Page 26 of The Gentleman’s Leading Lady

This could be the place where Cerys finally made a name for herself—finally made a success of herself on her own terms. Became someone known and admired. It wasn’t simply vanity that had called her to the stage; it was a desperate wish to be seen.

Those first days, out on promenade, Mr. Manelli looked at her and then right past her. He’d seen her first as scenery and then as a hostile intrusion, a detractor of the work he took such pride in. Their second meeting, at Thompson’s baths, he’d dismissed her as an actress, beneath him. She associated with the low and displayed herself on the stage, which to some made her little better than a common woman, while he was clearly determined to elbow his way into the ranks of gentlemen.

Today, earlier, he’d looked at her—really looked at her—and the memory of those dark eyes grazing each line of her face made her shoulders tighten with a heat that crept downward, flushing the skin above her breasts. No doubt he saw her as a nuisance. Adding noise and commotion to his living space, when he was clearly a man who valued symmetry, balance, quiet, and order.

He could use with a good mussing. He held himself far too tightly. One could see it in the strain of the dark coat over his broad shoulders and the rigid outline of his hair, ruthlessly styled with pomade. She wanted to shake him out of that stuffiness. Tousle his hair. Rumple his neckcloth. Put some creases in those tight pantaloons.

Remind him that he was a man of flesh, not a sculpture produced by his father, marble, immovable, not to be touched.

She wanted to touch him. What a marvelously stupid idea.

Cerys reached for her wine glass, then remembered her manners. She looked across the table and met Mame’s curious gaze. The older woman was watching Cerys with that protective, motherly air she sometimes wore for the younger ones—Tryphenie, Cerys, even Rhoda sometimes, though not ever for Dot.

Cerys raised her glass, and Mame followed suit. She drank, and the rich liquid swarmed her tongue, suffusing her senses with a luxurious attack. It had been long since she’d played a role like this, guest at a lord’s table. She knew it well. She’d played the part several times; it was one of the more polished pieces in her repertoire.

But no one here knew that, and she didn’t intend them to. She wanted them to take her at face value, simply as she was. Cerys Evans, born in Bristol, raised in Wales, actress aspiring to fame.

The kind of girl who would run away from a perfectly pleasant home and a beloved family, carving new worry lines into her mother’s beautiful face, earning a sober speech of warning from her practical stepfather, who had seen far more of the world than Cerys ever had. He, at least, had understood how the wider world called to her, how desperate she was to see more of it.

Leaving her mother still felt like a betrayal.

“So, Miss Evans. I admit I am ravenously curious about you.”

Lady Baeccon was done flattering Andover with praise for the beautiful house his father had built, the six children his lovely wife had produced, and his own high place in the world. She had spent the first course establishing that Lord Baeccon’s father had earned the title by distinguished service in the army of George III, while his son had devoted his life to hanging on the coattails of Prinny, now Regent, and doing nothing whatsoever to distinguish himself aside from being able to boast of the high personages he gambled with or passed by at his club. The second course was brought out, and her ladyship wanted something new to nibble on.

“There is little about me that could interest you, my lady,” Cerys said.

“Let me be the judge of that.” Her ladyship helped herself to the chicken ragout, thick with cream sauce. “How long have you been an actress?”

“All my life.” Cerys smiled. “But with Dorsey’s Players, only two years.”

“Hmm. And how much longer do you intend to continue in this life?”

Mame went alert at this. She and Dot, aside from Dorsey, were the only other of the players who had been invited to share their host’s table for dinner, mostly to fill out the numbers. Dot chewed quietly, listening.

Cerys looked down at her plate and the slice of roast partridge with its jelly of spring onions and chives. How much longer did she have? How much longer could she go about her merry way, ignoring her responsibilities? Her promise?

How much longer did she have to do what she’d set out, in all her childish innocence to do: make a mark on the world?

Not much longer. She must make that mark soon. Else she couldn’t justify the people she’d hurt with her selfishness. The people she’d abandoned.

“I’ll continue as long as they’ll have me,” Cerys answered. “Or as long as I’m useful and keep selling them tickets.” She winked at Mame. The older woman shook her head with a smile.

She couldn’t abandon Dorsey’s Players until she’d given them at least as much as they’d given her. Jed Dorsey had taken Cerys on when she was untried and unproven, with little else to offer other than ambition and memorable clouds of hair. She wanted to show her gratitude to them all, and she could prove her commitment with something concrete: a theater to call their own, a centerpiece of entertainment for Cheltenham and its environs, a gracious portal to the world of fantasy and an escape from the dreary round of the real world for a time.

That was what she wanted to create for people. That was what she wanted to leave behind her when she went, as she inevitably must, back home.

And Mr. Manelli was her means to make this happen. The designs from his book filled her head. They offered an elegance she hadn’t seen outside London. He, too, wanted to create beauty, and she wanted this for Dorsey’s. For herself.

She only had to make the stubborn, infuriating man fall in with her plans.

She shot him a covert glare down the table, and as he had before, the aggravating man glanced up in time to meet her gaze. It was as if he could feel the daggers she threw at him with her eyes. He was perceptive, for all his stubborn solidity.

And not so impenetrable after all, perhaps. He’d certainly looked penetrable when Lady Baeccon swept into the drawing room. He looked like a hare caught in the open, watching the hawk swoop toward him, claws extended. The expression on his face said he already felt those claws tearing his guts open.

This particular hawk had clawed him before, Cerys guessed. For a man who kept himself carefully shuttered, Mr. Manelli’s face had betrayed him in that instant. And Cerys would bet her pearl necklace, given the intent way Lady Baeccon’s eyes kept turning down the table in his direction, she meant to sink her claws in again. He’d been a satisfying feast the first time, no doubt, and her ladyship wanted more.

Inserting himself between them had been, initially, a way to taunt them both. Be a stone in the man’s path, the way he kept turning into a boulder in hers.