Lady Rosabella's Ruse (17 page)

Her chest tightened and she pressed a hand to it to ward off the pain. It was no good wishing. She must put the whole thing down to experience and move on with her plans. With Lady Keswick’s letter of introduction, she was sure to find a good role with an opera company and put Stanford’s allure behind her.

Her hands went to her belly. What if she was carrying his child? She pushed the thought aside.

She could only deal with one problem at a time.

Chapter Ten

‘M
rs Mallow lured her here,’ Garth said. ‘Your wife never let me or anyone else near her.’

Penelope’s innocent green eyes widened. Her rosebud lips formed a small O of surprise. No doubt she thought he was going to tell tales on her for flirting with Bannerby. Well, she’d have to own up for herself.

And if Mark wanted a brawl, he would give a good accounting of himself, because he wasn’t the guilty party.

Mark raked his fingers through his normally neat fair locks. ‘Why the hell didn’t you just put her on a coach and send her home?’

He shook his head. ‘If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, old chap, it’s never get between a man and his wife.’

Mark leaned close. ‘You really are a bastard sometimes.’

‘All the time,’ he said coolly.

‘Dammit, Garth. You know I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just too angry to choose my words carefully.’

Mark was one of two people who knew his secret. Him and Kit, his brother, apart from his dear mother, of course. ‘I’m glad you finally arrived.’

‘I found Penelope’s note.’

Penelope stared at him. ‘I thought you would be home days ago.’

Mark’s face turned grim. ‘I was delayed.’

Penelope froze, then shrugged. ‘I had decided to leave anyway. It’s all been perfectly horrid.’

He smiled down at his wife. ‘Then I am glad I am in time to escort you.’ He pulled her close. ‘We’ll talk more when we get home.’

Nauseated by the expression on his friend’s face, Garth turned away. Heaven forefend he would ever look so besotted. ‘Well, this is all very nice, but if you will excuse me, I am meeting Mrs Travenor in an hour or so. I just came in here for a newspaper to pass the time while I wait.’

Penelope gasped, then tried to cover it up with a cough.

‘What?’ Garth asked.

She shook her head, her cheeks flaming red, guilt writ large on her face.

‘Blast it, Penelope, tell me.’

‘Steady,’ Mark said, moving to shield his wife with his body.

‘Tell her to tell me, Mark,’ Garth said, clenching his fists.

Mark stared at him, then a grin broke out on his face. ‘Oh, not you, too.’

‘What on earth are you talking about? I just want to hear what she has to say about Mrs Travenor.’

‘Tell him, Penelope. He won’t let it go until you do.’

‘She left,’ Penelope said.

‘Left?’ Garth felt as if he’d been kicked in the gut by a horse. A bloody big one. ‘Left when?’

‘I mean, I think she left. She was carrying a valise. She said she was going to London.’

‘How long ago?’

‘If she was the dark beauty I met in the corridor when I arrived, it was not more than a few minutes ago,’ Mark said.

Penelope looked at him. ‘Beauty?’

He shrugged.

‘That was her, all right,’ Garth said, his stomach tightening, quickly followed by a hot buzz of anger. So Rose had lied to him again. What else had she lied about? Was there no end to her deceit? Perhaps she really had found what she was looking for in that house while he was sleeping.

It seemed where
Miss
Travenor was concerned he was a fool, but if she thought to escape him, she was in for a surprise. He wasn’t going to take the chance of her carrying his child, though God help him, if it was a boy, it meant he would never be able to put things right for his brother.

Well, he had one advantage on his side. He knew she was headed for London and the only way to get there from here was by stagecoach. And even if he missed her in the village, he’d soon catch up to her on the road.

He bowed. ‘If you will excuse me. You two have lots to discuss.’

‘Your absence will not be remarked upon,’ Mark said.

Garth wanted to knock the smile off his friend’s face. Being caught in the parson’s mousetrap was a fate worse than death, at least to him. His friend had seemed very happy about being leg-shackled. He hoped, for both their sakes, the events of the past few days wouldn’t change his mind.

