Break of Dawn (26 page)

She stared at him. If he had come to see her as he proclaimed, then how could he possibly have twisted the fight for liberty and the vote and the other issues in the play like this? Swallowing hard, she tried to inject cool politeness into her voice. ‘It is a play and I am an actress, that is all.’

‘Such modesty.’

‘I have to be at the theatre shortly so will you kindly stop this carriage,’ she said again, warning herself not to lose control. With this man’s henchmen sitting either side of her she had no chance of escape, so she had to talk her way out of this, but it was hard when she wanted to shout and scream. Whoever he was, he had money, that much was evident, but for all his fine clothes and this
carriage, which she had to admit was beautiful, he was no gentleman to behave this way.

‘All in good time.’ He smiled the smile that wasn’t a smile. ‘All in good time, m’dear.’

She would escape. He would have to stop the carriage at some time, and no matter where she was she would scream and make a run for it. Her mind made up, Cat tried to get her bearings. The carriage had been pointing in the opposite direction from the Cathedral, towards the Strand, but already she had been conscious that they had twisted and turned a couple of times so they could be going back whence she’d come for all she knew.

Was his name really Henry? She moistened her lips which were dry with fright. He was a big man and heavy with it, and she would put his age at about fifty or so, although it was difficult to tell with the full beard he wore in the style of the King. He wasn’t ugly, but there was something distinctly repellent about him, something that made her flesh creep. Whether it was the redness of the thick, full lips beneath the moustache or the look in his eyes when he stared at her, she didn’t know, but whatever it was, everything in her recoiled from any contact with him.

The two men either side of her were apparently relaxed, but she sensed the slightest move from her and they would pounce. Quietly, she said, ‘Where are you taking me?’

‘You’ll see shortly.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ She hated the pleading note in her voice. ‘If you admire me as you say you do, why are you treating me this way?’

‘This way? What way is that?’

‘Kidnapping me.’

He laughed, a dry sound. ‘Christabel, Christabel, such accusations. I am merely ensuring I enjoy the pleasure of your company as you seemed determined to thwart me. And really, you intrigue me more than a little. All this passion and openness on stage and yet you shrink from my letters? Why is that? I wondered. In all my observations over the last months I see no constant male beau, and so, I began to wonder, does your fancy lie in a different direction? Or
perhaps you simply enjoy pleasure from wherever it comes? Certainly I, myself, consider nothing unnatural. You could say I am the most liberal of men in that regard.’

She stared at him, only half-understanding what he was implying. ‘You’ve been watching me? Outside the theatre, I mean?’ The creeping feeling he induced spread over her scalp as if the hairs on her head were rising.

He sat, half-smiling, watching her.

The rest of the journey was conducted in silence and lasted no more than ten minutes or so. When the horses’ trot slowed down and then stopped, Cat prepared herself for flight, but no one in the carriage moved. And then the wheels were rolling again but only for a moment or two before the carriage turned at an angle and then stopped once more, but this time for good.

The man who called himself Henry got out, and she heard him say to someone, ‘Lock those gates,’ before adding, directly to her, ‘May I help you, my dear?’ as he held out his hand.

Ignoring him, Cat climbed out of the carriage to find she was in the walled yard of what looked to be a fairly substantial house, and another man was busy locking two huge wooden gates set in the eight-foot-high wall. She opened her mouth, but the scream never had voice because the man who had grabbed her had followed her from the carriage and now lifted her as before, his hand over her mouth as he carried her straight through an open doorway into the house. She kicked and struggled for a moment before becoming still, realising the futility of wasting her strength.

Cat saw she was in a large kitchen but she was carried through this into a passage. Halfway along the passage the man called Henry had unlocked another door, and as her captor took her down the steep stone steps she realised they were descending into the cellar. She fought again, nearly sending them both headlong, and as the man holding her uttered a string of oaths, Henry, now at the bottom of the stairs, laughed. ‘I think we’ll have to give her something. See to it, would you?’

‘I know what
I’d
like to give her.’

‘All good things come to those that wait, Seamus.’

