by Megan Chance
“ ‘A serpent’s tongue hid by a flowery face.’ ” Aloys fanned himself with a folded Post-Intelligencer. “What is it, Bea? Can’t resist stinging such a pretty bud this morning?”
I sighed and smiled my best at Mr. DeWitt, who, thankfully, seemed stunned by it. “Forgive me. I’m not myself this morning.”
Jackson said, “Who is? It is dreadfully hot.”
“I fear I should quite shrivel up and blow away,” Mrs. Chace said, plopping herself down on the edge of the stage, already red-faced, her grayed strawberry blond hair tumbling from its pins as if she’d walked twenty miles instead of a block and a half to get here.
“You’ve a bit more shriveling to go before that might happen, milady,” Jackson said.
Brody chortled; it turned into a snort.
Mrs. Chace glared at him. She wiped her neck with her handkerchief. “Well, I feel quite evaporated.”
Mr. DeWitt went to the prop table and began laying out his pencils and pens. His fingers were already black with ink, as early as it was. Mr. Geary strutted onto the stage. “Are we quite ready, ladies and gentlemen? Where is our star?”
“Not here yet,” Susan said.
“Maybe she’ll send a maid to fill in for her,” Brody said.
“We’ve got Bea for that. After all, she’s Mrs. Langley’s proxy in other ways.” Jack guffawed.
In irritation, I said, “We can’t start without her. She has lines on nearly every page. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve better things to do than wait around for someone who thinks she’s a star when she hasn’t a lick of.…” I trailed off as Jackson put his finger to his lips and shook his head, and then I heard Lucius’s booming voice behind me.
“What ‘better things’ might that be, my dear? Have you decided against accepting the part of Marjory?”
I turned to see him emerging from the wings, Mrs. Langley behind him. “You’d fine any one of us for being this late.”
“But Mrs. Langley hasn’t signed a contract, and thus she has no idea of the rules, which are more precisely meant for actors who can’t remember their place.” Lucius smiled, but his eyes were fierce. I looked away—of course I did. Lucius was a money-grubbing toad, but I was here by his sufferance, and I should have known to expect nothing more. I was the fool who’d trusted him. And it wasn’t really him I was angry with anyway.
“I am sorry. There was an accident on the road.” Mrs. Langley came forward.
Said sincerely enough, though she had that infuriating society way about her that made me angry just on principle.
Lucius strode to the table. “Well, then, the day whiles away. Shall we begin?”
Mrs. Langley followed him. She took off her hat and reached into her bag to pull out the script pages, though the rest of us had been off book for days now, and I waited for Lucius to tell her she couldn’t use it. Of course he didn’t, the hypocrite, just as he wouldn’t fine her either—and no lack of contract had ever stopped him before, whatever he said.
Lucius called out the scene. The rehearsal was what all rehearsals were: studied exercises in chaos, but Mrs. Langley’s inexperience forced us to rehearse scenes four or five times. I was torn between resenting that she was ruining the part I would have been so brilliant in, and taking delight in how she stumbled about the stage, in how stiffly she read the lines. At any other time, I would have found it amusing. Today, it only made me angrier.
Though Mrs. Langley could not know it, she was the victim of the company’s merciless guying. There had never been so much stumbling, flubbing lines, or crossing up stage right and stage left. All meant to keep her confused. It didn’t seem to faze her, actually; she had this smiling dignity that would have cowed lesser actors. But my fellows were bent on taking their revenge for me, and she didn’t manage to guilt them into behaving. Lucius sat there simmering, but you know, what could he do when the whole company was in revolt?
“I do not think I can speak this line,” Mrs. Chace called out, plopping herself down beside me where I sat on the edge of the stage. “I simply refuse to say it. Mrs. Cadsworth would never be so cruel as to not let Penelope rest!”
“She is a villain, madam,” DeWitt said in exasperation.
