Wicked Company (47 page)

“I am dreadfully ashamed of my conduct and deserve my fate as far as my forced marriage is concerned, but I cannot continue to work in this fashion… toiling on plays for which I receive neither credit as a playwright nor even a penny in my pocket!” She flushed, but soldiered on. “I don’t wish to sound boastful, sir, but I truly did compose the lion’s share of both
The
Footmen’s Conspiracy
and
The Provoked Player.”

“I must confess, I’m not much surprised to hear this sorry tale,” Garrick said, shaking his head. “I thought it strange such an undisciplined sort could have crafted such skillful work.”

“I tell you of my involvement in hopes you’ll entertain more favorably a new idea for a play I wish to write
on my own.”

“You are saying you do not wish to continue this collaboration with your new husband?”

“No, sir,” Sophie replied stiffly. “I wish to try my hand alone and thereby profit by remaining anonymous.”

“A wife’s possessions are usually managed and controlled by her mate,” Garrick said gravely.

“But that would mean Peter and I will find ourselves thrown in debtors’ prison before the year is out!” she groaned.

“Well, tell me of this new notion of yours,” Garrick replied.

As briefly as possible, Sophie outlined her idea, which concerned a miserly parson who, in spite of his sermonizing, was forever promoting luxuries for himself at the expense of his parishioners.

“You’ll have to make him a Scots Presbyterian,” Garrick warned. “’Tis the only way to get it past the Lord Chamberlain’s office. Capell, especially, might otherwise deny a license to a play that spoofs England’s religion.”

“I could
easily
make him Scottish!” Sophie responded, and Garrick reacted to her vehemence by raising one eyebrow. “But I must have your assurance, sir, that my authorship will be held strictly confidential,” she pleaded.

“Of course, my dear,” Garrick assured her. “And my response to your work will be as candid as you know it always has been, even though I had no idea you’d turned author…”

“I desire that,” Sophie answered fervently. “And will you remit all payments, if there are any, to me
personally
while telling no one? I very much need the funds to pay debts, and if Peter—I mean, if anyone should know…” she faltered.

“I understand the situation perfectly, my dear,” David Garrick assured her. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Thank you so much,” she said, preparing to depart.

“Not at all… I look forward to seeing the fruits of your efforts. Good day, my dear,” he said, smiling.

As Sophie opened the door to the passageway that led to the stairs, she heard a swish of petticoats and caught a glimpse of Mavis Piggott’s gown disappearing around the corner. Horrified, she wondered if the chit had turned the tables and had listened at the door. If so, what had she heard?

When Sophie arrived downstairs, her former rival for Hunter’s affections was standing next to a backstage wall chatting with Kitty Clive. A rehearsal was in progress on stage. Sophie nearly bit her tongue with the effort required not to demand to know if Mavis had placed her ear to the key hole of Garrick’s office and learned of Sophie’s plans to write a play on her own.

“I see you’ve returned from Smock Alley for the new season,” Sophie ventured stiffly. Mavis’s frosty stare surveyed Sophie’s figure from hair to toes.

“And I see you’ve got an Irish Toothache—as they say in Dublin,” she retorted, her eyes narrowing. “When’s the babe due?”

“In December or January,” Sophie replied, inwardly cursing the woman’s keen eye.

“Well, my congratulations,” she sneered. “Kitty, here, informs me ’tis
Lady
Lindsay-Hoyt now. Quite a rake you’ve chosen as your life’s mate. But a clever playwright, I must admit,” Mavis added grudgingly. “I’m sure your friends across the Irish Sea will be astonished to hear the remarkable news of your marriage to the admirable baronet.”

It was clear to Sophie that Mavis Piggott could hardly wait to dispatch the latest gossip to her colleagues at Smock Alley. And she knew it was only a matter of time before Hunter Robertson learned of her pregnancy and marriage—in that order.

***

“Ye’ll be wantin’ the letter that came for you today, Mr. Robertson,” the doorkeeper called out in his distinctive Irish lilt as Hunter entered the back stage area of Smock Alley Theater. “The prompters stowed it in his box. From London, by the looks of it.”

“Thanks, Reilly,” Hunter said, wondering if, at long last, Sophie had written him saying she was as ready as he was to declare a truce. The year spent in Ireland had certainly been instructive in one respect. He couldn’t get the lass out of his mind, awake or asleep, no matter how hard he had tried—and despite a parade of willing young actresses eager to assist him in this regard.

“Here ’tis, laddie,” Mr. Kelly, the prompter, said genially, handing him the missive. He watched a curious play of emotions flicker across Hunter’s features as the handsome young actor broke the wax seal and quickly scanned the letter’s contents in the dim light cast by a single candle in a wall sconce overhead.

“Well, well…” Hunter breathed. “I’m afraid I’ll be leaving midway through this season, Mr. Kelly. ’Tis fortunate I haven’t yet signed my articles…”

“But sure, the management’s wantin’ ye to stay, Mr. Robertson?” Kelly responded.

“Aye… but by December, ’tis to London I shall go!” he grinned.

Nineteen

O
CTOBER 1765

Sophie’s fingers were cramped painfully around her quill pen, and her eyes felt like the coals burning on the fireplace grate in the sitting room. A draft of frigid air seeped through the crack at the bottom of a window near her desk, causing the taper’s flame to flicker erratically. The discarded paper on the floor provided mute evidence that she had toiled far into the night.

