Angel in Scarlet (48 page)

I wished it were possible for me to play Kate Hardcastle, the wry, aristocratic lass who pretends to be a maid in order to win the debonair Marlow. It was a marvelous part, one that would give full range to my talents, and the lavish revival at the Haymarket was bound to be a tremendous critical and popular success. I longed to play comedy, knew I would be far better at it than I was in melodrama, but, of course, I couldn't think of taking the part. Jamie and I didn't have a written contract, true, and there was no legal reason why I couldn't go elsewhere when
My Charming Nellie
finally shut down, but there was a silent understanding between us. I could never be disloyal, not even for a plum like Kate. Goldy would have to find another actress, alas, but I felt honored that he wanted me. Perhaps Mary wouldn't be as dreary and stilted as I feared. Jamie was convinced the play would be a triumph.

A full week passed without a letter from him, and when, the following Friday, one finally arrived, it was distressing indeed. His cold had grown worse, Mrs. Lindsey had nursed him back to health with mustard plasters and hot chicken soup, and he was just now getting back to work on the play. Mary was giving him problems, the whole play had to be restructured and he probably wouldn't be home for another three weeks. Another three weeks! The page shook in my hand. It would be almost June before he got back home! I was in a wretched mood when I got to the theater that evening, impatient with my dresser, blowing a line in the first act, finding it difficult indeed to be blithe and capricious as Nell. The enchanting Mrs. Perry didn't help matters one bit.

We all took our curtain calls together and the audience applauded enthusiastically and the others left the stage and I stood alone and smiled and bowed. A rowdy group of young bucks from Oxford stood and cheered and threw a somewhat tattered bouquet of red roses onto the stage. I picked it up and sniffed the blooms and smiled again and pulled out one rose and tossed it to the ringleader of the group, a strapping blond. I was still in a wretched mood. I blew him a kiss. Lord, would they ever stop applauding and carrying on? I had a dreadful headache and knew I was going to stomp offstage if they didn't stop soon. The curtain came down, came up again, and I was humble and demure and grateful, giving a performance far superior to the one I had just given as Nellie. The curtain came down for the final time and I sighed with relief, giving the roses to the stagehand and moving into the wings.

Mrs. Perry was waiting for me, wearing the luscious pink and black striped satin she wore in the last act. It had a very full skirt and a very low bodice that left most of her bosom bare. One black and two pink plumes were fastened to the side of her coiffure with a large false diamond clasp. The diamonds she wore at her throat and on her wrists were false, too, and almost as gaudy as the real ones she had worn when the play opened last year. She smiled a very sweet smile that literally oozed malice.

“A bit off tonight, weren't you, dear?”

“On the contrary, I was brilliant. You should observe more closely. You might learn something.”

“I doubt seriously there is anything I could learn from you, Mrs. Howard,” she replied.

It was open warfare. Both of us knew it.

“I'm
so
relieved that James is feeling better,” she told me. “I was very concerned about him, but apparently those mustard plasters did the trick. Mrs. Lindsey must be a dear soul, nursing him as she did.”

Keep your temper, Angel. Don't let the bitch know she's scored a hit. So he wrote her a letter? Why shouldn't he? He's perfectly free to write to anyone he cares to, and I'm going to kill him when he returns.

“He's always been one of her favorites,” I said. “He's been going to Tunbridge Wells for years, and he always takes rooms there.”

“So I gather. It's so very peaceful there, with no one to bother him and distract him from his work. He needs that.”

“Indeed he does.”

“At least he keeps in touch,” she added. “I've received a letter almost every day this week—
long
letters. All about the play, of course. He's going to restructure it, and he wanted my opinion about the new scenes.”

“So kind of you to take an interest,” I said.

“Isn't it,” she replied.

She flashed that sweet, malicious smile and turned and left, and Megan, in her street clothes, came looking for me and saw my expression and was immediately concerned.

“Lord, luv, what is it? You look awful. Can I do something?”

“Yes,” I said tightly. “You can find me that stake.”

