Enslaved (25 page)

“I intended to wait until you came home but I couldn’t, or at least I didn’t want to.” He stepped back and turned her in his arms to face him. “This may not be the most opportune time to give you this, but I confess I can’t wait any longer.” Eyes beaming, he pulled a velvet-covered ring box from his jacket pocket.

“Oh, Gavin.” Reaching for him, she slid her hand into his silky hair, wishing they might stay in the moment forever and never move beyond it.

But of course, that was fantasy. She could no more stall time than she could conjure a magic wand and wave it to transform herself into a proper lady instead of what she was, an actress with a scandalous past and an illegitimate child.

“I love that you asked me, but you must know my answer can only be no.”

The light went out of his smile and his eyes. “Why is that?”

“Do you even need to ask? Surely you must know I’m no fit mate for you?”

He shook his head. “You’re my soul mate, the queen of my heart, the love of my life. What else might possibly matter?”

He was so unspeakably earnest, so impossibly honorable and dear it broke her heart to send him away but send him away she must. “Oh, Gavin, it’s a lovely fairytale we’ve been living these past weeks, but it’s coming time for it to end so we can both move forward with our lives. I’m an aspiring actress with a sketchy past and nothing to recommend me beyond a pair of dancer’s legs and a trunk full of musty costumes and paste baubles.”

“You’ve a great deal more to recommend you, and we both know it. And I love you. I should like to think that counted for something?”

Fearing she would weaken if he didn’t leave, and soon, Daisy reached inside herself for the one thing certain to drive him away forever.

“I had a visit earlier today … from your grandfather.”

The scowl that admission prompted put her in mind of his grandfather indeed, making her aware of a fleeting family resemblance. “What the devil did he want? Never mind, I’ll ask him myself and while I’m at it tell him to mind his own bloody business.” He turned as if to go.

“No, wait, don’t.” She reached out and caught at his coat sleeve. “Your grandfather offered me money, a great deal of money, in exchange for my promise to walk out of your life forever.”

He blew out a heavy breath. “The old badger never ceases trying to run my life. He must have been shocked when you turned him down. I wish I’d been a fly on the wall when you told him to sod off.” Unable to meet his gaze, Daisy dropped hers to the floor. He raised a dark brow and regarded her. “You did turn him down … didn’t you?”

Biting her bottom lip, she shook her head. “No, Gavin, I didn’t. I … I accepted. I’m … I’m sorry but five thousand pounds is a great deal of money for a girl like me, and I’ve a daughter to think of.”

“I would have provided for you and Freddie both, cared for her as though she were my own flesh and blood. Christ, Daisy, I was even thinking to legally adopt her.”

“Gavin, I’m … sorry.”

“Sorry?” He stared at her as though she’d just sprouted a second head—one crowned by devil’s horns and a great many hairy moles and hideous warts. “Can it be that’s all you have to say for yourself? You’re
sorry?
”

She’d done her work well, perhaps too well, because judging from the glacial gleam in his eyes and the cutting coldness of his voice, he well and truly hated her. That was what she wanted, wasn’t it? In a span of mere minutes she accomplished precisely what she set out to do. She’d driven him away once and for all. Huzzah for her. Whether she called herself Delilah du Lac or Daisy Lake no longer mattered, not really. Either way, she was a far better actress than anyone, herself included, had supposed.

Every sinew of her being screamed out for her to take back the lie and set things right with him while there was still time. For Gavin’s good she tamped down the temptation and forced herself to meet the raw pain in his gaze without flinching. “What else is there to say?”

“What else, indeed?” He threw back his head and let out a crack of laughter sharp as shattered glass.

“I am sorry, Gavin.”

“I’m sorry, too, Daisy—royally sorry I ever set eyes on you, sorrier still I let myself fall in love with you all over again. I do love you, you know. Greedy, grasping bitch that you are, God help me, I still want you in my bed and in my life. As it is, I’m not entirely certain how I’m to get you out of my head let alone my heart, or the scattered scraps left of it, and go on again.”

Tears sliding down her cheeks, Daisy shook her head. “Oh, Gavin, don’t you know Shakespeare had the right of it?” Swallowing hard, she recalled the one line of Rosalind’s she managed to miss several times earlier in rehearsal but now recalled with crystalline clarity. “'Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.'”

Staggering out onto the street, Gavin felt as though the future he built for himself was falling down in flames around him. The ring he left behind on Daisy’s dressing table, not because he’d forgotten it but because he never wanted to see it, or her, again.

