Wicked Company (69 page)

“You
both
were children… and what child can dictate to the fates?” Sophie asked gently, ignoring his accusing tone. She recalled Danielle writhing from a fever contracted from her father. “’Twas not my fault my daughter caught the ague from her thoughtless, reckless da… and ’twas not you who are to blame for the decision made by Jean Robertson.”

“But that’s the
coil!”
Hunter said, his eyes filled with remorse. “I blamed my mother for what she could not help… for what none of us could help. All these years I’ve
hated
her, just as I hated you… for a time.”

Hunter’s look of abject suffering mollified the shock Sophie felt at realizing that this man, who was so dear to her, could have heartily despised her.

“Well,” she said quietly. “You’ve asked my forgiveness, and I’ve granted it. Perhaps one day you’ll ask hers.”

“Perhaps…” he repeated faintly, pulling Sophie hard against his chest. “One day… perhaps… but tonight…”

Sophie shivered, excited by his touch as he pulled her down to lie beside him. She rested in his arms, allowing his hands to skim over the surface of her naked body, his lips exploring her collarbone and the valley between her breasts. She reached up, luxuriating in the sensation of her fingers sinking into his thick blond hair as the length of her body absorbed his weight.

“You shall have me for breakfast,” he announced softly. “Does that please you, my Ariel?”

“‘All hail, great master, grave sir, hail, I come…’” she whispered, quoting her character’s first lines in
The Tempest,
“‘…to answer thy best pleasure, be it to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire—’” She smoothed her hands along the contours of his muscular back, welcoming him like some wanton, suddenly possessed by an insatiable desire to have him within her.

“‘—to ride on curled clouds, to thy strong bidding task…’” Hunter murmured against her ear. He slipped his palms around her waist, pulling her closer toward the obvious evidence of his desire. “You shall answer my best pleasure… and yours as well.”

As he entered her swiftly, she cried out, calling his name. Strange, ethereal spirits seemed to fill the room, sighing like the wind that was beating against their window. Hunter moved gently at first, as if pushing her playfully on a garden swing. Higher and higher she sailed among gentle breezes, the soft air fragrant with columbine and dwarf carnation, higher and higher until she thought the swing would tear from its moorings, flinging her among the curled clouds where Ariel played havoc with the wind, summoning the tempest at Prospero’s bidding. Hunter might still blame her for Danielle’s death, she thought with what small coherence was left her, but his body’s thirst for hers had not been slaked by the turbulent passions they had shared when they’d sought refuge from last night’s gale. And for her, ’twas the same. She wanted him to seep into her pores like the rain, fuse himself to her forever.

Somehow in the vortex swirling around her, Sophie wrestled with the conscious thought she could conceive… she
would
conceive a child from such an impassioned coupling… if not today, then someday, because she could not find the will to fling herself—now or ever—out of the whirlwind that had taken possession of her.

“’Tis like the storm,” she cried, seizing his face between her hands and whispering fiercely. “I must dash myself upon the cliffs, or die…”

“Aye,” he said harshly, pressing her more deeply into the feather mattress that supported them, “’tis the same for me…”

And the tempest caught them up once again and they drowned in their love of it and their fear of it and it finally played itself out—as they regretfully knew it would.

They lay quietly in bed for some minutes, listening to the rain’s ceaseless rhythm on their roof.

***

Sophie awoke to the rolling sound of thunder and sleepily attempted to determine whether the noise was from the natural world or the cannons blasting their assigned wake-up call to Stratford’s populace. Soon, the town’s church bells added to the cacophony, prompting Sophie to burrow more deeply beneath the bed linen.

“Oh, no… it can’t be time for another of those infernal breakfasts at Town Hall,” she groaned.

She felt Hunter shift his weight, pulling her against him.

“Not even ducks would venture out in this weather, Sophie love…” he murmured against her ear, insinuating his tongue languidly as he spoke. “Not even the Great God Garrick, himself. Stay here with me, my love, and we’ll feast aplenty in our cozy bed.”

