Wicked Company (82 page)

Sophie opened her mouth to protest this blatant falsehood, but Darnly gave her no chance to speak.

“Really, my dear, you do have the most atrocious taste in men. I am sorry to learn you have again been played false by yet another rake, but then, what else can one expect from such scoundrels? All the more reason for you to come live with me… after your confinement, you can give the baby over to a wet nurse—which I shall be happy to provide—that is, if the whelp survives. Then you shall be free to write in peace.”

She stared at him, dumbfounded by his gall, and was tempted to confront his bold-faced lies. Instead she eyed him coldly, saying, “As I am in great danger of having this baby very soon—perhaps even
today—
I would appreciate it very much, Roderick, if you would take your leave.”

“Whatever you wish,” he replied, grim-faced. “But do give my proposals serious consideration. I stand ready and willing to serve as your protector.”

“And why in the name of St. Ninian, would you wish to do that?” she demanded.

Roderick cocked an eyebrow and smiled faintly.

“It never fails to astound me how much you undervalue your appeal to a man of my artistic sensibilities,” he replied, ignoring the look of disbelief flickering across her face. “Have you heard from the miscreant?” he asked mockingly. Sophie maintained a stony silence. “No? I thought not. I’m certain that eventually, dear Sophie, you’ll come to see that what I offer you is in our mutual interest. But… perhaps you merely need more time to think on it.”

He turned toward the door as if to depart.

“Oh, before I go…” he added, facing the bedstead once again. He pulled out a leather pouch, reached for her hand, and placed the purse in her palm. “I nearly forgot the primary reason for my visit. Here’s the rest of your share of
Vanquishers Vanquished.
Rosoman has, at last, done up his final accounts at Sadler’s and wished me to give you this,” he said, to Sophie’s astonishment.

“May I inquire how much
more
I am due?” she asked curtly, fingering the contents of the pouch.

“As I feared,” the viscount said shrugging, “the play’s expenses were astronomical. That man Rosoman’s a squanderer… but there should be a respectable forty-seven pounds in there, my dear.”

Sophie remained silent, forcing herself to quell her temper. There was no point in stirring up trouble, she reckoned, because, fortunately, Roderick Darnly was still unaware of her presence in Rosoman’s cupboard that night.

“Have you been well enough to work on any plays during these months of your confinement?” Roderick inquired blandly.

“Hasn’t anyone told you?” she retorted, in no mood for a chat. “I’ve given up the muse.” She was fed up with the man’s lies, and so thought it best to tell a few of our own. “I’ve discovered to my discouragement, there’s not enough blunt in play writing, what with managers’ supposed expenses and plain thievery when it comes to their accounts,” she added pointedly. “I’ve found I do far better with my little printing business, thanks to Garrick’s kind patronage.”

“Surrendered your quill, have you?” he murmured, appearing disconcerted by her announcement. “I’m sorry to hear of this.”

“Aye,” Sophie replied, feigning indifference. “’Tis of no consequence. I shall be more than occupied caring for the bairn.”

She began idly drumming the bed linen with her fingers, longing for Roderick to depart, when, suddenly, she was gripped by a stabbing pain that started in her groin and ripped through her abdomen like a scimitar. Just then, the door to her upstairs lodgings swung open and Lorna Blount stood in the threshold with an armload of daffodils.

“Sophie?” Lorna exclaimed, alarmed by the look of agony distorting her friend’s features. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, God,” Sophie groaned. “Oh, God! No!”

Just then, Sophie’s birth water gushed out between her legs, soaking the linen as another pain relentlessly bore down on her.

“Fetch Mrs. Phillips!” she gasped to Lorna.
“Quickly!”
she cried, her voice rising to a shrill scream.

Frantically, she grabbed the bedpost behind her head, riding out the contraction as best she could while Lorna tossed the daffodils on a table and dashed back downstairs to alert the apothecary-midwife. Struggling for breath, Sophie opened her eyes to find Lord Darnly, standing stock-still in the middle of the chamber wearing a horrified expression.

