Page 35 of The Gentleman’s Leading Lady

Cerys tilted her head and studied her ladyship with that considering, quizzical look Dante was starting to recognize. It meant the wheels in her clever little head were turning.

“The play is Hamlet, as I am sure her ladyship is aware, and we will be delighted to stage it for you as soon as we might. But I do have a question. How will your ladyship judge the play a success?”

Bathsheba narrowed her eyes. Not a single hair beneath her hat stirred in the light breeze; it wouldn’t dare disobey its owner’s tight control. “Why, in the usual ways, I would suppose.”

“But what criterion would that be, in this instance?” Cerys pressed. “As you see, we do not exactly have an office to sell boxes. Will his lordship consider us a success if we sell a certain number of tickets? Make a certain profit? Attract a certain number of people for our audience? Or is the consideration something else?”

His lordship tapped his whip in irritation and glared at his lady. Clearly, this was all her idea. Dante wondered how long it had taken before Baeccon, who had held out his hand thinking he would shelter this delicate, neglected creature and raise her to prominence, realized that he would not be doing the leading in his marriage.

Bathsheba smiled with false sweetness. “You are adorable. The criterion should be how well the play is received, don’t you think? For if you displease the audience, we can hardly hope you will establish yourselves with any success here in Cheltenham, and that would be a poor investment for his lordship, would it not?”

Cerys nodded briefly. “Very well. Then we shall do our best to impress, won’t we, Dorsey?”

“Oh, your ladyship will be impressed.” Dorsey grinned. “We rival the Royal Theatre on this one. Be prepared to open your purse, your lordship.”

Some glance of knowing passed between the manager and his actress, and annoyance raked across Dante’s shoulders. Annoyance only. The man had other and more experienced actresses, yet he favored Cerys.

But who would not? She stood out among the women like a stalk of red helleborine rising from a bed of common violets. Part of it was the glow of youth and native beauty, which of course would incite Bathsheba’s envy. Bathsheba was older than Dante, and he had a least a decade on the ingenue, who did not need her ladyship’s arts and cosmetics to glow with a fresh-faced appeal.

There was something artless and unstudied to the younger girl’s demeanor, as if she were simply behaving as herself, rather than playing a carefully scripted part. And while he suspected both women had learned to mimic their elders, Bathsheba had adopted the condescension and command of her rank, while Cerys’s mimicry was of an elegance and graciousness that seemed innate.

Even their clothing showed the difference. Bathsheba too wore a long pelisse, but with overlapping pipes of black trim that created dizzying designs along the front closure and an elaborate collar that formed a deep V. Her bonnet spilled with ribbons and puffs and false flowers. Beside Cerys’s natural simplicity, Bathsheba’s arts looked heavy, overdone. If Bathsheba was a flower, she was henbane, glossy forked leaves and showy flowers spotted with darkness, the whole possessing the power to give a man hallucinations and drive him to madness, if not death.

He’d been under her spell once. Bathsheba’s kisses had filled him with lust and a kind of madness to possess, along with self-congratulation that such a sensual, potent creature should desire him.

Cerys’s kiss was different. There was desire, certainly. He’d felt the urge to pull her to him completely and ravish her on the spot, so strong an urge he’d forced himself to break away before he followed through, right there on Suffolk’s stair in a bay of moonlight. There was the sensual haze that broke his thoughts apart and made good sense recede for the time being.

With Bathsheba, he’d felt shattered. Severed from himself somehow. With Cerys—it was strange to think it, and on the basis of only one kiss. But he felt more wholly himself around her. When she’d brought his face to hers, it wasn’t with the satisfaction of having incited desire. It was because she wanted him, enough to defy convention, morality, and every warning she’d no doubt been told about proper behavior.

She’d tossed it all to the wind, just to kiss him, and something about that very idea made him impatient to pull her into his arms and kiss her again.

And more. He suspected that with her, he would not be content merely to spend himself in her body. He would want more. And so would she.

And more, he could not offer, nor have.

He’d stared at Bathsheba long enough that she surmised an invitation, and she untwined her arm from her husband’s, leaving Lord Baeccon to converse with Dutton and the Thompson men while she sauntered to Dante’s side.

“I am surprised you would content yourself with such a small, out-of-the-way place as Cheltenham, Dante. You seemed made for grander things. I would think you could make your fortune in London, if not Paris.”

He shrugged and applied his crayon to his sketchbook, at last motivated to work. “One cannot throw a stone in London without hitting an architect. And Paris is a dangerous place for a Briton these days.”

“But Italians would be tolerated, even welcomed, I should think. Didn’t the little emperor make himself King of Italy?”

Dante concentrated on his sketch. He had been born in Britain and lived here all his life. It was strange that others, even those who knew him well, still thought of him as the Italian. He knew it was how he was talked about in Cheltenham—the Italian architect—and it helped make him distinct. He didn’t fight it, since the association of Italians with ancient Rome gave him a bit of edge in some minds. Still, it was a constant reminder that he didn’t quite belong.

Once, that was one aspect he and Bathsheba had had in common—the wish to rise from their positions. Be more. Have more. Bathsheba had accomplished that, to be sure, and he was still fighting to be recognized. To make his mark. To find his place.

“I can’t see how you think she could help you,” Bathsheba said. “She is young. She knows nothing.”

They were both watching Cerys, who walked with Pearson Thompson along the front of the spa, talking with great animation. She held a hand to her bonnet as she tilted her head back, gesturing toward the gallery, and Dante stared at the smooth, kissable column of her throat.

Something she said checked the younger man and he paused, following her broad gestures in the air, then grinned at her with frank admiration. Annoyance bit again into the side of Dante’s neck, like an irritating mosquito.

“I would not dismiss her simply because she is young,” Dante said, forcing his eyes back to his sketchbook. A loggia came to life beneath his hand, with tall arches and banded columns. No, he was not taking inspiration from the chit; this was an idea all his own.

“She’s spreading ridiculous tales that you are attached to her,” Bathsheba said. “I wouldn’t encourage her, if I were you.”

“What can it hurt me if she imagines I have any interest in her?”