I was absolutely livid as Peg helped me out of the silver and violet gown. I snapped at her and apologized and she said that was all right, pet, she understood artistic temperament and, besides, it was difficult being without my man, wasn't it? When her Herb wasn't around, he frequently took trips to visit his brothers in Kent, when he wasn't around she got as jittery as could be and wasn't herself at all, not at all, and Mr. Lambert had been gone a long time, hadn't he, it must be awfully hard on me, us being so close and all. I knew that if she didn't shut up I was going to crack a vase over her head so I smiled and told her that would be all, she could go, I'd finish dressing myself. Peg left and I put on a silk wrapper and sat at the dressing table and removed the stage makeup and washed my face and dried it.

I knew what she was up to, of course. She was trying to drive a wedge between Jamie and me so that she could step in and console him and play Mary herself.
I
knew that and
Jamie
knew that, he had told me so himself, the slut wasn't fooling anyone, so why did the son of a bitch have to write long letters to her? Almost every day!
I
sent him his bloody slippers and
I
worry myself sick about his cold and he pens a short note to me and writes reams to her! I could kill him, I really could, and I just might do it. I brushed my hair angrily until it fell in gleaming chestnut waves about my shoulders and then I hurled the brush across the room and it crashed against the wall.

Getting angry accomplished nothing, and that was exactly what the slut had intended to do, make me angry. I took several deep breaths and controlled myself and, eventually, managed some semblance of composure. I felt drained now, bone weary through and through. I wasn't getting enough sleep. I wasn't eating properly. I was growing edgy and snappish and shrewish. I sighed heavily, dressing, adjusting the low-cut bodice of the amethyst silk, spreading the full skirt over the silver-gray petticoat skirts beneath. I slipped on my cloak of silver-gray velvet, pulled the hood up over my head and left the theater, dreading going back to the empty house.

Perhaps … perhaps I hadn't been fair to Jamie, I thought as I strolled toward St. Martin's Lane. I
had
been negative about the new play from the very beginning, had made it quite clear that I had no desire to play Mary, and I had given him none of the encouragement, none of the support I always gave him when he began a new project. I had kept insisting he write the Aphra Behn play instead, and … and if he had turned to Mrs. Perry for encouragement and support, I had no one to blame but myself. He was an artist. He was temperamental. He was far more sensitive than his confident, swaggering manner would lead one to suspect, was, in fact, quite vulnerable beneath all the histrionics, all the noise. I knew that, and I suspected he was hurt by my lack of interest, my negative remarks. He was determined to prove me wrong, to prove he was capable of writing a play that would make the critics take notice.

That was very important to him. Jamie was proud of my success, for it was his success as well, but it stung when I received wonderful notices for my acting while his skills as a playwright were constantly denigrated. One critic had gone so far as to say that without Angel Howard to bring in the customers James Lambert would undoubtedly be sweeping stalls for a living. Although he claimed it didn't bother him one bit, that critics were a vile, envious lot, frustrated playwrights all, he had been in a foul mood for weeks afterward, sulky and bad tempered. It stung, too, that others eagerly sought me, that Garrick wanted me to act at Drury Lane, that Sheridan wanted me for his next play, that Goldsmith wanted me for the revival. Jamie had
created
Angel of Covent Garden, a fact I never denied, and it hurt that I no longer needed him. The male ego is a fragile thing indeed.

Poor darling. I decided I wouldn't kill him when he returned. I would be light and loving and I'd try my damndest to like the bloody play and be enthusiastic about playing Mary. Covent Garden was all moonlight and shadows and yellow light spilling out of Coffee Houses and windows. Couples strolled together and tipsy revelers staggered on the pavements and discreet prostitutes, many of them part-time actresses and supers, discreetly plied their trade. A pickpocket nimbly lifted a watch from a stout, drunken gentleman and, seeing me, waved. I blew a kiss and turned down St. Martin's Lane. Moonlight silvered the steps in front of the house and flooded the foyer when I unlocked the door and opened it. I reached for the candlestick on the table beside the door, struck a match and lighted the candle.

