by Louise Allen
‘Wonderful!’ Bel was openly mopping at her eyes, the others clapping. Lord Pangbourne beamed proudly as Sebastian put a chair forward and Maude sank down, her legs trembling. Give me my Romeo.
The string band began to play incidental music, the audience to gather itself, talking at the top of its voice. Laughter rose up to the box as the stalls began to empty. It was over—and it was just beginning, Maude told herself.
‘Maude and I will stay on a little, Lord Pangbourne, just to thank everyone who has worked so hard behind the scenes,’ Jessica was saying. ‘Is that all right?’
‘Of course.’ He was still beaming proudly. ‘And you say you cannot act, Maude. I have never heard better, I declare.’
‘Ah, yes, but you were not acting, were you?’ Eva murmured in her ear.
‘I’ll just go down and have a word with Mr Hurst, thank him for managing the stage so well,’ Maude said, slipping to the door of the box. She hurried down the stairs, held up every few paces by people wanting to congratulate her upon the evening or her recitation. Finally she made it to the door off the lobby and made her way to the wings.
Eden was there, giving orders to the stage manager and the hands. ‘Everyone help the caterers,’ he was saying. ‘The rest can be dealt with tomorrow. Lord Standon is taking care of the money; someone find him and carry the strong box to his carriage.’
Maude waited, enjoying seeing Eden work, the effortless way he covered everything that needed to be done. Finally the workers trooped off to their tasks and he turned and saw her.
‘Maude.’ It was there in his face, all the hope and despair and doubt that was whirling inside her. ‘Maude, that was…’
‘Hurst, my dear fellow. A triumph! I am very impressed, very impressed indeed.’ It was Papa, marching across the stage, hand outstretched to wring Eden’s. He turned and nodded briskly at Maude. ‘Telling him the good news about the theatre, my dear? That’s the way to round off the evening, indeed it is!’ He dropped a kiss on Maude’s cheek. ‘Now, don’t you and Lady Dereham stay here all hours, will you? You need your rest.’
‘What about the theatre?’ Eden asked, his voice ominously quiet as the earl disappeared from sight.
‘I…I know who owns it.’
‘And you were about to tell me?’
Some demon of truthfulness had Maude shaking her head. ‘No…I mean, yes, I was going to tell you, but not just now. You said you wanted to speak to me.’
‘And how long have you known who owns it?’ He made no move to come closer.
‘A week. Just over. Eden—’
‘Would you be very kind and wait for me in my office, Lady Maude?’ he asked with awful politeness. ‘I doubt that we will want to edify the stage hands with this discussion.’
‘Yes, of course.’ Maude walked stiffly past him. He was furious, she could understand why. But it wouldn’t last, once he understood…
Eden stood outside his own office, hand on the door. He had made himself stay and organise things until his stage manager could take over and then he had walked back here, still not allowing himself to think about what Maude’s knowledge meant.
Gritting his teeth, he walked in, closing the door behind himself and turning the key in the lock. Maude was sitting in an upright chair, her hands clasped in her lap, her chin up.
‘You know who owns the Unicorn?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ She swallowed. ‘I do.’
‘What?’ Maude met his eyes defiantly. ‘You bought it?’ The sense of betrayal was like a blow.
‘No, I inherited it from a friend of my mother. She was an actress. I did not know until last week she was the owner.’ But she had known last week, had known it and had not told him, even though she knew he was waiting anxiously for that very piece of news.
‘Why did you not tell me? You know I want to buy it. You know how much it means to me.’
‘I did not think I wanted to sell it,’ she said. ‘I thought I might keep it, as an investment. Then it would be safe for you.’
‘You could have invested the money,’ Eden said, furious, something very like fear gripping his heart. ‘If you keep it, when you marry it goes to your husband. You know that, it is the law. God knows what he will do with it.’
‘I wouldn’t…’ She swallowed. ‘I would not marry someone who would do that.’
‘Indeed?’ Eden demanded, his voice sceptical in an effort to hide the hurt of thinking of Maude as another man’s wife. ‘You’d put that in the marriage settlements, would you?’