“For God’s sake, Roderick! Don’t go all glassy eyed! I’m having a
baby!”
she cried angrily.

The viscount had taken a step backward, bumping awkwardly into a corner of the armoire that stood against the wall near the door. His face had drained of color.

Sophie watched her unwelcome visitor stumble toward the exit. She wished, suddenly, to inflict on him the same kind of physical suffering that now held her entire body in its grip. She was furious that the man who drove her bairn’s father from her side should be a witness to her distraught state.

“Did you know that Hunter and I have
long
been lovers?” she inquired brutally, as the first contraction finally ran its course. At these words, Lord Darnly halted midstep and turned to stare at her. “Eight months ago
exactly,
on the afternoon you were drinking your port downstairs at the Myddleton’s Head Inn, we were upstairs in my chambers directly overhead, making wonderful,
passionate
love!” she exclaimed, gratified to see a look of misery invade his gray eyes. “I can’t imagine why you filed those patently false charges,” she added with a withering glare. “He was only trying to ascertain what was owing the two of us.”

“And what did the villain claim to have seen in those ledgers?” Darnly asked in a low voice.

“I have no idea,” Sophie lied boldly, bracing for another contraction that appeared about to seize her. “As you are well aware, he was obliged to make a hasty exit and I never—”

“The man embezzled three hundred pounds, I tell you!”

“Whatever you claim, ’tis
his
flesh fighting to escape this womb of mine!” Sophie retorted scathingly, as another excruciating pain began to tear through her abdomen. “Damn you, Viscount Glyn! You forced my bairn’s father to flee
!”

Reaching behind her head to clutch desperately at the bedpost, her voice resounded shrilly across the distance that separated Roderick Darnly and his erstwhile scribe.

“
I want…
Hunter, damn your eyes!
” she half sobbed, half screamed.
“I… want… Hunter!”

“Not Viscount…” Roderick corrected her dully. “Earl,” he whispered, closing his ears to her agonized shrieks as Mrs. Phillips bustled through the door and rushed to Sophie’s bedside. “I really came here to tell you I am now the Earl of Llewelyn. My father has died, you see, and—at long last—I can do whatever I please.”

***

Afterward, Sophie only dimly recalled Darnly’s hasty departure. However, she remembered the pain of childbirth, and was grateful how short her labor had been. The babe was fragile looking—very long, but extremely thin.

“Tall… like his da,” Sophie whispered tearfully.

“More like a spider than a babe,” Mrs. Phillips had pronounced as she severed the umbilical cord on the bloody sheets. “When they’re eight-month bairns—they come out faster. I doubt if he’ll live,” she added flatly.

“He
will
live!” Sophie replied fiercely, seeing how Lorna and Mrs. Phillips exchanged worried looks. “Here… please clean him and put him to the breast!”

As if sheer will could keep an infant alive, Sophie accomplished what Mrs. Phillips privately predicted was impossible. Within a few weeks, little Rory McGann Robertson had gained weight and filled out a bit, “although he still doesn’t look quite human… a monkey now, instead of a spider,” Mrs. Phillips declared as Lorna made her way upstairs to bring her friend a warm caudle she’d had the tavern keeper concoct out of eggs, milk, and nutmeg.

By the middle of June, the apothecary pronounced the month-old infant almost out of danger, barring some unexpected fever.

“Have you written Hunter yet that he’s a father?” Lorna asked, holding the baby while Sophie sipped the caudle.

“I thought to wait till midsummer, when we’re more certain the bairn will…”

She left her sentence dangling. She thought of little Danielle, so pink and robust at birth, carried off by ague when three months old. Sophie reached out to take Rory from Lorna’s arms. She stroked his cheek and kissed him on each eyelid the way Hunter had so often kissed her. The baby’s tiny hand wrapped itself tightly around her forefinger. “That’s a good lad,” she crooned. “You must grow stronger every day.”

