Page 49 of The Lady Plays with Fire

“Your . . . aunt.” She heard a thread of amusement in his voice. Clearly, he recalled having been corrected on that very matter the night they met.

But today, she wanted him to remember she wasn’t alone in the world.

They passed into the vestibule in silence. The bustle of preparation for tonight’s show had already begun. A tall, thin man with a beaky nose inspected floral arrangements, while maids tidied and swept around him; ticket sellers hurried to their posts at the snap of the new box manager’s fingers.

On the pavement, Lord Dunstane signaled for a hackney. When a cab rolled to a stop before them, he opened the door and helped her in, holding her hand a moment longer than was strictly necessary. Uncertain, she swept her gaze over his face, taking in the sharp angle of his jaw, hardly softened by a scruff of reddish-brown beard, and his moss-green eyes, underlined by shadow.

“Make whatever excuse to Mrs. Hayes you think best, Julia,” he said. “But be here the day after tomorrow, with a draft of those edits you suggested. The play needs you.”

What had looked in the dimly lit theater like rakishness, the mercilessly gray afternoon revealed to be weariness. Worry. Over The Poison Pen?

He must have wagered a great deal on Blackadder’s success.

At last, he released her, closed the carriage door between them, and slapped his palm against the roof to signal the cabbie to depart.

She looked back at him through the dirty glass as he watched her go, her heart in her throat. The play needs you, he had said.

Was it her imagination, or had he meant, “I need you”?

* * *

I have him right where I want him, she wrote to Lady Stalbridge the next evening, after pointing out to Lord Dunstane that the loss of a loved one would likely dampen Reginald Briggs’s creative output. He’d responded by trimming a few of Mr. Sawyer’s harshest lines.

She didn’t dare tell the countess, or Aunt Mildred, the whole truth.

How Lord Dunstane’s stricken expression when she’d spoken of grief had made her want to gather him to her breast and soothe the hurt that she was beginning to suspect hid behind the cold, hard mask he wore.

How she had begun to wonder whether the bond between him and Ransom Blackadder might be more than patron and playwright. Brothers, as the script suggested?

Whatever drove him, she felt certain it was more than a return on his investment.

The following week, he’d called for daily rehearsals as opening night drew nearer. Monday and Tuesday the cast went through the entirety of the first two acts, with a rationally softened Perpetua and a marginally less arrogant Briggs, thanks to a combination of Blackadder’s edits and Julia’s. Julia was no longer certain her changes always made the play better—some of its humor had gone hand in hand with its sting. But she couldn’t worry about that, couldn’t worry about anything but saving the magazine.

Certainly, she couldn’t worry about Lord Dunstane or wonder what he’d meant by those whispered words, why his thoughts were often far away.

Wednesday began rehearsals for Act Three, which, according to the script she had read, called for the critic’s exposure and eventual destruction. Undercutting its message would take some doing. On the first day, she did nothing but listen and plan.

On Thursday, however, she arrived with her script marked up with new ideas.

“Up you get.” With no more fanfare than a flick of his wrist, Lord Dunstane ordered her to the stage. “Watch her,” he said to Mrs. Cole, who had given up protesting Julia’s incursions.

When Mr. Fanshawe called the scene, she spoke the lines as originally written.

“Again,” said Lord Dunstane in his quiet but forceful way as he stood and walked to the end of the row where he’d been seated for the past half an hour.

This time, she dared to incorporate a few of her changes.

“See,” he said to Mrs. Cole when the scene was done. “Sweet, not sour.”

Mr. Sawyer made a show of licking his lips, to the amusement of the men standing just offstage.

Lord Dunstane bounded up the steps. She thought, for a moment, that he would reprimand Mr. Sawyer’s bawdy behavior. But he stopped beside Mr. Fanshawe in the wings and explained away his decision to move by rubbing his neck with one hand, evidently easing the stiffness brought on by sitting below and looking up at the stage. “Again.”

Julia returned to Perpetua’s mark, drew a breath as if about to utter her lines, and then hesitated. “I’ve been thinking,” she said. “I wonder if it wouldn’t work better to—”

“Jesus.” Mr. Fanshawe tossed his script to the ground. “I signed on for a play by Ransom Blackadder, not Miss Hayes.”

Lord Dunstane swept the tattered paper aside with his foot, sending some of the pages fluttering into the pit. “Perhaps you’d rather not act at all. In this play, or any other.”