The Rake's Proposition

by Bess Greenfield

“They don’t have a telephone. Besides, there’s no need for you to sacrifice yourself on my account. I’ll write to them as soon as I find a new place to live.”

  * * *

  Claudine ran faster than she’d ever run in her life. The elevator operator looked at her as though she were dangerous as she leaped inside. “Ground floor, ground floor. Please hurry!”

  After an eternity, the uniformed young man closed the scrolling ironwork doors and shifted the control lever. The machine lurched downward, whistling and screeching far louder than it had on the way up, and they began their snail-like descent in the wretched, frightening contraption.

  She knew it was immature of her to run away and that she was only confirming his view of her by doing so. How dare he call her childish as if their extraordinary joining of souls had never occurred.

  Maybe the experience had been something quite different for him. “Can you not make it go faster?” How could he change so much, treat her so differently because of a name? That look on his face was ingrained in her mind. Disgust. He was disgusted with her for seducing him.

  The elevator operator was staring at her. She realized she was shaking and her face was wet. She focused on the patterns of the mosaic floor. Finally, they reached the ground floor, and he opened the doors for her. Mortified, she dried her tears, thanked the man, and stepped out into the polished teak lobby.

  Outside, she stood on the sidewalk. She was truly on her own now. A crowded electric trolley clanked by in one direction. A horse bus lumbered along in the other. She needed to return to The Crystal Music Hall, but was it east of here or south or both? And which way was south? Was he looking down at her from one of those high windows right now, judging her and her navigational incompetence? Her fists clenched at the thought.

  She’d imagined his reaction so differently. Until now, she’d thought him the most understanding, modern-thinking man she’d ever met. She’d thought she could rely upon him. Her disillusionment and anger all poured into one confusing mess, like thick pulp caught in a sieve.

  Never again. He was just another arrogant, self-serving man. One rule for him, another for her. She was better off alone. Or she would be, eventually.

  It didn’t matter in any case because now she had a purpose, a worthy one. It was up to her to save Alex any way she could.

  * * *

  Leo saw his brougham and driver waiting by the sidewalk as soon as he ran out of the building. He rushed up to the door, hoping to find Claudine inside, but there was only Guillory, sprawled out in a dead sleep. “Wake up!”

  The lanky young man sat up straight immediately and wiped the corner of his mouth with his knuckle.

  Leo shook his head with exasperation. “Did you bring Mademoiselle Lavoie here?”

  “Yes, sir. She said she needed to see you immediately about something urgent.” He looked about the sidewalk and the front of the building. “Where has she gone?”

  “Shouldn’t you know that?”

  “She told me she needed to speak with you in private so I stayed here.” Guillory grabbed a fistful of his curly hair, which he often did when he made mistakes. “She must have gotten lost on the way up.”

  “She didn’t get lost,” Leo said quietly. “She found me.” He took a few steps and turned, searching the sidewalks along Park Avenue for any trace of Claudine, but he saw only the impersonal faces of passers-by: dark-suited businessmen, pairs of women in pastel frocks engaged in shopping expeditions, street peddlers, newsies, messengers, and errand boys. The city had swallowed her up.

  He’d run after her but missed the closing of the elevator doors by seconds so he’d taken the stairs. By the time he’d descended six floors to the lobby, she was gone. Of course she was gone after the way he’d spoken to her.

  He’d ruined everything. Now that he’d absorbed the shock of her announcement and the implications of it, he could see the situation from her perspective, and why she’d run away from home as she had. Shame was a powerful motivator, and she was too young and inexperienced to see the situation clearly.

  But he’d been lying yesterday when he told her he didn’t care what people thought of him. He cared very much what the Valencourts thought of him. They were good, admirable people, and they’d shown great faith in him by volunteering to pay for his college tuition when his mother could not. They would think him a scoundrel him for luring their daughter away. His old world and his new one had collided in the worst possible way.

