Wicked Company (83 page)

“A satire of the macaronis?”

“I think you’ve found a title for your new comedy,” Mrs. Garrick smiled encouragingly.

“Should I write it as Sydney Ganwick?” Sophie asked doubtfully. “Lorna told me recently that someone is spreading rumors that the name disguises a female pen.”

“We shall decide that question in autumn,” Garrick shrugged. “It will help if
The Macaronis’
theme conveys the notion that staid English ways are best,” he suggested. “And come September, I shall ensure that certain anonymous articles find their way into the gossip journals speculating just who—of several worthy gentlemen named—this Ganwick could be. I think ’twill hide your identity well enough.”

“And this remains our secret?” Sophie asked earnestly. “You’ll not tell Peter or Roderick Darnly or even Mr. Lacy that I am writing again?”

“All shall be as before,” he reassured her.

Sophie smiled at the couple who had been so kind to her, despite the chaotic state of her personal life. “Have a good respite at Hampton House,” she urged. “I worry that this year’s wrangling among your players has exhausted you both.”

“You mean Mrs. Abington, and the Barrys, and that viper Mavis Piggott?” Mrs. Garrick exclaimed. “They dare to refuse the parts Davy assigns them! ’Tis disgraceful!” Eva-Maria added indignantly, nodding at her husband. “They drive my poor Davy to distraction! His foot swells and his belly aches!”

“Now, now, dearest,” Garrick soothed his wife. “For a few glorious weeks we shall forget our woes and eat strawberries and punt along the river. Replenish the well, we shall, so we can return to London, refreshed and ready to see what we can do with
The Macaronis!
The more I hear the title, the better I like it.”

Sophie noted the drawn, exhausted look pinching Garrick’s celebrated features and realized that despite his cordiality, he was in considerable pain. She quickly thanked her hosts and made a hasty departure. As she strode through the Great Piazza past St. Paul’s, she turned over in her mind the notion of adding a colonial dandy or two to her cast of characters. Hunter’s letter had described well-dressed travelers returning to America who, he said, prided themselves on their sartorial splendor.

A familiar feeling of longing swept over her. If only Hunter could magically be waiting for her at the top of the stairs above the Green Canister. If only—

Sophie pulled up short in front of the staymaker’s shop. Directly in her path stood Mavis Piggott. The actress had apparently been shopping for undergarments at the former site of Ashby’s Books, for she was carrying neatly wrapped purchases under her arm. The lusty wail of a hungry, indignant infant wafted down the stairwell adjacent to the shop. As one, the two women stared up at a window that was slightly ajar.

“I wondered if you still made your abode here,” Mavis said with a self-satisfied air. “We’ve seen little of you at Drury Lane this spring. Is it true you’ve produced another brat? Was it by your dear, departed Hunter Robertson? Or perhaps Old Drury’s patron,’’ she said nastily, “our new Earl of Llewelyn?” She paused for dramatic effect. “Surely you can’t have reconciled with that addle-pated
husband
of yours?”

Ignoring her unsubtle jibes, Sophie parried the actress’s rude questions as best she could.

“Is it true what Lorna Blount tells
me,”
Sophie retorted, “that you’ve not signed articles for Drury Lane next season? Pray, what playhouse in the kingdom will be graced with your presence?”

“I sail on tomorrow’s tide for Maryland, to join the American Company in Annapolis,” Mavis answered with a malicious gleam in her eye. “’Tis a delightful establishment that engages only the finest actors Britain has to offer—as
you
must surely know.” The tall, imposing woman nodded curtly. “So, I fear I must bid you and your new babe farewell. And you can be sure I’ll convey the latest tidings to all who know you across the sea. Adieu!”

Thirty-Two

O
CTOBER 1771

A chattering group of Covent Garden and Drury Lane veterans sought the cooler chambers of Reynolds Tavern on West Street across from Annapolis’s new theater. Their morning rehearsal had been conducted on a typically muggy Indian summer day and what they desired was a bit of refreshment and a breath of the breeze off the bay. The resident acting company was still basking in the success of its gala opening nearly a month earlier, on September 9.

