Winsor, Kathleen (39 page)

At
last she turned to face him and found his eyes on her, intense and serious,
glowing with desire. One arm reached out and went around her waist, drawing her
slowly toward him, and she slid over onto his lap. For a moment she hesitated,
and then her face bent to his and she felt the pressure of his mouth, moist
and warm and
eager; his hand moved over her breasts, and she could feel the heavy beating of
his heart against her own. Her blood began to rush, filling her with warmth and
quick passion—she felt herself sliding to surrender and had no inclination to
stop.

But
as he would have knelt before her she jumped up suddenly and left him, crossing
the room to stand before the black windows, her head buried in her hands.
Instantly he was behind her, his fingers taking hold of her shoulders, pressing
her back against him. His voice whispered to her, pleading, and as his lips
touched the back of her neck a thrill ran along her spine.

"Please,
darling—don't be angry. I'm in love with you, I swear I am. I want you, I've
got
to have you!" His fingers cut
into her shoulders and his voice in her
ear was hoarse with intensity. "Please—Amber, please! I won't hurt you—I
won't let anything happen—Come here." He swung her around to face him.

Amber
wrenched herself free; her own eyes were a little wild and her face was
flushed. "You've got the wrong opinion of me, Captain Morgan! I may be on
the stage, but I'm no whore! My poor father would die of shame if his daughter
gave herself up to a sinful life! Now let me go—" She brushed past him,
starting to get her cloak, and when he turned swiftly, catching her arm, his
jaw set and hard, she cried warningly, "Have a care, sir! I'm not one of
your willing rapes, either."

She
jerked away and getting her cloak, flung it on, took up her muff and went to
the door. "Good-night, Captain Morgan! If you'd told me why you brought me
here I could've saved you the cost of a supper!" She looked at him
haughtily, but the cold angry expression on his face alarmed her.

Now!
she
thought. If he doesn't really like me I've spoiled everything.

One
eyebrow went up as he stared at her and his mouth
twisted slightly, but as she
took hold of the knob he crossed over and stopped her. "Don't go away like
this, Mrs. Clare. I'm sorry if I've offended you. I'd heard— Well, never mind.
But you're a damned desirable woman. A man must be gelt if he wouldn't want
you—and to tell the truth, I'm not." He grinned down at her. "Let me
see you home."

After
that she saw him often, but not at the theatre, for she was not sure of him yet
and did not care to give Beck the opportunity of jeering at her. Beck,
meanwhile, continued to boast and brag of his attentions to her, showed Amber
his gifts, and gave her the intimate details of his visits. Amber was receiving
some gifts, too: A pair of exquisite black-lace stockings from France, garters
with little diamond buckles, a muff made of wide bands of gold brocade hooped
at either end with black fox—but she was very mysterious about the giver.

She
used every trick she knew—and by now they were several—to heighten his desire
for her. But each time he imagined himself about to succeed she pushed him off
and insisted again that she was a woman of virtue. Fortunately for her, he did
not suggest that such behaviour seemed quite the opposite of virtuous.
Sometimes he bellowed that she was a jilting baggage and stormed off swearing
that he would never see her again. Other times he stayed and pleaded, doggedly,
with real desperation, and then finally went away defeated. But each time he
came back.

And
then one evening, his face haggard and his cravat askew, he slumped down into a
chair, demanding, "What the devil
do
you want, then? I can't go on
like this. I'm fretting my bowels to fiddle-strings over you!"

She
had a sense of quick poignant relief. At last! And though a moment before she
had been feeling tired and discouraged
and all too inclined to be virtuous no
longer, now she laughed, got up, and went to the mirror to smooth her hair.

"That
isn't what Beck says. She was telling me today how last night you came to see
her, so hot you wouldn't be put off for an instant."

He
scowled, like an embarrassed boy. "Beck prattles too much. Answer me! What
are you holding me off for? What do you want? Marriage?" She knew that he
had been dreading to ask that, that he was no more eager to get married than
were any of the other young men, and that even though he believed or pretended
to believe her story about her aristocratic family, he would not marry an
actress.

"Marriage!"
she repeated in mock astonishment, staring at him in the mirror. "That's
enough to give one the vapours! What woman in her right senses wants to get
married?"

"Any
woman, it seems."

"Well,
they wouldn't if they'd ever
been
married!" She turned around and
stood looking at him, her hands easily on her hips.

"Ye
gods! Are you married?"

"No,
of course not! But I'm not blind. I've seen a thing or two. What's a wife,
pray? The men use 'em worse than a dog nowadays. They think they're good for
nothing but to breed up their brats—and serve as a foil to a mistress. A wife
gets a full belly every year, but a mistress gets all the money and attention.
Be a wife? Pooh! Not me! Not for a thousand pound!"

"Well!"
he said, obviously much relieved. "You talk like a woman of rare good
sense. But you don't seem very anxious to be a mistress, either. Surely you
don't expect to be that worthless object, a virgin, all your life? Not a woman
like you."

"Have
I said I did? If a man I liked made me a fair offer, I assure you I'd do him
the kindness to think it over."

He
smiled. "Well, now—we're getting somewhere at last And what's your notion
of a fair offer, pray?"

She
leaned her elbow back on the mantelpiece and stood with her weight on one foot,
the other bare knee sliding out of her satin dressing-gown; she began to count
on her fingers. "I'd want a settlement of two hundred pounds a year. I'd
want lodgings of my own choosing, and a maid, and a neat little
couch-and-four—and of course a coachman and footman—and leave to keep on
acting." She had no intention of quitting the stage, for she had met him
there and hoped someday to meet another and more important man. As she saw what
was possible for a young and beautiful and obliging woman, her ambitions
soared.