“Still she is, in her heart, kind. I insist you rewrite the line. I shall say instead something like: ‘My dear Miss Justis, you are weary. You must sit a spell.’ And I shall say it standing to your left, Mrs. Langley.”
DeWitt said, “She means to get Penny to her son before Keefe discovers them.”
Mrs. Chace said, “Perhaps an accident could delay Keefe.”
“There is no accident.”
“It would erode a great deal of the tension, my dear, if you took time to rest during what is in essence a kidnapping,” Aloys pointed out. “Speed is imperative. I am after all hoping not to be discovered as I wait to meet you. I cannot pace about the street forever without rousing suspicion.”
“I cannot say it,” Mrs. Chace said stubbornly.
“I’ll be happy to take the line,” I put in. “Perhaps Marjory could be secretly working against Penny.”
Brody laughed beneath his hand.
DeWitt’s sigh was loud and long-suffering. “It needs to be Mrs. Cadsworth’s line. Marjory is racing back to tell Keefe what has happened. She cannot both be trying to find her brother and in town.”
I gave him a bright look. “Perhaps you should rewrite it then. We could put a song in between, and no one would notice she was in two places at the same time.”
“A brilliant idea, Bea,” said Jackson. “That is exactly what you should do, DeWitt.”
DeWitt jammed his face into his hands, threading his fingers through his hair. Mrs. Langley looked uncertain.
Lucius glared at me. “Shall we continue with the play as DeWitt wrote it, please?”
I shrugged. “Perhaps you should ask Mr. Langley’s advice, Lucius. He’s so good at casting, after all. Who knows but that he might be good at plotting as well?”
Mrs. Langley frowned.
Jackson whistled low between his teeth.
“Put away your stinger, Bea,” Lucius said sourly. “Unless you’re inclined to pay a forfeit, you will continue with the play as it is written.”
I feigned offense. “You’ve allowed us to make suggestions before.”
“Yes, when they were honest ones,” he said. “Now carry on.”
I knew when I’d pushed him far enough. I turned away and caught Jackson’s eye. He winked at me, and I couldn’t help smiling. But I didn’t do anything else to stall the rehearsal. I didn’t need to. Mrs. Langley’s inexperience was doing enough all by itself.
She consistently moved to the wrong places; she was wedded to the script and spoke haltingly, her line readings all wrong—twice Brody laughed out loud. Three times she walked right into stagehands moving things about, and once she stumbled into the backdrop so the painters complained—fortunately for her, the real painting was going on above, and she smudged nothing. By the time rehearsal was over, the rest of us only had two hours before we had to be back again.
When Lucius finally excused us, Mrs. Langley looked near tears. She spoke to no one as she shoved her script back into her matching bag and repinned her hat to her head, and no one spoke to her. At least, no one did until Sebastian DeWitt stepped up to her. I couldn’t hear what they said, but she turned to him with a relieved smile and put her hand on his arm, and I realized with a little start that he was comforting her. My playwright, comforting the woman who’d made such a mess of the play he’d written for me, the woman who’d stolen it from both of us.
And that was when I put it together. Nathan’s talking about his wife fawning over some artist. DeWitt saying he knew someone who could help us. It was her: Geneva Langley, and I was filled with a jealousy I didn’t know what to do with—because why the hell should I be jealous? But I was, and when he smiled down at her and I saw how proprietary was her hand on his arm, I knew they were lovers. I thought of him in my room
, running lines, the way he’d stretched, the thoughts I’d had, and I hated her more than ever.
When DeWitt turned away from her again, her smile was still there. He passed me as he left, and his voice was cold when he said, “Good afternoon, Mrs. Wilkes,” and he was gone before I could reply.
I watched him go with dismay, feeling sick to my stomach, which, you know, wasn’t a feeling I liked, and it didn’t get any better when I turned to see Mrs. Langley suddenly beside me, holding a package wrapped in white paper, tied with a ribbon. “Mrs. Wilkes,” she said. “I feel I must apologize.”
“Apologize?”
“I didn’t understand how disruptive my presence would be, or that Penelope was to be your part.”