“Gadzooks!” Mavis exclaimed, mopping her damp brow with the lace attached to her sleeve. “Is it always so hot in October?”

“Aye,” replied Hunter, studying the fine lines that now creased the corners of Mavis’s almond-shaped eyes. “But by December, the weather will be bracing, I’m told.”

To Hunter, Mavis Piggott was still a handsome woman, but there was something disturbingly feline about the secretive smile and faraway looks she had been casting at him all morning. Ever since her unexpected arrival in Maryland the previous week, he had kept his manner friendly, but he had deliberately steered clear of any personal exchanges. However, now that they had both been cast in
Cymbeline,
he had the uncomfortable sensation that she was extremely eager to speak with him alone. She had been assigned the role of queen, and he, Lord Cloten, her loutish son, so they had several scenes together.

“Hunter,” she said, lowering her eyes to her tankard of ale, “I feel so in arrears in the mastery of my part… would you do me the kindness of working on my speeches with me this afternoon? Perhaps we could find a quiet spot down near the river under a tree where ’tis a bit cooler…”

Why not? he thought to himself. Perhaps she would have some current intelligence about Roderick Darnly’s state of mind. Hunter didn’t put much stock in whatever she might have to say of Sophie, but ’twould be good to hear news of London.

“If you wish,’’ he nodded. “We’re not due at the theater until four o’clock or so. Shall we?”

They walked slowly down Franklin Street where the poplar trees offered some shade from the oppressive heat. Mavis had taken a fan from her reticule and was trying to cool the damp hair clinging to her forehead. They found a shady space near the flowing river and began to recite their lines.

After a half hour or so, Mavis suddenly glanced over at Hunter from beneath her eyelashes and announced, “This queen certainly hatches plots for the benefit of her son, does she not?”

“Aye, she wants
him
to steal the throne from her own husband—the devious wench!” He laughed.

“And have I not plotted, in the past, for
your
advancement?” she asked with an innocent air.

“And for your own as well, I’ll wager,” he replied warily, startled by her abrupt forwardness.

“It seems you’re succeeding in this land of transplanted Englishmen,” she said pleasantly. “You’ve been given excellent roles and a hand in managing, I see.”

“I’ve done well enough—for a Scot,” he reminded her.

“And do you plan to return to Covent Garden next year?”

“I hope to…”

“And do you not worry that Lord Darnly—now that he is Earl of Llewelyn—can do you harm?”

Hunter gazed at her steadily.

“So… he has advanced a rung in power and importance.”

“Yes… and, no doubt, will try to wrest more mortgaged shares from Lacy, if he can. This cannot be good for
your
advancement at either theater…”

“Ah, you heard about our little
contretemps?”

“Who has
not?”
she laughed. “And who hasn’t heard of your rekindled passion for Sophie McGann, thanks to the Shakespeare Jubilee?” she added, that mysterious smile once again playing at her lips. “I thought it odd, at first, that you spirited yourself across the sea following your row with Darnly. Dublin’s Smock Alley would have been distance enough, it seemed to me. But now that I am acquainted with the… ah…
situation
facing you at Half Moon Passage, I quite understand.”

Hunter’s eyes narrowed, but he continued to stare at her coolly.

“What
situation
do you understand, Mavis?” he asked quietly.

“About the babe,” she shrugged. She smiled at him in a show of sympathy. “’Twas born in the middle of May, I’m told. I suppose a brat on your hands was the last thing you desired, with her being married to that shiftless sot, Lindsay-Hoyt. He’s just the type to threaten a suit for adultery as a way of extorting your blunt. It must have been a shock to learn she was
enceinte
just when
you
were wrestling with such troubles of your own with London’s newly minted earl. But then, I thought, no, perhaps her patron, Lord Darnly was the father… or she’d reconciled with her husband and you—”

Hunter grabbed the fan out of Mavis’s hands and was tempted to slap her across the cheek with it.

