A Reckless Desire (12 page)

“Oh, yes, my lord, I can see exactly why you did it,” she said, nodding sagely. “It was wicked clever of you, too. First you made me act like a fine noble lady, such as Ophelia was, and then you scorned me, same as the prince did to her, so I'd feel like her.”

He stared, stunned. He'd inappropriately lusted after her, fled in cowardly fashion without any explanation, and
this
was how she'd interpreted it? That he'd intended it all along as another acting lesson?

“O-FEEL-i-ah,” he said, correcting her pronunciation to avoid confessing why he'd truly left. “That's how you say it. Not Opp-HEL-yay. O-FEEL-i-ah.”

“O-FEEL-i-ah,” she repeated carefully, and nodded with satisfaction. “It's a peculiar name, one I've not heard before. Ophelia. But now I understand, my lord. I understand
her,
and what that passage you gave me to learn means.”

“What does it mean, Lucia?” he said, intrigued, and forgetting to use the name he'd concocted for her. “What do the words say to you?”

She tipped her head to one side, unconsciously making her eyes glow in the flickering light as her hair rippled over one shoulder. He couldn't fathom how he'd once judged her to be plain, not after he saw her like this.

“It's what the words mean to Lady Ophelia, my lord,” she said firmly. “She's so in love with the prince that she can't believe he'd be this hateful to her. Instead she thinks he's lost his wits. She loves him so much that it makes her sad for him, and breaks her heart to see.”

He nodded. She had, in fact, deciphered the meaning of the passage on her own, without any assistance from him. He was proud of her cleverness, very proud, though a small part of him regretted that there'd be no chance for him to be her attentive tutor—at least not for this.

“You're entirely right,” he said. “Not even Garrick himself could explain Ophelia's lines here any more clearly.”

She grinned shyly, and the last of those harsh cautionary thoughts in his father's voice vanished. How could they possibly survive in the face of a smile like hers?

“I can speak it much better now, too, my lord,” she said. “I can recite it for you here, if you please.”

Without waiting for his consent, she turned her back to him, all shining dark hair and lumpy coverlet. He wondered where she'd acquired this habit of turning away to compose herself, like a conjurer who didn't wish to reveal the secret behind a trick.

Except that she
was
the conjurer, and the trick was how she'd transformed herself so completely. When she turned around again to face him, she'd become the image of Ophelia's heartfelt sorrow: her shoulders were hunched by the weight of her distress, her features pinched by it, and her eyes seemed filled with the horror of what she'd just witnessed.

O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!

The Courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword,

Th' expectancy and rose of the fair state,

The glass of fashion and the mould of form,

Th' observ'd of all observers, quite, quite down!

And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,

That suck'd the honey of his music vows,

Now see that noble and most sovereign reason

Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh,

That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth

Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me

T'have seen what I have seen, see what I see.

She buried her face in her hands, a fitting close to the passage, and stayed that way. She wore no fancy costume, and her cheeks were free of stage paint, and yet by the light of the single candle and the embers in the hearth, she'd managed to create a more convincing show of loss and suffering than he'd ever seen on the stage. He was amazed, and proud, and pleased as well, to think she'd taken his advice yesterday so thoroughly to heart.

But most of all, he was touched by the raw emotion that she'd dared to display, here, just for him. It was something he'd never forget. When he'd begun this experiment, all he'd considered was the wager. Now he realized that Fortune had granted him something much richer. This wasn't a game any longer. Lucia di Rossi possessed all the natural gifts to become a true leading actress, and he felt privileged to have just seen her, in twelve lines,
become
Ophelia.

He raised his hands and slowly began to clap, giving her the applause she so richly deserved. Her head jerked up, and instead of the elegant curtsey of acknowledgment that he expected, her infectious grin returned, accompanied by a joyful little hop that reminded him of just how inexperienced she truly was.

“It
was
better, wasn't it, my lord?” she asked proudly. “I had to read the rest of the play to learn why Lady Ophelia was so upset, and then it made sense how I was to speak her lines.”

