Leading Lady (41 page)

In the silence that followed, his eyes glistened. “I understand more than you can know, Lady Holt.”

She stared for a minute, asked softly, “How so?”

“My parents were servants. I realized at a very young age that no matter how hard they worked, we occupied the lowest rung in the social ladder. And I can’t remember
not
being driven to prove myself.”

“But weren’t some of the Doyles and Rayborns servants themselves?” she asked innocently, though knowing the answer. “Surely that would have removed any class barriers between you.”

“I speak of Britons in general, Lady Holt,” he said with faint edge to his voice. “Mr. Rayborn was kind enough to pay for my music lessons when I was a boy.”

“I see.” She walked over to the sofa and nodded toward the chair he had occupied so briefly. “I should very much like to hear more, Mr. Russell. Can you not stay a bit longer?”

He blushed again. “You don’t want to hear me complain.”

“You don’t strike me as a complainer, Mr. Russell.” Muriel sat down, smoothed her gown over her knees. “And it’s those resentments that fuel our drives. It’s been so long since I’ve met a kindred spirit. Please help me to understand how you felt those class constraints even as a child.”

Awkwardly he sat, his violin case upon the carpet again. “Little things,” he began at length, tapping the ends of his fingers together as if unaware of doing so. “Schoolmasters whose praise and punishment varied, for the same accomplishment or infraction, according to the social status of a student’s family. Watching shop clerks abandon assisting my parents in order to bow and scrape to some well-dressed
swell
just entering the shop. My sister wearing cast-off clothing.”

Would those be Bethia’s cast-off clothes?
Muriel wondered. To ask would make it obvious that she was attempting to drive a wedge between them. But if the clothing was indeed from
Bethia, and it had festered in his mind this long, perhaps it was not so much a matter of driving the wedge as nurturing it so that it would grow.

“Is that why you took up music, Mr. Russell?”

“Not at all, Lady Holt. I’ve always loved music. It was when I was twelve when I recognized it as a means to gain the respect I so craved.” He gave her a thoughtful look. “What about you and acting?”

“It is the same,” she replied.

And now that they had established a connection, it was time to send him off. Better that
she
be the one to bring a halt to the conversation, lest he regret having revealed so much and resent her for coaxing it out of him. The best web to catch a fly would be woven of invisible subtle strands, not obvious ones.

“Speaking of acting,” she said, rising again, “I’m afraid it’s time I begin preparing for tonight’s performance. But I enjoyed our chat immensely, Mr. Russell.”

****

“Look! He opens his eyes!”

Muriel kissed the forehead of the man cradled in her arms, raised her face again.

“Robert, speak to me!” A sob, pause. “It’s May—your own wife!”

Richard Whitmore gazed up at her. “My darling, I’m glad you’re here! It’s only a clip on the head. It was all my game to snare those villains.”

There would be another standing ovation tonight, Muriel thought as she lovingly stroked the actor’s dyed hair. One could predict so by the number of sniffs coming from the rows.

“You see?” Mr. Whitmore said, reaching up to touch her cheek. “There may be some good left in a ticket-of-leave man after all!”

They held that pose as the heavy green curtain floated
downward with slow and solemn folds, then Mr. Whitmore bolted up to his feet so swiftly that Muriel fell backward. Her petticoat saved her from any injury, save to her dignity.

“Good gracious!” she said above the roar as he helped her to her feet. “Did you have to do that?”

“Sorry,” he said with a sympathetic grimace.

The applause intensified, meaning the actors playing minor parts were taking bows in front of the curtain. It was time to prepare for their turns. Instead of offering his arm as usual, he turned and strode toward the wing.

Who put the bee in your bonnet?
she wondered, recalling how he had ignored her in the greenroom before the performance. She did not have the opportunity to ask, for it was time to step out for bows. He took her hand as if by rote, they strode out onto center stage, smiling and looking overwhelmed at the standing ovation, then bowing. He let go of her hand to step forward and applaud the orchestra, and then, as usual, swept his arm toward her. She curtseyed, head lowered, and then he bowed again. Then the whole cast joined hands for one final bow.

