Leading Lady (36 page)

****

Muriel had to admit, if only to herself, that Bethia Rayborn was a genius at costume design. She stood to the side to study her profile in her dressing-room mirror. The simple lines and coarse brown fabric supported her role as the penniless May Edwards but did not detract from the femininity of Muriel Pearce Holt.

A knock sounded at her door.

“Come in.”

The actress assigned the minor part of Emily St. Evremond, a thin girl by the name of Corrie Walters or Waters or the like, stuck her blonde head inside. “I was asked to inform you that they’re waiting, Lady Holt.”

Muriel took note of the “I was asked” and the politely distant expression. It seemed the cast and crew, sympathetic enough just three weeks ago to send letters of condolence up to Sheffield, had turned upon her. Why was she surprised, with every actor and actress spending time in the wardrobe room to prepare for today?

Of course, Jewel had insisted that Bethia was not the sort of person to bear a grudge or spread gossip. In other words, her other cousin was perfect.

Richard Whitmore, who unfortunately had not chilled toward her, sat looking over the playscript in the greenroom with the new fellow, Noah Carey. Muriel wondered how Mr. Whitmore dared share a sofa with him, then remembered learning through snatches of corridor gossip that he had not had lice after all.

The man was actually rather handsome, Muriel realized, now that revulsion no longer clouded her vision. Tall and broad-shouldered, with hair as dark as ink, a complexion that was no stranger to sunlight, and dark eyes. Possibly even more handsome than Mr. Whitmore.

Not that she was interested in either—Richard Whitmore, with his cloying attempts to court her, nor Mr. Carey, with his poverty.

As if on cue, Mr. Whitmore looked up and gave her a sympathetic smile, which did not mask the admiration pouring from his eyes. If she would but give him any sign of encouragement, he would be on his feet in a flash. But Muriel returned his smile with a mere cordial one and, ignoring her own understudy, Amanda Hill, took a chair off to herself. It was time to concentrate on becoming May Edwards.

****

That concentration was shaken onstage, briefly, toward the end of Act I.

“Two sovereigns!” she had cried when Mr. Whitmore, as Robert Brierly, placed two gold coins in her palm.

“Nay, thou’lt make better use of the brass than me,” Mr. Whitmore said with a tender look that was not
all
acting. “What, crying again? Come, come, never heed that old brute. Hard words break no bones, you know.”

Muriel sent a glance toward the empty rows and spotted Bethia Rayborn seated between a bearded elderly man, obviously her father, and a younger one whom Muriel did not recognize.

“It’s not his hard words I’m crying for now, sir,” she said smoothly, returning to character.

“What, then?” Richard Whitmore said.

Muriel allowed her voice to soften. “Your kind ones. They’re harder to bear. They sound so strange to me.”

With jaw set she stalked to the women’s changing room, where Mrs. Allgood helped her out of the brown dress and
into a blue calico for the scene to follow. Muriel spoke only when necessary to the dresser, for she burned with anger.

Some of that anger was directed toward herself. Why had she not clarified that “keeping Bethia away” also meant not allowing Miss Prim-and-Proper to smirk at her from the seventh row during rehearsal?
And while I’m still in mourning for poor Douglas!

Back in the greenroom she fought the temptation to march into the theatre and complain to Jewel and Grady. Such a confrontation would only cast herself in a poor light and make a bigger martyr of Bethia Rayborn. A minute later Lewis stuck his head through the doorway to announce, “May Edwards!”

When the tableau curtains opened again, Muriel had stepped out onto a stage now transformed into a parlour complete with rugs, a caged canary, and framed needlework.

“There, Goldie,” she said to the canary. “I must give you your breakfast, though I don’t care a bit for my own. . . .”

She stayed onstage for the whole of Act II, while Corrie Walters=-or=-Waters came and went, then Richard Whitmore and other characters. The entire time, Muriel only glanced out into the theatre seats when Mr. Webb interrupted the acting to suggest she or someone else stand a bit farther upstage or such.

Finally, after the tableau curtains closed and the orchestra began playing their numbers for intermission, she asked Lewis how long until she was needed again.