And as Hunter predicted, the Parade of Shakespeare’s Characters was canceled for the second time. But the Shottery Horse Race—held a mile or so
outside Stratford—finally got under way at around noon when the weather began to clear.

By evening, they returned to Sophie’s room, donned warm, dry clothes, and arrived at the Rotunda for the last communal dinner, only to learn that several inches of water had inundated the entire pavilion and ticket holders were left to seek out what victuals they could at the various inns. Sophie used her influence and secured them a corner in the coffee room at the White Lion where the owner handed out several dishes salvaged from the makeshift kitchens next to the waterlogged amphitheater.

“I shall be off on the morrow,” James Boswell remarked as he took a seat at their small table, joining them for a brandy. “Pity, though, it cannot be sooner, for I weary of this soggy burgh.” A printer named Richardson had offered to share a chaise with him to London. “I had to borrow five guineas from Garrick for the fare. I’d spent my money having my verses struck.”

“God’s wounds, Bozzy, you do have cheek,” groaned Sophie. “Did you ever give them out?”

“I passed out copies at the ball in the wee hours and after the horse race,” Boswell said complacently. “When do you two leave this veil of mud?”

“I must stay a while to help put things to rights here in Stratford,” Sophie said.

Hunter glanced at her sharply.

“Must you?”

“Why, yes,” she replied, eyeing him curiously. “’Tis what I promised Garrick when I was engaged to work on the Jubilee. What’s left of the costumes and props must be packed into their boxes, put on wagons, and returned to Drury Lane for the opening of the new season on the eighteenth,” she explained. “’Tis only ten days’ hence. And you?” she asked, suddenly wary of Hunter’s answer.

“George Colman’s taken me on at Covent Garden,” Hunter replied slowly. “I must return to London immediately. Have you room for another passenger in that chaise of yours, Boswell?” he asked.

“You’ll not work for Garrick this year?” she asked, distressed.

She had been so certain, when she’d had time to think of it during their busy day, that Hunter would have been offered full employment by her mentor.

“He tendered me a place before I came to Stratford,” Hunter acknowledged, shifting his gaze back to Boswell, “but at Covent Garden I shall drill the chorus and create musical interludes, as well as perform. It appeared the better choice for me.”

“You’ll be a
London
manager soon, laddie!” Boswell enthused.

“Not with the state of my purse,” Hunter replied ruefully, “but perhaps one day I shall purchase some shares. ’Tis a start.”

Sophie was forced to admit that there was considerable truth to Hunter’s assessment of his fortunes in London. It appeared that Garrick and Lacy had lengthy, successful careers ahead of them, but the situation was far more fluid at Covent Garden. With a bit of good luck, he might one day join Colman as one of the managers. But how, she wondered, would she and Hunter avoid the rivalry and competition that inevitably arose between the two royal theaters?

“I’m pleased for you,” she said sighing, “though I wish you were to be at Old Drury… I fear we shall be beset with the nasty rivalries that afflict these two fine playhouses and…”

Her sentence trailed off, for there was really no answer to the quandary she divined would plague them in the future.

“Mayhap you’ll write plays for Colman one of these days,” Hunter ventured with a crooked smile. “Surely ’twould make things simpler for us, don’t you think?”

Simpler for you!
she replied silently, and then instantly chastised herself. ’Twas the same dilemma they had faced in Bath, and they couldn’t ride that way again. Hunter was only stating a rudimentary truth, not asking her to be disloyal to David Garrick.

“I’ve written very little these last years…” She shrugged, forcing a smile. “I’m not sure I know how to wield a pen anymore.”

But already she’d been mulling over plot twists for
The Bogus Baronet,
the comedy that lay abandoned for three years in her desk at Half Moon Passage. Garrick had liked the notion for the play when she had first proposed it to him in 1766, and she was certain he would be pleased with some new ideas she had thought of. She summoned a laugh and raised her glass.

