Drury Lane Darling (2 page)

Lady Raleigh gave a
tsk
of disgust at such ostentation. Before more could be said, they heard the butler opening the door, and Nigel’s fluting voice sounded.

“The place don’t look nearly so shabby in summer,” Nigel was assuring the actress. “Every place looks dismal in winter, but in April it looks quite decent, don’t it, Wes?”

A murmur of assent told them Lord Breslau was also in the door.

“It is charming,” the actress assured him.

Lady Raleigh’s features sharpened at the French accent. Sir Aubrey’s face assumed the expression of a hungry dog at the smell of meat, and Pamela stared expectantly toward the doorway. There was a slight delay and a murmur of voices beyond the door while outer clothing was removed. The first to appear, and alone, was the marquise, who always liked to make a grand entrance. The occupants of the room stared as the apparition swept a graceful curtsy, smiled, and advanced with two white, jeweled hands outstretched.

Pamela stared with an open curiosity that soon turned to admiration. How could anyone possibly not love this wonderful person? She had never seen anyone so glamorous and charming. The marquise’s bonnet had been removed to reveal the butter-taffy hair arranged in fashionable swirls and loops. Pamela’s hand went automatically to her own outmoded do. She always wore it skimmed back when she visited Belmont, to quench Nigel’s ardor. She thought of her new rose gown hanging in her closet in Kent. She should have been told the marquise was coming.

Pamela had thought the word
flawless
applied to the lady’s acting, but she began to wonder if it wasn’t a tribute to her beauty instead. Her complexion was pale and clear, her eyes large, dark, lustrous, and smiling. Her cheekbones were high and her chin was firm. Or so it looked at a glance across the room. Her full but lithe figure was encased in a traveling suit that not even Lady Raleigh could find a fault with, hard as she tried. It was dark green sarcenet, with a white fichu that added an air of innocence and a paisley shawl that added nothing, but would be welcome in the chilly saloon.

“Welcome to Belmont, madam,” Sir Aubrey said, and bounced forward, eyes glazed with admiration, to seize her hand and pump it, while his wife’s nostrils quivered in distaste.

While he told the marquise how much he had enjoyed her performance in
The Provok’d Husband,
Pamela took a quick glance at the others. Nigel looked even less appealing than usual. His nose was red at the end and his blue eyes were watering from the cold.

The famous Lord Breslau proved to be a tall, slender gentleman who needed no title to tell the world he was an aristocrat. He fairly reeked of it. Nothing but years of inbreeding could produce a nose so razor-thin, eyes so bored, a mouth so cynical, and an air of such perfect disinterest that it avoided arrogance by a hair. No one but Weston could have fashioned the superfine jacket that sat like a second skin on his shoulders. His dark brown hair was worn short, brushed back in protest against the popular Brutus do.

His manners, she allowed, were excellent. He proceeded straight to Lady Raleigh, bowed, and assured her her son was doing excellently in London. There was a general commotion of introducing everyone.

The marquise proclaimed herself
enchantee
to meet Mees Calmstock. Pamela smiled and returned the compliment. Her bright eyes did not fail to observe, however, that at this close range the crow’s work was visible at the corners of the marquise’s eyes. The neck, too, while firm, was beginning to assume the texture of crepe.

Lord Breslau was “charmed” to meet Miss Comstock, and said, “Nigel has told me so much about you.” Nigel, he noticed, had not been quite accurate in his description. He said the girl was “a great dull lump of a country bumpkin Mama plans to foist on me.” She was actually a rather small dull lump. When the introductions were over, there was a polite search for seats.

Lady Raleigh had no intention of sharing a sofa with an actress, and with a commanding beam from her eyes, she impelled Nigel and Pamela to the sofa, one on either side of her. This left the marquise abandoned to Sir Aubrey’s eager company. Under Dot’s steely gaze, he showed her to a chair and pulled his own chair as close as he dared. Lord Breslau took up a pose by the fireplace, with one booted foot on the grate and half of his back to the room.

In deference to the company, the talk turned to drama as soon as the trip had been covered and the observation made that they were lucky to have beat the rain.

“We are just paying you a dashing visit,” the marquise said. “The tyrant”—she glanced playfully at Lord Breslau—“has given me two nights off. I must be back in London for Wednesday’s performance.”

“We have an unexceptionable replacement in Rose Flanders,” Breslau said. This earned him an angry flash from the marquise.