“I didn’t know about any bairn before I left,” he said in a low, menacing voice. “Was she well when you last saw her? Is the babe lusty? Don’t play parts with
me,
Mavis!” he said snarling. “I know your tricks too damnably well!”

Mavis glanced at his angry features and then looked away, her eyes full of uncertainty. She wondered now if she had interpreted events correctly. The baby could be his… or could be anybody’s, she supposed. Word of Hunter’s precipitous flight to the New World had left her assuming he had been only too pleased to escape everything: Darnly’s wrath, Peter Lindsay-Hoyt’s demands for money, and Sophie’s entreaties that the baby was his, despite her valid marriage to that counterfeit baronet. There had even been rumors that Sophie’s play
The Bogus Baronet
was based on the vagaries of her own life.

Mavis felt the heat of Hunter’s glare. Perhaps she had miscalculated his true feelings for the chit. Ah… no matter. If the truth be told, she and Hunter never had got on very well. Should she desire someone to warm her bed in the New World, there was always that attractive young man playing Belarius in
Cymbeline
who had been throwing her bold looks during rehearsals.

“See here, Hunter,” she said, pulling herself to a standing position and meticulously brushing the blades of grass from her skirts. “All I know is I saw Sophie briefly on the street the day before I sailed last July. She looked well enough, as it was six weeks or so after she’d risen from childbed. I heard a lusty baby’s cry coming from her lodgings. That is all I know. I thank you for your help with my speeches, and I bid you adieu.”

Hunter watched her stride up the slope and head back toward town along Franklin Street.

Sophie has had a child! Is it a lad or lass?

His head was swimming with the import of Mavis’s news. Thank God Sophie had survived childbirth and was apparently well. Then the notion of fatherhood began to penetrate his consciousness. The poor lass had faced her ordeal alone, just as she had the birth of her daughter. Mid-May the bairn was born, Mavis had said. He mentally subtracted the months. They’d been together in their garret at Sadler’s Wells in September. Those two days had been the only time they’d been lovers in over a year.

October, November, December… He counted on his fingers. The middle of May added up to just over eight months. He swallowed hard. Bachelor though he might be, even
he
knew bairns were born nine months after…

Slowly, Hunter rose to his feet and stared vacantly across the river, leaning against a huge poplar that shaded its bank. Mid-May… the arithmetic ate at him like a canker. The autumn storm that native Marylanders predicted would bring cooler temperatures blew against Hunter’s window in the low-ceilinged chambers he had leased on Bloomsbury Square. He stared into the burning embers on the hearth, unable to fight his old devils of doubt and distrust.

If not he…
who could be the father?

Surely not Peter Lindsay. No, the man was too pathetic. Hunter rejected the notion as soon as it entered his head. But what if—

Darnly! Lord Darnly
—
now, the Earl of Llewelyn!

Several times, Hunter had accused Sophie of having a liaison with him, and it had driven him mad to discover she had spent four months as a guest on Darnly’s estate in Wales. Sophie had indignantly denied his charge, revealing, in fact, the earl’s all-night rendezvous with his factor and housemaid in the hay byre at Evansmor.

Did she play the wanton with you, Robertson, to find a father for the babe she might have already known she was carrying?

A black fog of melancholy invaded Hunter’s soul. Lord Darnly! The man whose wrath and power had driven him across an ocean. The man he had punched in the face for the way he had treated the woman he adored…

Sophie, Darnly’
s
sometime mistress?

Then he chastised himself. He was jumping to conclusions again. And each time he had, he had brought them both pain. But then, why had she not
written
him of the babe? He thought of the sly look on Mavis’s face when she had so cheerfully dispensed her news. Mavis Piggott had always caused him nothing but trouble, yet…