‘No,’ she snapped, on her feet in a swirl of silks. ‘No, because I only want to marry you.’
‘You—’ Eden knew he was staring, couldn’t find the words. He tried again. ‘You want to marry me? Impossible.’ She couldn’t be doing this to him, not on top of that speech this evening, not when he had screwed himself up to renounce anything to do with her.
‘Why is it impossible? Are you married already?’
‘No, of course not. You know why you cannot marry me. Look at me.’ He took a stride forward, seized her arms and pulled her back against him, forcing her to look at their images in the long glass. ‘And look at yourself.’ The contrast of her simple, lovely pearls, the elegant, understated lines of her gown and the glitter and tawdry tricks of his own appearance. ‘You are a lady, of the ton, a virgin, for God’s sake. I am a bastard, a theatre manager, a rake with a notorious reputation. Just because you desire me—’
‘I love you.’ Maude spoke the words to his image in the glass, her voice steady. ‘I love you, Eden. I was going to tell you that tonight. That is what those words I spoke tonight were for.’ Then her voice began to shake and she twisted in his grip. ‘How much closer could I get to telling you I loved you in front of the whole damned ton?’
She loved him? Eden’s heart seemed to turn to water in his chest, something—joy?—was struggling to surface against the fear for what this could mean, the impossibility of it. And there was a little nagging voice that would not be silenced. ‘When, exactly, were you going to tell me about the theatre?’ he asked.
Maude was so still in his arms, her face pale and very lovely as she looked up at him. ‘After I told you how I felt,’ she whispered. ‘Eden, tell me how you feel about me—I can’t bear it, not knowing. I have loved you for so long, ever since I first saw you. My love—’
Her words made no sense, he shook his head, grasping the one thing that was clear. ‘Why wait to tell me you own the theatre?’
‘Because…because I wanted you to be thinking just about us, not to be influenced by the Unicorn.’
‘Influenced?’ A coldness gripped him. ‘You were not sure whether I would tell you the truth about my feelings for you if I knew? You thought I would pretend to love you to gain the Unicorn?’
‘I was not certain. You are so passionate about it.’
‘And if I said I did not love you? You would punish me by keeping the ownership secret?’
‘No!’ Maude gave a little push against his chest as though to push away the very thought. ‘I would have told the agents to sell it to you and not reveal the owner.’
‘I see.’ Eden was not sure he believed her—a woman scorned would have to be a saint to do such a thing when she could hold such a weapon against him. ‘So, you love me, you say, but you do not trust me.’
‘Eden, I have loved you for a year and known you for a few weeks. I trust you, of course I do, with my life, but this is so important to you.’
‘If I loved you, Maude,’ Eden said slowly, ‘and burning down the Unicorn was what it took to have you, then I would light the match myself. If you do not know that about me, you know nothing.’
Her eyes were huge and shimmering with tears she was too proud to shed, her mouth, soft and vulnerable. She was everything he wanted and he had told her the truth: he would destroy the Unicorn if that was the only way to have her, if that was all it would take to make him eligible for her.
But if she could not trust him…And she was rig
ht not to. She sensed the haunted darkness inside him, the unworthiness. And then through his misery he saw that she had indeed handed him a weapon, the one he needed to convince her he did not desire her for every reason a man could desire a woman. He tried to feel glad, glad that here was an excuse to break with her, one that would surely cut the tie between them with the sharpest knife.
‘I realise,’ he said harshly, ‘that for a lady like yourself to admit desire for a man like me it might be necessary to dress it up as an elevated emotion, as love.’
‘No,’ Maude whispered. ‘Oh, no, Eden.’ Her hand fluttered at his breast and the need to hold her, rain kisses on her, was agony to resist.
‘I would enjoy taking you as a lover, Maude, but if you think I am insane enough to entangle myself with a society virgin just for that, you are far and away wrong. I have no desire to find myself called out by your friends, my cousins.’
‘You don’t love me?’ she asked. ‘No, I can see that you do not. You cannot find it in you to forgive me my lack of trust.’ There was bleakness in her eyes now, pain. ‘I will go now and send Benson round in the morning to discuss selling the theatre to you.’
