Wicked Company (10 page)

“Or ‘Winna Ye Give Me a Smile, Laddie Mine?’” Sophie replied, her spirits sinking even lower as she recalled seeing the pretty actress clinging to Hunter’s arm as he and Boswell repaired to the Pen and Feather. Her mood improved somewhat at the thought that permanent employment for Hunter meant that he could give up being a strolling player and remain in Edinburgh at least throughout the theatrical season. “Your mother and grandfather must be pleased about this stroke of good fortune,” she commented.

“’Tis sure that Rory’s at the end of his traveling days,’’ he noted somberly, “and Jean… well, Jean’s a survivor. She’s happy to have a clean bed and a roof over her head.”

“Who isn’t?” Sophie replied, wondering if Hunter would share a confidence because she had meted out so many this afternoon.

“Is Jean really your mother?” Sophie asked quietly.

“What a question!” Hunter replied, startled by her directness.

“You didn’t answer. Is she?”

Hunter stared silently out the shop window for a long moment and then looked at Sophie and sighed.

“Sometimes I wish to St. Ninian she wasn’t… but yes, Jean Hunter Robertson spawned me and kept me alive in the face of everything,” he answered cryptically, his jaw clamped, as if to prevent himself from commenting further.

Just at that moment, William Creech and James Boswell burst into the shop. Gesturing at Hunter, Boswell gave his companion a sly wink. “If he’s not at his lodgings, or in the feathers with Gwen, ’tis always a likely bet we’ll find this lad lounging around these dusty tomes, eh, Creech?”

“Why, you insolent swine!” Hunter responded with mock indignation. “I was just telling Sophie my bit o’ good luck, getting a berth with Beatt’s players for the new season.”

Sophie had flushed at the mention of the name of Hunter’s apparent new
amour,
but no one seemed to notice her chagrin.

“We’re going to change your life… or at least help you along in your new profession,” Boswell proclaimed grandly. “The great god of elocution, Thomas Sheridan, has come to this fair city to offer lessons in the art of speaking the king’s English, my lad!” Boswell pronounced. “He’s being sponsored by the Select Society of Edinburgh to help us bumpkins purge Scottish colloquial speech from fashionable Edinburgh.
You,
Hunter, he will teach to
speak
English.”

“’Tis a guinea a head for the series of lectures,” confided Creech excitedly to Sophie, “and we’ve enrolled the three of us.”

“’Tis a chance to speak our native tongue without being the subject of ridicule in London!” Boswell declared.

“Sheridan sounds like an Irish name,” Hunter replied doubtfully.

“He’s Irish, all right, but that makes what he teaches all the more remarkable,” Boswell enthused.

“Tell me truly, lads,” Hunter demanded, “who gives a newt’s nose if some London knave dinna like the roll of your
R
s?”

“A theater manager gives a newt’s nose,” Sophie interjected sharply, her dismay concerning the unwelcome confirmation of Hunter’s liaison with some actress named Gwen translating into a caustic tone. “Remember Mr. Beatt? He claimed he could hardly understand half your participles and his mother was from Inverness!”

“You
three understand me well enough!” Hunter protested.

“Ah… but we’re
used
to you!” she rejoined. “You may know every Scottish ditty ever invented, but when you speak, your accent is atrocious.”

Hunter shot her an injured look and then asked quietly, “When do Sheridan’s classes begin?”

“In a week’s time,” Boswell answered, “and they run through August.”

“I’m told his style gives the great Garrick pause,” Creech chimed in, referring to David Garrick, the most famous actor-manager in all of Britain and the titan of the Theater Royal, Drury Lane, in London.

Sophie noted the stubborn expression that had invaded Hunter’s features, and she sensed it had more to do with his being a Highlander than a Scot.

