The Privilege of the Sword (35 page)

Lydia knit her brow in thought. It was true that Mia had been most interested when the Black Rose’s name came up. And, to be fair, Mia had never liked being upstaged by anyone. “But if Lord Ferris has already left his mistress, then why should Mia mind so?”

“Because,” her mother explained crisply, “it all happened around MidWinter. He was courting them both at the same time, that’s why.” Lydia let out a low whistle. “There!” Lady Godwin accused her husband. “That’s what all this vulgar talk leads to. Lydia, no whistling in public, you know better.”

“If you knew about Lord Ferris and the Black Rose, then surely her parents did as well. Why didn’t anyone say anything?”

Lord Godwin said, “Artemisia’s father is, ah, a man of the town. Even if he did know about Lord Ferris’s affair with an actress, he surely knew it would blow over. He wouldn’t let it interfere with a good marriage contract.”

Lydia sat slowly digesting all this knowledge. Artemisia had never really loved Lord Ferris, she knew that. Maybe she was right not to marry him. Her parents could not force her, surely. This matter would prove to be just another long contest of wills, such as were not unknown in the Fitz-Levi family. She vowed to visit Mia again soon with a box of her favorite chocolates and some diversion.

“The Black Rose is in a new play,” Lydia said, “and all my friends have seen it. May I go?”

“Oh, dear,” sighed her mother, “it’s that awful piece of trash about the swordsman lover, isn’t it? My friends were mad for that book when we were young.”

“It’s not trash,” her daughter said. “It is full of great and noble truths of the heart. And swordfights.”

“I’ll have to read it,” her father said brightly, but no one paid him any attention.

“I so want Mia to see the play,” Lydia said. “If I can assure her that Lord Ferris will not be there—”

“He won’t,” her mother chuckled. “The Black Rose denied him entry to the theatre the morning after, and he hasn’t been back since.”

“Well, there you have it,” Michael Godwin said to his daughter. “Actresses are spiteful creatures. You be sure you tell your Armand that he should be very cautious when he chooses a mistress.”

A year ago, Lydia might still have giggled when he talked like that. But love had turned her serious, at least where love was concerned. “Oh, Papa,” she said. “You know Armand never would.”

“Of course not,” her father said. “He knows I’ve got my eye on him.”

chapter
VIII

J
UST KNOWING ABOUT
L
UCIUS
P
ERRY AND HIS LADYLOVE
made life more enjoyable. Whenever the duke got highhanded with us, implying that we were young and what did we know? we had to bite the inside of our cheeks to keep from laughing over the things we knew now that he did not.

Marcus and I speculated endlessly on what we had witnessed. I thought the lady was very wise, knowing Perry’s proclivities, to refuse to yield to his advances, since clearly he’d lose interest the moment she did. Marcus, though, claimed she must be ignorant of his other lives, or she’d never let him in the door. His colorful theories included the possibility that the woman was really Perry’s sister, so a little kissing was all she would allow. “He’s steeped in vice,” he said; “why shouldn’t it run in the family?”

I pointed out stiffly that these things did not always run in families.

We should have been trying to find out who owned her house. It would have been fairly easy to go up to the door with a misdelivered message and use that as an excuse to grill the maid, or the neighbors’ maids…. We talked about it, but we never did anything. That wasn’t the game, really. It was more of a challenge to try and catch both Lucius and his lady out together, see what they would betray to our inquisitiveness. What did they mean to each other? What were they hiding, and why? We wanted the secrets of their hearts, something no one else had, something they would be reluctant to yield to anyone else. We would hold it for them, and keep it safe, our treasure, whole and unique. Besides, the maid had a walleye.

It is possible, though, that lurking in late winter gardens was bad for the health. A few days later, Marcus caught a serious cold. While Marcus was in bed, my uncle sent for me. The duke was in his study with his friend Flavia, the unmercifully homely woman he kept around so they could make fun of people and do mathematical puzzles or something—at least, that’s what they always seemed to be doing when I saw them together. Today they were constructing some kind of a model—a tower, or maybe a clock, I couldn’t quite tell, and I didn’t want to ask and be lectured. I was wearing my splendid new cloak, because the day was finally warm enough that I could sling it back by the tassel and not have to worry about puddles.

Flavia looked up at me when I came in and said, “I’ve got it: You could have a career on the stage.”

“As what?” my uncle asked. “She can’t memorize anything, none of us can. Dates of crowns and battles leave her hapless.”

“I know poetry,” I said, but they ignored me.

“Well,” Flavia told him, “in case you haven’t noticed, the demand for female swordfighters is pretty much limited to Tremontaine House and the theatre, where they are enjoying a certain vogue.”

“They can’t really fight,” he said crossly. “They just know a few moves, and they leap about showing their legs. Whereas Katherine is an excellent duelist—and always very modestly dressed,” he added primly.

“Three yards of silk velvet isn’t what I’d call modest,” she said, but I knew he meant I didn’t flash my legs around.

“Look,” said my uncle, “speaking of theatre, how would you like to see a play?”

“Me?” I squeaked.

“Why not? I’ve got a box at the Hart, you may as well use it. They’re playing this afternoon. You should go. Enjoy yourself.” I waited. As a benevolent uncle, he wasn’t very convincing. “And when it’s done, you might like to go backstage and meet one of the actresses.”

“The swordfighter?” Did he want me to give her a few tips? I’d die.

