Wicked Company (74 page)

Sophie stared distractedly out of the coach window as the vehicle rolled along the perimeter of St. James’s Park. When the carriage encountered a knot of traffic near the King’s Opera House, she leaned forward suddenly, convinced that the tall figure walking toward an alleyway leading to the stage entrance was Hunter Robertson.

“Driver!” she shouted out the window. “Stop! Please!”

The coach lurched to a halt and Sophie flung open the door.

“Hunter! Hunter!” she cried, waving in his direction. The object of her frantic appeal halted in his tracks and observed her dashing to his side. “Oh, Hunter,” she panted, reaching out to take hold of his arm to steady herself, “why have I not heard from you? ’Tis ridiculous, your carrying spears when I know if I—”

“Used your influence, you could secure me employment?” he said coldly, staring over her head at Roderick Darnly’s coach emblazoned with its familiar gold crest. “Thank you, but no thank you,” he declared, turning toward the alleyway.

“Hunter! Blast your bones, what is wrong with you!” she cried.

“Absolutely nothing,” he replied grimly. “The problem lies with you, I believe, and your penchant for seeking favors from the likes of Peter Lindsay and my lord Roderick Darnly whenever you’re short of funds.”

“Good God, Hunter!” she exclaimed. “I merely accept a ride to my lodgings in the carriage of a friend and you—”

“Or a trip to Wales, where you had your own cottage in a secluded grove,” he snapped, “and where your host could come and go as he pleased?”

Sophie stared up at Hunter, horrified that his accurate recounting of her time spent on the Darnly estates did, indeed, imply that she had played the strumpet with Viscount Glyn.

“Who gave you such a description of my conduct?” she demanded.

“Who hasn’t?” he retorted. “If you thought we theater folk are discreet, you greatly miscalculated.”

“Mavis Piggott,” Sophie said wearily, recalling the languid looks cast by the actress in the direction of Drury Lane’s enigmatic patron.

“’Twas the talk of Drury Lane, I’m told.”

“I have not behaved like a harlot with anyone—except you,” she said in a low voice.

“No?” Hunter said. “Then why did you not tell me of your four-month sojourn in Wales with Darnly?”

Silently, she recollected the frenetic pace of the Stratford Jubilee and the brief snatches of time she and Hunter had spent together since their return to London—time mostly spent savoring each other’s charms in bed.

“Shall I tell you why I never mentioned it?” she asked quietly. “I simply forgot. The viscount and I were never lovers, and I am still not even sure we are friends. Once I was with you again, I never gave Roderick Darnly a single thought.”

“Well, it appears he’s given
you
a great deal of thought,” Hunter declared, nodding toward the coach.

Sophie looked at him with something close to pity.

“Hunter,” she said slowly, “it appears your old devils have returned to plague you once again. Think what you will.”

And with that, she strode toward Darnly’s carriage and bid the coachman to proceed to Half Moon Passage immediately.

***

March of 1770 proved to be a cold, blustery month conducive to remaining indoors. However, after a week of confinement, Sophie donned her warmest clothes and made the trek to Garrick’s country manor, Hampton House, where she was invited to discuss
The Bogus Baronet,
the play which, at long last, she had submitted to Drury Lane’s manager.

“Your recommendations will improve it immensely,” she agreed, retrieving her manuscript from Garrick’s desk in his library.

“Excellent!” the actor-manager smiled, “for I would like to present it before the current season ends.”

“Truly?” Sophie said, her spirits lifting for the first time in months.

“Absolutely,” replied her employer. “And I believe ’tis safe to submit it in the name of Sophie McGann, if you like. ’Tis a theme that might appeal to Edward Capell, as he despises pretentious fops.”

But in April, David Garrick was taken ill with gout and repaired to Bath for ten days to take the waters. In his absence, James Lacy charged his apparent confidante, Viscount Glyn, with the responsibility of personally delivering Sophie’s manuscript to Edward Capell and waiting for his decree.

