Silver Deceptions

by Sabrina Jeffries

  “I need you to write a scene. It’s got to be the best thing you’ve ever written and very convincing.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?” Aphra asked.

  “It has to be good enough to free my father and Colin, good enough to be performed before your most discriminating audience yet.”

  Aphra’s eyes narrowed. “Who?”

  “His Majesty.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Plots, true or false, are necessary things,

  To raise up commonwealths and ruin kings.”

  —John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel

  Soft violin music wafted from the musicians’ box to where Annabelle sat in one of the special boxes, the one next to the king’s. It felt odd to sit across from the stage instead of behind it. It felt odder still to wear a mask, although she knew no one else would remark on it, since plenty of women did at the theater.

  Yet except for the mask and her seat in the box, tonight was no different from any other night at the theater. Her hands were clammy with both nervousness and the rush of excitement that came before a performance. She still wore a costume, even if it was just an expensive gown she’d purchased with Buckingham’s money in a very ostentatious manner.

  If everything went according to plan, however, her audience would be far more limited . . . and far more discerning than usual. Oh yes, this would be the role of a lifetime. It had to be absolutely convincing, or His Majesty would never believe it.

  Thank heaven Sir William Davenant had agreed to help her and Aphra by pushing up the production of George Etherege’s new play, She Would If She Could. Etherege was popular with the wits and gallants, so she and Aphra had reasoned that a new play of his would draw most of fine society.

  And it had. Everyone of any consequence was there. The seats had been filled by two o’clock, even though the performance wasn’t scheduled until three-thirty. Still, she’d not been able to rest until the king and Buckingham arrived. Once she’d heard noises in the box next to her and had recognized the king’s bored tone and Buckingham’s lazy one, she’d relaxed.

  Now, if only her plan worked. She hoped she could say Aphra’s skilled lines with some degree of sincerity and that Aphra’s first attempt at acting would turn out well. Charity would certainly do her part with ease.

  The curtains opened, and the first part of her plan fell into place as the theater owner himself announced that Mrs. Maynard wouldn’t be playing the part of Lady Cockwood as scheduled. Mrs. Shadwell would play the part instead, Sir William Davenant stated, to some isolated boos from the wits.

  As soon as he left the stage, the whispering started in the pit. Annabelle could see one gallant after another beckoning to Charity, who moved about and muttered first in one ear, then in another. Fortunately, no one noticed her sitting alone above the pit. Not that they would have recognized her with her mask on.

  Everything was in motion, yet Annabelle couldn’t relax. So many things could go wrong. It was a good thing Sir William hadn’t asked them too many questions. He would throttle all of them when he realized how they intended to disrupt the big night.

  As she waited, she fidgeted in her seat, unable to dull the edge of fearful anticipation in her blood. Her anxiety was only slightly alleviated when she heard Sir Charles Sedley enter next door and repeat to His Majesty the rumors Charity had circulated below. When His Majesty laughed, she relaxed a fraction. Sir Charles hadn’t been in on the plan, but he was perfect. His Majesty had taken the first nibble at the hook, thanks to Sir Charles’s gossiping tongue.

  Time passed far too slowly after that. She felt as if she were watching it all from underwater. But at last Henry Harris made his entrance onstage and spoke the lines she’d been waiting for. It was time.

  Right on cue, Aphra swung open the door to Annabelle’s box. “Annabelle Maynard! I should have known you’d be skulking about in here, hiding behind a mask! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

  “Keep your voice down, Aphra, if you please!” Annabelle retorted in a stage whisper that would carry quite easily to the box next to her. “I don’t want Sir William to know I’m here. He thinks I’m ill.”

  “So he does.” Aphra dropped into the chair next to Annabelle and squeezed her hand before continuing in a scathing tone, “But we both know why you don’t wish to tread the boards tonight.”

