Earl's Well That Ends Well

by Jane Ashford

  “Did you enjoy your travels?” she asked.

  “I did.” He should have talked about the play, Arthur thought. But at the moment he couldn’t remember anything about the wretched piece. He didn’t usually have troubles like this.

  “And did your father?”

  Nothing to do but press forward. “He found that the Greek he’d learned in school was nothing like that spoken in the streets of Athens. He was quite outraged. He sent a letter of complaint to his old schoolmasters at Eton.”

  “Because he hadn’t been taught modern Greek?”

  “No. He felt that the Greeks should not have been allowed to stray from strict classical forms.”

  She laughed, and Arthur felt a surge of triumph. Laughter made friendships. He leaned a bit closer to her. The theater was filling, and the babble of the audience made conversation harder. He caught a hint of the sweet scent she wore, and lost his train of thought.

  “And what did they reply?”

  “They?”

  “The schoolmasters at Eton.”

  “Oh. Yes. I never heard. They didn’t mention the letter to me. Not even when I boasted to my schoolmates, after we returned, that I had seen the world. I was quite puffed up with my own consequence.”

  “Did you take the, ah, the ‘grand tour’ after your school days like so many young English milords?”

  How old did she think he was? “By the time I was of an age to do that, France had erupted in revolution,” he pointed out.

  “Ah. Yes.” Her dark eyes grew distant. “And then the war came to our country. I was to go—” She broke off abruptly.

  It seemed as if every conversational avenue led to awkwardness. Arthur wondered what journey the fighting in Spain had disrupted. He wanted to know all about her, and she didn’t wish to reveal anything about her life. It was an impasse.

  “It became impossible to travel,” she said as if closing the subject.

  He hated seeing melancholy in her face. What could he do to banish it? Arthur felt he would go to any lengths to cheer her. If only he knew how.

  He hadn’t meant to pry. It was natural to want to get to know a new…friend? Señora Alvarez was looking down again, hiding her face with the mantilla. Arthur struggled with unfamiliar frustration. Generally, people he met were eager to further the acquaintance. Some did it because they saw an advantage in the connection, of course. Society was full of toadeaters. But many liked him for himself. He became aware of an impulse to tell her so, and immediately felt like a preening coxcomb. He should talk of something else. Surely if he found the right words, she would respond. But none came to mind in this moment.

  The beginning of the play both rescued and thwarted him as everyone’s attention turned to the stage.

  Lord for a Season was the story of a young man who arrived in London pretending to be a lord. Based on many years of theater attendance, Arthur suspected the young man would actually turn out to be one in the end. Tom played one of the fashionable friends the hero made in town. It was a very small part—mostly standing about as the action unfolded, Tom had said. But he was onstage a good deal and had a few speeches. It was an opportunity for the lad to show what he could do. Arthur hoped that all would go well for his debut.

  Teresa leaned forward as Tom entered the play several scenes in. The theater makeup and borrowed clothes made him look older and more handsome, she thought. Tom was one of those males who would look better at forty than at sixteen.

  He showed no sign of fear. In truth, she was more nervous with Lord Macklin at her side than Tom seemed to be onstage. The earl wasn’t so very close to her, but somehow it felt as if he was. He was a powerful personality in every sense of those words. A fact that should not be forgotten, she reminded herself.

  The hero of the play pranced about and made affected speeches. Other characters answered him. The ingenue simpered. Tom had little to do, but he didn’t simply stand on the stage letting the action flow around him. He reacted to each line spoken with expressions and small movements. He reflected or contradicted other actors’ attitudes. Teresa could see the audience noticing him. Once they laughed when he gaped in astonishment at an exchange of quips. He was certainly drawing attention. Teresa saw two other actors frown at him in ways that had nothing to do with the action of the play.

  “What do you think of Tom’s performance?” Lord Macklin asked her when the first interval began.

  “I think he is in danger of annoying the chief actors by attracting too much attention,” Teresa replied.

