Page 41 of The Lady Plays with Fire

Once she had told Laura, the woman her brother had later married, that it wasn’t fair to decry actresses’ reputations and deny respectable women a place on the stage. All women played parts, she had insisted. Every young lady occasionally hid behind a costume, a well-rehearsed line, a mask.

Never had those words felt more true.

She, for instance, was accumulating new roles by the hour. Miss Hayes. Miss Philpot. Miss on Scene.

Julia.

The memory of his rough voice as he’d all but groaned her name sent a shiver of longing through her. He could be such a disagreeable man. And she knew better than to desire his attention.

But still she found herself wishing he had kissed her once more . . .

Determined to dispel such thoughts, she rolled the script into a tube, as Mr. Fanshawe had done. But instead of gesticulating with it, she used it to peer out the window, like a pirate through a spyglass. The treetops of Clapham Common were just visible in the distance. Then, laughing at her own childishness, she smoothed the script over her knees until it lay flat again. Once she had gleaned everything she could from the document, she would have to return it, ideally without Mrs. Cole even realizing it was gone.

A few moments later, the hackney rolled to something like a stop near Mrs. Hayes’s front door, and Julia leaped nimbly to the pavement. Inside, she met Mrs. Whyte escorting the apothecary, Mr. Watkins, down the stairs.

The housekeeper’s ordinarily mild expression was lined with concern and darkened a bit further as she greeted Julia with a well-disguised scold. “Ah, Miss Addison. I wondered where you’d got to.”

“I had an errand to run,” she explained. “On behalf of Mrs. Hayes.”

She told herself it wasn’t quite a lie. As far as she was concerned, every woman in London stood to suffer some degree of loss if the Magazine for Misses was destroyed.

“The last for a while, I daresay.” Mr. Watkins placed his apothecary’s bag beside his hat on the demilune table positioned against the wall near the front door, then slipped his arms into the sleeves of his greatcoat.

Julia looked from one to the other, suddenly worried. “Is everything all right?”

“A rheumatic flare,” Mr. Watkins said with a sigh of compassion. “I’ve insisted on a fortnight’s strict bed rest and left Mrs. Whyte with a poultice and instructions for bandaging her limbs, which I hope will alleviate some of her discomfort. A warmer climate for the winter really would be best, but alas, with the war . . .” He shook his head as his voice faded away. “It’s good you’ll be here to keep her amused, Miss Addison.”

She managed to nod. “I’ll go to her now, shall I?” With a quick curtsy, she hurried past Mrs. Whyte on the stairs, not waiting for an answer.

After pausing to shed her pelisse and bonnet in her room, she tapped on the door of Mrs. Hayes’s chamber. One of the housemaids responded to her knock.

“Has she been asking for me, Nelly?” Julia had come armed with the French romance they had been reading and the afternoon papers.

A soft snore from the bed answered her question.

“She were that done up,” the girl said. “Mr. Watkins recommended another dose of her sleeping draught to help her settle.”

Julia nodded her understanding and gestured to indicate that Nelly might resume her usual duties. Once the girl was gone, Julia took up the chair positioned near the head of the bed and deposited the pile of amusements she had brought with her on the small marble-topped table beside her.

After several moments, in which Mrs. Hayes showed no sign of wakefulness, Julia twisted the chair toward the window to catch the last of the fading afternoon light and slid Mrs. Cole’s script from the pile, where she had secreted it amidst the gossip sheets and the news of the day.

She had known better than to think that a few hours of unexpected freedom had been a sign. If Fate, or the guardian angel sent by her father, were to intervene in her life, this would surely be the form such an intervention would take: a circumstance tailor-made to ensure she would be stuck at Mrs. Hayes’s bedside for at least two weeks, safe from all but the desire to return to Covent Garden and Lord Dunstane.

If she were diligent, the script would tell her what she needed to know and show her how to respond, without any further risk to her virtue or her reputation.

If she were wise, she wouldn’t return to the theater until she could do so in the company of Mrs. Hayes, for a scheduled performance.

Perhaps not until the end of November, when The Poison Pen was set to debut.

* * *

The next morning, Nelly came to Julia’s bedside. “Mrs. Hayes is askin’ for ye, miss.”

Julia blinked against the dawn. “She’s awake?”

Mrs. Hayes had hardly stirred since the apothecary’s visit. After supper, Mrs. Whyte had ordered Nelly to sit with their mistress, with every expectation that she would pass a quiet night. Julia had thus been settled comfortably in her own bed by half past ten, according to the bells of Holy Trinity Church.

But sleep had been elusive. She had heard the mournful hours of two and three ring out across Clapham Common before finally managing to quiet her restless thoughts enough to snatch a little rest. She had even caught herself wishing for the oblivion of Mrs. Hayes’s sleeping draught, which had been at least temporarily effective once before at blotting out the memory of Lord Dunstane’s touch.