But there was someone he despised far more than Daisy at the moment and that someone was his grandfather. He stormed into the old man’s law office only to have the buttoned-up secretary inform him Mr. St. John had not yet returned from luncheon. According to the ticking grandfather’s clock, it was coming on four o’ clock. For a man who typically took his meals at his desk, such an extended absence was noteworthy.

“Shall I tell him you came by?”

“Don’t bother. I’m sure I’ll find him.”

Gavin lost no time in heading for his grandfather’s townhouse. Situated within view of the Marble Arch on fashionable Park Lane, its Palladian façade always struck Gavin as more like a public building than a private home. Ordinarily he avoided the place as he might avoid the plague. He had myriad memories of finishing out his adolescence there, at least on school holidays, but few of them could be called happy.

His grandfather’s butler greeted him beneath the fanlight-crowned entrance. “Master Gavin, how nice to see you.”

Stepping inside the foyer, Gavin was amazed at how the sterility of the place still stifled him. Marble busts of Greek and Roman philosophers were set in the recessed wall panels and the furniture and silver pieces polished to a high gloss.

“And you, Wentworth.” The butler must be nearing seventy. Gavin remembered looking up to him as a boy but now the old man barely reached his shoulder. “Is my grandfather in?”

“He’s only just returned home. He’s in his study. Shall I inform him you’re here?”

Gavin shook his head. “That won’t be necessary. I am well acquainted with the way.”

In his boyhood, he’d been summoned to his grandfather’s sanctum often enough, usually to be dressed down for some supposed transgression, rarely to be praised. He vividly recalled a caning or two. Leaning over the desk with his trousers riding his ankles and his teeth gritted to keep from crying out, those episodes counted as the most humiliating of his life.

The door to the study stood ajar when he approached. He gave the perfunctory light rap and stepped inside.

Seated behind the mahogany desk, his grandfather looked up. “Given the turn our luncheon took, I hadn’t thought to see you again this day or soon again.”

Gavin doubted that very much. Not much took the old man by surprise and given the meddling mischief he’d been about, surely he couldn’t be surprised to have his grandson turning up at his door.

Rather than play his grandfather’s game, Gavin came directly to the point. “I’ve just come from Drury Lane Theater. I’m sure it will please you to know Miss Lake has rejected my marriage proposal.”

“The devil she has.” The old man must be something of an actor himself because the shocked expression on his gaunt face looked to be real.

“Forgive me if I admit to finding your reaction rather contrived, particularly when turning me down is precisely what you paid her to do.”

For the first time in fifteen years, Gavin saw his grandfather hesitate. Moistening pale lips, he dropped his gaze to the desk blotter almost as if … as if he were ashamed to meet Gavin’s eye. “Is that what she told you?”

“Yes.”

“That is only half the truth. I did offer her money, a great deal of money, but she refused to accept so much as a penny from me.”

For the first time since barging in, Gavin felt less than sure of his purpose. “But she said she took the money from you.”

“If you don’t believe me, then perhaps you’ll believe the proof of your eyes.” St. John reached into his coat pocket and pulled out two halves of what looked to be a bank note. He handed the torn pieces over to Gavin. “She rent this in front of me, consigned me to the Devil, and then tossed me out of her dressing room. Whatever else she is, she’s quite a woman—a woman who must love you very much.”

“A woman’s who’s lied to me.” Gavin held off on adding “again” if only because whatever deception occurred in the past or present was between Daisy and he. “By the by, you shall have my letter of resignation come Monday morning.”

“I wish you’d reconsider.”

“I can’t be in business with a man who schemes to undermine me any more than I can marry a woman who lies to me.”

His grandfather shook his grizzled head, and Gavin was again struck by how weary and frail he appeared. It was as if the tyrant of his youth had become an old man overnight. “We’re none of us perfect, Gavin.”

Rourke had said fair near the same to him the other night when he’d shown up drunk at his door. He dismissed it at the time, but lately he found himself giving the statement more and more thought. Did his high standards and perfectionist ways drive the people he cared for to lie rather than risk disappointing him—or losing his love?

“It may well be too late for you and I, but don’t let your stubborn pride stand in the way of your happiness with Miss Lake. If you still wish to wed her, I won’t stand in your way.”

“Even if I were willing to debase myself by asking her yet again, it is obvious she’ll do and say just about anything to be rid of me.”

“Quite the contrary, she’s been fighting to find her way back to you for the past fifteen years.”

“What game are you playing at now, Grandfather?”