I stared wordlessly at her.
She smiled and held out the package to me. “I feel terrible about it. I would like to amend the error. I hope you’ll accept this as a token of my regret.”
I glanced down at the package in her hand. It was rectangular and flat, the same size and shape as the boxes of candied fruit Nathan gave me, and it suddenly seemed so ridiculous, the same gift from both of them, that I could not prevent the bubble of laughter from coming up my throat. I choked it short.
She gave me a bewildered little frown. “Mrs. Wilkes?”
“Forgive me,” I said bitterly. “Keep it for yourself, Mrs. Langley. I’m afraid I’ve grown tired of Parisian candy.”
Her frown deepened. “Oh, it’s not candy, Mrs. Wilkes.”
She pushed it toward me insistently, and I found myself taking it, pulling at the ribbon, sliding my thumb beneath the white paper. The ribbon and the paper fell; what was beneath it was a blue patterned box. Inside were sheets of paper. Creamy, thick writing paper of the best quality, tied into place with a thin satin ribbon.
She said, “I thought you might have need of something nice.”
Something nice. It brought my anger back like a flood, and I wanted to hurt her, to watch her flinch. It was all I could do to say in a flat voice, “Who do you imagine I would write to?”
She went still. I threw the box down onto a riser and walked into the wings, away from her and her useless gift, the stupid apology she’d offered as if it solved anything, and I hated her and the life that told her I might have need of fine writing paper when it was all I could do just to pay my rent, when the best meals I ate were at her husband’s pleasure, where her mere whim could take everything I had away.
The Last Days of Pompeii was well received; it was a favorite, after all, with all its sulfurous smoke and spectacle. The hall by the greenroom was crowded as I pushed my way through it to the dressing room I still shared with Susan because Geneva Langley would be using Stella’s old one.
Susan was wiping off her makeup with a towel, her brown hair tumbling down her back. She glanced at me in the mirror. “A good house tonight.”
I nodded, grabbing at the pins that held the elaborate hairstyle Lucius had determined was best for a Greek slave who’d once been a princess—ha! “They’ll always come to Pompeii.”
Susan said, “I didn’t see your Mr. Langley in the crowd.”
“No.” I didn’t want to think about “my” Nathan Langley. Or any Langley, for that matter. I took up a towel to wipe at my own makeup, threw it aside and undid the gold-painted laces binding the drape I wore, standing nearly naked before I grabbed my chemise from the hook and pulled it on, shaking my hair free. I reached for my corset.
There was a knock on the door.
“Who is it?” I called impatiently, hoping it wasn’t Nathan’s driver. I wanted no visitors. I was tired and dispirited, and I meant to go home.
“Sebastian.” A pause. “DeWitt.”
Susan threw me a knowing glance, which did not help at all. I remembered this morning, Mrs. Langley smiling at him, the chill of his good-bye to me, my belief that they were lovers, and I wondered if he’d come tonight to tell me he’d decided to take her side. Now there’s good work, Bea, to lose both the lead and the playwright before you’ve had them two weeks.
“Come in,” I called, and if I sounded nervous, well, I had good reason to be.
The door opened. He stepped inside, took in my state of undress, then, like any real playwright—not those who pretended to it, but those who’d spent their fair share of time about the stage—ignored it.
“Close the door,” I said, pulling closed the hooks of my corset. And then I couldn’t help testing just how close Mrs. Langley held him. “As long as you’re here, you can tighten my laces.” I turned my back to him so he could.
“How is the hallway, Mr. DeWitt?” Susan asked. She twisted on the bench, allowing her dressing gown to fall open a bit too obviously. “Is it quite crowded this evening?”
“It seems so.” I felt his fingers at my back as he obediently, and with unexpected skill, tightened my laces.
“I think I’ll go out and look for Tommy.” Susan rose, winking at me as she did so. She flounced out of the room, leaving DeWitt and me alone.
