Page 14 of The Lady Plays with Fire

Generosity? A scoffing noise nearly escaped Julia’s dry throat. Was it not a gentleman’s duty to right the wrong perpetrated against a poor, old widow and her innocent companion?

Oh, dear. That sounded like a line from the last chapter she’d read. She glanced toward the thick volume lying beside her on the damasked sofa. Perhaps Lord Dunstane had been right. Perhaps she ought sometimes to read better books.

“He doesn’t,” she explained to Mrs. Hayes. “At least, not directly. We’ll need his ticket, of course.” Mrs. Hayes’s ticket to the box, being an unauthorized duplication, was little better than counterfeit. “There’s a bit here about dealing with Mr. Pope, or rather . . .” She squinted at the sentence again; it was written rather awkwardly, despite the flowing handwriting. “Anyway, I suppose the box office knows when it is to be free.”

“I’d rather not have to speak with Mr. Pope,” Mrs. Hayes said, a sour expression wrinkling her lips. “Particularly not after that letter I sent.”

Generally, she left the details of her less personal correspondence to Julia, concerned only with the substance of the matter at hand. But on the occasion of dressing down the box manager, she had chosen every harsh word herself.

“I’ll take care of it, ma’am. Why, if I go now,” Julia offered, rising, “we might be able to attend the theater tonight.”

A visit to the playhouse would be the perfect opportunity to plan out the subject of her next column. It would also provide welcome cover for her absence when she slipped out to the magazine meeting at half past two. She would simply tell Mrs. Hayes she had been delayed.

With Mrs. Hayes’s permission secured, she donned her pelisse and bonnet and set out for Covent Garden. Daniel called her a hackney. As far as Mrs. Hayes knew, he accompanied her on every outing, an acknowledgment of her status as the younger sister of a viscount. But in general, Julia preferred to give him an hour’s freedom, his silence purchased with a portion of her wages from the magazine. She considered it proper preparation for his future career, when the young ladies of whatever grand house at which he was eventually employed begged him to look the other way when they got up to mischief.

“I’m only a lady’s companion,” she reminded Daniel when he looked askance at the destination she gave the cabbie. Little more than a servant in the world’s eyes, in other words, and perfectly capable of moving about independently.

A damp morning had given way to a marvelous October midday, sunny and crisp. The leaves on the trees were mostly still green, though here and there a hint of gold could be seen. She felt fortunate that Mrs. Hayes insisted on staying in Clapham, where, despite its sleepy appearance, radicals and freethinkers congregated. Together they attended the most interesting lectures and heard the most stirring sermons. Julia had heard it said this was the only part of Town where one could speak the phrase Rights of Woman without being mocked. Occasionally, she wondered whether Mrs. Hayes would even disapprove of her involvement with the Magazine for Misses if it were discovered.

As the cab rattled over the bridge, she glanced out the window with what most certainly was not a wistful sigh. She had an extraordinary degree of freedom for a well-bred young lady of almost twenty. She had work she enjoyed and the friendship of intelligent women.

And very soon, she would have tickets to the theater, to be enjoyed without ever again having to cross paths with Lord Dunstane.

Really, what more could she want?

Chapter 5

Once a play took the stage before an audience, there was very little left for a playwright to do but wait for reviews. What was done, was done. Now, during rehearsals, was the moment to make adjustments, to improve things.

Graham’s aversion to London meant he didn’t often take such an opportunity, however. And even from his current position in the pit, a few rows back from the stage, he couldn’t quite see how to pull it off.

For one thing, he was reminded—as he had been reminded twice during Othello’s run—that sitting alone, while congenial to his mood, was not the ideal vantage point from which to view a performance. With no hint from another person’s expression, no sound of someone’s murmuring or laughter or even breath, he was having a great deal of trouble imagining how theatergoers would react to his reviewer character’s first victim—a poet, because a playwright had seemed . . . too scornful, somehow. Or at least, too on the nose.

He was not a sympathetic character, particularly given George Fanshawe’s rather limp depiction of him. Then again, people did not go into a Ransom Blackadder play expecting anyone in it to be genuinely likeable.

But it went against Graham’s purpose for writing the damn thing if everyone wished a bad review really might be capable of killing a man.

When Fanshawe called a stop to the day’s rehearsal, an audible sigh eased from Graham’s lungs. Not that anyone was nearby enough to hear it.

“I hope you’ll give Mr. Blackadder a good report, my lord,” said the actor as he swung down from the stage and hustled toward Graham, who had explained his presence by claiming to observe on the playwright’s behalf.

The tattered state of Fanshawe’s script put Graham in mind of the first issue of the Magazine for Misses he had seen. In the wake of that memory came the recollection of his reaction to the reviewer’s audacious pity. And then his subsequent concern that if more people began to see through his gambit, Ransom Blackadder’s popularity would fade.

The profits from his first play, modest though they had been, had saved Castle Dunstane from toppling over a precipice, quite literally. The second and third had allowed Graham to claw his way out of most of the debts his elder brother had left behind. And the fourth, had it arrived a few weeks earlier, would have—

He shook all of it away with a visible shudder that the other man clearly misinterpreted. Graham didn’t correct the misunderstanding. He wanted this play to do well, to draw crowds, even if they came—as the majority always had—to jeer.

He did not intend to let Miss on Scene have the last word.

“I’ll give Blackadder an honest report, Mr. Fanshawe,” Graham told him, his tone cool. “And you can expect he will be equally forthright in his reply. He’ll want to see some changes, I have no doubt. And if my support of your work here is to continue—” He raised his voice enough that all the actors still milling about the stage could hear, though he needn’t have bothered. The mention of money always made people’s ears perk up. “You’ll want to do as he says.”

Fanshawe blanched. “Of course, my lord. Tell him—if you please—tell him it’s early days yet, sir. We’re all just getting a feel for the thing. No need to fret.”

Graham arched one brow. Fret?

At his expression, Fanshawe began to babble more excuses, new regrets, the incoherent sounds of which followed Graham as he turned on one heel and strode out of the theater via a less-public door nearer the stage.

Absorbed in his thoughts, he paid little attention to the handful of people who crossed his path: scene painters and carpenters daubed and dusty with the marks of their trades; actors half out of costume; a wiry lad sent to fetch a pot of coffee or, more likely, a bottle of gin. The comingled odors of greasepaint and sweat hung heavy on the stale air.