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“Somebody paid you to perform,” she said. “And you needed the money.” She glanced at Lisburne, who stood guard by the door to the stairs, his pose deceptively casual, his face wearing the beautiful-but-stupid look.
Which showed how not stupid he was. He understood she was trying to win the woman’s trust and he was doing what he could to appear harmless.
“I’d always been able to look after myself and my daughter,” Mrs. Williams said. “I was with a good company. We toured the provinces. I had work, and nobody asked awkward questions about Bianca. Quite the contrary. She was a draw. The audiences love an infant prodigy.”
Her gaze went to the back room. No doubt the child slept there.
“I was Mrs. Williams, in any event,” she said, her voice lowered. “None of my fellow actors asked where Mr. Williams was. Bianca doesn’t know. She thinks Papa is touring in America. The other night, when we were going to Vauxhall, I told her we’d be playacting. But we weren’t, really.”
Lisburne started to take a step away from the door, then subsided. His voice was mild when he said, “Not really playacting?”
Again the woman looked toward the room where her child slept.
“If you’ve been wronged,” Leonie said, “Lord Swanton wants to make it right.”
“But his lordship hasn’t come, has he?” Mrs. Williams said.
“Do you want him to?” Leonie said.
Mrs. Williams looked from her to Lisburne. Then she moved away and gently closed the bedroom door.
When she returned to them, she returned the scrapbook to its place on the table. “If I ever imagined Bianca’s father would carry me away on his white charger, I had my eyes opened when I told him I was expecting,” she said.
“He offered no help at all?” Leonie said. This didn’t sound like Swanton.
Mrs. Williams laughed. “I’d be helping him, more like. Maybe I’m not good enough for the great London theaters, but I’m good enough to find work easily elsewhere. Good enough not to be at any man’s beck and call.”
She threw Lisburne a defiant look. He only blinked stupidly, like the harmless aristocratic idiot he wasn’t.
Mrs. Williams went on more rapidly, in the way people do when they’ve bottled up feelings for too long, “As I said, I’d joined a good company. Bianca and I did well. Then in May I fell ill and couldn’t work. My colleagues helped as much as they could, but I seemed only to grow weaker and weaker, good for nothing. I had to let them go on without me. We were in Portsmouth then. I was running out of belongings to pawn. I used the little I had left to pay our way to London. Maybe I wasn’t thinking clearly, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do but appeal to Bianca’s father.”
“You wrote to him,” Leonie said. “And he ignored you.”
“Oh, no,” the actress said. “I know about these gentlemen and their lawyers. I couldn’t let him put me off by proxy, with affidavits and threats, could I? I went into a bookshop and found out his direction in Boyle’s Court Guide. I went to his lodgings in the morning when I knew he’d be abed. I pretended to be a servant who’d brought a message to the wrong house. I was so prettily embarrassed. His servant flirted with me, and I flirted back, and found out where the master was going that day.”
It was the same as Sophy would have done. Or Leonie. Or any Noirot or DeLucey. Pretend to be someone else. Play on others’ weaknesses.
Her mind on her sisters, it took Leonie a moment to notice the change in Lisburne, the way the tension went out of him. Then she realized: Whomever Bianca belonged to, it definitely wasn’t Swanton. Among other clues, the poet didn’t live in hired lodgings, but in the Marquess of Lisburne’s villa in the Regent’s Park.
“I lay in wait for him at the British Institution,” Mrs. Williams said. “But I hadn’t realized he’d be with a great crowd of people. I waited what seemed an eternity, trying to think of a way to get him alone, when he and his friend moved away from the others. By this time, you’d left, and Lord Swanton and the others had gone into the next room. You may be sure my two gentlemen whisked me out of sight of their fine friends. Then we had a long talk. He said he hadn’t any money. I said he’d better get some, or I’d make scenes from one end of London to the other, haunting him like Banquo’s ghost.”
“But he might have had you arrested,” Leonie said. The law was always on the side of the privileged. They weren’t to be annoyed or harassed.
“I was desperate enough to risk it, Miss Noirot. He knows the kind of scene I’m capable of making. And I knew he didn’t want anybody to know about me.” Mrs. Williams smiled crookedly. “Not that my strength is up to haunting him as I threatened to do. But he doesn’t know that. The trouble is, even the greatest Thespian can’t get blood from a stone. I should have realized he’d be sponging off others and borrowing on expectations—of what, I can’t say. His idea of a financial plan is waiting for the next tumble of dice.”