‘You want me to buy back your investment as well?’ he asked, wondering why he was still able to speak of such matters when he had just denied his own feelings and wounded Maude to the very heart. But talking of business suited the image he wanted her to have of him. It was the true image, after all. In a day or two she would be grateful for her escape, he had to tell himself that.
‘No.’ She pushed back out of his arms and he let her go. The last time he would hold her. ‘I will not come to the theatre again, I will not interfere. I do not think I could bear to return. But should I consider marriage in the future, I will sell my investment back, never fear.’
Maude opened the door. His last chance to say those three words. He was hurting her now; to say them would be to ruin her. This, if ever, was the time to pretend to himself that he was a gentleman. Eden held his tongue. ‘Goodbye, Maude.’
She turned, looked back and now he could see one tear sliding down her cheek. ‘Goodbye.’ Then she was gone.
She should go home, or at least to Jessica’s. Maude passed down the passageway like a ghost, her surroundings as insubstantial as a dream, She had told Eden of her love and he had rejected her. She had shown her lack of trust and wounded him—but surely, if he had loved her, he would have told her so, despite that?
Her mind could hardly touch the hurt with thoughts; she knew she could not speak of it to anyone, not yet. Maude came up against a closed door and stopped, disorientated, before she recognised that this was the dressing room where she and Eden had found the two lovers. It would be deserted now, she could sit in there a while. Time would pass and perhaps she would be able to think what to do next, where to go.
How long she sat there in the dark, she did not know, nor what she had been thinking about. Her consciousness just seemed to be full of pain, a dull, bruised ache that stabbed like a knife wound if she let her thoughts drift to Eden.
But her limbs were cramped and she felt so tired. Maude got to her feet and went out again into the silence that seemed to fill the old building. She should go now; the stage door-keeper, who doubled as a night watchman, would find her a hackney. She felt her way through the darkness until she realised where she was. This was the door to Eden’s office.
Just once more, she told herself, pushing it open and finding by touch the box of Lucifers he kept on his desk. She had never lit the gas before, but she had seen Eden do it. Maude struck a light, then turned the tap, jumping as the gas lit with a loud pop. His great chair loomed out of the shadows and she went to sit in it, curling up under the grasp of the eagle’s claws. She would just rest there for a few minutes, absorbing one last memory.
She was so tired, as though she was ill. Perhaps a broken heart was an illness. So very tired. Maude’s head drooped and she slept. Above her, the shadow of the eagle on the wall dipped wildly as the gas flame fluttered and dimmed, then strengthened again.
The shouting brought Eden bolt upright in his bed. Hell—had he managed to sleep after all? The noise was approaching his room, raised voices, three at least. The candle on the nightstand had almost burned out, but gave enough light for him to see the face of his watch: three o’clock.
He flung back the covers and got out of bed, stark naked, just as the door banged back.
‘You cannot go in there! My lord, my lord, I will have to call the Watch!’ Greengage, his butler, was giving ground before the bulk of a much larger, taller, older man whose arm was held by one of the footmen, quite ineffectually, for he was being towed along despite his efforts.
‘Sir, I tried to stop him, but he has run mad, I think!’ Greengage gasped. ‘I’ll go for help, sir.’
‘No.’ Eden had seen who the furious intruder was. ‘Leave us.’
‘But—’
‘Out!’
‘Where is my daughter?’ Lord Pangbourne advanced on Eden, clenched fist raised. ‘Where is she?’
‘Not here, my lord.’ Eden moved quickly, catching the earl’s arm as he stumbled. ‘Is she not with Lady Dereham or Lady Standon?’
‘No, I went there first, when she was not returned by one. And to Lord Sebastian’s house, too. That left only you.’
‘I give you my word, she is not with me and I have not seen her since she left my office at the Unicorn.’ The older man’s eyes were fixed on him with painful intensity and he felt his colour rise. ‘I realise that I am not a gentleman, that you may not be willing to accept my word, but I give you leave to search this house, cellars to attics.’