“No, the romantic lead. She’s called the Black Rose. I’ve got something I’d like you to give her.” He handed me a brocade pouch with something heavy slinking inside it. “It’s a gold chain,” he said, “and I’m trusting you not to run off with it. Just give it to her. She’ll know who it’s from, and what it means. But if anyone asks, it’s a tribute from you to her, in admiration of her fine performance.”

“Is she really that good?”

My uncle smiled creamily. “The best.”

“Dear one, cease the salacious thoughts and hand me that piece—no, the little one. Butterfingers.”

“Butterfingers, yourself.”

S
O THAT WAS HOW
I
WENT TO THE THEATRE FOR THE
first time. I would have thought it was a temple, with its painted columns and bright facade, but the banners proclaimed it the
LEAPING HART THEATRE, HENRY STERLING, ACTOR/MANAGER
. At the last minute the duke had realized that if the chain was not to be seen coming from him, I shouldn’t sit in his box. So he gave me money for a good seat in the stalls across from the stage, and money to tip the seatman, and more for snacks and incidentals. A girl in a lowcut bodice was selling nuts; I bought some but forgot to eat them, I was so excited to be there.

I felt a bit like an actress myself, in my gorgeous cloak and a new hat with a plume that Betty had produced at the last minute. The ticket-taker called me “sir,” and I didn’t bother to correct him; why not pass for a boy and enjoy the freedom of one? All things were permitted here, it seemed. I couldn’t wait to see the actress with the sword.

Candles were lit on the stage, although it was still broad daylight. There was a bed on it, a big one with curtains. There were also curtains at the windows at the back of the stage, which were very tall, and a dressing table and a carpet. It looked like a lady’s bedroom.

To the side of the stage, a consort started to play, and the audience quieted. Then a woman entered. There was a little sigh, because she was so very beautiful, deep bosomed and dark haired, gorgeously dressed in a rose-colored gown with many flounces, but her white throat was decked with simple pearls.

“No, thank you,” she said to someone we couldn’t see offstage, her maid, I guess. “I will put myself to bed.” Somebody chuckled and was shushed. The woman unclasped her cloak and laid it on a chair. She did it with such an air of sweet weariness that you somehow knew that she had been out late, and enjoyed herself, too, but was more than ready for the day to be over. Languidly she reached up to her hair, and pulled two pins out. A fall of dark tresses released itself down her back, like an animal let loose. She reached for the clasp at her throat. It was then, when we were admiring her private moment of grace and release, thinking it was only for us, that a man stepped out from behind one of her long bedroom curtains. He was devastatingly handsome and carried a sword. His voice, when he spoke, was warm and rich like poured chocolate—but it was not that which made me catch my breath.

“Lady Stella,” he said. “Allow me.”

I had to dig my nails into my palms to keep from squeaking out loud. As it was, I began moving my lips along with the lines. I knew them all, from the opening chapter of my favorite book.

Fabian snuffed the candles, one by one. On the dusky stage he drew Stella to him, and they disappeared together within the bedcurtains. A woman behind me squeaked happily. The curtains didn’t stir, but the consort began to play a slow and lovely air. When it was done, her maid came in and pulled back the draperies, first the high ones at the window, and then the bedcurtains.

Stella was revealed alone in the bed, her dark hair falling over her white ruffled nightdress. She rose and went to the window, and we saw that it was open a little, as though someone had left without quite closing it behind him. She turned and looked out over the audience, one hand stroking her hair.

“I was a girl before tonight. I am a woman now.”

It was the oddest feeling in the world, seeing something that had belonged so utterly to me alone being made to happen up on the stage with living people doing it, and others watching it. (I’d lent Marcus the book once. When I finally asked for it back he never said anything, so either he hadn’t liked it or he hadn’t bothered to read it.)

When they got to the fight in the clocktower between Mangrove and Fabian, the swords finally came out in earnest. Henry Sterling’s swordplay was not bad—he certainly had the flair and the spirit of Fabian—but whoever played Mangrove really knew what he was doing with his wrist. It was almost a surprise when he dropped his sword and fled in confusion.

Mangrove was all wrong, of course—too short, for one thing, because he’s supposed to be much taller than Fabian, and Henry Sterling was a truly magnificent Fabian, especially when he tells Stella (wrongly) that he’s glad it’s Tyrian’s child because Mangrove is right and his own seed is cursed—but it must have been hard to find an actor taller than Sterling. And Mangrove should have had a mustache, because in the scene where he kisses Stella, she is repelled by it, but of course they left that out. The gorgeous actress playing Stella, who was surely the Black Rose, did a wonderful job of looking repelled just the same: she did a little thing with curling her fingers behind her back that meant she was filled with disgust, you could tell.

Tyrian. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Tyrian. You could tell it was a woman, if you looked hard and thought about it. But everyone onstage referred to her as “he” and treated her like a man, so you sort of had to go along with it. She did take big swaggering steps like a man, and held her head a certain way, and she had cut all her hair right off, so that it stood in fair little curls all over her head. Even in the book there is a certain softness to Tyrian, a gentleness that makes you like him and think it would not be so bad if Stella chose him over his friend. The actress was very good at that, the way she looked at Stella when Stella wasn’t looking, and the way she stepped back when Stella was thinking and all. Maybe they just couldn’t find a man to play Tyrian that well. She did look very dashing with her sword at her side; I could hardly wait to see her use it later.