A Reckless Desire

by Isabella Bradford

  Yet by the time the last ribbon had been chosen and the final fitting made, the afternoon had begun to fade into evening, and Lucia was thoroughly exhausted. It was not simply the challenge of being Mrs. Willow, but also the stress of choosing so many new things for herself in an elegant lady’s shop. She had never purchased so much as a length of ribbon from a place such as this. Instead she’d always worn jackets and petticoats that had been passed down from others in the company, plus the rare plain linen gown that she’d bought for herself from one of the peddlers and small shops that sold secondhand (or third-, or fourth-, or fifth-hand) clothing in Whitechapel.

  She’d no experience with costly silks and precious lace and other trims, or having a small flock of seamstresses and apprentices hovering about her, ready to obey her every suggestion or whim. While she knew Rivers had meant this as a treat, a pleasurable indulgence, she’d been unable to shake the uneasy feeling that she didn’t quite deserve such luxury, and beneath the smiling façade of Mrs. Willow, her inexperience had made her uncertain and anxious. If only she’d had written lines to memorize so she’d be certain to say the right thing!

  With each decision that Mrs. Currie presented to her to make, she feared she’d choose a color or cloth that was somehow wrong, and she’d be eternally grateful for how the mantua-maker tactfully had guided her as to what was not only fashionable, but flattering as well. The red gown would be finished so that they might bring it back to the Lodge with them today, and Mrs. Currie herself would come out with the rest of the things in two days for more fittings.

  It was all more than Lucia could keep straight herself, and when at last Rivers handed her back into the carriage, she was too exhausted and overwhelmed to take pride in what she’d accomplished, or pleasure in her new wardrobe.

  “You were brilliant,” Rivers said proudly as the footman latched the carriage door shut. “Not only did you convince Mrs. Currie that you truly were Mrs. Willow, but you were also so endearing that she went out of her way to please you.”

  “Do you think so?” she asked with a sigh, sinking wearily into one corner of the seat. “I hoped I’d done well, but I could not tell for certain whether I’d succeeded, or if she was simply being nice to me because of you.”

  “When we first arrived, I would guess she was being agreeable in deference to my family name,” he said, settling beside her. “But it didn’t take long for you to win her over in your own right.”

  “I shouldn’t have spoken French,” she said, wincing a bit at the memory. “That was wrong. I did it without thinking, and I shouldn’t have.”

  “No, it was exactly right,” he said. “Every English lady speaks French, or at least the clever ones do. Clearly Mrs. Currie does not, but the way you salvaged her pride for her showed both kindness and understanding. That’s why she gave you the red gown, not because of me. You played a lady to perfection.”

  That was exactly it: she had played a lady. She must remind herself of that. Mrs. Willow was a role, improvised without lines to memorize, but only a role, a character, a part to be learned. She’d welcomed the chance to put aside her old life for a better one, but she hadn’t realized that by becoming Mrs. Willow, she’d lose so much of Lucia di Rossi. Instead of feeling proud of what she’d done, she felt confused and unsettled, and having Rivers praise her like this somehow only made it worse.

  “It didn’t seem perfect to me,” she said, shifting back to her old way of speaking. She untied her hat and placed it on her lap so she could lean her head back against the squabs. “If I did, then it was your doing, Rivers, not mine.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” he said firmly. “It was all yours, and your serious study and work. I merely led the way.”

  He patted the seat beside him and with a sigh she slid across the cushion to join him. He slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, and with another sigh she nestled into his side, finding comfort in the warmth and strength of his body.

  “Thank you so much, Rivers,” she said softly. “For—for everything.”

  “I knew you’d enjoy choosing some new clothes,” he said, clearly enjoying having given her such a gift. “I know how much you ladies do love your finery.”

  She smiled wistfully at how he’d unconsciously included her among the ranks of ladies of his acquaintance, a place where she never would belong.