By now it was clear who the culprits were: the same two men who’d spirited Mrs. Williams out of Vauxhall.
Leonie glanced at Lisburne, who merely looked about the room, apparently indifferent, though his posture told her otherwise.
“I saw how hopeless it was with him,” Mrs. Williams went on. “I saw how foolish I was to think he’d help me. When his friend suggested I try a scene with the poet, what choice had I? He said Lord Lisburne would pay handsomely to make me go away.”
“For somebody else’s child?” he said. “If word got about, every unmarried mama in London would be at my door.”
“For twenty pounds, I’ll go away,” she told him. She lifted her chin. “I would have left London by now if I could. I’ve had a stomach full of him and his friends and their brilliant ideas. He promised to arrange matters with you or the poet. But it’s been days and I’ve had no word from him. I need to pay my rent, and my daughter and I must eat.”
“I’ll give you a hundred pounds,” Lisburne said. “But strings are attached.”
Mrs. Williams was a good actress, as she’d said. If she was frightened of exposure or arrest, she hid it well, from Lisburne, in any event. But she couldn’t completely hide her shock when he offered a hundred pounds.
She’d thought twenty pounds was an immense amount. He knew some men paid no more than twenty shillings a year to support their bastards.
Lisburne said, “First, I want the father’s name. We know it’s one of two men.”
He saw the struggle in her face, between need and fear. “If I tell you, I’ll have no hold over him,” she said. “They warned me—”
“They’re bullies,” Lisburne said. “Leave them to me.”
“I can’t risk exposing him,” she said. “By law, the child belongs to the father. He could take her away.” She bit her lip. “He cares nothing for her. He’d send Bianca to a charity school and forget about her.”
“Let me deal with them,” Lisburne said.
“Never mind,” Leonie said. “It doesn’t matter which man it is.”
Lisburne looked at her. He wasn’t sure what she had in mind. He was sure she’d arrived at it through logic and calculation, though. “You’re right,” he said.
Her eyebrows went up.
“You could be right once,” he said. “Stranger things have happened.”
Mrs. Williams was fixed on Leonie. “Miss Noirot, I’m sure you understand. I promise you, my conscience has plagu
ed me ever since that night at Vauxhall. Poor Lord Swanton looked so bewildered. But they told me he’d pay me off and the matter would be hushed up.” She wrung her hands. “And now I’ve got myself into a dreadful coil.”
“We’re going to uncoil it,” Leonie said. “We don’t need to know which of the two is the father. It’s enough to know that they acted in concert to destroy Lord Swanton’s good name as well as wreck others’ reputations. All we need to do is prove this in a way the world will believe.”
As she spoke, an image formed in Lisburne’s mind. “I have an idea,” he said.
She was looking at Mrs. Williams. “So have I.”
The actress looked panicked.
“One hundred pounds, recollect,” he said. “But we need your help.”
“I can’t risk losing Bianca,” she said. “Not for any amount of money.”
“The Marquess of Lisburne outranks those two men,” Leonie said. “Obviously he has a great deal more money. As well as an army of lawyers.”
“If one of those men tries to take the child—which I very much doubt—I’ll see him lawyered to death,” Lisburne said. “But this matter wants discussion and a plan, and this isn’t the time or place. Mrs. Williams, you seem to have been expecting company. The men in question, I suppose?”
“They promised to settle matters with Lord Swanton and bring me funds,” the actress said. “All I got for my performance at Vauxhall was a few shillings to pay for this week’s rent and food. I’ve been waiting for them for days.”
“They won’t help you now,” Leonie said. “You’ve no hold over them. You can hardly make a scene about the real father after naming Lord Swanton in front of hundreds of witnesses.”
Mrs. Williams stared at her for a moment. Her gaze returned to the bedroom door.
“We understand why you did it,” Lisburne said gently. “But you’ve put yourself in a dangerous position. Those men could betray you and claim they had nothing to do with the scene at Vauxhall. They’d blacken your name as easily as they did Swanton’s. While I know he won’t press charges against you, I should imagine the scandal would make it difficult for you to find work.”