“Fifteen minutes, Lady Holt,” he replied.

“I’m stepping out for air.”

The boy gave her a worried look. “But . . .”

“I’ll be back.”

****

“What are they playing?” Bethia asked.

Guy tilted his head, listened. “Mendelssohn’s Fugue in D Minor.”

“I don’t think that light is supposed to flicker like that,” Father said, pointing to a portion of the curtain.

“When did it flicker?” Bethia asked just as one section of the curtain darkened, then became illuminated again. Three rows ahead, Grady and Jewel were involved in discussion.

“I’ll tell them,” Father said.

“Here, Mr. Rayborn, allow me,” Guy offered, starting to rise, but Father shook his head and got to his feet.

“I’d like to see how those things work anyway.”

“What a hypocrite,” Guy murmured when they were seated again after rising to allow Father to pass.

Bethia looked at him. “
What
did you just say?”

“Not your
father,
goose.” He leaned closer. “Lady Holt. She treats you so abominably. And yet she actually had me feeling pity for her up there.”

“It’s called
acting,
Guy,” she said dryly and felt an immediate little stab of guilt for having enjoyed hearing him speak ill of Muriel. For even though she felt sympathy for the woman’s loss of a brother and would regret her own part in the tragedy for the rest of her life, she was beginning to feel lower than human under the present arrangement—having to leave the wardrobe room well before Muriel was expected for a fitting, to pass her by in the corridors with eyes averted, and still feel the hostility coming in waves.

Forgive me, Father,
she prayed under her breath.
This is a thimbleful compared to what your son endured. Please help me to shrug it off and not mind so much. Or still better, please soften Muriel’s heart toward me.

That would take a miracle, but then why pray at all if one did not believe God capable of answering?

The peace following that thought was shaken by another from some cynical portion of her mind she did not know existed.
What good did it do to pray for Douglas Pearce’s safety?

She closed her eyes, drew in an even breath. For most of her twenty-one years she had trusted that God knew best. But then, that trust was easy to maintain surrounded by people who loved her, enjoying comfort, good health, and
opportunities to use her talents. A faith that was so fragile as to shatter at the first bump in the road—was that really faith at all?

Please increase my faith, Father.

****

Muriel passed the refreshment counter, where Mr. Birch and one of the maids were stacking cups upon a tray for the greenroom, with muffled
clicks.
Ignoring their puzzled looks, she went through the lobby, pushed open the lone unlocked door, and stepped out under the marquee. A light rain was falling. It startled and pleased her because of the clean, wet aroma of the air. Had she the liberty, she would have kirtled her skirts, run down the pavement as fast as possible, and allowed the rain to bathe away all the gloom and grief clinging to her.

A colorful poster advertising
The Ticket-of-Leave Man
hung upon the theatre wall. Such posters were scattered about town, in train stations above and below ground, on walls and lampposts. The artist had worked from a photograph she and Mr. Whitmore had posed for weeks ago, and Muriel was pleased with the blush to her cheeks and that her thick lashes seem even thicker.

He had caught the devotion toward her in Mr. Whitmore’s eyes too. Any woman gazing upon that poster would envy her and assume she had not a care in the world. If only it were so!

Why wouldn’t you listen to us, Douglas!
she thought, her throat tightening.
He
should be inside watching the rehearsal, sitting on the front row opening night. How proud he would have been! Instead he had died in some cold place, unaware that his sister had become an actress.

****

“Bethia?”

Bethia turned toward Guy again. He was studying her, violin case in his arms.

“Penny for your thoughts?” he said.

She smiled and changed the subject. “You have to leave?”

“I’m afraid so.” He glanced toward the stage, where an electrician was kneeling. Father and Grady watched from just before the orchestra pit, and Jewel was rustling through the playscript. “Say farewell to everyone for me?”

“I will.”

But he did not leave yet. “You don’t have to stay here, you know.”

“I still love my work,” Bethia said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. And mine and Muriel’s paths seldom even cross.” She was reminding herself of that even while she reassured him. “Don’t you have to run along?”

He winced and then squeezed her hand. “Right away.”