“Come ye now, Hunter,” she coaxed, valiantly trying to regain her good humor by adopting the burr that made his speech unintelligible at times. “’Twould be excellent training for the stage. And you kin speak your barbaric tongue with me privately whenever you fancy,” she added, struck by the thought of how much
she
would enjoy attending such a series of lectures. To hear one of the finest actors and playwrights in the land expound on a subject that fascinated her—

She sighed. The Select Society of Edinburgh was decidedly men only.

“You’ll need
lessons
to speak
my
way, lassie,” Hunter chided her, “so I suppose ’tis sensible for this fledgling player to learn his craft so he can challenge this Sheridan, or perhaps even that fellow David Garrick for parts in London someday.”

“Then you’ll do it?” Sophie asked earnestly, coming to the abrupt decision that she’d rather have Hunter as a friend, if nothing else.

“Aye… and I’ll come after these two villains for the guinea if learning to prattle like some stiff-necked English fop doesn’t someday fill my coffers!”

“Splendid!” Boswell exclaimed.

“I say, capital, old boy!” Creech said in a fair imitation of the speech they all hoped to mimic.

“This calls for a toast. Let’s repair to the Pen and Feather, eh, lads?” Boswell proposed.

“What about—” Sophie stopped short of reminding Hunter they were about to have a reading lesson.

“I’ll be back tomorrow or the day after,” Hunter said blithely over his shoulder as the three young men headed out of the shop.

Sophie stared after them moodily. But gradually her face lit up with a private smile as a plan started to take shape. Perhaps, for
once
in her life, she could use her flat bosom to her advantage.

***

Daniel McGann nervously watched the last sheets of their paper stock disappear under the platen as Sophie gave the printing press handle a counterclockwise yank, moving the wooden form containing the metal letters to its proper position.

“And you’re positive this Sheridan will pay?” he inquired anxiously.

A second push of the handle caused the type to impress its characters on the paper. What resulted was a placard ballyhooing Thomas Sheridan’s distinguished acting career and exhorting fashionable Edinburgh to subscribe to his series of lectures, “The Elocutionary Arts.”

“Aye, Da,” Sophie assured him, breathing heavily from the exertion required to pull the heavy handlebar. “He promised to give full payment directly following his first program at the Royal Infirmary tonight.”

“Well, that’s a blessing,” Daniel sighed.

“And did you know that he’s the Sheridan married to
Frances
Sheridan?” Sophie added, brimming with enthusiasm. “The novelist who wrote
Memoirs of Miss Sydney Biddulph.”

“Yes, I
did
know that,” her father said with a trace of his former good humor. “But I didn’t realize you’d read all three volumes when I wasn’t looking,” he teased, retreating through the door to the book shop itself.

Sophie hung the last of the placards to dry on lines strung across the low-ceilinged chamber. She gathered a stack she had printed the previous day and prepared to make another foray down the High Street to add them to the scores she had already affixed to walls and doorways all over the town. Thomas Sheridan himself had appeared at the threshold of McGann’s earlier in the day to announce that his lecture series was nearly sold out. He offered bemused thanks to Sophie for her efforts, handing her a free ticket as part of the bargain they had struck when she had called at his lodgings in St. James’s Court and first proposed printing his placards.

As soon as Sheridan left, Sophie had returned to the printing room to produce the last of the advertisements slated for distribution along Princes Street. Gathering the broadsides in her arms, she paused when she heard the shop door open and the now too-familiar voice of Lord Lemore.

“I’m glad I spied you on the High Street, McGann,” Sophie heard the nobleman address her father as he followed the proprietor into the shop and shut the door. Quietly setting the placards on top of the printing press, Sophie crept closer to the door to eavesdrop. “The last time I called at this establishment to place a special order from your agent in London, I was insulted by that little saucebox daughter of yours.”

“Sophie?” Daniel replied, sounding bewildered by such a damning description of his beloved child. “Oh, I am most sorry to hear that, sir… h-how may I help you?”

“I’d like you to see about securing an illustrated copy of Curll’s
Treatise on the Use of Flogging in Venereal Affairs,”
he said blandly. “I understand the 1718 edition has been republished this year.”