Right now he had a more important matter on his mind. Rose.

‘Let’s hear you, then.’

Rosa stared out into the theatre, at the fussy little assistant manager’s assistant, with his springy blond hair and Lady Keswick’s letter in his hand. He squinted at Rosa over his spectacles from the front of the pit.

Nerves always tied her stomach in knots when she began to sing, but it was far worse this time. The theatre was cavernous. Unfriendly. It was so important that she do well and the aria he’d given her was pitched far too high for her voice.

She took a deep breath.

‘I haven’t got all day,’ the little man said. He pointed to the sheet of music in her hand. ‘Sing.’

Settle down. Just sing. She took another breath. Her heart was sitting too high in her throat. She swallowed it down. The first notes came out a croak.

‘Stop!’ the little man shrieked. He put his hands to his ears. ‘No more.’

‘No. I can do it. Just let me—’

‘I’m not looking for frogs. Can you dance? We need dancers.’

No. This was all going wrong. Why wouldn’t he listen? ‘If I could just try again? Please.’

‘Next,’ he yelled

Another girl, with carrot-red hair, stepped on stage from the wings.

She couldn’t let this happen. ‘I can dance,’ Rosa cried out to catch his attention. ‘I know all the country dances.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Saints preserve me from bloody amateurs. I meant
pas de chats
and
pirouettes
, not the flippin’ Roger de Coverly. Next.’

The words pushed through her panic. Mama had shown her some of the dances required for performances. It had been so long ago, she’d all but forgotten. Rosa went up on her right toe and twirled, landing off centre. ‘You mean this?’

Another woman walked on stage from the opposite side, a large-bosomed woman in a sumptuous red silk gown and flashing jewels.

‘Gif her a chance,
mein Herr
.’ The woman gracefully twirled her wrist in the direction of the seats. ‘At least she appeals to the gentlemen more than the herd of cows you haf now. Look at that bosom, those legs.’ She grabbed Rosa’s skirt at the knee and hiked it up.

The harried little man stopped fussing with his papers and leaned forwards.

‘Hold up your skirts and tvirl once more,’ the woman said.

Blushing, Rosa did as she was bid. This time she landed on balance and placed her heels neatly together and turned out her toes.

The woman laughed, waved an airy hand. ‘See, she dances. But, Frederick, you must do vot you please. Just tell me my gown for tonight is ready.’

‘It’s ready,’ a woman sitting at the back of the theatre called out, holding up swaths of fabric.

‘Gut. Ver gut.’ The woman, who had to be Fräulein Helga Von Geldhardt, the soprano and leading lady, wandered back into the wings. ‘Take her, Freddy,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘She’s the best you’ve seen today.’

‘Which is not saying anything,’ the little man screeched, pulling at his frizzy blond curls.

‘Do you want me now?’ the girl halfway out of the wings said in the nasal tones of London.

‘You—’ the assistant pointed at Rosa ‘—go and find Señor Paloma and tell him you are in the chorus. Be ready for rehearsal at six tomorrow morning. You—’ He glared at the girl hovering half on and half off the stage. ‘Can you dance?’

‘I’m a singer.’

‘No,’ Frederick screamed.

Rosa fled before he changed his mind about her.

Walking around the back of the stage in search of the dancemaster, she decided the position of chorus dancer was better than nothing. She had a foot firmly over the threshold. All she had to do was let them hear her sing and they’d realise they’d made a mistake.

And if Fräulein Von Geldhardt was right and the gentlemen did love her, then she might find a rich protector, because a dancer in the chorus did not get paid nearly as well as a soloist. And a protector would have influence and be able to get her a starring role.

A flutter of disquiet ran through her stomach. Her mother would have been so disappointed to find she’d been forced to sink so low. If only they would give her a chance to sing. Let her nerves settle. But it was better than the loveless marriage proposed by Stanford where she had no guarantees he would help her sisters. This way, her earnings were her own to do with as she willed.