  “It was not easy for me, Rivers,” she confessed, gazing across the carriage to where the new scarlet gown, swathed in protective linen, had been carefully laid on the other bench for the drive back to the Lodge. “I do not know how ladies make such choices every day when they dress.”

  “ ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks,’ ” he said, teasing by quoting more from Hamlet. “It’s true that Mrs. Currie had a veritable bazaar of temptations for you, but what lady doesn’t relish making such decisions?”

  “I didn’t,” she insisted, twisting around to face him. “And that line of Queen Gertrude’s makes no sense at all here.”

  He smiled indulgently. “I only meant it as a jest, sweetheart.”

  “And I meant it as the truth.” She sank back against him, her head pillowed against his shoulder, and thought of the significance of the new dress, pale and ghostly in its linen wrapping. “I’ve never had bespoke clothes, Rivers, not so much as a single petticoat. This gown is my first. With so many things to choose from, it was hard for me to know what was right to pick.”

  “What was right was what you wanted, and what gave you pleasure,” he said, his voice growing more gentle and losing the edge of teasing. “But how did you come by your clothes before, if not from a shop?”

  She shook her head, reluctant to explain exactly how very different their circumstances were. Most times he understood, but there were others, like now, when the distance between them felt yawning and insurmountable. He’d been born to enormous wealth and position, and she had not, and she’d no wish to emphasize the difference between them any further, especially not today.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said, evasive. “Not at all.”

  “Everything about you matters to me,” he said, with such conviction that she wanted very much to believe him. “There must have been one special gown in your life. Every woman has one.”

  “There was one,” she confessed slowly, remembering. Although she’d worked among the bright and glittering dancers’ costumes in the tiring room and wardrobe, only one dress had been special in the way he meant. “The pink silk gown that Papa bought for me in an old-frock shop in Lancaster. I wore it as my costume the summer we toured with the circus-folk.”

  “What was the gown like?” he asked, his interest genuine. She’d always loved that about him: he wished to learn everything, not to make light of it, but because that knowledge made him wiser, and better, too.

  “I remember the dress as being vastly beautiful,” she began slowly. In the fading light of day, here in the carriage, it was easy for her to imagine that long-ago dress, and easy to trust him with the memory of it. “It had a damask pattern of swirling pomegranates, and it was unlike anything else I’d ever worn.”

  “You must have looked beautiful in it,” he said gently, falling into the reverie with her. “If I’d known, I would have asked that Mrs. Currie bring out every pink silk damask in her stock for you today.”

  She smiled at his enthusiasm, and his generosity, too.

  “It would not have been the same,” she said wistfully, “nor could it have been. Although I believed that gown was magical, it had been worn by so many others before me that the damask was soft and nearly in tatters, with a large blotchy stain on the side of the skirts.”

  He chuckled fondly. “I doubt anyone noticed,” he said. “Not on you.”

  “No, they didn’t,” she agreed, also remembering how undiscerning her audiences had been, and how often half-drunk, too, at the end of a fair-day. “We were in the country, and the audiences believed the dress was every bit as beautiful as I did. They wouldn’t notice t
hat the cut was years out of date, and the silver thread that had once outlined the pomegranates—there were still a few traces of it left—had been picked out to be resold, leaving hundreds of little holes in the faded pink silk. Even so, every time I wore it I’d felt like a princess, standing in the lantern’s light on the back of the wagon to recite my pieces.”

  “Do you have the gown still?” he asked.

  “Oh, no,” she said, knowing how foolish such a memento would have been in her life. One day after they’d returned to London, the gown had simply disappeared; most likely Papa had sold it away to another old-frock dealer. “By the end of the summer, I’d outgrown it, and I do not know what became of it after that.”

  “No doubt your father was proud of having such an accomplished daughter,” Rivers said. “Rightly so, too.”