  The voices in the next box had grown quiet as well as those in two of the other boxes. Annabelle bit back a smile and made her tone haughty. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I heard what Charity’s telling everyone, all that rot about you not taking the stage because you’re distraught over your newly found father’s arrest. You ought to be ashamed for letting them believe such lies.”

  “I am distraught over my poor dear father’s arrest,” she said in the sarcastic tone she’d perfected when sparring with gallants. “Here I am, having just found him, and now he’s being whisked away from me.”

  “Such fustian, and you know it! If you hadn’t lied about that poem, he wouldn’t have been arrested at all.”

  Annabelle gave a dramatic sigh. “I didn’t lie. My father did give that poem to my mother to deliver to someone in Norwood.”

  “Aye, but to one of the Royalists, as you well know. You didn’t bother to tell them, did you, that the poem was sent to that Benedict fellow, or that the line about Hart was meant to warn his friends that their companion was a traitor. Nor did you happen to mention that the reference to ‘crownless hands’ referred to the Roundheads. That poem clearly stated that if his companions didn’t leave St. Stephens they’d be captured. Of course, you kept that all quite secret.”

  Now a gallant was looking up from the pit at them. He nudged his companion and they focused their eyes on the two women conversing above them. She and Aphra had pitched their voices to stand out slightly over the hum of audience noise that always accompanied the plays, so she knew that anyone who paid attention would hear them.

  “I didn’t see the need to tell His Majesty everything,” Annabelle said smugly, but wondered if the men in the next box could truly be so dense as to not realize this was staged. Then again, they’d been pretty dense in other matters.

  Besides, it didn’t matter if they figured it out. She’d still have made the situation public in a way that the king dared not ignore.

  “Aye, you told them exactly what you wanted them to know,” Aphra hissed. “I take it you didn’t tell them that you hold your father responsible for abandoning your mother.”

  “That was none of their affair,” Annabelle said with a sniff.

  Aphra gave a mocking laugh. “Nor did it suit your plans. I hope you’re happy now. An innocent man is in prison because of your lies. Thanks to you, your father is being treated as a traitor instead of the hero that he was.”

  “Why do you care about my father anyway?” Annabelle said in her stage whisper. “You know it was monstrous of him to abandon my mother and me. What does it matter to you if I wish to avenge that?”

  “I don’t care a whit for your father. But thanks to your insane desire to see vengeance, my friend Lord Hampden is in the Tower. That’s what you should be ashamed of. After all, he was your lover.”

  “Was. Until he ran off somewhere to meet another woman, leaving me here without so much as a shilling to see me through his absence.”

  Aphra sighed loudly. “Yes, well, he is a wastrel, but I could have told you that. In any case, you landed well enough on your feet.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I know about that tidy sum Buckingham sent to you this morning in payment for your lies about your father.”

  They both heard the gasp in the next box, but Annabelle continued the conversation as if she’d not noticed at all.

  “I suppose you’ll want some of it now to help you pay off your debt,” Annabelle said hotly.

  “Well, I have been lodging you at my house. I don’t think you should begrudge me a little of Buckingham’s money.�
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  Now the people in the fourth box over were straining forward to hear the conversation, which had risen in loudness since they’d begun. Annabelle shot Aphra a questioning glance through the slits of her mask. How long should they continue this before they’d said enough? The first act was ending, and once the interlude came, they’d not be able to be heard by anyone, even His Majesty.

  Annabelle gave an exaggerated sigh. “All right, then. I’ll give you some of it. Trouble is, the gold’s not going very far. This gown cost me nearly all of it, though it was worth it to be able to buy a decent gown for a change. I swear, Lord Hampden was terribly lax about such things.”

  “That’s not provocation enough to have him put in the Tower, for God’s sake,” Aphra retorted slyly.

  “I didn’t have him put in the Tower. That was all Rochester’s doing. He was angry, you know—”

  A tap at the door to the box made her break off. Sweet Mary, it had taken them long enough.

  Now the more difficult part of her performance would begin. “Enter,” she said, making her voice sound more normal.