  “I saw that. Not wise for a newcomer.”

  “No.” Jealousy was common in the theater.

  “He is rather good though.”

  She nodded. “He seems so much at ease on the stage. It’s as if he doesn’t even notice all the people staring at him.”

  “Tom has a gift of ease. I’ve often wondered where it can come from, considering his unfortunate childhood. Some inner light that cannot be extinguished, I suppose.”

  The man had a brush of the poet, Teresa thought. As well as the looks of a fairy-tale hero. Those steady blue eyes urged one to drop into them and forget all else. What was that English word? Blandishments. Yes. That’s what they were. Seductive blandishments. They promised honesty and understanding and warmth. As if eyes could not lie. Dangerous. She turned away. “That is a good way of putting it,” she said.

  A flurry at the doorway of the box drew her attention. It was crowded with male visitors. The young ladies were clearly attracting beaus in their bow to society. “How young they all look,” she murmured without thinking. She had wondered at first if the girls might be targets of the earl’s gallantry, but he’d shown no sign of interest. In fact, all the arrangements pointed to a desire to talk with her.

  “When I was their age, I was newly on the town and thought myself vastly sophisticated,” replied the earl quietly. He was smiling.

  “I was…” She stopped. At seventeen, she’d been engaged to the son of a Spanish count, a marriage arranged by their parents. Her bride clothes had been sewn and the wedding date set. And then her fiancé fell ill and died. She’d mourned the young man she hardly knew and, later, the future that had expired with him. Her life would have been so different if he’d lived. His estates were outside the main battle zone. They might have lost much, but not everything, in the subsequent war.

  “Is something wrong?”

  This Lord Macklin was too perceptive for comfort. His open expression invited confidences. But Teresa knew that confidences nearly always led to betrayal. They would be used to manipulate or extort. “Of course,” she said, making her tone dismissive. She had vowed never to be foolish again.

  She should have refused this invitation. She was enjoying Tom’s performance, but she was also creating a false impression. The young ladies were obviously curious, or had been before their admirers arrived. The earl’s party wanted to know who she was, where she came from, and why he had invited her to sit beside him in the box. The first two were none of their affair, and the last was…a whim she ought not to have indulged. She bent her head behind the shield of her mantilla.

  “Compton seems to be mounting a defense against the onslaught of visitors,” said Macklin. He sounded amused.

  “He is engaged to the young lady with the eyebrows,” Teresa replied. She had absorbed the flurry of introductions at the beginning of the evening.

  “Miss Ada Grandison,” the earl said.

  “She is very happy about that, I think.”

  “Yes, she won him in a treasure hunt.”

  Teresa wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. Was this perhaps some odd English idiom? She decided to ignore it. “I think the girl with the red hair wishes she was somewhere else,” she said.

  “Miss Finch does look uneasy,” her companion agreed. “Which is strange, since she is an heiress and much courted by society.”


  “For her money?” Teresa asked.

  “Well, in the beginning, I suppose so.”

  “And you wonder that she might not like that?”

  He did her the courtesy of considering her remark. “I can see that it is a two-edged sword,” he replied finally. “And yet her path in society is smoothed. She is welcomed as others are not. She may not realize her luck.”

  “That welcome has nothing to do with her personally,” said Teresa.

  “I would not go so far. She is a pretty girl, and amiable.”

  “The pick of the heiresses, in fact. Like the ripest orange on the tree.”

  He cocked his head at the bitterness that had entered her voice. “She will have more choices than many young ladies are granted.”

  Teresa bowed her head to acknowledge his point and to shade her face. Why did she agitate herself over strangers? She had enough to do managing her own life. She was glad when the play resumed and ended the conversation.

  Someone must have spoken to Tom, Arthur thought, because he was much more subdued in the later parts of the play. He did not draw attention from the main characters or add flourishes to his speeches. He was the model of a secondary actor. Arthur felt the retreat was too bad, but no doubt it was the better part of valor, and Tom would survive to act again.

