen. His face and form reminded me so strongly of Richard that I could scarcely bear his presence. It made my scarred heart feel the pain of breaking as keenly as if it had been only yesterday instead of more than eighteen years before. And this same man was the one Richard had seemed to despise above all others—the only person, in fact, who animated anything like hostility in him. It would be betraying the memory of the man I had loved to wed the very man he had held in contempt.