  “He was,” she said sadly, a memory that was not quite so fair. She’d often thought how differently their lives would have turned out if she and Papa had been able to stay with the circus-folk in the green fields and wandering roads in the country, and had not returned to London, and the company. Papa might not have fallen so deeply into despair and strong drink, and she herself would never have had her final hopes of becoming a dancer beaten from her by Uncle Lorenzo.

  But then she would not have landed here, either, with Rivers’s arm protectively around her shoulders. For now, with him, she felt safe, and she settled a little more closely against him, her hand curling lightly on his chest.

  “When I was with Mrs. Currie in the shop, I felt wrong as Mrs. Willow, as if I were hollow and empty and false,” she confessed, her words coming out in an anxious rush. “I felt as if I was forgetting who I was and where I’d come from, that all I had left was the lie of being Mrs. Willow, and…and it frightened me, Rivers. I feared that I had—that I have—lost myself.”

  He drew her closer. “That won’t happen, Lucia,” he said. “You’re far too strong a woman for that. Besides, I like you too much as you are to let that happen.”

  She looked up at him, startled. “You do?”

  “I do,” he said solemnly. “I’m vastly proud of how much you’ve accomplished, and how as an actress you’ve learned to transform yourself so completely into another. But it’s Lucia di Rossi who has become dear to me, not Mrs. Willow, and I’m far too selfish to let her vanish.”

  “Oh, Rivers,” she said, tears stinging her eyes. “I do not wish to go away.”

  “Then we shall both be content, yes?” With his fingers on her jaw, he turned her face the fraction more that was necessary for him to kiss her, his lips finding hers in a way that felt like a sensual pledge, a promise that he would do exactly as he said, and keep her safe and with him. She closed her eyes, relishing the kiss. In that moment, she trusted him completely, more than she’d ever trusted another, and whatever fears she’d held before slipped away, forgotten. He’d done that for her, and she felt strangely at peace.

  “I am content,” she whispered against his cheek, her eyes still closed. “I am.”

  —

  The moon had risen and the stars with it when at last the carriage turned into the long drive that led to the Lodge. Rivers glanced down at Lucia, asleep in his arms, and smiled. She was soft and warm against him, her long, dark lashes feathering her cheek and her lips parted as if frozen in a kiss in her dreams.

  He had not expected her to fall asleep like this; he supposed he should feel slighted that she had, even insulted. If any other woman had drifted off like that after he’d kissed her, he would have been. But Lucia wasn’t like other women, and what he was feeling toward her now was far, far from insulting.

  He hadn’t expected her to completely become Mrs. Willow in the mantua-maker’s shop, or to so thoroughly project the essence of a well-bred lady that Mrs. Currie and her assistants never doubted her for even an instant. There had been not so much as a breath of a rapacious highwayman and no tigers. Instead she’d played her part to near-perfection, from her accent to her posture to the smattering of French, and how she’d been the one to smooth over Mrs. Currie’s gaffe had been pure gracious genius worthy of any duchess, including his own impeccable stepmother.

  She’d every right to crow after such a triumph, and savor the success she’d earned. But again she’d done what he hadn’t expected, and instead of crowing in the carriage, she’d wilted in a way that had reminded him of her old days in the tiring room, when she’d been nearly invisible. Her explanation had touched him deeply, and he couldn’t imagine how the brave little woman he saw each day could fear she’d disappear like an insubstantial wisp of smoke.

  He’d grant that she had changed in these last weeks. She now walked with confidence, and spoke with assurance. The shadows were gone from around her eyes, and the hollows from her cheeks. She’d learned how to hold a teacup, and not to wipe her fingers on the tablecloth. Not only had her accent changed, but her vocabulary had blossomed as well. The young woman who’d only read broadsides and the Bible now stayed awake at night to devour the books she borrowed from his library.

  So yes, she’d changed, but to his mind these changes were only little improvements to the woman she already was. He’d done his best to reassure her, hoping to ease her anxieties, and he’d hoped, too, that the spree of free spending he’d granted her in the shop would have cheered her. Every other woman he’d known would have wallowed happily in a greedy sea of silk.