“Truth or consequences, I suppose you’d call it.” St. John drew open a desk drawer and slapped a bundle of letters atop the desk. “I should have shown these to you ere now. I only pray to God it isn’t too late.” He slid the string-tied letters across the desk to Gavin.

Heart pounding and palms perspiring, Gavin looked from the pile of post to his grandfather. “What’s all this?”

“Letters Miss Lake, Daisy, wrote to you all those years ago.”

Gavin felt a strange reluctance to touch them, knew a keen sense that to open so much as one would be akin to throwing up the lid on Pandora’s Box—a life-altering experience, a deed from which there would be no turning back, not now, not ever. “Why didn’t I ever receive them?”

“Believe me when I say I honestly had your best interest at heart.”

Looking up, he said, “You kept them from me, didn’t you?” It wasn’t really a question.

Maximilian hesitated and then nodded. “When you went away to school, I left orders with the headmaster you were only to receive correspondence from a list of approved persons. Any letters from anyone else were to be remanded to me. I wanted to give you a fresh start, to give you a chance to purge the bad memories from the past.”

“Not all my memories were bad. Apart from those of the fire, most of them were bloody good.”

“But I didn’t know that. After I brought you home here, many a night I’d be working in this study when your screams would reach me from above. I knew you were dreaming of the past, the fire. You’d suffered so much already, I couldn’t stand by and see you suffer any more, not if I could prevent it.”

“I suffered when you took me away from my friends. They were the only comfort, the only family, I’d known for more than a year, and yet you tore them from me much as you might tear off a limb.”

“I see that now though I didn’t then. For what it’s worth, I am sorry, Gavin. I was only trying to protect you.”

“You were thinking of one person and one person only, the same person who remains uppermost in your mind and your heart: yourself. You as good as killed my mother with your heartlessness and your rigid, unbending rules, and you’ve spent the past fifteen years doing your damnedest to break me as well. Well, you’re not going to get away with it, Grandfather, not any longer. You and this firm can go to the Devil. I’d sooner hawk fish on Fleet Bridge than take a single more case to benefit you and your highbrow friends.”

“Gavin, wait, don’t leave like this … please.”

“Go to the devil, Grandfather.”

Gavin picked up the packet of letters and walked out into the twilight.

“We that are true lovers run into strange capers;
but as all is mortal in nature, so is all nature
in love mortal in folly.”
—W
ILLIAM
S
HAKESPEARE
, Touchstone,
As You Like It

T
he day of Daisy’s theatrical debut dawned crisp and clear. Such fine weather constituted a good omen that Flora exclaimed she felt in her bones, but then her adoptive mother’s anatomy was partial to the warmer, dryer weather. Owing to the split with Gavin, Daisy had a bad time of it the night before. It would take more than sunshine burning the fog away to lift her spirits. A good, long cry in private had been a given but afterward she’d been determined to pull herself together. Not only did she have a child and aging parents to support but the theater company was counting on her as well. Sir Augustus had confided that box office receipts had not been as sound as he might care to see. He was counting on her winning rave reviews to pack the house for the remainder of the play’s run.

She reminded herself that her time with Gavin was never intended to be permanent, at least not on her part. In another few days, the agreed-upon month would have concluded anyway. Over the past week, she let herself be lulled into thinking they might have a future together, but the interview with Gavin’s grandfather had confirmed that could never be. She’d met her month’s promise to him and a lovely month it had been. She would cherish the gift of their time together as adults for the rest of her days but for the present, this day especially, it was time to move on.

Even with such a fine resolution floating about in her head, it had taken her a long while to fall asleep. When she finally did, she slept in snatches, dropping in and out of restless dreams in which she was both herself and her character of Rosalind. Like the latter, she was wandering about the forest only instead of searching for food and safe haven, she was searching for Gavin. All at once, the fictitious forest transformed into the busy London streets. Gavin stood on the other side of Catherine Street across from the theater. Every time she tried stepping out into the traffic to reach him, another stream of vehicles rolled by. In another version of the dream, she stood on the ledge atop the theater. Gavin was below her, orchestrating her rescue with a fire truck and an enormous circus-style net stretched just above the street to catch her when she leapt.

He called up to her. “Let go and come to me, Daisy.”

“I can’t,” she called back. “I want to but I can’t.”

He looked up at her for a long, sad moment and then all at once the scene below her faded into fog, stealing her view of the street and Gavin with it. She was alone on the ledge and this time when her feet slipped out from beneath her there was no net, and no Gavin, to catch her.