  Lord Rochester opened the door, his face blanched in rage. “Mrs. Maynard? It is you under that mask, isn’t it?”

  Annabelle nodded her head regally. “I wish to be alone just now, Lord Rochester.”

  “I beg your pardon, madam,” he said, his tone heavily sarcastic, “but His Majesty has sent me to request that you accompany me to his box.”

  She dropped her mouth open in feigned surprise. “Oh, dear heaven, is His Majesty here tonight?”

  “Yes.” His eyes shot daggers at her. He, at least, was not fooled by her little scene . . . but then, he wasn’t the man she needed to fool.

  Rising to her feet and flashing Aphra an exaggerated look of horror, she followed Lord Rochester into the passageway and then into the next box. His Majesty had apparently sent away everyone but Buckingham. They’d also pulled the curtains to cut off the noise of the theater, although every eye was probably on those closed curtains.

  She only hoped enough people had overheard her and Aphra’s conversation to ensure that the king couldn’t take her statements lightly.

  “Mrs. Maynard,” the king remarked, his eyes cold on her as she curtsied. “If you would be so kind as to remove the mask—”

  “Of course,” she murmured and did as he asked.

  It made it easier to see his face, which looked flushed even in the dim light of the sconces.

  “ ’Tis very rude of us, we know,” the king said, “but we couldn’t help overhearing your conversation with Mrs. Behn.”

  I should hope not, given how hard we worked to make sure of it. She feigned a stricken expression. “Oh, dear heaven, I had no idea that—”

  “We must say, your conversation has us disturbed, very disturbed indeed.”

  It was all she could do to keep from looking at Buckingham to see how he was taking this.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she murmured.

  “You’ve said enough already,” the king snapped. “Egad, what kind of woman would deliberately set out to ruin a respectable man like your father?”

  She drew on all her acting abilities to look devastated. “Oh, Your Majesty, ’tis not at all how it sounded. Aphra is peeved at me, so she has made up these insane accusations—”

  “Enough of your lies. Lord Hampden as well has pointed out the alternate interpretations of the poem. We did not believe him, of course, because Walcester is his friend and we assumed he was misled, but now we see that he told the truth after all.”

  “But, Your Majesty—” she protested.

  “Silence!”

  The king turned to Buckingham, and only then did she dare venture a look at the duke. He kept his features carefully indifferent, but she could see the anger seething behind his eyes. He definitely understood what she’d just done. And now she’d made an enemy of him, though it couldn’t have been helped.

  “Buckingham,” the king said in a stern voice that made her quake for the duke, “how do you suggest we handle this terrible situation?”

  Buckingham regarded her a moment longer with glittering eyes. Then he turned to the king with an ingratiating smile. “I would humbly propose that Lord Walcester be released, Your Majesty. It appears that a gross error has been made.”

  The king nodded wearily, for the first time not looking quite so in command.

  Had His Majesty really believed her little scene? Or had he simply been forced to accept her presentation of the matter because he knew if he didn’t, his subjects, many of whom had also heard the exchange, would rise up in outrage to demand the earl’s release? After all, it wouldn’t do for him to appear to mistreat a hero at the word of a lowly actress. He had enough trouble dealing with his subjects’ dislike of his many mistresses and their pensions.

  It didn’t matter why; her father was going to be released. But no mention had been made of Colin. And she could hardly ask about him when she’d been pretending indifference to his plight. Still, how could they keep him imprisoned now?

  “Your Majesty, what are we to do with Mrs. Maynard?” Buckingham asked.

  She caught her breath. She’d deliberately ignored the possibility that they might punish her for falsely maligning a noble, but deep down she’d known to expect it. That was the way these things were handled. Horrible memories filled her mind . . . her mother’s cell, her mother’s last ride to the gallows, her mother with the noose about her neck . . .

  “What do you think?” His Majesty asked, turning a shrewd gaze on Buckingham.