Henry stood aside at the bottom of the steps. An enclosed room had been constructed, the door of which was open, and now Cat was pushed into it with enough force to send her to her knees. She crawled forwards and then scrambled to her feet, turning to see Henry watching her from the doorway. ‘Scream all you like,’ he said mildly. ‘This room was made to certain requirements.’ And then he shut the door and she heard the bolts slid into place.

The gas-lights burning in several holders mounted on brackets on the walls of the room told Cat she had been expected. It was the colour that hit her senses first. A deep scarlet red; walls, carpet – covering all of the floor; even the ceiling was painted in the same brazen shade. There were no windows, no natural light, but as Cat stared about her, her face white and terrified, the implements the room contained froze her blood. Whips, handcuffs and other items were hanging on the wall close to the huge bed, and it was then she began to whimper like a child.

When the man Seamus returned he had his companion with him who was holding a cup. Cat had heard the bolts being slid, and had braced herself to fly at whoever entered the room, but Seamus had clearly anticipated such a reaction. He subdued her with little effort, and the other man held her nose, brought her head back at a painful angle and forced her to swallow the contents of the cup. It tasted bitter, and when she had ingested it all Seamus hauled her to the bed and flung her on it. ‘I’ll wager you won’t forget this day in a hurry,’ he said thickly, surveying her sprawled limbs hungrily. ‘The things he does . . .’ He grinned. ‘Still, you’ll find out soon enough.’

When they left the room, locking the door once more, Cat had a feeling come over her she’d never experienced before. Her limbs were heavy and her mind wasn’t her own, but the panic and agitation had subsided somewhat and she wanted nothing more than to sleep. Knowing she couldn’t give in to the deadening potion, she tried to fight it, but it was worse with each minute that ticked by, and by the time the door opened again she was barely able to stand.

Henry Chide-Mulhearne, a member of the aristocracy and a follower of Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade, had been
anticipating this moment for a while. He had come across one of the Marquis de Sade’s novels,
Les 120 Journées de Sodome
in his youth, and the works of sexual fantasy and perversion had gripped him like nothing else in his pampered and profligate life. Wealth and power he took as his right, and the privileges they accorded him a divine prerogative. He considered himself above the law and the narrow views of men, and although he usually took his women from the brothels where they would not be missed should his ‘games’ go too far, occasionally, as in the case of Cat, a woman who was not a prostitute caught his eye.

His servants, such as Seamus, he chose very carefully and paid extremely well. He had a country estate, this large townhouse, a grand chalet in France and a villa in the Italian Alps, and divided his time between them, never staying too long in one place. Each of his homes had what he called his ‘special’ room, like the one Cat was in now. Actresses interested him, they always had. In an age where the paragon of womanhood was the humble, obedient wife, mother or sister of some man, a woman who flagrantly displayed herself on the stage of the theatre was anathema and therefore exciting to his jaded palate – whatever the puritan morality of the play. And lately, the ‘new drama’ where conventional attitudes were challenged excited him still more.

He saw that the drug Seamus had given her had done its work. Even as she backed away from him, she stumbled and almost fell. He was wearing nothing beneath the long velvet dressing gown he had on, and as he reached her, he said softly, ‘Will you take off your clothes, my dear, or shall I?’

The lunch with Patience and William went well, but Sophy was glad when it was over. Patience did most of the talking. By the time they parted, Sophy was well-acquainted with most aspects of her cousins’ lives. She knew John and Matthew had houses in the same street in Bishopwearmouth and were blissfully happy with their respective wives, and that John’s boys were darlings but a handful. David had done splendidly at university and was now an archaeologist working somewhere in Egypt. Patience and her husband lived close to the children’s hospital on the southern outskirts of Bishopwearmouth where William had recently taken up the post of Head Consultant, after eighteen years at the Sunderland Infirmary. Patience had told Sophy that she and her brothers saw their father on a regular basis, but their mother rarely.

Sophy gave Patience her address before they said goodbye. It would have been churlish not to. But seeing her cousin had brought up the wounds of the past, especially the feeling of loss she’d felt when Bridget, Kitty and Patrick had been dismissed. Consequently she left the hotel sad and disturbed.