I stepped away from him to get my dress and pulled it on. “Did you want something, Mr. DeWitt?” I hit the want as coyly as I could and hoped like hell he would flirt back. But instead he looked so damned serious.
“I wanted to speak with you.”
I went to the mirror, grabbing up my brush. “About what?”
“I wanted to let you know that Langley commissioned me to write another play for you.”
I was surprised, first that Nathan had done what he’d promised and second that he’d done it so quickly.
I set my brush down. “He did?”
“This afternoon. Summoned me to his office.”
Quickly I coiled my long hair and pinned it up. “What did he say about it?”
“That I was to write a play. The only thing that mattered to him was that you were to have the main part.”
“Hmmm. Did he already pay you?”
DeWitt regarded me steadily. “Yes. He’s a generous patron. For both of us, it seems.”
“Indeed.” And then I couldn’t help myself, or keep the acid from my voice when I said, “How well you’ve played things, Mr. DeWitt. You have both Langleys in your pocket already. Nathan tells me his wife is quite taken with you. And I don’t think he means as a patron.”
DeWitt said nothing.
I glanced at him in the mirror. His face was expressionless. “Is he wrong?”
“I don’t know why he would tell you that. I don’t know what he means by it.” He frowned. “I think he … intends something.”
I didn’t give a damn about Nathan’s intentions regarding his wife. “Perhaps he’s only angry that his wife has a lover.”
“I don’t think it would make him angry.”
“What do you mean?”
DeWitt shrugged. “You were in the carriage with us that night. You heard him.”
I remembered that strange conversation. The one I’d been so curious about before Sebastian DeWitt’s talk of passion swept it from my head. “I heard him say a great deal I didn’t understand.”
“He so much as told me he wants me to have an affair with his wife.”
“Really? When did he say that? You must have misheard him.” I thought of how Nathan had spoken of his wife’s infatuation. “Believe me, I don’t think he likes the idea at all.”
DeWitt seemed puzzled. “How … interesting.”
I went back to pinning up my hair. “So are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Having an affair with Mrs. Langley?”
Now a faint smile, as if he were laughing at me, which irritated me more than a little. “Not that it’s any of your concern, but no.”
“Why not?”
His gaze was on me, and I thought he would say some little flirtation then, because I’m waiting for you or something like Jack would say, and I waited for it, I wanted it, which was stupid, but I was as vain as the next woman, and I knew—whether Sebastian DeWitt did or not—that Mrs. Langley wanted him, and would have hi
m too, if she could manage it.
But DeWitt only said, “In any case, I only stopped by to tell you about the play.”
His change of subject was firm. Very well, there’d be nothing more from him, and in a way I was relieved. I didn’t want to talk or even think about the Langleys anymore.
“When will you start writing it?”
“When the revisions to Penelope are done. Or perhaps sooner, if I can manage an hour here or there.”
“Will it be another part like Penny?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“I think I should like that. Someone honorable, but strong willed too. Though no sisters. I think they detract too much attention from the heroine.”
“Do you?”
“You’re a talented playwright, Mr. DeWitt, as I believe I’ve said before. You could probably do much better than writing mellies.”
“You’re a talented actress, Mrs. Wilkes, as I’ve said before.” He met my tone word for word. “And you could probably do better than playing naive heroines overly concerned with their virtue.”
I frowned. “Write me something better then.”
“What would you suggest?”
I swiveled on the bench to face him. “I’ve already told you. Someone honorable. Someone kind.”
“Do you think you could play someone so out of character?”
His expression was so bland, it took me a moment to realize I’d been insulted, and by him—the man whose gaze followed me about like a shadow in search of the sun, the man who’d sat on the end of my bed and told me that he wanted to help me follow my passion. I said stiffly, “I’m not sure I take your meaning.”
He shrugged. “I think perhaps those ingenues and virtuous wives are too pale for you. You know you’ve the makings of a superb villainess. In fact, I’m rewriting Penny to reflect it. You’ve quite a cruel streak.”