‘Of course I take your word, Hurst, damn it,’ Lord Pangbourne snapped. ‘Do you think I would allow Maude to associate with you if I did not consider you a man of honour? Your parents may have acted without much; that’s not to your discredit. I make my own judgements about men. But where is she?’ he asked, suddenly looking desperately anxious and vulnerable.
‘We parted…angrily. It may be that she is still at the theatre, I can think of nowhere else. I’ll go, right away.’ Eden went to drag on the bell pull, his heart pounding. Maude.
‘I’m coming, too, and for God’s sake, put some clothes on, man.’ The earl sounded more himself.
Greengage burst into the room, a poker in his hand and the footman on his heels. ‘Sir!’
‘Put that damn thing down, get a carriage harnessed. Fast!’ Eden threw open the clothes-press door and began to drag on clothes.
The pair skidded into the theatre yard. Eden was out of the carriage before it came to a halt. ‘There is no light in the stage-door office.’
The stench of gas hit him, even before he got the door properly open. In his cubby hole, Doggett lay slumped over the table, his face strangely flushed. The gas lamp hissed, unlit. Eden turned it off. ‘Drag him out into the air,’ he snapped, his heart turning to water inside him, even as he began to run. ‘I’ll find Maude.’
He hardly dared think, lest fear freeze him, could not strike a light to search by for fear of igniting the gas. His brain was already clouded by the fumes as he ran down the passageway, into the Green Room. It was empty, its gas lamps turned off. The office, she might have gone there.
Eden ran, shouldered open the door into the dark room, hearing the hiss of gas, choking as the fumes hit him. For a moment, as he turned the tap off, he could see nothing, then the huddled form slumped over the desk came into focus.
‘Maude! Maude!’ He half-lifted, half-dragged her, a dead weight, out into the corridor. But he could not see, and the fumes were making him choke. Eden pulled her over his shoulder and ran for the yard and the clean, fresh air.
‘You have her!’ Lord Pangbourne started towards them. Beside the carriage the groom knelt over Doggett. ‘That poor old fellow’s gone. But she is all right? Tell me she’s all right!’
‘I don’t know.’ Eden lowered Maude on to the damp flags. ‘She’s not breathing. I think she was brea
thing when I found her.’ The fear was washing over him, the despair clutching. She had come back for him, gone to his room, and he had not been there for her and now she was dead. ‘Maude! My love, darling, speak to me. Maude!’ Desperate, he slapped her face, jerking her head back and forth, but there was no response. Eden bent, covered her mouth with his and breathed hard down into her lungs.
He could taste the gas as he worked, masking the scent and the taste of her. Desperate he kept going, aware of the earl’s sobbing breath beside him. It was no good, she had gone. Eden sat back, feeling the tears begin to roll down his cheeks. ‘Maude, oh, my love, my love.’
And then she coughed, a pathetic, tiny noise like a half-drowned kitten. Eden snatched her up, pulled her against his shoulder, patting her back hard while she gasped and choked and then, at last, clung to him. ‘Eden…’ Her eyes were closed, but she breathed.
Lord Pangbourne threw his arms around the pair of them and they rocked together in the chill morning while Eden cried tears of incredulous joy and the older man wept unashamedly.
Chapter Twenty-One
‘Eden.’ Restless, Maude turned her head on the pillow. Her head ached appallingly, her stomach hurt as though she had been sick and somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew that something was terribly wrong.
‘Hush. Try to drink this, dear.’ Jessica’s voice. Maude opened her eyes on her friend’s anxious face. ‘There, you’ll be all right soon, try to drink a little. Jane, come and help Lady Maude sit up.’
Between them they pulled her up against the pillows and the maid held a glass of barley water. Maude sipped, choked and sipped again. ‘What happened?’
‘Do you remember being in Mr Hurst’s office? The gas pressure must have dropped and your light, and that in the stage-door office, were the only ones lit. The flame went out and when the pressure came back the taps were still open. Gas poured out and nearly killed you. If your father and Mr Hurst had not arrived in time and found you and the stage doorman…’