Suddenly, the black enameled door marking the Lord Chamberlain’s office at St. James’s Palace swung open and Lord Darnly strode toward Sophie, his lips curling in a satisfied smile.

“Well, my dear,” he chuckled as he assisted her into his waiting coach, “you are now a scribbler of farces in your own name. Capell has granted your play a license.”

Emitting an unladylike squeal that could have startled the horses, Sophie snatched the manuscript from his hands and stared at the precious imprimatur scrawled on the title page in Capell’s own hand: “Licensed to Act.”

***

Garrick’s infirmities improved enough for him to mount
The Bogus Baronet
as the last original play presented during the 1769–1770 season.

“Sophie,” Roderick chided from his front seat in box three, “for pity’s sake, move your chair forward a bit or you won’t see a whit of your own play.” The viscount had not pressed her again on the issue of residing in his home, but had proved remarkably supportive during the nerve-wracking process of mounting her play.

“I can’t bear to watch,” she groaned, moving her seat deeper into the shadows behind the velvet swag attached to a nearby wall. One of the programs she had printed, touting “a five-act farce by Sophie McGann,” lay crumpled at her feet.

But, by hour’s end, she was leaning against the railing, drinking in the audience’s delighted reaction to the unmasking of a pretentious young scalawag who eventually received his just desserts for attempting to pass as a member of the nobility.

As the actors took their bows, cheers rang in her ears, and eventually, she was prompted by Roderick to rise to her feet and acknowledge the cries of “Author! Author!” Inclining her head graciously, she could only wish that Hunter were there to witness it all.

The Bogus Baronet
enjoyed a respectable run of eight evenings, yielding two Author’s Night Benefits for Sophie that were worth nearly two hundred pounds. She rather hoped to receive congratulations from Hunter, but no word came, and as the summer began in earnest, she sadly assumed he had taken employment outside of London.

“He’ll eventually recover his temper,” Lorna reassured her on the eve of the dancer’s departure for Sadler’s Wells.

Sophie merely gazed at her friend pessimistically. The following day, she bid Lorna farewell at the Soho coaching station and braced herself for a long summer in the city.

On a sun-filled afternoon in early June, Sophie sat across from David Garrick in the Treasure Room and stared in awe at a pile of coins worth some £189—money she had earned in her own name from her own pen!

“Have you any notions for other projects you’d like to discuss?” Garrick asked, expectantly.

“I-I’d like to write about Bedlam,” she said softly. “I’d like to show the true insanity of the methods employed there.”

Garrick gazed at her thoughtfully.

“A tragicomedy, I should think… nothing too heavy-handed, else your audience will consider themselves scolded, not entertained.”

“I suppose you’re right,” laughed Sophie ruefully. “Though how one finds humor in what I’ve witnessed, I’ll be bound I don’t know.”

“Even so, my dear, I think you should refrain from such a weighty subject until you’ve had a bit more experience in the trenches.” He pulled a manuscript bound in a battered leather binding from a nearby shelf. “Perhaps this might interest you… and could prepare you for such an effort in the future.” He patted the manuscript.
“
This is
a play by Aphra Behn… do you know her work?” he asked.

“I know some of it,” Sophie replied, her interest piqued. “My father stocked many of her plays, though she died… what… eighty years ago?”

“Yes, and I’m pleased you know of her,” he replied with a smile. “She was a brilliant but eccentric woman, some would say ‘indelicate.’ She was despised by polite society for her audacity in taking up a calling essentially reserved for men in that day. Sad to say, Aphra was left destitute and abandoned at her death. But she wrote at least thirteen novels and had some seventeen plays mounted in seventeen years—more than any gentleman of that age I could name,” Garrick smiled again. “At any rate, this play,
Forced Marriage,
has always intrigued me.”

Sophie peered at a date scratched on the first page.

“‘1671’” she read in awe. “’Tis almost exactly a hundred years ago.”

“Precisely my thought,” Garrick smiled. “Would you like to read it and consider adapting it for us for next season? ’Tis a tragicomedy, like your notion about a play concerning Bedlam. ’Tis well structured, but I think it could be made more appropriate to our age. Will you have at it?”