Both times she woke drenched in an icy sweat, the bedcovers a damp tangle. Smoothing a hand over the empty side of mattress, Gavin’s side, the irony of her situation wasn’t lost on her. She who’d been so resolute in never letting a man spend the night in her bed suddenly couldn’t sleep without one. But she was missing more than merely the feel of a warm, hard body pressed against hers. She was missing a particular man. She was missing Gavin.

She finally gave up on independence and slipped into bed beside Freddie. The cot was scarcely wide enough for one but holding her precious child against her, she finally found peace enough to fall asleep.

Morning had come early. Awaking tired and puffyeyed, she scarcely felt at her best but as someone once said, the show must go on. Cups of hot tea got her through the dicier parts of the day and once she made it to the theater and was absorbed into the flurry of preparations and general mayhem, she felt her energy returning.

She’d just walked through the final wardrobe check along with the location of props. Scarce minutes before the curtain went up, she was left with nothing really to do beyond hold down her panic and wait. She lifted the curtain and peaked out onto the house. It wasn’t a sell-out but there was a respectable crowd. Her practiced eye reckoned that close to three-quarters of the theater’s three thousand-odd seats were sold out, not a bad showing for a first night’s performance of Shakespeare with an unknown actress in the lead. Her gaze went to Gavin’s box. Harry and an attractive brunette who must be his wife, Callie, were seated inside along with Rourke albeit without the elusive heiress he hoped would accompany him. Lady Katherine had so far proven herself a worthy adversary in fending off his romantic advances though Daisy suspected the stubborn Scot would mount another onslaught before long. The Lakes had brought Freddie, whom Daisy said might stay up late in honor of the special occasion. Her daughter looked pretty as a picture in the new celestial blue frock Daisy had bought to match her eyes, blue ribbons woven into her shiny black curls. Everyone she loved, everyone who loved her, had turned out to wish her well—except Gavin.

He had sent her flowers, though not the customary field daisies but a lovely bouquet of passion red roses. She liked to think the color signified there might be some hope for them yet, but the enclosed card bore no message beyond his name.

And yet what right had she to expect more than that when she had done everything she could to drive him away? Without him in her life, she could turn her attention to her career. She should be happy, elated even. Isn’t this what she always wanted?

Even among comedies,
As You Like It
was such a
happy
play. The witty quips and easily brought about happy ending struck her as bordering on annoying. Who knew but despite her background with Paris’s
opera-comiques
perhaps with her current experience she would find herself better suited to tragedy after all. Hers and Gavin’s relationship seemed more akin to Romeo and Juliet than to Rosalind and Orlando.
Oh, Gavin!

She felt a tap on her shoulder and whirled about, half-wondering if she had the power to will him there.

Her heart dropped when she saw the theater manager instead. “Sir Augustus. I didn’t expect to see you before the performance.”

“I was in my box, but I couldn’t resist coming backstage to check on a few last minute things including my play’s leading lady. How are you getting on, my dear? Not too terribly nervous, I hope?”

Daisy swallowed hard, praying the grease paint and powder hid the dark circles rimming her eyes. “I’m all right.”

She wished she might say the same of him. His face wore a fine sheen of perspiration and he cracked his knuckles as though he were the one about to be called onstage to perform before an audience of thousands.

“Good, jolly good.” He clicked his heels, gaze darting to the right and then the left. Apparently determining there was no one close enough by to overhear, he leaned in and whispered, “Don’t disappoint me, Daisy. The future of Drury Lane may well be riding on the success, or failure, of tonight’s performance.”

The stage director chose that moment to stride up to them, the ubiquitous clipboard in hand. “The curtain goes up in five minutes, Daisy,” he said without bothering to stop.

“Thank you.” Rosalind didn’t appear until the second scene of Act I. There was still time. She turned back to the theater manager. “I’ll do my very best, sir.”

“Of course you will, m’dear. I’d wish you luck but then again we theater folk are a superstitious lot. Break a leg, as the Americans say.” Sir Augustus managed a thin smile. “Mind that for the next two-odd hours, you
are
Rosalind.”

He turned and headed toward one of the exit doors. Watching him go, Daisy thought,
I don’t know who I am any more: Daisy or Delilah or now Rosalind. I might as well be Rosalind. In the end, she at least gets her man.

Once the curtain went up, Daisy threw herself into her role, not merely playing the plucky Rosalind but becoming her, drawing on her recent real life joys and pains to enrich the character. When as Rosalind she cried out to the actress playing her cousin, Celia, “O coz, coz … that thou didst know how many fathoms deep I am in love,” real tears wet her cheeks. And when in the final act she and her onstage Orlando made their way to the bridal bower, it was Gavin she imagined kissing when she accepted the actor’s light stage buss.