That made sense to him—too much sense, really.

“Why do you say that?” he asked. “About how you needed to know the character before you could recite her part.”

“You told me to do so, my lord,” she said promptly. “In the green parlor. You said I should act the way Mr. Garrick advises, and forget Madame Adelaide.”

“That's very flattering, but I'm not so sure it's the truth,” he said, walking back and forth before her. “You've already proved you learn quickly, and I trust that I am an adept tutor, but for you to make such progress in a single day would be prodigious indeed.”

“Ahh,” she said, a single syllable of wariness. “Is it good to be prodigious, my lord?”

“Oh, yes,” he said evenly. “Very good. Remarkable. Extraordinary. All of which your performance was. But I don't believe I can claim it was all my teaching. Rather, I think you've had a bit more experience to make you so…so prodigious.”

In three quick steps she was standing directly before him, blocking his path.

“But how could that be, my lord?” she demanded defensively, her hands bunched into two knots beneath the coverlet. “You know my family's company as well as I. The Di Rossis are dancers.”

He shook his head, unconvinced. “That tale you spun for me last night in the carriage,” he said. “The part about how the famous Mrs. Willow began her career standing on the back of a wagon, reciting poetry to make the women weep. That wasn't an invention, was it?”

“But there's never been a Mr. Willow, my lord, because I've never had a husband, not then nor now,” she said with a frantic edge to her voice that hinted at a half truth. “I vow I wasn't lying, my lord, not to you. I'll swear to it, whatever way you wish of me!”

Oh, hell, he hadn't even considered some ne'er-do-well playhouse-husband lurking in the shadows of her past. He hoped she was telling the truth about that much.

But a blasted
husband.
No, he didn't want to imagine her with a husband, or any other man, either.

“Hush, Lucia, please,” he said, striving to sound more calm and measured than he actually felt. “I never accused you of lying. All I wish to know is this: have you ever before given a performance before a crowd?”

She went very still, so quiet that the pop and hiss of the fire was the only sound between them.

“Lucia,” he said softly. “The truth.”

“You will not be angry, my lord?” she asked in a small voice. “You will not claim I have spoiled your wager, and turn me away?”

“How in blazes could you spoil the wager?” he asked, his misgivings increasing by the moment.

“If I were not the inexperienced actress that Sir Edward believed me to be when he chose me,” she said. “If that no longer made your wager fair.”

“What, because Everett unwittingly gave me an advantage?” he said, relieved, and hoping against hope that this was all. “He chose you, not I, and if I benefit from his choice, so much the better. I intend to win this wager, and I require your presence to do so. So I have guessed correctly?”

She sighed forlornly. “Yes, my lord, in a way,” she said. “One summer I did do what I said. When I was younger, I did travel about with a circus company, speaking pieces from a wagon while the hat was passed. And I did wear a pink silk gown, too, and though it wasn't new, it was the best I've ever worn.”

“You weren't alone, were you?” he said, picturing all the dangers to a young girl in such a situation. “Who was passing that hat?”

“Not Mr. Willow,” she said with a sad attempt at a smile. “It was my papa.”

“Your father,” Rivers repeated carefully. He was relieved more than he should have been that it wasn't the phantom husband, but a father—an irate, outraged father…who could raise an entirely different set of problems. “You've never mentioned him before. Does he know you're here at the Lodge?”

“He's dead,” she said, the words brittle with old sorrow. “He died three years ago December. My mother died so long ago that I can only just remember her. I'm all that's left.”

“I'm sorry, Lucia,” Rivers said. No wonder she'd seemed so vulnerable to him. She was. He'd always been surrounded and protected by his brothers, his father, and the rest of his extended family of cousins and wives and their children, and at first he'd assumed that she'd enjoyed the same security in that den of Di Rossis. But she'd let enough slip about how little they regarded her, he now realized that parting with them had been a relief, even if it meant she was every bit as solitary as she appeared now: a small, brave figure who was achingly alone in the world.

