Page 77 of The Lady Plays with Fire

After maneuvering through throngs of curious theatergoers, Julia was at last reunited with Aunt Mildred in the long saloon behind the boxes. “Well, my dear,” the older woman said, her lorgnette half raised to her eyes, “that was quite the theatrical debut.”

Tears sprang to Julia’s eyes—shock, fatigue, and a hundred more emotions that she could not name. “Oh, Aunt. This will teach me to be careful what I wish for.”

“Come, now,” Aunt Mildred said, looping her arm through Julia’s. “It’s not like you to give up so easily. And who knows what may happen, now that you’re to be married to the most notorious playwright of the age?”

She’d almost forgotten that Graham had revealed his secret identity to the world—to forestall Fanshawe, who had come perilously close to revealing hers.

“Jeremy is fit to be tied by it all. He may yet refuse his consent.”

They reached the lower level, walked through the vestibule, and emerged into the chilly evening, where the line of carriages had begun to thin. Aunt Mildred pointed with her walking stick toward the barouche, directing Julia’s footsteps. “Your brother has enough to concern himself with, just now. Scolding the future Countess of Dunstane can wait. Half Moon Street,” she called up to the driver when they were within earshot.

“Aunt Mildred?” Julia asked uncertainly. It was not a direction she recognized, and it would hardly be proper to hope.

“Dunstane will have need of a nursemaid,” the other woman explained with a wink, the movement almost lost in shadow if not for the twinkle of her eye. “It’s only right for me to send him the best.”

* * *

Graham arrived in Half Moon Street at nearly midnight, exhausted as much by the tumult of his emotions as the pain in his hand, the expenditure of nervous energy draining him more than the loss of blood.

Climbing wearily from the hackney, he struggled up the steps and into the house. No doubt the cabbie thought him a sot. Once inside, a footman reached to help him off with his greatcoat. Graham merely shrugged, and his coat and greatcoat came away together; the physician, Essex, had only draped them over his shoulders after bandaging Graham’s hand and strapping his arm into a sling to discourage its use.

“My lord?” the footman began. Graham’s shirt was streaked with blood.

Graham waved him off with his good hand. “See that I’m not disturbed.” Then he trudged up another two flights of stairs to his bedchamber and swung open the door, expecting to have to fend off his valet. Just a dozen steps more to his bed.

To his surprise, Harcourt was not within. Nevertheless, he or someone had prepared the room for an invalid. The bedcoverings had been turned back and the pillows fluffed. A roaring fire crackled in the hearth.

The firelight painted a glow across the sleeping figure of Julia, curled in an oversized leather chair, hair down about her shoulders, still clad in the costume of Perpetua Philpot. His ring glittered on her finger. He blinked twice, trying to clear the vision.

“Lass.”

He’d meant it for a scold, but the word eased from him with what sounded suspiciously like relief. She jerked awake and to her feet. “Graham.” Her bright eyes swept over him, as if checking to make sure he was still whole. “You’re here.”

“Aye. And you shouldn’t be.”

A toss of her head sent unexpected sparks of red and gold scattering from her dark locks. “It’s no use sounding all gruff and telling me I have to go. I’m here to nurse you back to health, on Aunt Mildred’s orders.” With gentle pressure, she guided him to sit in the chair she’d just vacated.

He sank down to find the leather warmed by the fire and her body. He was too tired to argue, though he knew he ought. “How did you get in?” he asked instead, attempting to toe off his shoes.

“Let me,” she insisted, kneeling before him and slipping the shoes off his feet, then setting them neatly aside. “When the footman opened the door, I simply wouldn’t let him say no.”

Suddenly Graham understood that what he’d taken for the manservant’s expression of concern had more likely been an attempt at a warning.

“Though he did fetch someone else. Your secretary, I believe, who—”

“Never say Keynes let you wait in my bedchamber?” He could picture the man’s goggling eyes and determined, though obviously ineffectual, protests.

“I didn’t exactly ask permission,” she admitted, glancing up at him with a mischievous smile and waggling her hand to make the ring sparkle. “And he seemed to run out of arguments when I told him I was your betrothed.”

He started to shake his head in patent disbelief. Had her work at the magazine encouraged such shocking “miss conduct,” or had she always been prone to it?

But when he looked into her glowing, upturned face, he forgot to be disapproving. “When I think of what might have happened tonight, the harm that might have come to you . . . I should never—”

“I stepped onto that stage most willingly,” she reminded him. “Though I do believe I’m now well and truly cured of my longing to act.”

“You were brilliant,” he insisted. “From the first scene to the last.”

“You may tell me that as many times as you wish.” Her kiss was swift, more a buss in passing as she got to her feet. “But first you need your rest.”