  The lad’s part in the play ended well before the climax, and he appeared at Arthur’s box as soon as the piece was finished to receive their congratulations. “I should go,” began Señora Alvarez when these were done.

  “Not yet.” Tom took her arm with a grin. “We’re having champagne to celebrate, thanks to his lordship.”

  In fact this had been Tom’s idea. He’d arranged the whole. Really, the lad had become most enterprising in his new life.

  They moved en masse to the theater entrance. There were sidelong glances as they departed with the lad, forming one of the largest groups of admirers in the place. Only the lead actors had more, and they eyed his entourage with speculative rivalry. The attention was a two-edged sword, Arthur thought. Popularity would help Tom gain more roles and build a reputation as an actor, but it might also attract retribution. If anyone could navigate those shoals, however, it was Tom.

  Arthur had engaged a private parlor at a nearby inn, on Tom’s instructions. The lad guided them there very much like a sheepdog whose herd included one member very eager to stray. Tom hadn’t let go of Señora Alvarez’s arm. Fortunately for Arthur’s peace of mind, she began to look amused at the lad’s enthusiasm.

  At the inn, they opened champagne and toasted Tom’s performance and prospects for a successful career on the stage. “Have to say I like acting,” the lad said in reply. “Mebbe a bit too much, according to what was said to me during the first interval.”

  “I suppose the other actors were jealous because the audience liked you,” said Miss Deeping.

  “Do you think they did?” asked Tom.

  Arthur found it touching, as well as amusing, to see that Tom wasn’t immune to the desire for praise.

  “Oh yes,” said Miss Moran. “You were so funny.”

  This made Tom beam. “Mr. Bennett said it wasn’t my place to draw attention, though.”

  “Was he the one playing the hero?” asked Miss Ada Grandison.

  “That’s him.”

  “I would call him only a passable thespian,” declared Miss Julia Grandison, with the air of a seasoned critic.

  “But he is well known in the theater,” said Señora Alvarez. She frowned at Tom. “He could do you harm there.”

  “I begged his pardon and promised it wouldn’t nev…ever happen again,” said Tom. Under his breath he murmured, “The froward fustilarian.”

  That didn’t bode well, Arthur thought. “Mrs. Thorpe might have some good advice for you. No one knows the London theater better.”

  Tom nodded.

  The talk became more general. Teresa moved to the edge of the group, thinking that she might slip away and have the innkeeper find her a hackney. She felt she was here under false pretenses. She didn’t belong to their society. What had Lord Macklin told these people about her? Why hadn’t she asked him? But that would have been a very awkward conversation, and at any rate Tom had scarcely given her the chance. It seemed he had wanted her in the audience, and she was glad if her presence had been a support to him.

  But now was the moment to go. With luck, no one would notice. Teresa turned and found the four young ladies in her path. They flowed around her like a beautifully dressed wolf pack. She could see that they were bursting with questions.

  “Your headdress is lovely, Señora Alvarez,” said the tallest. Miss Deeping was her name, Teresa recalled, and her eyes were acute.

  “It’s called a mantilla,” said the smaller sandy-haired girl. That was Miss Moran, and the others were the sulky heiress Miss Finch and the engaged girl, Miss Grandison. She had remembered all the names, though it was still difficult really to tell them apart. “They wear them in Spain,” Miss Moran added.

  “Are you visiting from Spain?” asked Miss Ada Grandison.

  The four girls gazed at her, waiting for a response. Waiting to pounce on it, Teresa thought, almost as if they were accustomed to conducting interrogations together. It might have been intimidating if they hadn’t been half her age. She’d been making social conversation before they could form sentences. “No, I live in London,” she replied.

  “So you are a friend of Lord Macklin’s,” said Miss Deeping. This was not quite a question.

  “I am a friend of Tom’s,” replied Teresa. The earl was not a friend. He was…what precisely?