“Thank you, my lord,” she said, her voice reduced to little more than a whisper. “It was consumption that took him in the end, but it was strong drink that broke him. That summer when we were with the circus, after he'd quarreled with Uncle Antonio, he'd sworn he'd stop drinking, and he nearly did. He'd do comic dances between the acrobats' tricks while I said my pieces before the show, and the circus folk were kind to us. It was the best time of my life, doing that with him. But then the cold weather came and the circus stopped, and Papa took to drinking again, and that—that was all.”

She raised her hands and let them drop, as final a gesture as Rivers had ever seen. But now he understood why she'd refused to drink with him in the carriage, and inwardly he winced to recall how he'd unwittingly tried to tease her from it, even when she'd claimed then that liquor only brought “trouble and sorrow.” For her that was undeniably true, and for her sake he resolved not to drink in her company as long as she was here with him at the Lodge.

“I am sorry,” he said again, painfully aware of the inadequacy of the words.

“You needn't be, my lord,” she said, a quick refusal of his sympathy. “None of it was your fault or concern. When Papa died, I wasn't left to fend for myself like most orphans would've been. I'd a place and lodgings with the company.”

“I should think so, given that they are your family,” he said. He had been very young when his own mother had died, but he recalled how as bereft as his father had been, he had done his best to ease the grief and suffering for Rivers and his brothers. They had all supported one another, as a family was supposed to do. “Whether you're part of the same dancing company or not is inconsequential. You're related by blood, and it was their duty to look after you.”

“Yes, my lord,” she said, hedging. “But it would have been a much easier duty for my uncle if I hadn't been so—so disappointing to him.”

“An inability to dance should hardly qualify as a disappointment,” Rivers insisted, unable to imagine how anyone could feel this way about her. She didn't deserve it, not one bit. “I cannot begin to understand why your uncle and Magdalena don't show you more kindness.”

“I understand completely, my lord,” she said with a resignation that chilled him. “Ballet must be perfect. Each dancer, each step must be in harmony, or the whole is destroyed. My uncle danced for kings and queens. He was such a great dancer that on the night of his last benefit, the House of Lords canceled their debates so that the lords could attend.”

“But that has nothing to do with you!”

“It has everything to do with me, my lord,” she said firmly, bunching the coverlet around her shoulders like woolen armor against her fate. “Uncle Lorenzo was perfect, and he expects perfection from everyone in the company. I could not give it to him. I was like the one broken wheel that keeps the entire clockwork from working, and he could not help but loathe me for it.”

He fought the almost irresistible urge to wrap his arms around her, to hold her and tell her how that damnable uncle was an ignorant bully without the brains to appreciate her. It would be easy enough, natural enough, and she was less than an arm's length away from him. But it would not be
right,
even if he'd never wanted to do anything more in his life. Instead he simply stood, his arms folded across his chest in order to keep them where they belonged.

“But your father never felt that way, did he?” he asked, striving to say only what he should. “He looked after you while he lived, didn't he?”

“As much as he could, my lord,” she said sadly. “
Santo cielo,
the fights he had with my uncle over me! Of course it grieved Papa that I could not dance like either him or Mama, but he never faulted me for it. Instead he believed that one day I'd be a great actress.”

“A wise man,” Rivers said. “It's a pity he didn't live to see you make your debut as Ophelia.”

She smiled wistfully, her eyes luminous as she looked up at him.

“He would have liked that,” she said softly. “He was the only one who ever believed I'd the talent to act. The only one, my lord, until you.”

He could think of nothing to say to that, and any words that could be formed into a sensible reply had fled his brain. She had never seemed so achingly alone, and he longed to prove to her that he did, in fact, believe in her, as she'd just said. He just wasn't sure how to do it, because jumbled together with that was the distinct and ungentlemanly awareness of how, at this moment, she was also achingly desirable. He'd always thought himself to be a rational man, a man ruled by his head and not his passions, yet there was nothing rational about what he was feeling right now as she gazed up at him.