The final act segued to its mutual happy ending for all involved. The overhead lights dimmed, cloaking her fellow players and the painted scenery into smoky darkness. Daisy advanced toward the footlights in measured steps. Looking out into the audience, hoping Gavin might have come to see her after all, she envisioned his handsome face.

She took her bow to thunderous applause and shouts of “Brava” and “Encore, encore!” The houselights came on, and she looked out into the audience to see every man, woman, and child risen to their feet. Breathless, she backed up to form a queue with the company, clasping hands with the actor playing Orlando and the actress playing Celia. A second and then a third bow was called for before the curtain fell for the final time.

A champagne reception followed in the theater’s Green Room. After the final curtain, Daisy rushed back to her dressing room where she washed the grease paint from her face, combed and rearranged her hair, and changed into the green silk dinner gown. An hour later she stood at the center of London’s theatrical elite. Her flute of champagne growing warm in her hand, she accepted accolades from renowned luminaries of the stage she knew by reputation but had never thought to meet face to face, including the brilliant librettist, W.S. Gilbert, who couldn’t seem to praise her enough.

Leaning in so that his white handlebar mustache tickled her cheek, Sir Gilbert whispered, “I don’t suppose there’s any way I might steal you away to play the lead role of Mabel in Sullivan’s and my upcoming production of
Pirates of Penzance?”

Daisy hesitated. “Sir Augustus has been good to me.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone and signed an exclusive contract with the fellow?” Mr. Gilbert looked stricken until Daisy admitted she had not. Smile returning, he said, “In that case, call on Sullivan and I at The Savoy at your earliest convenience. I assure you that whatever salary Drury Lane is offering, The Savoy is prepared to match it. To sweeten the pot, I’ll even give you a percentage of the door provided you sign an exclusive contract with us.”

“I heard that.” Sir Augustus sidled up to them, a scowl on his face. “I see you’ve come poaching as usual, Gilbert.”

Gilbert did not deny it. “Miss Lake is not only a gifted actress but a charming young woman. We were just discussing her future.”

“Indeed, I knew the very moment I laid eyes on her she’d be splendid for Rosalind.” Shifting his gaze to Daisy, Sir Augustus’s expression lightened. “Your performance tonight has outshone even my vision. Brava, m’dear.”

“Thank you, Sir Augustus, Mr. Gilbert. You are both very kind.”

“It’s not every actress who receives a standing ovation their first time out. After tonight, you’ll be the known as the Darling of Drury Lane.”

Mr. Gilbert poked his silvered head into their huddle. “Or the future Sweetheart of the Savoy perhaps.”

Face reddening, Sir Augustus rounded on his rival. “Now see here, Gilbert …”

Watching them butt heads, Daisy could scarcely believe her great good fortune. Being fought over by the manager of Drury Lane and the great Gilbert of Gilbert and Sullivan was heady stuff. Practically speaking, it meant she would be in a position to take care of Freddie and the Lakes on her own as well as start saving to pay Gavin back the money he’d invested in her.

Gavin. At the thought of him, her heart gave a lurch. More so than anyone, he’d believed in her all along. Were it not for him, she would still be in her dirty, dark-lit dressing room at The Palace, calves aching from finishing her third and final show of the day. She owed him so much and had given him so little. Beyond the very great gratitude she felt, she quite simply wanted him with her.

Mr. Gilbert took his leave and Sir Augustus turned to her. “Where is Mr. Carmichael?” he asked as if reading her thoughts. “I would have thought he would be the very first to congratulate you.”

Daisy hesitated. The situation was even more awkward than she thought. “Unfortunately, he is … otherwise engaged this evening.”

“That is a pity. When I next see him at the Garrick, I shall be sure to give him a full report on how splendid you were.”

Daisy wasn’t certain what to say to that so she settled on “Thank you.”

“There is a gentleman who has been waiting most patiently to meet you. A very influential gentleman,” he added, gesturing to a tall, bespectacled man clicking his heels in the corner. Feeling in a daze, Daisy made her excuses to Sir Gilbert and let Sir August lead her away.

The “very influential gentleman” was the theatrical reviewer for
The London Times.
Daisy spent the next several minutes listening to him exclaim over her performance, his praise a highbrow version of the overblown announcements the music hall chairman had used to make before bringing her onstage. Scarcely a month had passed and yet what a long time ago that seemed, almost another life.

Attention wandering off, she found herself searching the room’s four corners for the one person from whom a single word of praise would have meant the world.