Page 10 of The English Wife

Mr. Van Duyvil slowed his steps as he thought about it. “You could argue that he was expunging a stain—purging the corruption from society.”

“By killing it off?” There was something heady about the way he was listening to her, really listening. “That’s throwing out the baby with the bathwater.”

“Well … metaphorically.”

“It’s hardly a metaphor when the stage is covered with bodies.”

“The bodies of people who never were,” pointed out Mr. Van Duyvil. “It’s all a fiction.”

“What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, that he would weep for her?” quoted Georgie in exaggerated tones. “But he does weep for her, that’s the point.”

“As I recall, that wasn’t quite the point—” Mr. Van Duyvil began, but Georgie swept his objections aside.

“If the characters aren’t made real to you, if you don’t mourn for them when they fall, why watch the play?”

“For the poetry?” A slow smile spread from Mr. Van Duyvil’s eyes down to his lips. “You are a passionate advocate for your art, Miss Evans.”

And you, thought Georgie, are a far more accomplished flirt than you seem.

“I was merely passing the time.” Georgie drew her arm from Mr. Van Duyvil’s, ostensibly to fix the angle of her hat. She looked up at him from under the brim. “I’m afraid we’ve been lumbered with each other, so we’d best make the best of it.”

“I wouldn’t say—that is, I’m quite enjoying—” Mr. Van Duyvil’s eyes caught hers, and he made a helpless gesture. “This whole evening has been something quite out of the common. Hugo told me we were seeing Shakespeare.”

Georgie smiled without humor. “And so it is—Shakespeare ground up like sausage and about as appetizing.”

It was the Ali Baba’s specialty: Shakespeare with song, blank verse transformed into ribald rhymes, a nudge and a wink and a few bad puns. So far, Georgie had played Ophelia in a wetted slip, sighing and swooning across the battlements of Elsinore; Rosalind in breeches, strutting through the Forest of Arden; and a surprisingly musical Lady Macbeth, rending her bodice in strategic ways as she called upon the spirits to unsex her here.

That had evoked a great deal of very predictable commentary from the stalls.

“Just be grateful it wasn’t Macbeth,” said Georgie grimly. “You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen Birnham Wood showing its shimmy all the way to Dunsinane.”

The skin around Mr. Van Duyvil’s eyes crinkled. “Isn’t it bad luck to say the name of the Scottish play?”

“Did you think anything could make the Ali Baba much worse?”

“I didn’t mean that the show wasn’t good. It was quite…”

“Awful?”

“I was going to say unique.” They walked in silence for a moment, before Mr. Van Duyvil ventured, “If you’ll forgive my asking … why Eleven and One Nights?”

“The Grand Pajandrum—that’s Mr. Dunstan, the proprietor—thought it would be more likely to bring in the punters than Twelfth Night. Shades of Scheherazade and all that.”

Mr. Van Duyvil looked down at her with new interest. “You’ve read the Thousand and One Nights?”

“Bits of it.” Georgie wasn’t about to admit to reading. Men expected their chorus girls to conform to a pattern. It didn’t do to disrupt their thinking. Keep her head down and keep moving, that’s what she had learned. “Everyone was talking about it. You’ll have noticed the name of the theater?”

“The name of the … oh.” Mr. Van Duyvil grinned sheepishly. “The Ali Baba. Of course.”

“Instead of forty thieves, you only get your pocket picked by one—the ticket taker. Sorry. House joke.”

“Mind the puddle.” Mr. Van Duyvil took her arm, guiding her away from a damp patch that was undoubtedly more than rainwater. His touch was gentle, respectful. He made her feel almost like the lady she might once have been.

An illusion, like the stage on which they played. With murmured thanks, Georgie tucked her arm close to her side, wearing her coat like armor.

Ahead of them, Kitty’s arm was entwined with Sir Hugo’s, his lips close to her ear as they made their progress down the ill-lit street. He was saying something about Deauville, and the races, and the beautiful people who filled the stands, his aristocratic drawl weaving webs of fancy around Kitty, a thousand and one tales of wonder. Although Georgie doubted Sir Hugo would keep her for the whole of one night, much less a thousand. That Kitty was caught, Georgie had no doubt. She could see it shining in her eyes, glassy with gin and ambition.

Oh, Kitty, thought Georgie. Kitty hadn’t got over the dream that her prince would come, would see her onstage and sweep her away to a life of riches and leisure, stretched out on a chaise longue with minions bustling about, bringing her bonbons. All it took was for one Gaiety Girl to marry a marquis and the entire chorus went broody.