Page 72 of The Lady Plays with Fire

“Five minutes?” Julia echoed. “But I—”

The dresser, a girl a few years younger than Julia, her light brown hair covered by a kerchief, looked her up and down in patent disbelief and said, “Who’re you?”

“I’m Miss—” she hesitated over her choice of answers, then shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. Tonight, I’m Perpetua Philpot. Will you help me please?”

Though the girl shook her head, she jerked her thumb to point behind a screen. “Let’s get you dressed, then. Can you do your own paint?”

No lady’s maid had ever got her mistress out of one gown and into another with the efficiency of a theatrical dresser, who even had time to complain about the work she had done tailoring the costumes to the more statuesque figure of Mrs. Cole. “All for naught,” she grumbled around a mouthful of pins. “All right. That’ll do. Sit down at the dressing table.”

Julia did as she had been bid, her eyes sweeping over a bewildering array of cosmetics as the girl fussed over a selection of hairpieces, none of which matched her hair.

“Never mind it.”

Glancing into the looking glass, Julia met Graham’s eyes over her shoulder. He was standing just inside the doorway to the dressing room. Impatience had been added to the mixture of expressions he had been wearing a few moments before.

And something that looked like worry.

“You’re certain about this?” he asked.

“I am,” she told his reflection, then she spun on the stool to address him directly. “Unless you think I’ll make things worse.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible,” he answered dryly. “The papers on Perpetua’s desk are pages from the script now. You can read most of the lines directly from them and make it look as if you’re reading from your notes. When you get to the third act—”

“Places, everyone,” a voice called down the corridor. “Curtain going up!”

“Go on, then,” Graham said, stepping away from the door so that she could slip past.

“But the third act?” she cried.

“But her face?” cried the dresser. She snatched up a pot from the table. “At least let me dab on a bit of rouge.”

“Allow me,” Graham said, taking Julia’s hand to pull her onto her feet and into a swift kiss. As always, color rushed to her cheeks. “I dinnae ken whether you’re a brave lass or a foolish one,” he whispered into her ear, no longer attempting to restrain the Scots in his voice. “But I love you, all the same.”

Before she could even react to those words, he practically pushed her down the corridor, at the far end of which Mr. Sawyer stood, motioning for her to hurry. “Up you get,” he said, handing her up another set of wooden stairs, almost a ladder, that led to the back of the stage. “Fanshawe’s already in place. And for God’s sake,” he called after her as she scurried toward Perpetua’s writing desk, “speak up!”

“You?” Mr. Fanshawe sneered as he motioned for the stagehands to draw the curtain. Then he picked up his pen and squared himself to his own table. “Perfect.”

A packed theater was nothing like an empty one, she quickly discovered. It buzzed with a sort of electricity—and with conversation, as speculation over her identity passed in whispers behind fans and hands. Fanshawe had some trouble making himself heard over the noise.

She wanted to glance up at her family in the box but didn’t dare. Instead, she picked up the extravagant quill, bowed her head over the escritoire, and pretended to write on a page already filled with the lines she was shortly to speak. Lines which bore a remarkable similarity to the words she had jotted down at her first rehearsal. A sensible critique from a writer who was twice the poet as sickly Robert Briggs.

And when she stood to deliver Perpetua’s first speech, she forgot to be nervous. Forgot to wonder what changes were in store for the third act. Forgot everything but what Graham had said right before she stepped onstage.

She wished she had had time to tell him she loved him too.

But for the next hour, her performance would have to speak for her. She was determined to earn his praise.

Chapter 22

Graham dragged in a deep breath of the familiar scents of the theater—greasepaint, sweat, and sawdust—and held it. Waiting.

The noise was terrific. Even Fanshawe, who had come up through the music halls and penny shows, struggled to make himself heard over the crowd. Graham considered whether to signal for the curtain to be dropped, to put the play out of its misery at last.

Then Julia stood, paper in one hand, quill in the other, and an unexpected hush fell over the audience.

Less out of respect than morbid curiosity, he feared. Theatergoers found entertainment in spectacle, even in failure. He should never have agreed to this, should never have let Julia go on.

By Christ, she was brave, though. Her posture revealed no hint of nervousness. She looked every inch the clever, confident reviewer whose judgment deserved to be heeded.