****

Muriel was so absorbed in thought that she did not realize the door had opened until she heard a footstep behind her. She turned. A young man was closing his coat protectively over something bulky, as if to shield it from the rain. After a fraction of a second Muriel realized he had been seated with Bethia in the dim auditorium. Blue eyes the color of sapphires were the only striking features in a rather nondescript, though nicely chiseled, face.

He nodded at her without so much as a good-day and, cradling the odd burden inside his coat, hurried toward the underground station. His boots made splatting noises against the wet pavement. Muriel watched until he was out of sight, then went back indoors.

Mr. Birch was alone at the refreshment counter this time.

“Who was that man who just left?” Muriel asked. She gave no clue that she had seen him inside, for she did not want gossip reaching the wardrobe room that she had expressed any interest in Bethia or her companions whatsoever.

“The gentleman’s name is Russell, Lady Holt,” Mr. Birch replied while filling a tea strainer with leaves. The old man did not express his sympathy or even appear grateful that a
lead actress would stoop to chat with him, even though he was nothing more than a glorified servant.

Though piqued, Muriel prodded some more. While she was aware that Bethia was romantically linked with a coachman’s son, she could not recall Douglas ever mentioning his name. And according to Mother, a whole clan of Rayborn-Doyles lived in the Hampstead house. The man could possibly be a cousin or stepbrother or young uncle.

“His face is vaguely familiar,” she prodded. “Do you happen to know what his father does for a living?”

“Living?” Finally Mr. Birch looked at her. In his gray eyes, hooded by a thatching of grayer eyebrows, lurked the expression of one who had resigned himself to giving as much information as would allow him to return to the task at hand without interruption. “I have no knowledge of his father. Why don’t you ask Miss Rayborn? He’s her fiancé.”

Twenty-Seven

Lady Holt’s absence for the final two-and-a-half weeks of
Lady Audley’s Secret
was still being felt on the thirteenth of August, when
The Ticket-of-Leave Man
opened to a theatre only eighty-three percent filled. But word of mouth and favorable newspaper critiques increased that percentage nightly, and ten days later the production played to its first sellout audience. It would be the first of many, columnists predicted, heaping laurels upon the cast, orchestra, sets, and costumes.

Bethia was as happy as anyone at the turn of events. As soon as one production started rolling smoothly, however, it was time to start concentrating upon the one to follow. The Royal Court had staged Leopold Lewis’s
The Bells
six years ago, but that was before her hiring on as wardrobe mistress. The costumes in storage were typical of rural English folk of the late nineteenth century; however, the drama was set in the early nineteenth century in the village of Alsace, near the German border, and therefore would require some influence from French as well as German cultures. For inspiration, she brought her sketch tablet to the National Gallery and studied the canvases portraying early nineteenth-century peasant life by Jean-François Millet.

Once the sketches were completed, the next steps would be to take measurements and create patterns. Muriel’s appointment was scheduled for half past ten in the morning on the twenty-ninth of August. At ten past ten, Bethia took up her satchel, intent upon leaving to lessen any chance of their meeting on the stairs or in a corridor. She would walk down to Spencer, Turner & Boldero and look at cloth, she told the seamstresses.

Miss Lidstone pressed lips tight and shook her head. “It’s a shame you have to coddle that—”

Mrs. Hamby cleared her throat with exaggerated enthusiasm. “Good morning, Lady Holt, ha-ha-ha!”

Bethia looked toward the doorway, where Muriel stood just inside, a white box in her arms making stark contrast to her mourning clothes.
You’ll not apologize for being here,
Bethia said to herself. Not with Muriel arriving before the appointed time.

Incredibly, Muriel smiled.

“Good morning, Mrs. Hamby, Miss Lidstone . . . Miss Rayborn,” she said, continuing on into the room. I picked up some éclairs from Capucine’s. A peace offering, if you will.”

“How lovely of you, ha-ha,” Mrs. Hamby said. “Isn’t that lovely, ladies?”

Miss Lidstone gave the actress a wary eye. “A peace offering, Lady Holt?”

“I realize I’ve been an unbearable prima donna, Muriel said, setting the carton upon the drafting table. “Especially with Miss Rayborn here.”