  Annabelle’s heart pounded, but Buckingham’s hatred for her might work to her advantage. Everyone now knew he’d given her money to keep silent, so they would assume, if he ordered some cruel punishment, that he was retaliating, and that wouldn’t look good either.

  Buckingham stared at her a moment, obviously itching to torment her. Then he said in a bored tone, “She’s a woman, Your Majesty, and women are weak in matters like these. They think only of their petty emotions and strike in fury without giving the matter the more considered thought that a man would.”

  Annabelle tensed. It was so like a man to consider a woman’s maneuvering to be motivated by petty emotion, while his own was motivated only by sound logic. Buckingham had schemed more than she had, and would get only a few words of disapproval from the king for it. While she was to be given . . . what?

  “Why not order that she be dismissed from the duke’s players?” Buckingham went on. “That way you’ll prevent her from continuing her scheming among the nobility. I think that’s a suitable punishment.”

  Aye, he would think so. An actress dismissed from her company generally had one of two choices—find a protector or sink into the darkness of the whorehouses. And since she’d offended every nobleman’s sensibilities and betrayed her father, Buckingham no doubt thought she’d have only the latter choice.

  But she knew better. She’d always find a way to survive. The theater had taught her that.

  The king appeared to consider Buckingham’s suggestion. Then he nodded. “That sounds most appropriate.” He leveled a stern gaze on her. “Mrs. Maynard, we hope that, away from the theater, you will reflect upon the error of your ways.”

  She’d best make a token protest. “But, Your Majesty, how will I live? I have nothing but my profession.”

  Charles II waved his hand dismissively. “You should have thought about that before you embarked on this terrible scheme. Now begone. We are fast tiring of your deceitful countenance.”

  After falling into a deep curtsy, she stormed dramatically from the king’s box. As soon as she’d moved into the passageway, Aphra met her, but Rochester was standing there watching them, so she couldn’t say a word to her friend.

  With hurried steps, she left the second tier, conscious that the interlude had begun and people would soon be milling about. She had to get out before that. The story of what she’d done would be spreading through the theater, and she didn’t feel like
enduring the murmurs and contemptuous remarks.

  How odd—now that she’d finally succeeded in making herself truly scandalous, she didn’t care.

  It was probably a fitting punishment for a woman who’d betrayed her own father. Well, at least she and her father were even on that score. He was once more the revered member of the nobility, and she was, as always, the despised bastard.

  But it no longer bothered her. After tonight, she knew she could do anything she put her mind to. By heaven, if Colin weren’t released in a few days, she’d manufacture some other scheme for his release.

  Feeling a little better, she walked through the foyer, doing her best to maintain her role of affronted actress. Just as she passed Sir William’s tiny office near the front doors, however, two hands reached out and dragged her forcibly inside, shutting the door behind her.

  Thinking some forward gallant had waylaid her, she whirled, a hot retort on her lips that died when she saw who’d grabbed her.

  “Colin!” she exclaimed. “But . . . but how? I thought . . .”

  He frowned, but the twinkle in his eyes belied his attempt to look severe. “Now, now, dearling. I could hardly stay in the Tower with Buckingham buying you gowns and Aphra calling me a wastrel, could I? Besides, having left you without so much as a shilling, I had to at least correct that injustice.”

  She colored. “You heard . . .”

  “Aye.” He grinned, all pretense of anger gone. “Leave it to you to find a way to make the king eat his words, and before an audience, no less. I assume he did eat his words when he took you aside.”

  She nodded, unable to keep back her exuberant smile. “My father’s been freed, although Buckingham’s mad as a hornet about it.”

  “Not surprising. He’s just found himself outwitted by a woman, and isn’t quite certain if it was intentional or simply bad fortune on his part.” His grin faded. “Annabelle, dearling, you are amazing.”

  Her breath caught in her throat at his searing look. With a low cry, she threw herself into his arms and he clasped her so close, she exulted. He was safe and free, and he wasn’t angry at her!