  Yet she’d surprised him there as well. Instead of finding joy amongst the taffetas and dimities, she’d been overwhelmed and miserable, and convinced she didn’t deserve such largesse. He was so accustomed to her usual confidence that he hadn’t quite believed her, not until she’d confided that heartbreaking story of the stained and holey pink gown. Only Lucia could have infused a raggedy secondhand dress with enough of herself to make it sound magical and fit for a princess. He hoped the new gown he’d bought her today would come to hold even more of her magic.

  He glanced across at the gown and smiled, trying to picture her wearing it. He hadn’t gone back to the shop’s dressing room with her for the fitting—they weren’t yet on the terms that would permit that kind of intimacy—but in a way he was glad, because it meant he’d have the great pleasure of seeing her wear it for the first time tonight, just for him.

  Tonight would be special in many ways, or so he hoped. For any other woman, he would have arranged the obligatory small supper in his dressing room, the sort of small supper that every young nobleman of means was expected to order for fair young creatures. There would be much wine and a Frenchified meal that might or might not be eaten before they moved on to his conveniently nearby bedchamber. In the course of the night, there would also be many declarations of passion and affection that neither party would believe, and after a small parting gift in the morning, there would be mutual satisfaction with the arrangement, which would soon be forgotten.

  But Lucia deserved more from him than that. Her words this morning about how he lived too much through his books had struck home. He wanted to prove to her that he could be as impetuous and romantic as any Neapolitan. He was determined to put aside his customary British reserve, and share with her a side of himself that no one else had ever seen, and prove to her that he knew how to experience the very best that life had to offer firsthand, not through words written by another.

  Lightly he kissed the top of her head, her dark hair mussed like a child’s from her hat, and she stirred, but did not wake. He hoped she’d understand. No, he knew she would, because she was Lucia.

  There was one more thing he intended to share with her tonight, something he would have already revealed if she hadn’t fallen asleep. Tucked inside his coat was the letter from Mr. McGraw, the manager of the Russell Street Theatre. The letter had arrived shortly before he and Lucia had left for Newbury, and though Rivers had had time to read it only once, the significance of its contents had been running through his mind all afternoon.

  When he’d first made his wager with Everett, he’d envisioned tr
aining Lucia to perform a single scene for Everett and a small circle of other acquaintances in the drawing room of his house in Cavendish Square. If there were interest enough, he might even have hired the ballroom of a local inn, and offered a subscription for tickets, so she’d have some kind of payment for her performance that didn’t come from him.

  That would have been sufficient to win the wager, and it was how he’d described to her his plans for a performance when she’d asked, early in their time together. She had trusted him to make whatever arrangements were necessary, and had asked nothing more, concentrating instead on perfecting her role.

  But as Rivers had discovered the depth of Lucia’s talent and witnessed the progress she’d made, his own ambitions for her had grown. He’d no longer be content with an amateur performance for an invited audience. He wanted her to have the opportunity to become a true actress, able to make her living on the stage, the way that she wanted. She’d said he believed in her and he did, and to prove it, he’d written to McGraw to request an audition for Lucia to play Ophelia in a staged production of Hamlet at the Russell Street Theatre.

  It would be considered a benefit, a single, pared-down performance on a single night, the kind of thing that was often done in the theater, but it would also become a public audition for her as an actress. In that night, she’d also become a professional, for while McGraw would take his share of the ticket sales, Rivers intended to make sure that she herself would receive the lion’s share of the benefit’s profits, a surprise reward.

  Russell Street was second only to Garrick’s own Theatre Royal in Drury Lane—the two playhouses were in fact within sight of each other—and a very grand place indeed for an aspiring actress to make her debut before the notoriously critical London crowds. Now the manager would present himself at the Lodge in three days for an impromptu audition, and Lucia would take her first step toward being the actress she’d always wanted to be.