Offstage, Richard Whitmore congratulated every actor but her. It was only as he was heading for the dressing rooms that he sent her a look. A glance over his shoulder, actually, and in a vague sort of way, as if just looking back in general and not at anyone in particular.

Muriel smiled as understanding dawned upon her. She had spent enough time in school yards to have heard of “playing hard to get.”

I just hope he keeps it up,
she thought.

****

But that was not to be, for the following evening he knocked at her dressing room door as she was wondering whether to bother with changing her left stocking, for her disproportionately long big toes tended to work holes into the tips. Not that it would show, but a toe poking through frayed silk was not the most pleasant sensation.

“Have you a moment?” he said after opening the door wide enough to look through the gap.

“Just one,” she replied. “What is it?”

He stepped into the room and closed the door. He was in costume, save the hat the character Robert Brierly was to wear in the opening scene. Uneasily, his eyes full of longing, he said, “I must apologize, Lady Holt, for knocking you down last night. And for my rudeness afterward and in the greenroom.”

“It was only an accident, Mr. Whitmore, but thank you,” she said with an impersonal smile. And so that he would not assume she paid attention to him in any manner, thereby encouraging his tedious efforts at courtship, she added casually, “And I wasn’t aware of any rudeness.”

Pain washed across his aristocratic face. “What is it I’ve done to make you dislike me so, Lady Holt?”

“I don’t dislike you at all,” she replied, feeling a little sorry for him in spite of herself. “It’s just . . .”

“Just what?” he said, and it seemed he held his breath after the words left his mouth.

Muriel sighed. She did not wish an unpleasant scene, especially when they would be called to the greenroom any second, and she needed this time to get into character as well as into a more comfortable stocking. But with him standing there, practically offering his heart to her on a platter, should she not take advantage of the opportunity to nip this infatuation in the bud?

“I’m not interested in any sort of courtship with
any
man, Mr. Whitmore. I apologize if anything I’ve done has led you to believe otherwise.”

He winced and looked away, then back at her. “But outside of work, you hardly know me.”

In the bud,
Muriel thought. Hoping that her regretful expression would prove that she was not indifferent to his sadness, she softened her voice and said, “Nor do I wish to, I’m afraid. And if you please, Mr. Whitmore, I really must finish dressing.”

Thirty

Standing on the parlour rug of the Hampstead house Sunday afternoon, John tugged on his earlobe.

“Sounds like . . .” Sarah said.

John nodded, then grimaced theatrically.

“Frown!” guessed Danny, home from University for the fortnight before Michaelmas Term was to begin.

“Anger!” Sarah said.

“Scowl?” said Guy.

John pumped his head, this time more enthusiastically.

Bethia sneaked a worried look to William, Mother, and Father. The other team was getting close.

“What sounds like scowl?” Sarah asked. “Hmm. Fowl?”

“Howl?” Guy guessed.

“Owl?” said Danny, prompting more nods from John.

“The owl . . . the owl . . .” Sarah clapped her hands sharply.
“The Owl and the Nightingale!”

“That’s it!” John exclaimed.

“That’s five to two,” Danny reminded Bethia’s team.

“It’s not over,” Father reminded
him.

The game of charades continued for well over an hour. The team comprised of Father, Mother, William, and Bethia ultimately won by a single point, the final subject being George Eliot’s
Felix Holt, the Radical,
which the other team had been so certain would stump them.

They had not reckoned upon Father striking forefinger against thumb, Bethia guessing
flick,
William extending it to
flicks,
Father making motions that the word should be drawn out, and Mother coming up with the title.

****

“Remember, I’ll not be by next Sunday,” Guy said as he and Bethia walked arm in arm up Cannonhall Road afterward. As usual, William had offered to drive him back to Bond Street
in his runabout, as Hiram had Sundays off, but Guy was just as content to take the underground railway.

“I remember,” Bethia said. “Will her neighbors come this time, do you think?”

