Page 25 of The Lady Plays with Fire

“And so attentive, too. He seemed content to hang on my every word. One hears him called standoffish, but I saw nothing of it.”

Julia recalled his scowl, his ramrod-straight spine.

Perhaps Mrs. Hayes was not as perceptive as Julia sometimes gave her credit for being.

At long last, shortly past midday, Mrs. Hayes called for her usual light luncheon to be served and asked Julia to fetch the blue bottle of tonic.

Julia knew she must seize the opportunity she had been given. Reaching across the table to tipple a drop or two into Mrs. Hayes’s goblet, she allowed the glass vial to slip from her hand and spill its remaining contents onto the cloth.

The apothecary around the corner would whip up another draught for his best customer on a moment’s notice. So when Julia returned home from her walk on the green, she still might have to devise some explanation for a longer-than-expected absence. Perhaps, if she were lucky, he would be called away to visit a patient. Or he would have to procure some ingredient from another shop. In any case, she could tell Mrs. Hayes as much.

It was far from a brilliant excuse, but it would have to do.

“Oh, dear,” she exclaimed, hurrying to soak up the puddle of liquid with her napkin so that nothing of it might be saved. “Look what I’ve done. I’ll go right after luncheon and have Mr. Watkins put up a new bottle of the same for you.”

Mrs. Hayes looked remarkably unperturbed and continued spreading butter on her bread. “ ’Tisn’t necessary, my dear. I’m not convinced that bottle has done my rheumatism a bit of good.”

This was an unforeseen complication. “Nonsense, ma’am,” Julia quickly countered. “Don’t you feel that our afternoons have been more pleasantly spent of late?”

“Oh, yes, dear. But it’s all down to that new book, I think. You have just the right voice for it.”

“You are too kind, ma’am. I date the matter somewhat differently. I noticed an improvement well before the book—from the time, in fact, that Mr. Watkins sent round the blue bottle for you to try.” Julia’s cheeks heated at the lie.

Mrs. Hayes tipped her head. On anyone else, Julia would have described her expression as skeptical. But Mrs. Hayes was such a trusting soul, she believed every fib Julia told. After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded. “Very well. I wouldn’t want to interfere with your preparations for Lady Clearwater’s party, though. I’ll send Daniel for the medicine.”

Julia fumbled as she tried to recork the now-empty bottle. “Oh, no. It’s no trouble, ma’am. I, um—if you send Daniel, he’ll surely tell his mother why. Before you know it, all the servants will be wondering about the state of your health and, uh, fretting about the security of their positions.”

It was a tale crafted to appeal to Mrs. Hayes’s particular worries, and Julia felt more than usually guilty about deceiving the poor woman, who had been so good to her, albeit often unwittingly. Occasionally, Julia wondered whether it wouldn’t be better just to tell her the truth—about her solitary adventures through London, about her work for the magazine, even about her longing not merely to review plays, but to perform onstage in them. To act.

But confessing any one of those secret desires might be scandalous enough to cost her her place as Mrs. Hayes’s companion and force her to return to country life, forever under her mother or brother’s watchful eye.

So she palmed the blue bottle and curtsied. “I shan’t be gone long, ma’am.”

Only as long as it took for Lord Manwaring to reveal what he’d learned and for the three of them to devise some plan to protect Miss on Scene and the magazine.

Clapham Common was a wedge of wilderness, surrounded on its three sides by the homes of wealthy City merchants and the Holy Trinity Church. Though it lacked the posh appeal of Hyde Park, it was often busy; on this day, when sunshine beckoned and Londoners recalled the impending approach of gloomier days, it fairly bustled. Nurses gathered in clusters to gossip while their charges ran free, chasing after balls and butterflies. Old men strolled in pairs, reliving their glory days. Near the church, a pair of modestly dressed women and a man in a battered beaver skin hat were handing out leaflets about some cause or other.

Julia ducked into the apothecary’s shop, confessed that she had spilled Mrs. Hayes’s tonic, and requested a replacement.

“Of course,” said Mr. Watkins, as she sheepishly handed over the empty vial. “Won’t take a moment. It’s helping with the swelling, then?” he called over his shoulder as he retreated among his jars and bottles.

“As much as anything can, sir,” she replied. “But you needn’t hurry. I have another errand to run. I’ll stop in for it on my way back.”

Mr. Watkins waved her off, and Julia escaped into the sunshine, her eyes searching the edges of the green for Lady Stalbridge and her stepson. At last, she spotted them, not by the sight of one of Lord Manwaring’s eye-popping waistcoats, as she had half expected, but because of the distinctive china-blue pelisse the countess often wore.

With hurried steps on Julia’s part, and a more sedate tread on the part of Lady Stalbridge, the three of them met where two footpaths crossed near the center of the green. Lady Stalbridge inclined her head toward a nearby bench, beneath a spreading oak. “I will chaperone from there,” she said with a wry sort of smile.

Lord Manwaring’s answering grin was charmingly lopsided, though bracketed by surprisingly deep grooves. Fatigue had left dark smudges beneath his eyes. Evidence that he had recently passed one of his notoriously wild nights, Julia supposed. She took his offered arm with the slightest tremor of trepidation.

He seemed to guess the direction of her thoughts. “I won’t bite, child.”

Though his linen was remarkable, a degree of brightness and crispness achieved only by the valets of dandies, he was otherwise ordinarily dressed for a gentleman. His waistcoat was a perfectly respectable buff, a shade or two lighter than his breeches, which disappeared into riding boots that were just worn enough to convince her they had actually been used for their appointed purpose. His duster concealed nothing more ostentatious than the jeweled handle of his quizzing glass. Perhaps he was not quite as wild as he was rumored to be.

Julia was on the point of retorting that she was hardly a child, at most only a few years younger than he, when he snapped his white, even teeth together in another, more lupine smile. “Unless asked.”

The flare of her eyes must have been visible to Lady Stalbridge, now sitting several feet away. “Oliver,” the countess reprimanded him, her voice at once stern and amused. “Behave.”

“Very well, Mamabet,” he promised with an exaggerated sigh. “But if Miss Addison can’t bear to be teased, I don’t think she’s ready to hear the sort of naughtiness Ransom Blackadder’s got up to.”