  His hope that she might return to his house independently died a quick death. It was nearly dark outside. She didn’t know her way around the city and she had difficulty understanding many commonplace American expressions. Where could she have gone?

  He rushed upstairs to her room, hoping to find some clue. He found the wardrobe full. The bureau drawers were likewise stocked with the pretty underthings he’d bought for her. He’d become used to protecting her, caring for her, and now he was helpless to do so.

  The sight of her favorite hat, discarded upon the bed, instantly brought her sweet face to mind. Emptiness swelled inside him as he picked it up and absently toyed with the blue silk flowers adorning the wide brim. How would she survive now?

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Raise that umbrella and give it a little twirl. Try to look like you’re having a good time up there,” Mr. Poole called from the dim recesses of The Crystal Music Hall.

  Claudine gave a lame smile and began her song again. She felt silly wearing a red and white swimming costume with no body of water in sight, only a room full of empty tables and benches.

  “Better.” Mr. Poole called at the end of the number.

  “Lousy. Try it again,” a second rougher voice shouted.

  A chill ran down her spine as she recognized Mr. Fowler leaning against a pillar. She hadn’t seen him for two weeks, not since she’d agreed to work for him in return for “his leniency” toward her cousin. She knew he was toying with her, that he would never forgive her cousin for stealing his wife no matter what she did.

  But she had her own plan: find Alex, berate him for his idiotic, immoral, and self-destructive behavior, and save his life.

  The first step would be the most challenging. Working at The Crystal was her best hope of obtaining information. Someone here had to know where he was. All she had to do was gain the trust of her fellow performers. Their reluctance to speak of the scandal was understandable given Mr. Fowler’s temper, but it was only a matter of time before one of them let some piece of gossip slip.

  So far she’d learned nothing about Alex. Stories about Fowler, however, abounded. He’d been a boxer in his early twenties, notoriously violent. He’d moved on to other pursuits after barely escaping a prison sentence for killing his opponent.

  What had Alexandre been thinking to commit adultery with the wife of such a man? Alex had had many liaisons with all sorts of women over the years, but she’d never known him to interfere with a marriage.

  It wouldn’t be the first time she’d extricated her cousin from a dangerous mess. Even though she was seven years younger than he, she’d always been the sensible, responsible one. He suffered from dark moods. Sometimes he’d become so morose he wouldn’t talk for days, or he’d get into a pointless fight with another boy at school.

  But this, running off with a thug’s wife, was by far the worst thing he’d ever done. Claudine feared the underlying cause might be something more daunting than a dark mood.

  “I’m waiting, Miss Vale,” Mr. Fowler barked at her.

  This was her new stage name. She was amassing quite a pile of names, but she couldn’t use her real name or Madeleine Lavoie. She didn’t know if Leo would bother to look for her, but she didn’t wish to be found. Her anger had not abated. Selfish? Childish? How dare he judge her so harshly not even two days after pretending to be so understanding about her plight?

  But her view of Leo became muddled at night as she lay in her creaky bed listening to drunken laughter and shouting, boozy singing accompanie
d by the twang of an out-of-tune piano, and the rhythmic metallic wheeze of her neighbor’s bedsprings. Maybe she had put him in a difficult position by lying to him. Maybe she had been the tiniest bit selfish…

  During the day she had no time to think about Leo at all. Her new routine was more challenging and risqué than her previous numbers, but she was gradually overcoming her self-consciousness. She began the song a third time, employing the sort of provocative movements she’d seen Mimi do at Le Chien Vif. She even added a wink and a smile after some of the words for just the right amount of ambiguity. Those who liked their music naughty could find it naughty, and those who didn’t would hopefully fail to notice the innuendo. But they’d have to be fairly obtuse to miss it.

  When she finished, there was only silence. In the distance, a wooden chair scraped against the floor.

  Her rehearsal continued for another hour until Maude Larraby, the headliner, arrived and shooed her off the stage. Claudine greeted the waifish blonde warmly as they passed in opposite directions. Miss Larraby ignored her and launched into her first number. Her entire repertoire consisted of songs Alex had certainly written. His distinctive style stamped the music as his even though each composition had been attributed to Odette Fowler.

