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Jo dove under his arm and opened the door to her dressing room.
Mick stepped away at last. “Think about it, Jo. You need a friend. What if someone finds out your true backgroundJosephine? Then the entire theater will go down in flames. You don’t want that to happen, now, do you?”
Jo turned toward him, her nostrils flaring. “What do you know about my background, Mick?”
“Everybody in the theater knows. But they keep silent because who cares if the actress is a harlot? All of you are. But a playwright?” He shrugged with a disgusted grimace. “Yes. Perhaps people watched the plays written by the king’s mistress, but a lowly whore’s daughter? Not likely.”
Jo gripped the door handle tight, to the point of her knuckles whitening. She wanted to punch Mick in his nose. Instead, she slammed the door in his face.
“Do think about it,” he called from behind the door.
Jo whirled around in her dressing room, feeling more defeated than she had before.
Then things suddenly turned for the better as something surprising caught her eye.
A bouquet of beautiful flowers stood on her vanity table.
She slowly walked toward it, something warm unfurling inside her chest before she even saw who the flowers were from.
She fished out the card and read:
Please forgive my boorish behavior. I was a cad to not tell you the full truth. I was an arse to propose what I did. And I am going to spend the rest of my life trying to get you to forgive me.
* * *
For the next two weeks, Jo kept receiving flowers, sweetmeats, and even poems from Richard.
She never responded.
She knew that his intentions were pure at heart, but it still didn’t justify what he had done, and neither did it solve any of their problems.
She was still an actress. He was still a viscount.
And as far as she knew, he was still betrothed.
She checked the papers diligently for any news on the wedding, but there was nothing. But there was nothing about the dissolution of the wedding either.
As much as Jo enjoyed the attention, as much as she grinned and giggled like a little girl with every gift she’d received, a piece of her also died every day. Because things weren’t actions. Words in poetry weren’t promises.
So as long as that was true, she wasn’t going to melt before him and forgive him for everything.
And then one day, it all stopped.
When Jo went into her dressing room expecting another gift, it wasn’t there.
Perhaps Richard had decided that it was a waste of time, which it was. Perhaps he saw the futility of his actions and realized this was not the way back to Jo’s heart.
Jo agreed.
But it still stung.
As a result, when Jo went to join the cast for a special meeting that Mr. Hart had invited them to, she was in a sour mood. And her mood only turned for the worse when she found out what the reason for the meeting was.
The theater manager proudly presented a new play they were going to perform that year. A new play written by their own Michael Kenworthy.
Except that the play wasn’t his. It was Jo’s.
It was the play Jo had written for Lady Vane’s house party.