Sophie was touched by Garrick’s offer to learn this form of play writing from such a mistress of it as Aphra Behn. Swiftly agreeing to his proposal, she made her exit from Drury Lane’s Treasure Room with a pouch of heavy coins in one hand and the ninety-nine-year-old manuscript by Aphra Behn in the other. As she paused in the passageway to tuck the money into her bodice, she was unable to repress a smile of pleasure.

Downstairs, Sophie groped her way through the murky candlelight that barely illuminated the back stage area.

“Ready to take up the quill again so soon?” a gruff voice said from the shadows.

“Wha—?” gasped Sophie, unnerved by a tall figure emerging from the darkness. Her heart began to beat erratically, followed immediately by a crushing sense of disappointment. “G-good afternoon, Roderick.” She faltered as Darnly, now Viscount Glyn, strode toward her in the gloom. “You startled me.… I thought the place deserted.”

Sophie was amazed at how Roderick Darnly always seemed to know the smallest details of what transpired at Drury Lane. Then again, he was a partner of sorts, a mortgage-holder of some of Lacy’s Drury Lane shares, and thus privy to much playhouse business.

“As you may know,” she replied, observing him closely, “Mr. Garrick has asked me to adapt a play by Aphra Behn— a tragicomedy.”

“Really?” he said laconically. “Isn’t that a bit of a stretch for a mistress of frothy tales about counterfeit aristocrats?”

Sophie grasped the worn leather cover of the manuscript Garrick had entrusted to her. Darnly’s tone was one shade removed from insulting.

“Fortunately,” she replied with a steady gaze, “Mr. Garrick believes I am eminently suited to the task of adapting this particular work.”

“Forgive me, Sophie, but I believe your high aspirations have wrongly prompted you to abandon what you do best— amusing farce,” he opined. “For myself, I am disappointed by this news. I had hoped to try to place your next comedy with someone eager to revitalize a certain playhouse this summer.”

As she had always suspected, it now appeared that Roderick Darnly had higher theatrical ambitions than merely controlling a few shares at Drury Lane. He would not wish to accept crumbs from Garrick’s table. Extending his sway at some summer pleasure garden was undoubtedly his next goal.

“Perhaps, if I can find the time, I can write both,” she suggested brightly.

Much to her consternation, he nodded.

“I would like that very much indeed,” he said calmly. “It needn’t be Shakespeare, my dear,” he continued dryly, “merely an amusing confection—and quickly conceived, I might add. I would need a manuscript by the end of July, at the latest.”

“I-I shall do my best,” Sophie said, thinking how pleasant it would be to be earning siller from two plays at once.

“And if you seek a quiet place to work, the chambers I showed you are at your disposal,” he added.

“You’re very kind,” she murmured, “but for the nonce—”

“As you wish,” he interrupted.

Begging his leave, she quickly left through the back stage door, wondering how in the world she could ever live up to the demands being made of her. For the second time in an hour, she was startled practically witless by another figure accosting her from the shadows as she entered the stairwell to her lodgings.

“Ah… at last!” exclaimed an emaciated man suddenly blocking her path.

“Peter!” Sophie gasped as the husband she hadn’t seen in years grabbed her wrist.

His coat and knee breeches were wrinkled and frayed, and his linen was in a scandalously filthy state. His nose was laced with a web of fine purple lines that plainly told the story of the damage done by his penchant for strong spirits.

“Ah… my fine,
successful
lady wife,” he said, lurching forward in a mocking attempt to kiss her hand. “I heard the playhouse was full for both Author’s Benefit Nights. You must have earned a fortune from your spoof of old Peter, here.”

“Be gone, you drunken fool!”

“‘Bogus baronet’ I may be, but I remain your beloved husband,” he said sarcastically, tightening his grip. “By rights, whatever money you garner from your pen is mine anyway, and I’ve come to collect my due,” he said menacingly.