“We’ll all be back in London’s hurly-burly soon enough,” she said, realizing with a start that legally, she was still a married woman. London, to her, meant Peter Lindsay and Mavis Piggott, and the two of them meant trouble. She tried to rid herself of such gloomy thoughts. “Let us enjoy this last evening together,” she added, reaching across to caress Hunter’s hand resting on the table. “The stars are out tonight.… I believe ’twill be fair tomorrow. Let us drink to having
survived
the Shakespeare Jubilee!”

“To Shakespeare and survival!” the men chorused and the trio clinked glasses in a jaunty toast.

Book 6

1769-1770

When women write, the Criticks, now-a-days

Are ready, e’er they see, to damn their Plays;

Wit, as the Men’s Prerogative, they claim

And with one Voice, the bold Invader blame.

—Mary Davys, “Prologue,”
The Self Rival

Twenty-Seven

S
EPTEMBER 1769

St. Paul’s church bells tolled as Sophie approached the stage entrance to Covent Garden. She found herself taking deep breaths to calm her nervous anticipation. She was certain she would find Hunter either just finishing an afternoon rehearsal for the season’s opening of
Love in a Village,
or down the road at the Nag’s Head, having his early evening meal.

“Why, Lady Lindsay-Hoyt,” exclaimed Besford, the doorkeeper. “So good to see you. Mr. Colman told me you had quite a time of it among those rustics in Stratford. Have you dried out?” he joked.

She was startled to hear herself addressed as “Lady,” but, of course, only a few people—Hunter, Garrick, Darnly, Mary Ann Skene, and her friend Lorna—knew that Peter’s ascension to the peerage was fraudulent.

“I have indeed, Mr. Besford. May I inquire if Hunter Robertson is here?” she asked.

She smiled graciously at the doorkeeper, surprised that the gossip-loving Mary Ann had kept the secret this long. Sophie didn’t much care one way or the other, since she had been employing her maiden name for three years now. However, she was glad Mary Ann had been discreet, as there was always the danger that Peter’s creditors would pursue her for redress—especially when they realized there would be no fortune coming to the supposed heir to the sizable Hoyt estates in Yorkshire. “I’m terribly sorry, m’lady,” Besford said with a nervous smile, “I’ve just been informed that Mr. Robertson will be in rehearsal for several hours into the evening.”

“But ’tis quite late, isn’t it?” she asked, “…nearly time to sup, I should think.”

“I do regret the situation, m’lady,” Besford apologized again, “but I have my instructions from Mr. Colman. No one but staff is permitted backstage. Strict orders.”

Sophie could hear faint strains of music that sounded vaguely familiar wafting from the front of the house. Suddenly, she recognized the tune: Dibdin’s “Dawn Serenade.”

“I wouldn’t dream of barging in,” Sophie replied, weighing the significance of the Covent Garden orchestra playing a piece of music commissioned by the manager of Drury Lane for his Stratford Jubilee—and now, this order to bar outsiders from attending rehearsals for a coming attraction at Drury Lane’s rival theater. ’Twas all very curious.

“Would you kindly inform Mr. Robertson that I have returned to London and will see him anon?”

“I’m certain he’d want to know of it right away,” Mr. Besford replied with a knowing smile. Apparently speculation about Sophie’s reuniting with Hunter at the Jubilee must have been the subject of tittletattle among the theaterfolk. “I’ll see he gets your ladyship’s message directly.”

Sophie strolled the quarter mile down Bow Street to Brydges Street where she exchanged similar pleasantries with Mr. Collins, the stage doorkeeper at Drury Lane.

“Wonderful to have you back,” Collins said warmly. “’Tis especially good to see you in such fine fettle, if I may say so, Sophie.”

“Thank you,” she said, smiling. “Is Mr. Garrick about?”