Page 9 of The Gentleman’s Leading Lady

Gods damn him. He couldn’t stand here reacting like a randy schoolboy when he was trying to secure a commission.

Blast the girl for affecting him. He wanted to slide his hands around her throat and shake her for her cool dismissal, and he wanted to yank her into his arms, plunge his hands into her hair, and kiss her until she was panting for air.

A gentleman could do none of those things, of course. Holding back a growl, Dante turned his attention to Dorsey, who was watching his exchange with the dark-haired termagant with the fascination of a man watching a rock dove poke at an insect it intended to devour. The girl was one of his troupe, wasn’t she? Didn’t the older man—or someone, anywhere—have charge of her? Why should he handle her with kid gloves rather than taking some of the air out of her pretensions?

Instead the manager was letting his actress have her head, and Dante would guess this had been true all the girl’s life. No one about to haul back on the ribbons, even when she was getting out of line. No one teaching her to behave with common decency to those she considered below her. She’d been raised a pampered princess, spoiled with all the gifts her beauty could win her, and this temper was the result of it.

What had she said, again? There’d been almost something plaintive in her remark about not having an investor. A yearning revealed. There was something she needed, and Dante had the power to give it to her.

“A theater of your own,” Dante said. “I can give you that. Not a building on loan, and not a makeshift stage. Something that will belong to Dorsey’s Players.”

Longing flashed through the girl’s eyes, raw and eager. Dante wished he hadn’t seen it.

“Such a thing would belong to all of Cheltenham, it would.” Dorsey withdrew a small clay pipe from one pocket and a snuffbox full of tobacco out of another. He packed the bowl as he spoke. “We’d be doing the town a service, with our entertainers to fill their nights. Revenge tragedies. Sentimental romances. Harlequinades, mayhap the occasional pantomime ballet.” He struck a match and lit his pipe, his eyes catching the glint of flame. “We are more than artificers or entertainers. We spin dreams into life.”

“Ballet?” He’d heard of this, but never seen one. “Who is your dancer?”

Dorsey’s eyes flitted to the termagant, who turned suddenly and studied the front of the pavilion as if she weren’t listening to every word they said, ready to jump in to heap scorn upon his head. Her chin tipped up a notch, a ribbon on her chip hat fluttering in the light breeze.

Of course. Of course she would be their leading lady. No other woman in the group had her air of grace and command, and not a one came close to her striking looks. She must be their prize attraction, the face of the playbills and posters, and as such she was petted and spoiled, her every whim attended to, her every wish fulfilled.

Dante didn’t know what that was like. Not many common people did.

He turned back to Dorsey, man to man. Aspiring gentleman to aspiring gentleman. “Have you decided on investors to approach?”

Dorsey’s gaze slid sidewise to where Thompson stood introducing his son, who was visiting during a break in his university studies. Thompson had bought huge tracts from the De La Bere estate when the ancestral lands went up for sale. He was as keen a player as any in the competition to attract visitors to one’s well to drink plain old water flavored with iron and salt. One had to admire the man’s showmanship, if nothing else.

“Himself, of course.” Dorsey nodded in Thompson’s direction. “But location will be a question, I know. We’ll want our premises on High Street, or as close as possible, I’d wager.”

Dante nodded, though he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the scene of Pearson Thompson meeting the termagant for the first time. The boy could be no more than seventeen, a raw young blood, a pup barely grown into his paws. The points of his shirt collar touched his jaw, and his cravat was tied in a flamboyant bow. He tripped over his feet stepping forward to take the harpy’s slender hand and kiss the back of her kid glove.

She smiled, and the pucker at the sides of her mouth deepened. That plump lower lip came into balance with the upper when her lips curved. There was nothing coy nor purposefully beguiling in her manner, just the exchange of pleasantries that might take place in any fashionable haunt across Britain. Yet Pearson looked as if he’d been struck over the head by the gleam of peridot green in her eyes, and Dante’s gut burned. He wrenched his gaze away.

High Street. Yes. High Street was a burgeoning vein of the town, new buildings springing up to the east and west, though the best place for development, as Dante saw it, was the expanse south of town between High Street and the river. The wells were found there, with pavilions and pump rooms to be formed around them, walks and byways to be designed, and scenic drives just waiting to be landscaped.

“You might try Joseph Pitt,” Dante said. “He’s bought up a great deal of land as well, with plans to build.” In fact, Pitt had visions of building a spa to rival Thompson’s, and Dante was preparing sketches for the day he meant to begin in earnest.

Dorsey nodded, his eyes flickering toward another fashionable group making their exit from the pavilion. “The Reverend Skillicorne—is he primed for any more investments?”

“Yes,” Dante said. “Skillicorne.” The Reverend had inherited the empire his forebear had built, taking a muddy spring interesting only to pigeons and turning it into a well of medicinal water that attracted nobles and kings. “I haven’t had many commissions from him lately, but what can it hurt to ask.”

Dante tried very hard not to notice how Pearson was fawning on the little harpy, hovering at her shoulder, trying to monopolize her attention. She bore his solicitations with an amused patience that said she was accustomed to being adored.

Men would do much for a smile from an elegant beauty. Make heartfelt promises. Promise vast dreams. Build monuments to her name.

“Have you approached the Earl of Suffolk?” Dante asked, seeing Suffolk’s heir, the Viscount Andover, among the group issuing from the spa. John Dutton, heir to the Baron Sherborne, formed part of his train. Both men were Dante’s age, but they had titles to their name, wives in their keeping, and, between them, ten children in their possession.

Dante had a half-built house, partial credit for half a dozen buildings around Cheltenham, and a sound, thorough jilting in his past.

“Can’t say I’ve thought of Suffolk, or Sherborne,” Dorsey mused. “A man knows his range, aye? Knows how far he can shoot, and how high to aim.”

Dante knew the feeling. There were lines laid down everywhere, silent but as good as snares, letting a man know where it was safe to walk. He’d trod on them enough times, to immediate reprimand, to know now where they were drawn.

It wasn’t the same for women. Or for lordlings like Andover and Dutton. They paused with the theater women and conversed with the obvious intention to be amused, though they would perceive at a glance that these weren’t among the highborn. All the great knew each other—sought one another out upon coming to town, actually—and made a united front whenever it came to protecting their collective privileges and the ancient rights of class.

Yet women were allowed to trespass boundaries all the time, for the sake of delivering pleasure, while a man was born into his station and every effort made to keep him there.

And the women knew this. All five of the females with Dorsey were dressed as well as ladies, but they stood in a formation that made the termagant their apex, as if her loveliness were the wedge that could drive through any wall.