"You
set a damned high price on yourself."

"Do
I?" She smiled a little and gave a faint shrug. "Well— a high price,
you know, serves to keep off ill company."

"If
I take you at that figure I'll expect it to keep off
all
company, but
mine."

It
took Amber several days to find the lodgings that suited
her and she
rattled all over town in a hackney, searching, whenever she could be free from
the theatre. But at last she found a three-room suite on the third floor of the
Blue Balcony, down at the fashionable Strand end of Drury Lane. The rent was
high, forty pounds a year, but Captain Morgan paid it in advance.

Everything
here was in the latest fashion, reflecting the light gay colourful taste of the
new age. The parlour was hung in emerald-green damask. There were French tables
and chairs of walnut, some of them gilt, and all very different from the heavy
old oaken pieces she was accustomed to seeing in inns. A long walnut couch had
thick green cushions, fringed with gold, and there were several green-and-gold
lacquered mirrors. She decided immediately that she would have her portrait
painted and sink it flush with the wall above the fireplace, like one she had
seen in the apartments of another actress, who was in the keeping of a lord.

The
walls of the dining-room were covered with hand-painted Chinese paper,
flaunting peonies and chrysanthemums, all aswarm with brilliant-hued birds and
butterflies. The chairs and stools had thick bright-green cushions tied to
them. In the bedroom the hangings were also of damask, patterned in green and
gold; there was a five-leaved screen, two leaves red and three green, and
green-and-red-striped chair cushions.

"Oh!"
cried Amber, when Captain Morgan went with her to see it and agreed that she
might have it. "Thank you, Rex! I can't wait to move in!"

"Neither
can I," he said. But she gave him a quick pout and then a smile.

"Now,
Rex—remember what you said! You promised you'd wait."

"And
I will. But for God's sake—not much longer."

She
insisted on having the whole of her allowance in advance and, when she got it,
hunted out Shadrac Newbold— whose name she remembered, Bruce Carlton had told
her— and put it with him at six percent interest. In Cow Lane they found a
second-hand coach which, though small, was freshly painted and in good
condition. It was glossy black with red wheels and red reins and harness, and
he bought four handsome black-and-white horses to draw it. The coachman and
footman were named, respectively, Tempest and Jeremiah, and she ordered red livery
trimmed with silver braid for them.

She
hired her maid from an old woman Mrs. Scroggs recommended with the absolute
assurance that the girl was honest, demure, and well-bred, that she could carve
and sew and clean, would not sleep late or gossip to the neighbours or run
about in slovenly dress. She was a plain-faced girl whose teeth had wide spaces
between them and whose face was entirely covered with little pale freckles.
Prudence was her name, which Amber did not like, for she remembered simple harmless
Honour Mills who had been in league with a pair of thieves to
rob her. But
still the girl seemed anxious to please and looked so pitiful at the prospect
of not being hired that Amber took her.

The
first night at her new apartments she and Rex had an elaborate supper sent in
from the Rose Tavern nearby and opened a bottle of champagne, but they scarcely
drank a glass, for he picked her up impetuously and carried her in to the
bedroom. And yet for all his passionate fervour he was tender and considerate, as
eager to give pleasure as to take it, and Amber thought that this was far more
like a wedding-night than that wretched experience she had had with Luke
Channell. For the first time in a year and a half she was wholly and completely
satisfied, for Rex had the same combination of experience, energy, controlled
violence, and instinctive understanding which Lord Carlton had also had.

There's
a world of difference, she told herself, between being a man's mistress and his
wife. And as far as she was concerned that difference was all for the better.

The
next afternoon Amber found the women's tiring-room buzzing like a swarm of
angry hornets, and Beck Marshall was the centre of their chattering
indignation. She realized instantly that they had heard about her and Rex. And
though they all turned at once to fix upon her their cold wrathful stares, she
sauntered into the room and pulled off her gloves with a great show of
unconcern. Scroggs waddled over to her immediately, a self-satisfied grin on
her ugly old face.

"Damn
me, Mrs. St. Clare!" she said now, and her deep hoarse rough voice carried
above all the noise of the room. "But it pleased me mightily to hear of
your good fortune!" She leaned close, smelling strongly of brandy and
spoilt fish, and gave Amber a jab in the ribs. "When ye asked me t'other
day where ye might hire a woman I says to m'self, 'Aha! Mrs. St. Clare's
a-goin' into keepin', I'll warrant you!' But I'll swear I never guessed the
gentleman'd be Captain Morgan!" She leered and nudged, and jerked her
thumb in the direction of the glowering group across the room.

Scroggs
had taken Amber's cloak and fan and muff and was helping her out of her gown.
"Neither did anyone else, I see," murmured Amber, glancing toward
them with a significant lift of one eyebrow. She bent over to step out of her
petticoats.

"Foh!
Ye should've seen the look on the face of Mrs. Snottynose when she heard the
news!" She laughed heartily, showing the holes in her mouth where teeth
had been, and slapped her great thigh. "Damn me! I thought she'd bust a
gut!"

Amber
smiled, taking the combs out of her side curls and giving her hair a shake. And
then, as she looked at her, Beck's head turned and their eyes met directly. For
a long moment they stared, Amber exultant, taunting, Beck seething with rage,
and then all at once Beck turned away, raising her right hand to show Amber the
stiff middle finger. Amber laughed out loud
at that and picked up the black wig she
was to wear for her part as Cleopatra in Shakespeare's tragedy, sliding it down
over her own coarse bright silken hair.