A hand landed on his shoulder. “Are you sure you want to do this?” Kit asked.
“I’m not letting a conversation with that prick Richard Islington go to waste. And I’m not losing Tessa without a fight. Raise the curtain.” He glanced at Islington whowaited in the wings for his cue, his blond hair brassy in the shadows.
“It’s not quite time yet, I think. Will it work? Tessa’s mother has every reason not to believe you, no matter who else does.”
“They must believe it because it’s the truth. From here out at least.”
“We’re ready, Mr. Ives,” his stage manager said.
Remmy nodded, Kit ran into the wings, the curtains parted, and Remmy raised his arms. The noise of the rumbling crowd died slowly, one voice at a time as each member of the audience realized the show had started. As they quieted, Remmy admired his work—the balconies newly painted, the seats recently padded, the chandeliers and gas lamps. It was a work of art, his own sweat and tears, and every night, he brought dreams to life here. He would miss it.
“Good evening!” He used his theatre voice, but the world had become so quiet, he could whisper and the audience would still hear. “Thank you all for coming tonight.” Remmy cleared his throat. This performance mattered more than the others. He had to sell it. “I am, as you all may know, Remington Ives, the owner of this theatre and… as many have claimed, the June rake.”
Murmurs rippled across the audience, fansthwippedopen and hats ripped off, to hide whispering mouths.
“But you do not know me at all,” Remmy continued. “You see… I have a confession to make. When the Brazen Belle wrote about a Mr. R. I.”—a pause, for dramatic effect or personal fortification, he could not decide—“I knew it was not me, but I took advantage of the initials. The real June rake is Richard Islington.” He ground the name between his teeth.
“Islington?” a young man in the front row said. “Who is that?”
An excellent gentleman, there. Remmy could onlyimagine how Islington was fuming in the wings. He was almost tempted to let them all continue, but he grinned and said, “He owns a very boring theatre in Drury Lane.” The audience laughed, and he used his hands to quiet them once more. “Andheis R. I.”
“Why pretend to be him?” a man from a balcony called out.
The crowd agreed—they wanted an answer. And he hadn’t prepared one for this particular question.
“Erm… Mr. Islington… asked me to pretend! He’s ill. Dying. Aaaand… he doesn’t want this to ruin his legacy.” Man was fit as a fiddle as far as Remmy knew.
And he was currently storming onto the stage. “I amnotdying,” he said loudly enough for the crowd to hear.
When he was close enough to hear, Remmy whispered, “We’ve an audience, Islington. You must perform for them. Go with it.”
Islington pulled at his cravat and raised his voice. “But I was ill. I got better.”
“So now you’re not dying,” someone said, “you want to ruin your reputation?”
“What do we do now, Ives?” Islington hissed.
“Aaahhh…”
“Lies!” The voice rang out loud and clear from the back of the crowd, and it thumped his heart into a frantic rhythm.
“This is annoyingly out of control,” Islington said, slinking back toward the backstage shadows.
Remmy rushed to the front of the stage, but the stage lights blinded him. A figure strode down the side aisle and stopped just before the stage, looking up at him. She stood between two gas lamps, her hair a wild and fiery halo around her freckled, determined face.
He knelt before her. “Tessa.” Her name a breath. “What are you doing here? How did you get here?”
She grinned and held out a hand. “Help me up?”
When he wrapped his hand around hers, he worried he might never let her go and tried to tug her into the side wings of the stage and out of sight to have her all to himself.
But she escaped and strode to center stage, faced the rapt audience. Chin high, shoulders back and spine straight like the queen she was and wearing a sin of a gown of shifting blues that shimmered in the gas lamps, she captivated the audience.
“Mr. Ives,” she said, “is a liar.”
He’d forgotten about that. He strode toward her. “Hold on, Tessa. What is this about?”
“You sir,” she said as loudly as she could, “are a liar. A horrid one. Just another failing to place at your feet.”
