Wicked Company (49 page)

“Will you stop it?” he shouted. “I know my name is on the placard outside, but I swear to you, Sophie, I
didn’t steal
the play—
your
play, if you like!”

“It
is
my play, you lout,” she shouted between ragged breaths, “and I would like to know exactly how it comes to have your name attached to it, if you please?”

“The manager, John Beard, bought it through an intermediary who asked, as a condition of sale, that someone
else
put their name on the piece,” Hunter exclaimed. “Since I was newly arrived, Beard dubbed me the lucky author and had the placards put up this morning. We assumed the genuine dramatist was some timid woman scribe or a member of the
ton
who desired anonymity,” he declared, describing a common practice among authors from the upper classes.

“Or a person or persons wanting to
hide
their identity as a way of committing this shameless robbery!” Sophie retorted bitterly. “Who
was
this intermediary?” she demanded,

“Beard dealt with the person, not I,” Hunter replied.

“And why should I believe you?” Sophie snapped. “Why should I not think Mavis Piggott didn’t spend a long evening in Garrick’s office copying the work and bringing it to you as soon as she heard you’d returned to London? What a lovely gift to the new assistant manager, anxious to make his mark—and she, so desirous of currying your favor once again!”

“Sophie,” Hunter said more calmly and with a look of concern for her agitated state, “my only involvement is that Beard has ordered the work turned into a comic opera and asked me to put my name to it to disguise its true authorship. That is all I can tell you.”

“That is all you are
willing
to tell me,” Sophie maintained stubbornly. “You men of the theater stick together, don’t you?” she added acidly.

“I find it surprising you have had time to take up the quill,” he said pointedly. “It seems you have been otherwise occupied while I was in Ireland.”

“And I suppose
you
played the celibate priest in Dublin all year?” she shot back.

Hunter immediately shifted his gaze and said nothing. As misery flooded her every fiber, Sophie turned away from him blindly, fleeing past a row of painted flats depicting moonlit terraces and castle keeps. The startled doorkeeper gawked as she bolted out the stage entrance. Behind her, she heard the sound of Hunter giving chase into the narrow passageway. Walking as fast as her cumbersome girth would allow, she had almost reached the end of the lane when he grabbed her by her arm and whirled her toward him. The breathless pair gazed wordlessly at each other for a long moment. A palpable tremor passed between them before Hunter leaned down, seized Sophie’s head between his large hands, and drew her roughly toward him, kissing her fiercely. Having initiated the passionate embrace, he pulled away angrily.

“I seem always to be kissing you in theater alleys,” he announced hoarsely. “You wouldn’t go to Dublin with me, yet you married that rake.
Why,
Sophie?” he asked in a strangled voice.

She sighed and smiled wanly.

“I wanted to be a writer of plays,” she explained softly. “I wanted to say… so many things with my pen. You didn’t seem to think that was important… it appeared that what was important to me meant little to you… only that you wanted me wherever
your
ambitions took you.”

Hunter looked down at her and shook his head sorrowfully.

“I see that… may have been the way of it—then,” he acknowledged quietly. “I understand how my actions must have seemed to you.” He forced her to meet his gaze. “And is Sir Peter Lindsay-Hoyt such a paragon of masculine understanding?” he asked more sharply.

Sophie laughed bitterly.

“Peter… ah… Peter. The gentleman
seemed
to understand that I wanted so much to learn the playwright’s craft—and said he did as well.”

“And did he?” Hunter asked.

“No,” Sophie whispered, near tears. “I allowed him to use me… use whatever talent I possessed to help pay his monstrous debts. Peter gave little thought to my dreams or welfare,” she finished. “I have totally played the fool.”

“I’m sorry for that,” Hunter said. “You deserved better.” Then he smiled grimly. “Well, at least you’ve got a title out of all this—
Lady
Lindsay-Hoyt, isn’t it?”

The memory of Mavis Piggott taunting her with precisely the same words not an hour before at the Half Moon Tavern made Sophie’s blood boil.

“That’s odd,” she said caustically, her temper rising once again. “’Tis
exactly
the way Mavis Piggott described my marriage. Yes… I am now the
Lady
Lindsay-Hoyt,” she declared, referring to her bogus title with as much bravado as her shattered nerves could muster. “And, if you do not reveal who brought you my play—and I am certain you do, indeed, know the identity at least of the intermediary—I shall use the influence at my disposal to initiate legal action!”

“I’m sorry, Sophie, truly I am, for everything that has happened to you in my absence,” he said gravely, “but I do not know who appropriated your play and I cannot tell you the name of the intermediary. On that, I gave my new employer my word of honor.”

“Honor!”
Sophie exploded furiously. “Here’s
this
for your supposed honor, you thieving blackguard!” She slapped him a stinging blow across his chiseled features, a blow that carried with it all the anguish and despair she had endured since they had parted in Bath.

***

David Garrick was more disturbed than shocked to hear the latest developments at Covent Garden.

“I am
certain
Mavis Piggott has done this,” Sophie complained. “Why cannot we simply confront her with the facts of this affair?”

“You have no proof, no witnesses, and to pronounce such accusations publicly—that would be slander.”

Sophie averted her face from the manager to hide her angry tears. Garrick leaned across his desk and patted her hand.

“As one who has lost sleep toiling over a piece, I know too well what you are feeling,” he soothed. “I once wrote a Christmas pantomime that had an unauthorized debut at another theater. My only copy had been pinched right from under my nose, and there was absolutely nothing to be done about it.” He smiled sympathetically. “I know ’tis difficult, but I think it best if you simply put this unpleasantness behind you and start work on something new. Have you any other comic notions in that fertile mind of yours?” he gently teased.