  “Oh, Tom.” They all smiled. Clearly they liked the lad, which was a mark in their favor. “He has so many friends,” said Miss Moran.

  “Indeed.” Teresa allowed a hint of umbrage to tinge her tone, as if being lumped in with the many was slightly insulting. Miss Moran blushed. This was beginning to be a little amusing.

  “Where did you meet him?” asked Miss Grandison.

  “I have a connection with the theater.” Teresa watched them digest this information, or lack of it. It was a game, replying without revealing, and it seemed they knew it better than she would have expected. The girls exchanged glances as if deciding who would speak next.

  “And you met Lord Macklin because of Tom,” said Miss Deeping.

  She was the most direct. Her dark eyes showed sharp intelligence. “I did,” admitted Teresa.

  “Lord Macklin is so truly the gentleman,” said Miss Moran.

  “He’s been terribly kind to Peter,” said Miss Grandison.

  Peter must be the ducal fiancé, Teresa thought, judging from Miss Grandison’s tender expression, which actually went well with her formidable eyebrows.

  “And others as well,” said the wealthy Miss Finch.

  They spoke of Macklin as of a favorite uncle. One they would unite to defend… That was the message Teresa was receiving. She couldn’t imagine that they would ever need to. The man seemed supremely able to take care of himself. And she was certainly no kind of threat. She had no designs on him. If she was glad to know that he didn’t flirt with these girls or attempt to beguile them, well, that was only because this was right and proper behavior, befitting the difference in their ages. And of course the earl was hampered by their social position. These young ladies were protected creatures, not prey.

  “He invited you to the play,” said Miss Deeping.

  “Because of Tom,” Teresa answered, more impatient with their questions suddenly.

  “Tom has so many friends. I daresay they would fill a dozen theater boxes.” And yet none of those other friends were here, the angular girl’s tone implied.

  The debutante wolf pack waited. Teresa let them. Silence didn’t intimidate her, and she didn’t owe these young ladies any answers. She noticed that the large lady chaperon
e was looming over the young duke and looking impatient. This party was about to break up, which would be a relief. Mostly. She had enjoyed dressing in her best and going out as she had in her youth. She couldn’t deny it.

  “You are rather a mystery,” said Miss Finch. “Very close-mouthed.”

  Teresa raised an eyebrow. An heiress could afford to be a little rude, she supposed. Much would be forgiven a fortune.

  “We solve mysteries,” said Miss Deeping.

  “You?” The word was surprised out of Teresa.

  Miss Deeping gestured at the four of them. “We,” she repeated. Her gaze held a hint of challenge.

  “We found a treasure in Shropshire,” Miss Moran burst out.

  Was this what Lord Macklin had meant about a fiancée won in a treasure hunt? Miss Grandison did look proudly smug. The idea was interesting, but Teresa didn’t like the thought of anyone “solving” her. Her history was no one else’s affair. That was a maxim of her new life, and she intended to keep it that way. “I am merely an acquaintance, not a mystery,” she said in a tone that signaled this conversation was over.

  “I have a puzzle for you,” said Tom. He had come up behind Teresa and now joined their group. “Or worse,” he added. “Happening over at the theater.”

  The girls’ heads turned to him in unison, like a group of cats spotting a bit of dangling string. “What is it?” asked Miss Deeping.

  “People disappearing,” said Tom. “Dancers.”

  “Another?” asked Teresa before she thought. This was bad news.

  “Odile,” replied Tom. “Nobody’s heard from her. She’s not been to her lodgings.” He shook his head. “She’s not the only one either,” he told the young ladies. “It’s the same with two others.”

  “Are you saying something happened to them?” asked Miss Moran.

  “Can’t help but think so. It’s too odd. Three of ’em to suddenly go off with no word.”

  “Perhaps they went together,” said Miss Deeping.

  Tom gave a humorless laugh. “That ain’t it. It was at different times. And Odile and Sonia came near to hair pulling more than once. Maria didn’t like either of ’em.”