***

The London theaters closed once again for the summer season and most of the players and fellow theater people deserted Covent Garden in their customary fashion. Sophie had revealed her pregnancy to David Garrick during rehearsals for
Strife for a Wife
and had sworn him to secrecy. Now, on the eve of the Garricks’ annual departure for Hampton House, she informed them personally of little Rory’s premature birth.

“I wondered how you’d bear to keep your cloak on when the weather grew warm.” Garrick smiled as he hobbled across the sitting room in Southampton Street to offer her a chair. Despite his latest trip to Bath, he was still suffering intermittent attacks of gout and biliousness.

“And the babe is well?” Mrs. Garrick asked hesitantly. “Only eight months term, David said.”

“Aye, he surprised us with his early debut, but he’s blooming. In fact, I’ll wager he’s gained half a stone!” She laughed at her own exaggeration. “I can only stay a short while. Lorna Blount was kind enough to mind him during this visit, but there is no substitute for mama on occasion…”

David cleared his throat.

“And what of the babe’s father…?”

“I’ve received my first missive from Hunter just this week,” she confided. “He doesn’t know of the bairn, of course. I would have distressed him needlessly if something had happened before my confinement… and then, when Rory was born so prematurely, I wished to wait and see if—”

“We understand,” Eva-Maria interjected kindly. “And what of Mr. Robertson’s journey to Annapolis?”

“The ship sailed to the West Indies in record time, thanks to a hurricane!” she related, warming to the tale of Hunter’s unusual crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. “In fact, the months of inclement weather in the Caribbean forced the
Jenny
to remain in St. Thomas all winter. That’s where he wrote the letter. I haven’t heard yet of his impressions of Annapolis, but the new theater is scheduled to open in September and—depending on the situation here in London at the end of the season next spring—I imagine he hopes to return…”

Both Garricks peered sympathetically across their teacups at their guest. Now that her baby had been born healthy, Sophie’s situation was even more precarious. Wretch though he might be, her legal husband was still alive and full of ploys to wheedle money from his estranged wife. To make matters worse, the father of wee Rory had resorted to fisticuffs with one of the premier peers of the realm. Garrick had not been surprised to learn of Darnly’s larcenous treatment of Sophie at Sadler’s Wells, but, in all, ’twas a circumstance that did not bode well for the return of young Robertson, even though the new Earl of Llewelyn seemed to spend little time, now, in London.

Drury Lane’s ailing manager listened to the young woman he almost considered a daughter chatting with his wife. Her petite figure was enhanced by her newly rounded bosom, full of mother’s milk, and for a brief, painful moment, he considered his and Eva-Maria’s own childlessness.

Sophie was such a vibrant, intense young thing, he reflected, wry and witty one moment, eyes
flashing and full of righteous indignation over the world’s folly at another. Absently, he glanced at the ornate harpsichord standing in the corner of his parlor. In many ways, she was like a pianist’s tuning fork, he mused, sensitive to every sound, every nuance in the atmosphere. The joys as well as the chaos and personal catastrophes that had beset her had made her more sympathetic to life around her, giving her the ability to reflect in her writing all that she had seen and experienced.

“Well, then,” Garrick said to his wife who busied herself pouring another round of tea, “a bit of business, if you don’t object, my dear. In the autumn, Sophie, will you wish to continue printing our playbills and such?” he asked.

“Certainly,” she responded eagerly, relieved to have some promise of income to tide her over until she fully regained her strength and had confirmation that Rory remained healthy.

“And over the summer, will you be up to any pen scratching?”

“Well…” Sophie said slowly. “Hunter’s recent letter describing some of the dandies traveling to the Colonies on board his ship put me to mind of those outrageous young men who return from the Continent. I find their garish costumes quite comical, to say nothing of their display of what they consider the latest in fashionable manners and
bon mots.
I thought to spoof the English fops on tour… and contrast with them plain and prudent British folk.”