  As Miss Larraby had been Mrs. Fowler’s understudy, Claudine was eager to speak with her, but each time she tried the singer brushed her off with one excuse or another. Some of the performers genuinely seemed to have no recollection of Alex, but others seemed nervous at the mere mention of his name.

  Miss Larraby belonged in the later category. She knew something. Claudine only needed to discover a motivation more powerful than fear to discover what it was.

  And the following afternoon, she stumbled upon it. The shattering of glass in Miss Larraby’s dressing room heralded the news. Everyone in the greenroom stopped to stare at the door with the star upon it. Naturally, conjecture ensued.

  “Was she fired?” one of the chorus girls, dressed like a skinny yellow-feathered duck, whispered to another girl wearing an identical costume.

  “I’ve heard he’s rearranging all the acts, and Maude isn’t going to have top billing anymore.”

  “Serves her right,” the first girl replied. “She’s been unbearable ever since she moved up from the chorus. Who’s taking her place?”

  Their feathered caps bobbed as their heads moved closer in hushed conversation. Claudine didn’t need to hear the rest anyway. Here was a golden opportunity to show empathy and improve her standing with Miss Larraby. She approached the star’s dressing room and knocked.

  Minnie, her personal dresser, a petite young woman with huge shining brown eyes and a pert nose, answered the door. Then she quietly returned to her chair and her mending in the corner of the room.

  Patchouli laden perfume and the cloying scent of too many floral arrangements swamped Maude’s cluttered little chamber. Shards of glass, the remnants of a crystal vase perhaps, were scattered along the far wall. Dressing gowns and costumes were heaped upon a red velvet chaise longue.

  Miss Larraby was kneeling upon a worn Persian rug beside a large cardboard box full of wadded up clothing. Her bare knee stuck out from her calico print dressing gown.

  “You’re not leaving the theater over this, are you?”

  The singer looked up suddenly. Claudine almost didn’t recognize her. Without cosmetics, her face looked pale and youthful with round cheeks, dimples, and a small upturned nose. “Don’t play coy with me. I invented coy. You know why I’m packing. He’s given you my dressing room. And Minnie. Congratulations on getting top billing.”

  “But I don’t want this room.” She couldn’t imagine needing to continue her ruse more than a few more days, and the additional privacy would not be worth the resentment it would foster among the other girls. Besides, the rose patterned wallpaper was dizzying.

  “This innocent act of yours has become a trifle absurd, don’t you think?” Maude took a few steps toward her mirrored dressing table and sank wearily onto a stained red velvet upholstered chair.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  She picked up a brush and forced it through her coarse blonde hair. “Everyone knows you’re sleeping with him.”

  Claudine’s mouth fell open. “I’ve scarcely even spoken with him twice.”

  “Sometimes that’s all it takes. If he hasn’t tried yet, it’s only a matter of time. In case you hadn’t heard, he owns the place. He tends to get what he wants.”

  Claudine recalled Mr. Fowler’s forward manner on the day they met, but he hadn’t approached her since so she wasn’t concerned. “The sooner I find my cousin, the sooner I’ll be gone, and then you’ll be the headliner again.”

  Maude stared at the perfume bottles and cosmetics littering her dressing table for a moment. “I already told you. I never met the man.”

  “I find that hard to believe. Mr. Fowler claims my cousin had an affair with his wife, and I’ve heard you were her friend. She never mentioned him once?”

  Minnie approached the singer with her costume, a pale blue confection of ruffled satin and tulle. The singer rose and tossed her dressing gown onto the back of her chair. The combination and corset she wore underneath were worn-out and dingy from excessive wear. “I need to be on stage in a few minutes and you are upsetting me so I’m afraid you’ll have to go now. Some of us take our profession seriously.”