“How are you making out with clearing the debt at Drury Lane?” Lady Raleigh enquired politely of Breslau. Thus far, she had nodded to the actress, but not actually spoken to her.

“Lady Chamaude’s performances are always sold out,” Breslau replied, with what the hostess considered a quite unnecessary acknowledging bow to the actress.

The marquise, who found Sir Aubrey every bit as dull as he feared, lent an ear to the other conversation. “Give me a real role and you will see a real performance,” she snipped.

“By Jove, I saw a real performance when I went to watch you,” Sir Aubrey assured her.

“The marquise is referring to tragedy,” Breslau informed them. “It’s a cliché in the theater that actors always want to perform the roles they’re least qualified for.”

Lady Raleigh stirred to life. “Lady Chamaude plays the ingénue, I believe?” she remarked, addressing her words to the grate.

There was a short, uncomfortable silence, finally broken by the marquise, who exercised her control not to hear that spiteful remark. “You think I couldn’t play tragedy?” she challenged Breslau. Fire darted from her fine dark eyes. “How is the world to know I can act, if I am only allowed to laugh and flirt? I have known much tragedy in my life, as Sonny could tell you. It is all in my memoirs.”

Lady Raleigh bridled up to hear Nigel being called a pet name by this creature.

“In the dull months, folks want comedy,” Breslau insisted. “Our tragedies never fare half so well.”

“They would if Fleur was playing the lead,” Nigel said staunchly. Lady Raleigh’s nostrils pinched in chagrin.

“Is
MacBeth
not a tragedy?” the actress asked. “It did very well at Covent Garden last season.”

Pamela noticed that Breslau and his flirt were enjoying a lovers’ spat, and conjured with how this might affect her visit vis-à-vis Nigel.

“None of the chairs left the hall,” Breslau allowed with one of his bored looks, and turned his attention to the fire, to try to kick the embers to flame.

Pamela wished to store up some anecdotes to take home as trophies to Kent and said to the marquise, “I read that you escaped from the guillotine in a cabbage cart, Lady Chamaude. Is it true?”

“Non,
it was a cart full of rutabagas,” she replied, and told the oft-repeated story of this hair-raising experience, with a sword being plunged into the vegetables, missing her by inches. Her gown was slit from the blade, just the way Pamela had read.

“It’s all in chapter two,” Nigel said, for he had heard the story several times and wanted to discuss his own editing of the memoirs instead.

“I look forward to reading it,” Sir Aubrey said. “It should make a dandy tale.”

Breslau looked over his shoulder. “You won’t want to miss it, Aubrey. You were one of Prinney’s set in those days, I think. Perhaps you remember the French refugees landing at Brighton?”

“I recall some talk of it.”

“The Prince Regent himself pulled me from the lugger and placed his mantle over me,” Lady Chamaude said, her eyes glowing. “He put some of us up at his Brighton pavilion. I fear he is a naughty man, but I shan’t mention that in my memoirs. Noblesse oblige,” she added.

“But that was years ago!” Pamela exclaimed. “You must have been a child, Lady Chamaude.”

“Oh, a
veritable enfant,
though I was married. We marry very young in France.” This was the trickiest portion of the memoirs, to account for having been married and on the stage while still more or less in pinafores. The landing at Brighton had occurred over two decades ago, and the Marquise disliked to admit to much more than thirty years. “Ladies marry much later in England, of course,” she added with a meaningful glance at Miss Comstock, still single. That would teach the bright-eyed chit to do her arithmetic in public.

Help came from an unlikely quarter. “I wouldn’t put much past some of Prinney’s set,” Lady Raleigh said grimly. She had managed to cut her husband off entirely from those rakehell friends. “I remember hearing some pretty scandalous stories about the carrying on at Brighton.” Aubrey was right in the thick of it, too, but she’d soon brought
that
to a halt.

“The dear prince is a changed man now,” the marquise said. She enjoyed his favor, and had no intention of embarrassing him in her memoirs. “He was a very model of kindness to me in those days. He let me ride a pretty white pony. I called her Lady Blanche, and placed three white plumes under her crown piece—the Prince of Wales’s feathers, you know.”

No one noticed the sudden frown that assailed Sir Aubrey’s features. The incident stirred dormant memories. There had been a French refugee taken under Prinney’s wing in those days. Corinne was her name, like the heroine of Madame de Stael’s novel. A pretty, brown-eyed, brown-haired little filly she was, full of pep and vinegar. The marquise, he assumed, had heard the story and used it. Corinne would be nudging forty by now. The marquise didn’t look a day over thirty.