Two days later, however, when she waited in vain for Cat at Dolly’s, and then went to the theatre where Cat was appearing
only to find her friend hadn’t shown for the last few performances, she felt more than disturbed. It was the same story at Cat’s lodgings. No one had seen her since the morning Cat had attended the suffrage meeting.

Sophy left Cat’s lodgings and went straight to the local police station. From there she tried several hospitals. Everyone she spoke to tried to be helpful but Cat had apparently disappeared into thin air. During her performance that night, all Sophy could think about was her friend. She sensed that something was terribly wrong. Single actresses were vulnerable. Everyone knew that, which was why many married for protection as much as for respectability. True, the theatre was more reputable than the music halls, and the social status regarding male actors had changed for the better in the last decade or two, but a segment of society persisted in viewing actresses as scarlet women. Henry Irving, the actor-manager of the Lyceum, had done much for male actors when he was knighted thirteen years before, but actresses were still suspect. Ambition and independence were unfeminine attributes, male logic argued, and when women expressed passion and a lack of restraint on stage, it stood to reason they were females of a certain sort.

Sophy had heard these views in various forms over the years. Most of the time actresses could laugh at the bigotry they rep resented, but occasionally, like now, they were more worrying.

Toby didn’t come home that night. This was not an uncommon occurrence. Sophy had long since insisted on separate bedrooms so he did not wake her in the early hours. But it wasn’t her husband’s absence which had her pacing the floor. She felt sick about Cat. At one point she sat on her bed holding Maisie, who normally reposed on her dressing-table, staring at the doll Bridget had given her so long ago and praying that another dear friend hadn’t been taken from her. And as Bridget had been more mother than friend, so was Cat more the sister she had never had. She loved her dearly. How dearly, she hadn’t realised till now.

As soon as it was light Sophy bathed and dressed, refusing the
breakfast Sadie – her maid-cum-cook – tried to press upon her before she left the house. With Sophy’s success had come a move to a large terraced establishment overlooking Berkeley Square, and when she’d come across Sadie, an ageing ex-actress who’d spent the last decade living in abject poverty, it had seemed right to offer her the job even though some of the other applicants had been more suitable. It had proved a happy arrangement. Sadie was endlessly grateful for her changed circumstances, and Sophy was glad of the other woman’s company, especially with Toby being the way he was. It was good to have another woman living in the house.

Sadie now fussed over her as she hailed Sophy a cab. ‘You ought to eat something, ma’am,’ she scolded gently. ‘Even if it’s just a slice of toast.’

‘I’ll have something later, when I’ve spoken to Kane.’

‘Mr Gregory’ had become ‘Kane’ some years ago. The entertainment world was a small one, and after meeting several times at various functions on a social level, he had requested she address him less formally.

‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’ he’d asked one day at a dinner for a respected actor who was retiring from the profession and going abroad to end his days in the sun. ‘And I always think of you as Sophy. It’s silly to stand on ceremony.’

Toby hadn’t liked it, of course, but by then Sophy had ceased to worry about annoying her husband. If Toby had had his way, she would have had no friends of her own and would have sat at home twiddling her thumbs when she wasn’t at the theatre. She had become used to attending the numerous receptions and social occasions alone, when Toby was either off goodness knows where or in a state of drugged senselessness, and it was nice when Kane invited her to be his partner for some event or other. He was always very proper, and most meticulous about her reputation, making sure that no one misconstrued their friendship for anything else. And he’d proved himself to be a good and faithful friend over the years, although Sophy sometimes felt she knew as little about him now as when she’d first met him.
She never spoke about Toby and Kane never asked, although she suspected the state of their marriage was common knowledge in the incestuous theatre world.

She had never visited Kane’s home before, although she knew where he lived, and during the cab ride to Russell Square at the back of the British Museum she found she was a little nervous, although she was sure he wouldn’t mind her calling unannounced in the circumstances. When the cab deposited her outside a large, three-storeyed terrace with black painted iron railings separating the snowy-white front steps from the pavement, she stood for a moment, composing herself before she mounted the steps and used the shiny brass knocker on the front door.