Page 44 of The Lady Plays with Fire

Julia caught her breath. “Ma’am? I—no.” She couldn’t. It would be foolish in the extreme for her to return to Covent Garden. She was in danger of losing her reputation. And—if she were honest—her heart. “It’s too late, anyway. By the time I arrived, rehearsal would be over. And you need me here.”

“I need rest. You said so yourself. When’s the next rehearsal?”

“Wednesday, I believe.”

“Ah. Well, then. We have time to think up a proper excuse to give Mrs. Whyte for your going out. A pity about today, but Lord Dunstane must know that a lady’s companion is sometimes at the whim of her crotchety old employer and unable to get away.”

“Go out?” She couldn’t disguise the incredulity in her voice. “Surely you don’t mean to allow . . . ?”

Though truth be told, encourage might be the better word.

“Allow what?” As Julia watched, the shrewdness faded from Mrs. Hayes’s expression, leaving her looking positively feeble. “How can an old lady possibly be expected to be aware of everything that goes on beneath her roof, all the comings and goings?” And then she winked, and the spark returned to her eyes. “Just ask my niece.”

While ostensibly serving as her aunt’s companion, Laura had often sneaked out to play a dangerous role, acting as an avenging angel for mistreated young women. Laura still believed she had succeeded in pulling the wool over her aunt’s eyes about those escapades.

Julia gasped. “You knew?”

Mrs. Hayes shrugged, as if to excuse herself. “I know what it is to love the theater, the donning of costumes, the playing of parts. I also know what freedom tastes like. A nibble now and again is never enough. And I’ve always thought it a pity that women are so rarely afforded a chance to do as they wish until”—she paused to pluck at the linens, puckering the fabric here and there—“they are too old and feeble to do much of anything.”

Julia sent a sidelong glance at the tattered script. “What if someone finds out?”

The discovery that she, a young lady—paid companion or not—had spent time unchaperoned in the company of actors . . . and Lord Dunstane . . . What a scandal! Even if nothing happened between them, her reputation might be tarnished. And if something did happen?

Then things would go worse for her still. Her family would insist she leave London forever.

If they didn’t disown her entirely.

Mrs. Hayes now smoothed one gnarled hand over the quilt, as if wiping away the wrinkles in their plan. “You must see that no one does.”

Julia leaped to her feet and wrapped the frail woman in a careful hug. “Thank you, ma’am!” she breathed.

“Just be careful not to lose sight of what’s important, my dear,” Mrs. Hayes said, returning Julia’s embrace with surprising strength. “This Guide to Misconduct must go on giving young ladies a voice—no, teaching them they have a voice of their own. And one more thing—”

“Ma’am?” She pulled back enough that she could see Mrs. Hayes’s face.

“I do wish you would call me Aunt Mildred.”

Chapter 14

Monday’s rehearsal had been the worst yet. Mrs. Cole had misplaced her script. Fanshawe had whinged interminably about having to learn new lines. And Graham had known, even before the words were spoken, that the scenes he had labored for the better part of three days to rewrite were swill.

They lacked Julia’s deftness, her lightness of touch. Once he had read her suggestions, nothing in Blackadder’s ordinary style sounded quite right.

For the first hour he had sat in the back of the theater, ready to assist her with the door. He had divided his gaze between his box, lest she had decided to observe from a distance, and the stage, where he imagined her bright eyes and mischievous smile as Perpetua Philpot brought a poor poet to the brink of despair and made the audience half in love with her for it.

When it became clear she had no intention of coming his rescue, he had reminded himself that fascination with the clever critic was to be expected. After all, had he not once been almost seduced by Miss on Scene’s compliments? Then she had delivered the death blow—that snide remark about pity—and now she would be justly punished in the end.

Not long into the second hour, he had stridden to the foot of the stage, told the actors of Blackadder’s disappointment at their efforts in no uncertain terms, and gone back to Half Moon Street to berate Keynes about his lack of progress in discovering the identity of Miss on Scene.

On Tuesday, when no rehearsal had been called, he ordered his curricle and set out in a southerly direction. Over the Thames. In the general vicinity of Clapham, as it happened. Not that he had any intention of stopping. He certainly didn’t wonder which of the stately, modern houses belonged to the Widow Hayes. He was just passing through into the country for a longer drive. The horses wanted the exercise. And he needed fresh air, somewhere away from Mayfair.

Far away from the theater and everything—everyone—associated with it.

Only when Clapham Common was far behind him did he loosen his grip on the reins, allow himself to take in his surroundings. To either side of a narrow lane lay rolling fields, some fallow for the impending winter, others awaiting a final harvest of grain, all of them constrained by brown, scraggly hedgerows.

Except for the sheep dotting a distant pasture, none of it reminded him of the Highlands. Too flat, too cultivated, too . . . English. But something about the countryside made him think with longing of Dunstane. Despite the pains and travails associated with the place, when all was said and done, it was still his home.

He wanted, quite suddenly, to write. Not the painstaking—and, he feared, ultimately pointless—revisions to The Poison Pen, which required too much coffee to begin and too much whisky to continue. Something fresh. Something with a bit more heart and a bit less rancor.