“She believes they will. In fact, that was how she realized she had written the wrong date on the invitations. A neighbor she happened upon in the Square said she was looking forward to the eighteenth.”

“That’s quite a leap . . . from eight to eighteen.”

Guy smiled. “She said the date had been stuck in her mind for weeks, as it’s when her brother’s wife’s baby is due.”

“Bernard.” Bethia smiled as well. “I didn’t realize they were expecting. How lovely.”

“I’m relieved, actually,” Guy said. “What with her overpaying me that first time.”

“Yes, of course.”

She understood how a person could absently write an incorrect number. In fact, Girton College had had to return a cheque to Father because he had written it for the amount remaining in his banking ledger instead of the amount of tuition, an overpayment of over seven thousand pounds.

But to compound a mistake a half dozen times?

It could happen.
Once the first invitation was written, then the other five would be copied by rote, without much thought. Bethia had been around actors and actresses long enough to know that an artistic temperament and the ability to focus on mundane tasks did not always go hand in hand.

And besides, what was the alternative? To believe that Muriel had engineered this so that she could have Guy over twice? To what end? If she wished him to come to her house twice, she simply could host two teas and hire him both times.

“Lady Holt says an acquaintance of hers is interested in lessons,” he said.

“Lessons, Guy? Isn’t that a step down for a concert violinist?”

He gave her a sidelong look. “I polish saddles and bridles
too, remember? How is giving lessons any more of a step down?”

She blew out a breath, aware of how snobbish she had sounded, aware that the difference between his and her upbringings would always be, if not a barrier between them, a third presence that sometimes nudged its way between them without invitation. It mattered little that her own mother had once been a servant. Her family possessed wealth, his did not. “You know I didn’t mean it that way, Guy.”

“What’s wrong, Bethia?” he asked as they turned down Heath Street.

She would not have jumped upon the lessons had the idea not ultimately originated from Muriel Holt. It was time to confess her concern. That, or continue suffering doubts. If the foundation for their marriage was to be total honesty, as Guy had said before, she did not want to start having to weigh her words before they even made it to the altar.

“It’s Muriel,” she admitted. “I’m not quite sure what to think of this attention she’s giving you.”

“Attention? She’s simply hiring me to play at her tea.” He squeezed her hand. “And as I recall,
you
talked me into accepting that first engagement.”

“I just didn’t realize it would lead into another quite so soon.”

“But I explained the mistake. It was supposed to be—” Guy stopped himself midsentence, studied her face. “You wouldn’t possibly be jealous, would you?”

“No,” Bethia replied at once, then bit her lip. That wasn’t true.

Gently he went on. “Because you’ve owned my heart since we were children.”

“I have?” she said.

“You know very well you have.” He gave her a knowing grin. “But I’m
very
flattered that you were jealous.”

Bethia could not quite bring herself to smile at his jest. “She’s . . . very beautiful.”

“So are you, Lilly.” Not breaking stride, he released her hand to give her shoulder a brief squeeze. “But I would love you if you were homely as a hat rack. Because you have the most beautiful heart of anyone I know.”

His words, the comforting gesture put her fears to rest. Two women on the opposite pavement put their heads together disapprovingly. Bethia moved her eyes from them. Avoiding even the appearance of evil had always been easy, what with having parents who instilled in her a respect for God and herself and the family name. But if she allowed a stranger’s frown to become her barometer for evil, she would have never gone to a women’s college, which many British still considered detrimental to society, or taken the job at the theatre, which still more considered Sodom and Gomorrah.

“I’ll telephone you afterward and let you know how it went,” he said, taking her hand again as they continued down Heath Street.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Then I’ll telephone just to hear your voice.”

She smiled. “That would be nice.”

****

“Are you quite sure she’s not bored?” Muriel whispered. Georgiana, on her knees beside a pail, swirled the water with a stick so that a handful of leaves raced in circles inside the rim.

“She’s in her own little world, m’Lady,” Leah Prescott whispered back. “Her little mind is turning just like that water. Those leaves have become boats . . . or perhaps ducklings, in her imagination.”