As had been her practice for the past two months, Sophie left a few pages of
Double Devils
scattered on the desktop—a work that Peter and she were supposed to be writing together. Meanwhile, she labored on her own original comedy,
The Parsimonious Parson.
It was a deception she’d adopted in case her husband came upon her unexpectedly and wanted to know how she was employing her time. More often than not, he simply ignored her and assumed she was busy on a play that would ultimately earn them urgently needed funds.

“The additional fees from
The Provoked Player
should see us through for some time,” Sophie had protested after the second Author’s Benefit Night. “Pay some of the tradesmen with those!”

“There’s nothing left,” Peter announced flatly. “These London merchants are all brigands!”

“’Tis the debts owing your gambling cronies, isn’t it?” Sophie pulled several new IOUs from Peter’s desk drawer and shook them in front of his nose.

Her husband had merely stomped out of the sitting room, offering no defense. From the moment Roderick Darnly had revealed him to be a fraud, Peter had abandoned all pretense of functioning as her writing partner and indulged himself in whatever vice or amusement appealed to him most at that moment. It seemed to Sophie as if the charming facade he had employed so convincingly during their year-long acquaintance had simply cracked, exposing all of Peter’s character flaws and leaving nothing but rubble at her feet.

Meanwhile, she had been secretly lavishing most of her flagging energy on the new work she had proposed to Garrick in September. For several days, now, she had been struggling with the second act and had been reworking the same passage far into the wee hours of the chilly October morn.

Suddenly, she heard a commotion at the front door.

“I’m fine… jus’ fine!” she heard Peter saying, his slurred speech bearing witness to an evening imbibing wine and spirits.

He and Roderick staggered together through the sitting room door. The Earl of Llewelyn’s son had looped her husband’s arm around his neck to prevent his inebriated companion from pitching forward.

“I do believe he’s about to faint,” Roderick announced sharply, red faced from the exertion.

“Over here,” Sophie commanded, pointing at the daybed. “Let him sleep it off till morn.”

She watched with disgust as he half-dragged her husband across the carpet and lowered him on the very chaise where she and Peter had first made love. She rubbed her aching back involuntarily and glanced down at her rounded belly, which by now restricted her view of her own feet.

“There!” Roderick gasped, straightening to his full height. “My good deed for the night.”

“I thought you two were no longer on friendly terms,” she commented dryly. “Why such concern for the drunken sot?”

“I can’t let the father of your child be run over in the gutter by a hackney coach, now can I?” Roderick replied. “Would you be so kind as to offer me a port or brandy? I find nursemaid duties quite enervating.”

“Of course,” Sophie answered, painfully aware that their supply of port was exhausted. She poured what was left of the brandy into a snifter and handed it to him. As he sipped the amber liquid, his eyes drifted to her desk.

“Working, I see,” he said, an eyebrow cocked. “Your muse visits you rather late in the evening, does it not?”

“I write when ’tis quiet,” she replied with a glance in the direction of her husband, who was snoring noisily.

“And you’re making progress?”

“Not really,” Sophie replied evasively. “’Tis slow going when one’s writing partner is either absent or unconscious.”

Roderick studied her for several moments and then stepped closer, taking her hand in his.

“I do hope you haven’t forgotten my offer of help, should you find yourself in need of funds,” he said softly, raising her fingers to his lips.

She could smell by his breath that he had kept pace with Peter’s drinking. Yet tonight, as was often the case, Roderick Darnly appeared calm and controlled.

“I appreciate your concern, sir,” Sophie replied evenly, gently withdrawing her hand from his, “but with Ashby’s and my printing work, I expect I’ll manage.”

“Perhaps you shall,” he said with a glint in his eye. “But I can’t quite believe you wouldn’t enjoy being looked after.”

“Ah… but there is always a price to be paid for such benevolence, isn’t there?” she countered lightly, moving toward the desk in a show of tidying her papers.

For a moment, he merely gazed at her, as if reflecting on her words.

“Give and take, Sophie, my dear,” he said at length. “’Tis what makes the world go ’round.”

“The weak
give
and the strong
take,
” Sophie responded wearily. “That’s about the size of it, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would say only that ’tis damnably late, and I must be off,” he replied, setting down his brandy snifter. “I wish you and Peter success with your new play—and, of course, the best of luck obtaining the endorsement of the censor.”

***

For the rest of October, Sophie felt as if she were growing plumper around her waist with every manuscript page of
The Parsimonious Parson
she produced. Once or twice she feared Peter might discover she was working on something other than
Double Devils,
but in truth she had made slow progress on that play too. It was a light farce depicting the machinations of twins who confound the people to whom they owe money by posing at different times as the Good Twin or the Bad Twin, as the situation warranted.

“I told Garrick I’d have a first draft of
Devils
by mid-November!” Peter groused as he stared at the words
Act Two
which she had just penned. “You’ve never worked at such a snail’s pace before!”

“And
you’ve
never worked on
Devils
at all!” she snapped.

“Why should I?” he shrugged. “You’re clever enough with a quill for the two of us. And, besides, I expect you to earn your keep!”

Before she could stop herself, the two of them were once again bickering like fishwives.

The first week of November, Sophie arrived at Garrick’s office with dark smudges under her eyes, and feeling utterly exhausted. Still, she had been pleased to deliver a manuscript the previous day that she thought sparkled with some wit. ’Twas strange, she thought, watching Garrick retrieve the five-act farce from the top of a pile of proposed works. Writing comedy had been a welcome escape from the miserable reality of her current predicament.

“The Parsimonious Parson,”
Garrick pronounced, surveying the first page. “Even the title makes me smile…”

“I hope the rest of the work did as well,” Sophie replied, awaiting his verdict.

“’Tis an excellent job… my notes are few,” he granted.