Sophie sighed, and then brightened.

“Peter said he’d discussed an idea about twins with you… two rakes whose actions confound visitors at a stylish country estate. That was my idea.”

“I
do
remember that one!” he said approvingly, “but the young rogue never came forth with it. Can you work on it?”

“Aye, but I don’t know what to do about an author’s credit…”

“We shall wrestle with that issue when there’s a play to argue over,” he said. “If your husband joins you in this effort—so be it. If ’tis
you
who does the work… then credit shall be as you wish and we shall find a new title. And I promise you,” Garrick added soberly, “I shall purchase a strongbox to preserve new compositions as they are submitted, to which only I have the key!” Sophie could barely summon a weary smile of thanks for his support. “Now, I want you to get busy, my dear,” he urged her. “How are you for funds? Will you have enough to cope with the expenses of your new… arrival?”

The actor who could subdue an unruly audience of fifteen hundred souls appeared flustered at the mention of the impending birth of Sophie’s child.

“We’re as short as ever,” Sophie admitted glumly, “but with Lorna keeping Ashby’s going, and with the orders I get from you for printing the playbills, I hope to get by.”

Nodding, Garrick reached behind his desk and selected a tattered manuscript.

“I plan a Christmas pantomime based on
The Milk Maids,”
he said. “It has a part for an extraordinarily short, very rotund old man who does not say a single line the entire performance. Would you consent to play the role
incognito
for the salary of a pound a week?”

Sophie knew his gesture was one of pure charity, but she accepted it with gratitude.

“Now off with you,” Garrick said cheerfully. “And I’d like a draft of
Double Devils
as soon as you can manage it.”

***

Harriet Ashby sat on the dirty straw, propped up in the corner of her cell, looking like nothing so much as a living skeleton. Her sunken eyes and prominent cheekbones spoke eloquently of the near starvation she had suffered during the three years she had resided in Bedlam. The sight of her swollen joints and emaciated form made Sophie feel helpless with rage.

“’Tis nasty in here, sir,” the turnkey warned Sophie. On this visit to the hospital she was disguised as the fat old man she would soon be playing in Drury Lane’s Christmas pantomime. The guard unlocked the door, shepherded his visitor into the cell, and returned to his post.

The stench was overwhelming, and for the first time since the early months of her pregnancy, Sophie was assaulted by a wave of nausea. In her borrowed knee breeches and man’s bagwig, she knelt beside her aunt.

“Harriet… Aunt Harriet!’’ she whispered urgently. “’Tis me… Sophie… dressed as an old man.” Her aunt glanced at her with darting, frightened eyes. “’Tis all right, Aunt… I’m here,” she said soothingly, brushing strands of gray hair off the old woman’s haggard face. “I’ve brought you some food… would you like a pastie? ’Tis full of lovely beef bits… let me feed you some.”

As Sophie dug into her knapsack, her aunt’s eyes seemed suddenly to glow with recognition. Without warning, tears began running silently down her cheeks.

“No… no…” the woman croaked, “’tis no use…” Sophie stared, stunned at the spark of sanity that burned in her aunt’s gaze. “I wish only to die… only to die,” Aunt Harriet whispered. “Give me something… anything, to make me die…”

“Oh, Aunt…” Sophie said helplessly.

“Die… die…
please
let me die…” she moaned.

Her aunt continued to sob the phrase in a horrifying litany until Sophie could stand it no longer and fled the cell the instant the turnkey could be hailed to set her free.

***

Within a week of Sophie’s back stage confrontation with Hunter,
The Parsimonious Parson
opened at Covent Garden after a minimum of rehearsal as a companion piece to
The Summer’s Tale.

“Have you seen
The Public Advertiser
today?” Lorna asked tentatively when Sophie arrived at Ashby’s Books to set type for a series of Drury Lane playbills.

“Yes… yes, I have,” Sophie replied tersely as she placed a packet containing two acts of
Double Devils
on the desk where she hoped to work later that afternoon. “As I recall, it said something about the ‘clever characterization of the pinch-penny parson’ and that ‘the lively music and dancing created by author Hunter Robertson gives audiences and critics alike much to praise,’” she added sarcastically, reciting from memory.

“Does Sir Peter know about this theft?” Lorna asked apprehensively.

“No, and since he doesn’t know I
wrote
the piece, I don’t intend to tell him,” Sophie replied firmly, recalling her husband’s panicked demands that she spend less time at her book shop and more hours with her quill. Even Roderick Darnly’s solicitor had sent word that the due bill from a certain wager must be met by the first of February in the new year.

Perched on a stool in the printing chamber, Sophie slid pieces of metal type into the wooden form. When she pulled the lever on the hand press, the baby inside her delivered a swift kick. She wouldn’t be able to function as a printer much longer, she reflected glumly, as she pondered her bloated form. And since her confinement was due in about a month, she wondered anxiously whether Lorna would be willing once again to add the duties of printer to the many others she had already assumed.

By three o’clock, Sophie realized she was far too exhausted to work on her comedy. Gathering the freshly printed placards under her arm, she bid Lorna farewell and trudged through the chill December air to deliver her goods to Garrick’s office, thanking the fates that her services were not required in
The Milk Maids
this night.

“Have you seen this
Parson
play of yours?” Garrick asked her casually.

“No…”