“It has?” Daniel replied uneasily.

“And if that is not available, please obtain a set of engravings from Cleland’s
Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.”

“But I’m afraid, m’lord, that book was published a good t-ten years ago, and the a-authorities—” Daniel stuttered nervously.

“A friend of mine has Drybutter’s 1757 edition,” Lemore snapped, “so if you
truly
wish to be of service to me, your sources in London can undoubtedly locate the engravings, if not the book itself.”

“I shall try, m’lord… that’s all I can promise,” Sophie heard Daniel murmur.

“I suggest you try with special diligence, my man,” Lemore retorted. “Certain circles might come to learn that this establishment has, in the past, been the provider of such—ah, ribald, some might say
irreligious,
material. ’Twould be most dangerous to you personally if that intelligence should reach the ears of our saintly clerics next door… do you not agree?”

“Would it not bode ill for you also if the men of St. Giles knew of the orders you’d placed for—” Daniel began.

“I would simply call you a liar,” Lemore replied flatly.

“I shall write to my London agent,” she heard her father say dully, “and notify you of the response.”

“Very good,” Lemore said pleasantly. “I bid you good day.”

As soon as Sophie heard the door to the High Street close, she stormed into the book shop.

“I heard what Lord Lemore asked of you, Da,” she exclaimed angrily. “’Tis an outrage! ’Tis
suicidal
for the shop to be dealing in such filth with St. Giles a stone’s throw away! I
saw
those lewd engravings you sold to Lemore last spring. Those canting crows in cassocks will have us pilloried—or worse!”

Anyone judged guilty of blasphemy could be prosecuted for high treason, locked into wooden stocks, or even executed. A bookseller could be arrested for selling or possessing lewd or infamous reading matter and charged with inciting public disorder.

“I know, I know,” her father said despairingly, mortified that his own daughter was now aware of his terrible predicament. “I wouldn’t for the world have put us in such jeopardy, but I’m desperate for funds, Sophie! When Lord Lemore first came in the shop and merely desired another Hogarth, it seemed a boon, but then his requests became…” His words trailed off. He seemed hard pressed to maintain his composure in the face of such a precarious state of affairs. “After your mother died, I neglected so many things… I-I just couldn’t seem to… and the shop…”

As his words became incoherent, his shoulders began to heave. Sophie watched in horror as her father wept for his departed wife and the cruelty of a world in which an obsessed, malicious man like Lemore thought nothing of ruining a gentle, bookish soul like Daniel McGann.

“Oh, Da…” Sophie said, heartstruck at his sorrow and mourning her own loss of a calm and competent mother who had kept their family life on an even keel. She put her arms around her father’s slight shoulders. “Don’t worry yourself so,” she soothed, while inwardly groping for a solution to the treacherous problem of Lord Lemore’s demands. “We’ll sort this out,” she comforted him, having no idea how that would be accomplished.

After some minutes, her father’s shoulders stopped trembling and he wiped his eyes on his worn sleeve.

“You’re a good lass,” he smiled wanly. “So like your mum.” And then his face crumpled and he began to weep once more.

Four

Sophie swiftly donned the breeches Daniel wore during the day and poked her head through his linen shirt. She glanced over at her father’s sleeping form on the bed tucked under the eaves. Following supper, he had instantly fallen into an exhausted sleep in their shared room above the shop.

Sophie donned her father’s coat made of black velvet. It was a bit moth eaten, but serviceable. The garments hung loosely on her small frame, but they were a passable fit when she folded back the coat’s sleeves. Then she fastened her auburn hair with cord which she’d used earlier to dry placards in the print shop downstairs. Clamping Daniel’s tri-cornered hat down to her eyes, she slipped quietly downstairs, her hard-earned free ticket to Sheridan’s lecture in her pocket, and stealthily headed toward the Royal Infirmary in whose operating theater Thomas Sheridan would impart secrets of her native tongue.