A pool of wavering gold light surrounded me and shadows sprang against the walls. I closed the door and locked it and stood there for a few moments holding the candlestick, frowning. I could feel the emptiness all around me, and I had a peculiar sensation that the house was … was waiting, watching me, holding its breath, as though it were an animate thing. I felt a curious chill in my blood, and my frown deepened. Get hold of yourself, Angel, I scolded. It's a little late in the game for you to get spooked now, after staying by yourself for weeks. You've been reading too many of those scary novels Walpole made so popular with
The Castle of Otranto
. There is no one in the house but you, and you're not going to get nervy now. I squared my shoulders and went upstairs to the bedroom and lighted candles there and removed my cloak, and I still had the spooky feeling that something was wrong, that the atmosphere had been disturbed somehow.

My first instinct was to lock the bedroom door and barricade it and huddle here in terror until dawn, but I wasn't about to do that. I knew that if I let myself give in I'd be a mass of nerves all night long. You're going to go down to the kitchen and make yourself a cup of nice hot tea and find some snacks and come back up here and read and put this nonsense out of your mind. If there is a ghost in the house it's Aphra Behn's, and she's bound to be a dear soul, full of benevolence. I picked up the candlestick and left the bedroom and stood at the top of the stairs, peering down into the shadowy darkness below, and it was one of the bravest things I had ever done.

The house waited, watched, and it seemed to whisper as well, a soft, barely audible whispering. I held the candlestick high, and wavering golden light spilled around me and intensified the darkness, and I knew there was nothing on earth that would induce me to go down those stairs, into the study and kitchen. I didn't
need
tea. I wasn't really hungry. Oh, no, Angel, you're not going to back out now. This is positively absurd. You've never been frightened before. There is nothing wrong. I tried to convince myself of that as I took another deep breath and started slowly down the stairs. My amethyst silk skirts made a loud rustling noise. The fourth step down creaked loudly, seemed to squeal out in the silence. I paused, gripping the pewter candlestick tightly. Go on. Go on down. If you let this silly nervousness get the best of you you'll be nervous every night, afraid to stay alone.

Someone was down there. In the darkness. I sensed it. I knew it. Someone was watching me. I could feel eyes staring, an almost physical sensation. There, by the bookcase, a dark form, darker than the darkness surrounding it, a man, waiting, watching me. The heavy candlestick shook in my hand. The candle flame waved wildly, shadows leaping on the wall. The dark form moved, merging into the darker shadows, vanished, and I knew my imagination was playing tricks on me. Damn Walpole. Damn all those scary novels I'd been consuming. Aphra, if it's you, I'm coming down and I'm making myself some tea, and if you want to watch, fine. I moved on down the stairs and golden light washed over the bookcases lining the foyer, and there was no one there, of course, never had been. I sighed with relief and moved through the doorway into the study.

I had only taken a few steps into the room when a gust of wind caused the draperies to billow. The candle blew out. Darkness engulfed me like a tangible thing, like a heavy black cloak suddenly thrown over my head, and I was in a world of inky blackness, alone with the thing that watched. I could feel it again, and my skin seemed to prickle. My heart pounded. I couldn't breathe. I knew a moment of sheer, stark terror and I thought I was going to faint. My knees grew weak. I could feel myself beginning to reel, and I steadied myself, willed myself to hold the hysterics at bay. A gust of wind blew the draperies into the room and blew out the candle and there was positively no reason to be alarmed. But … why was the window open? It had been shut, been securely locked when I left for the theater. Hadn't it? Had I opened it this afternoon to get some fresh air and forgotten to close it? My heart still pounded. I caught my breath.

Several moments passed and each one seemed an eternity. I couldn't stand here in the darkness all night, clutching the candlestick and imagining I wasn't alone in the room. I had to relight the candle. We kept a box of matches on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. I started toward it and stumbled, my foot slipping on a rug, and I knew I was likely to fall and break my neck if I tried to grope around in this inky blackness. I turned and took two steps and reached the window and pulled the draperies open. Shafts of silvery moonlight flooded the center of the room and left everything else in shadow but at least I would be able to see my way to the fireplace without falling and … I saw him then.