His eyes slid to her profile as she regaled the company with other Brighton tales. “Oh, they were all a naughty bunch of boys.” She laughed gaily. “I remember one—I called him my groom, because he always accompanied me when I rode Lady Blanche in the Marine Parade.” She turned and cast a sapient eye on Sir Aubrey. “Perhaps you remember him, Sir Aubrey?”

Sir Aubrey looked, and felt the hair on the back of his neck lift. How Corinne had changed! Her hair had magically turned to a soft blondish red. Her maidenly body had filled out majestically. Her voice, her manner—all were different, but the eyes were the same. She still had those sharp, knowing eyes.

“Can’t say that I do,” he said gruffly.

She smiled demurely. “Perhaps my visit will jog your memory. It is one of the reasons I’m here,” she threatened sweetly. “Nigel told me you were in Brighton at that time. I’m eager to meet old friends and refresh my own memory. You’d be surprised what talking over the old days can bring up. Lord Alban, for instance, has been most helpful.”

Alban! Yes, he’d been after Corinne as well! Ho, they were all after her. But she’d favored himself. Not as rich as the others, but more handsome. Dot had been home at Belmont that spring. Nigel was only a few months old. How it all came washing back. Corinne, the little cottage at Freshfield Place, near the park. Then the summons from Dot. “Come home at once if you ever want to see your son again.” Who had told her? Alban’s work, very likely.

Had Alban replaced him? He had recently been “most helpful.” There was a very sly glint in Corinne’s eye when she said that. Was it possible she was here to hold him to ransom? Pay up, or I reveal you in my book for the scoundrel you are? “Alban, you say? I haven’t seen him in an age.”

“He is still very dashing—like you, Sir Aubrey. He comes to all my plays. We’ll talk later,
n
on
? I’m sure you will remember some helpful details for my memoirs. All my old friends are very generous in assisting me.”

The marquise smiled her charming, warm smile, and turned her attention to Lady Raleigh. No amount of praising the ugly old house turned the termagant up sweet. “I saw a lovely Palladian bridge over a stream as we drove through the park,” she attempted. “All stone, with arches and Corinthian columns. Did you have it built, Lady Raleigh, or is it old?”

“My husband’s father had it built a quarter of a century ago.”

“It’s charming. Nigel tells me you have some paintings hung on tapestry in the gallery, in the old style.”

“You wouldn’t want to see that old rubbish,” Nigel told her. “I say, Fleur, can I get you a glass of wine?”

“Tea will be arriving shortly,” Lady Raleigh announced. She noticed Nigel hadn’t offered Pamela wine. In fact, he had scarcely glanced at her. He was besotted with this wretched actress.

“Tea, so English.” The marquise smiled politely, as her eyes slid hopefully to the wine table.

“You might want to attend the assembly in Hatfield this evening,” Nigel continued, tempting the jaded lady with his simple country treats. “Are you planning to attend, Mama?”

“We will be taking you and Pamela,” his mother replied.

“By Jove, you’ll like that, Fleur. What a stir you’ll cause amongst all the local bucks.”

Lord Breslau had thawed out sufficiently to leave the grate. “Were you just offering sherry, Nigel? I’ll have one, if you please.”

“Tea is on the way,” Lady Raleigh repeated. “You may have wine if you prefer, Breslau. How is your mama?”

“I must confess I have no idea. She doesn’t write—letters, I mean. My housekeeper would have notified me if she were ill or dead, however, so I expect she is fine.”

Lady Raleigh gave him a pained look. “You haven’t written in weeks, Nigel,” was her next attempt at conversation.

“How can you say so, Mama? Didn’t I write just last week and tell you Fleur was coming for a visit?”

“And the very next day to add that I, too, was coming,” Breslau pointed out. “Why, you’ve been deluged with letters, madam. Mama would box my ears if I bombarded her with so many epistles.”

Pamela stared at Lord Breslau as though he were an exotic animal in a zoo. She had never heard such strange conversation in her life, the voice and manner so polite, and the words so offensive. She hardly knew what tone to take toward him. In her experience, gentlemen came in two categories. There were the eligible ones, who were given the encouragement of smiles for any attempt at conversation, and there was the other sort. Despite his title, his fortune, and his fame, Breslau clearly fell into the latter category. She exchanged a bewildered look with Lady Raleigh.