  * * *

  Claudine wasn’t certain what time it was. Mr. Fowler had increased her stage time, and the theater ran shows continually from noon until midnight. Every night it seemed the crowd grew larger. At the moment she was singing about a little lamb, a parody of the English nursery rhyme about Mary. The lyrics were innocent. Her shepherdess costume wasn’t.

  In the middle of her song, a garbled, inebriated male voice called out something crude. At first she thought she’d misheard him or mistranslated, but the man repeated the vulgar question more emphatically. Gasps of dismay rippled through the audience.

  She did her best to ignore him, but the man persisted. So she tried a different approach, an old trick of Monsieur Giraux’s from Le Chien Vif. She stopped singing, looked directly at the heckler, and called out with astonishment, “Is that you, Vanderham? When did they let you out of prison?”

  Laughter rippled through the audience. Some of the chorus girls winked at her and from the curtains she saw Mr. Fowler grin. Maybe that boded well for her cousin. She had no intention of asking him. She planned to continue avoiding the man indefinitely.

  During her costume change, she couldn’t find Minnie or any other dresser so she had to remove her absurdly frilly shepherdess outfit and put on the red and white swimming costume on her own. On her way back to the stage, something sharp jabbed her in the waist. A pin. There was no time to remedy the situation. The orchestra was beginning the overture for her next number. Soon there were more jabs every time she turned. Many pins.

  Afterward, she had a new bit to do, a short dialogue with a comedian. As soon as her part was over, she rushed offstage to the costume shop to enlist the aid of Mrs. Feldt. The head seamstress could mend anything with amazing speed and dexterity, all while talking nonstop about the personal and professional travails of her three children.

  Claudine spotted the short, buxom, frizzy-haired matron arranging one of the costume racks. “Can you help me get out of this wretched thing? It stabs me every time I move.”

  The thick lenses of her wire framed spectacles made Mrs. Feldt’s brown eyes look enormous. “Don’t move. I can’t have any blood on the costumes. Mr. Fowler will take it out of my pay.” Her Lower East Side accent grew pronounced when she was agitated.

  She helped Claudine remove the swimming costume and inspected it, shaking her head as she opened a seam. “This isn’t my doing. I would never be so sloppy. The pins are embedded in the seams, where you might not notice them at first. I’ve seen this before. It looks to me like you have a jealous rival.”

  Claudine concurred. One
or two pins left in a costume could be viewed as an accident but not six or seven. “Have you seen Maude?”

  Mrs. Feldt nodded, removing a pin. “I was thinking the same thing. She knows you sing ten times better than she does. She also knows he’s interested in you.”

  He could only be one person. “I’m certain that’s not the case.”

  “It’s obvious. He used to show his face here maybe once a week, but since you’ve come, he’s here every night right about the time you go on stage. He looks at you the same way he used to look at his wife when she was the headliner here.”

  “What was Mrs. Fowler like?”

  “Beautiful, talented, highly temperamental.” Mrs. Feldt said nothing for the next few minutes as she focused on her work. “There. That’s the last of them, I think.”

  “I heard she ran away with another man.”

  Mrs. Feldt’s mouth constricted. “No one talks about that, and you’d be wise to do the same.”

  “But the man is my cousin, and I believe Mr. Fowler intends to harm him.”

  “Your cousin?”

  “That’s why I’m here. I have try to find and warn him, but no one will tell me anything.”

  Wary eyes darted to the doorway. “The poor fellow probably had no idea what he was stepping into when he took up with that woman. She was obviously using him to make her husband jealous. She flaunted the affair. Everyone knew. Or suspected. He used to come here several nights a week and see her between shows in her dressing room. And as if that weren’t bad enough, she sang the songs he wrote for her every night. There were new ones every day, and she claimed every single one as her own work.”

  “How do you know he wrote her songs then?”

  “She wasn’t able to read music, much less write it. Couldn’t focus her eyes properly. I’ve been here for ten years, and she never composed a thing until he came along. And his songs were special. The tunes sparkled, and the lyrics danced about your head until you felt like you’d been born knowing every word.”