If he’d wanted to make her his mistress, it might have been easier to agree to stay. Her parents’ marriage had worked because they’d loved each other. Stanford didn’t love her any more than she loved him. That feeling she’d felt for him had been infatuation. It had to be. She could not fall in love with a rake who had no intention of changing his ways.

It wasn’t possible life would be so cruel.

Enough whining. She had a position in the opera. She would send the rest of her earnings from Lady Keswick’s to Meg for the moneylender and find a way to get another audition.

As soon as they heard her, they would give her a better role. She drew in a deep breath. She could do this.

In the green room she found a collection of young women standing around a rotund man with curling black moustaches and thinning black hair. ‘Is he Señor Paloma?’ she asked.

One of the girls nodded.

A pair of beady black eyes swivelled in Rosa’s direction. ‘Who are you,
señorita
?’

‘I’m to join the chorus,’ she said, feeling every eye in the room focusing on her.

The man waved his fat hands in the air. ‘Now he sends me a
spilungona
? First I get all these pale little English midgets, now I get a giant. Where I put you?’

‘At the back?’

His eyes widened. Then he laughed, and every part of him jiggled: his cheeks, his belly, even his thighs in their tight-fitting buff pantaloons.

He stopped as suddenly as he’d started. ‘No amusing.’

The little redhead who’d been waiting while Rosa was on stage crept in. He glared at her. ‘You are the last?’

She nodded.

‘Bellissimo.’
He clapped his hands. ‘All of you. Be here at six in the morning.’

Rosa followed the rest of the girls along a passage and out of the back door of the theatre into the depths of Covent Garden.

‘Where do you live?’ the little redhead asked.

‘I have yet to find a room.’

‘You can stay with me,’ the girl offered with a hesitant smile. ‘I’m Bess. The room ain’t much, but I’ve a bed big enough for two and I need help with the rent.’

Rosa stuck out her hand. ‘Rosa. Rosabella di Camisa.’ She decided to use one of her mother’s names. It sounded more operatic and Grandfather would never recognise it. ‘I would love to help with the rent.’

Bess grinned. ‘What about a kipper at the chop shop, then, afore we go home?’

‘Sounds wonderful.’ Rosa’s stomach growled agreement. It would be the first food she’d eaten since yesterday. She’d stayed at a nearby inn and hadn’t dared pay for a meal, too.

Finally, she thought, things seemed to be going as planned. Well, almost. Everything would be perfect when they let her audition for a singing role.

The next few days had flashed by in a blur of long rehearsals and short nights spent in exhausted sleep. Today was dress rehearsal.

‘Oh, no.’ Rosa regarded her costume with dismay. It was even worse than she’d imagined, when her brain had any energy left for such pursuits. ‘I can’t wear these.’

She held up the breeches and stockings. She didn’t need to try them on to know they would hug her legs.

Señor Paloma had solved his problem of what to do with his giant after an hour of their first rehearsal. She would play a trouser role. A silent trouser role. While the girls occasionally sang, all she got to do was lift them and carry them about the stage. They might just as well have employed a horse.

‘Never mind,’ Bess said, twirling around in a bit of gauze that barely covered her knees. ‘Remember Mrs Robinson.’

Mrs Robinson had snared the Prince of Wales in seventy-two. Since then every actress had hoped for the same.

‘It didn’t do her a bit of good,’ Rosa grumbled. ‘And besides, in these, who is even going to know I’m a girl?’

Was that really so bad? Even though she slept the sleep of the dead every night, she kept having the same dream. Stanford arriving to cart her back to Grandfather’s house. Not that he had a clue she even had a grandfather. He knew nothing about her and would never find her here. Not that he’d want to, she assured herself, remembering the look on his face when he’d realised she’d never been married. The hunted look. It still made her feel hot and cold by turns.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

She slipped on the breeches and shirt. ‘What do you think?’

Bess laughed. ‘With that bum and that bosom, they’ll have no trouble guessing you’re a girl.’