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Mick placed his hands on the band of his breeches, puffing out his chest like a peacock. “The ending is completely unrealistic. What man, after finding the letters written to his lady, would forgive the adulteress so easily?”
Jo took a deep breath. The fern wasn’t doing its job anymore. Her face heated in rage. “If you read the play, you would know that not to be true.” Jo inwardly congratulated herself for reining in her impatience. “The baron had pursued her and threatened her throughout the play. She is not an adulteress.”
“Yet she hid the letters from her husband? Why would she do it if she weren’t guilty?”
“If you just read the bl—” Jo swallowed the rest of the sentence and forced herself to calm down. “It is all explained. He is a powerful lord, and she was afraid that her husband’s ire would get them in trouble. Which of course happens in the end, when he confronts the baron and kills him in a duel. As a result, they have to run away from the only home they’ve known.”
Mick watched her dispassionately for a moment before raising his eyes heavenward. “That is not only unrealistic but also boring. We don’t want to bore the wits out of people, do we?” He pulled out the script from behind his back—lord only knew where he’d stored it—and straightened it before Jo’s face. The script had corrections all over it. “Look, my version flows much better. I redid some dialogue, too,” he offered proudly. “The husband confronts his wife for her infidelity. She denies it all, but under the veil of darkness, she runs off to her lover—” His voice took on a dramatic overtone.
“He isnother lover!” Jo grumbled.
“—to warn him. But her husband catches her and kills the wife. Then the baron has time to pull out the gun and shoot the husband. The tragic ending is a lot more realistic than the idea that the husband would forgive her and they’d run off together.”
“That defeats the entire moral of the play. The villain gets what he deserves—”
“Yes, and she is the villain, the adulteress. She dies, and the jealous husband dies, too! Your point is achieved, and the plot becomes more believable.”
Jo watched Mick for a long moment, wondering ifshecould get away with murdering him. Now, instead of the fern, in her mind, she had a rapier in her hand. She ran him through, blood sputtering out of his mouth…
Jo shook the pleasant image out of her mind. Would she have a happy ending in that scenario, or would she get captured and quartered? The likely scenario would be that she’d be accused of being a witch and burned at the stake.
Jo let out a breath. “You are right. It is far more realistic that the man is a complete idiot and therefore he kills his wife for no good reason but his bigoted perception of her and all women.”
“Perfect!” Mick turned away toward the other actors—who stood nearby, listening raptly to their debate—clearly not having heard anything she’d said beyond ‘you are right.’
“Mick!” Jo shouted, tired of the arrogant arse. “We are not changing the ending. We shall perform it as written.”
The entire room fell silent as half a dozen heads turned her way. Mick raised a brow. “No need to get so emotional about this. You should show some restraint.”
Jo took a deep breath. He had no idea how much restraint she was exercising right at that moment. “We perform it as is,” she repeated evenly.
“As you wish.” He executed a mocking bow, then turned toward his fellow actors with raised brows and an incredulous grimace on his face.
* * *
Unsurprisingly, but irritatingly, Mick was good in this play, just as he always was. He knew his words. He was exceptionally dramatic, and the ladies in the audience swooned at the mere sight of him. Half of them likely didn’t even pay attention to the plot. They just watched with mesmerized expressions on their faces as he paced along the makeshift stage, and then gasped and fanned themselves whenever he actually spoke. When the scene lacked his presence, they waited for him to appear with bated breath.
Jo didn’t fault the ladies. They didn’t know that in real life he was a pompous arse. They didn’t know that he terrorized the actresses, disrespected anyone who wasn’t his superior, and didn’t even show up to the rehearsals.
No. Nobody knew that except for the small troupe currently on stage, and even they were hypnotized by the snake that he was.
But for the ladies of theton, he was a novelty. A temporary distraction. Sometimes a short-lived clandestine affair.
Jo was the same thing to the lords of theton. These aristocrats viewed all the actors and actresses as playthings. But unlike Mick, Jo didn’t like the way she was perceived by theton.She’d worked really hard to get away from the mistress persona, but it wasn’t easy. Being beautiful, young, and an actress sealed her fate in being viewed as a temporary distraction, whether on stage or in bed.
Usually, it was quite easy for her to stay dispassionate as she flirted with the lords and pretended to be flattered by their flirtations. But this time, a certain pair of eyes followed her around the stage with passion and hunger glinting in them. And she would have easily thwarted the attention of this man or would have used it to her advantage, but something in his feral gaze called to her, and she longed to answer the call.
Soon, their performance would be over. And perhaps it would be a good idea for Jo to leave and never see the viscount again. And yet…
“Jo! It’s your turn!” Selena whispered loudly as she pushed Jo out of her thoughts.
Right. The final part of the play. Jo sauntered onto the stage as the aggrieved wife Odette who’d just discovered her husband Milton reading the notes that had come from the insistent Lord Brackenridge.
Milton, played by Mick, demanded an explanation and Jo recited her lines.
Now was the time for Mick to fly into a rage, take out his pistol, and go after the blackguard Brackenridge.
Jo looked at Mick as he dramatically turned away from her, anguish evident on his face. “Oh, Odette, how have you wronged me! You shall pay for your mistakes!” He pulled out a gun and pulled the trigger!
