Page 10 of The Gentleman’s Leading Lady

And perhaps she could. Dante mainly read architectural designs and building journals for pleasure, but his sisters exclusively read sensational novels and gossip, and Dante was aware that the Earl of Craven had married an actress, Louisa Brunton, not so many years ago. Prinny, now the Regent, had cut a swath through actresses, infamously beginning with Mary Robinson.

And the Duke of Clarence had produced all those FitzClarences on an actress known to be as successful in finding male protectors as she was patrons for the stage. Oh, yes, a woman with that dainty turn of wrist and ankle, those long lashes, and that devastating smile could aim as high as she wanted, whether or not she possessed an aristocratic nose.

The little harpy wasn’t delivering any disapproving stares and sniffs to the lordlings. Quite the opposite. That pucker of mischief at her mouth had come out to stay. She stood still as a reed on a riverbank, no fluttering, no cooing or coy gestures. Cordial. Even sweet. Pearson stuttered something—probably an ode to her beauty—and she laughed.

Laughed. The sound was the ring of a church bell through the fog of a morning, the golden glint through a cloud on a stormy day. Dante curled his hands into fists. He’d drawn only contempt, but to the genteel or wealthy, she was a pad of butter melting on the tongue.

He’d read her true from the beginning. A rude, thoughtless, social-climbing termagant. One of those beauties who would charge her way through life seeing only what she wanted, and treading on anyone who got in her way. He’d seen his sisters wounded too many times by other girls competing for suitors or praise. He’d been skewered himself by a woman who dripped honey promises from her lips and hid the lance she later drove through his gut, once he was well and truly in love. He still dripped poison from that wound.

“But you won’t stay at the Great House? I’ve had many a fine dinner there. The rooms are pleasant.” Dutton had pushed close to the harpy. Too close. He was a head taller, perfectly positioned to gaze down her décolletage.

It was worth staring, though Dante wouldn’t be so foolish, neither to stare nor to be caught out doing it. She was slender and taller than the other women, but Nature had not stinted in distributing her feminine curves.

“Too great for us,” said the older matron. She’d withdrawn a fan and was using it, though the day was only beginning to warm. “Mr. Fisher said he hadn’t the rooms. We have a lodging house for the nonce, but the accommodations are not what you would call comfortable.”

Fisher was angling for the patronage of the upper crust, and hosting a traveling theater troupe might cloud that image, however much they pretended to respectability. Still, Dante wondered why they hadn’t trotted out the termagant when they went looking for lodgings. She didn’t seem like a woman accustomed to having doors shut in her face.

“Andover.” Dutton turned to his friend. “This won’t do. They must have a theater, and they must have accommodations while their theater is built. We cannot let it be said that Cheltenham was so inhospitable to talent.”

“Really, Mr. Dutton, you must not distress yourself on our behalf,” said the termagant. Her smile was fascination and admiration and a trace of amusement. “We are accustomed to being creative. Indeed, we thrive on it.”

“Would you go so far as to say original?” Dante taunted. “Or are your performances mostly derivatives and copies, written by or modeled on the works of others?”

Her smile turned feral, glinting with teeth. Pretty, white, even ones, as rounded as if not accustomed to tearing flesh. She wore the mouth of a woman who had never been hungry in her life, never wondered if the coin or credit her father had left were enough to last the family for another week.

“Perhaps you are not acquainted with the nature of theater, sir. I know some people consider themselves above its allure. The very strict moralists, and those with no sense of beauty.”

No sense of beauty! He was an architect. He lived for beauty.

“You must stay at Suffolk House, of course,” said Andover with a careless smile. “We’ve scores of rooms, all done up grand, thanks to Manelli here.”

Every eye in the group turned to Dante.

This was exactly the type of scrutiny he hated. Measuring, comparing, judging his worth. He came up short, every time. Too dark. Too abrupt, too assertive. Too opinionated. Too much foreign blood. Too much, always.

“I did design Suffolk House.” He was also staying there, overseeing the last of the interior designs that the Countess wanted in place. It wasn’t a typical part of his service, but the Countess had put great faith in him, and also understood that Dante was without accommodation while his own house was under construction.

He couldn’t have the lilac harpy under the same roof as him. He could not. She would test his patience to the limit. He would throttle her within a day and prove himself, beyond any shadow of doubt, not a gentleman.

“Milord! We could not possibly impose on your good nature, or your hospitality,” the matron simpered. Dante had marked her for the kind of shrewd businesswoman who cut a sharp deal and never simpered, but she was an actress, too.

He nodded. They couldn’t possibly live in peace all together. The actors would have to find somewhere else to stay.

“Oh, Andover won’t even notice you’re there.” Dutton waved a hand with a small laugh. “And he’s accustomed to noise, you know, with six little Howards in his keeping. Six! One just newly minted, too.”

“Our felicitations, I’m sure, on the expansion of your family,” said the matron. “But we would not think to trespass on your domestic harmony. Or interfere with your wife’s recovery.”

“But she ain’t there,” Dutton said. “All bundled away to Holkham Hall to take the sea air and be near family at her delicate time. And with the pater at the London house while Parliament is sitting, Andover is here all on his lonesome, bravely overseeing the family estates.”

Andover nodded, doing his best to achieve a doleful look. Dante forced himself to unball his fists. Just because Andover was a pleasant looking fellow and his wife was not about did not mean the little harpy was in danger from him. Not every man in the world desired to make an actress his mistress; why, some managed to refrain their whole lives from being entangled in theatrical snares.

But Dante sensed a calculating look in the face of the little termagant as she waved her painted fan back and forth beneath her chin, stirring tendrils of dark hair that had fallen free from her bonnet. She studied Andover like a con artist measuring a mark.

Evaluating him the way Dante evaluated the men he wanted to win commissions from. Studying the best angle to ply, if it be flattery, bargaining, appeals to vanity, or offering a deal too good to resist.

“I am sure Lord Andover would not wish us to trespass on his good nature, or cut up his peace,” she said at last, echoing the matron’s sentiments, but with a gleam in her eye that was less shrewd and more—inviting? Was she turning coy now?

Trying to angle her way into an invitation in truth. She didn’t need protecting from Andover; gods take him, Andover needed protecting from her.