by Joan Smith
“Eh? You make it dammed hard.” He scowled. “The heroine has to be good.”
“Good, but not necessarily perfect. And remember, if you’re writing for Fleur, make it a comedy.”
“Damme, she’s told me to make it a tragedy. That’s what she wants to do next.”
“What she wants is fifty guineas a performance. I told her I know half a dozen fine actresses who’d be happy to work for half that.”
“And she knows the half dozen you have in mind—Rose Flanders, that’s who. Rose ain’t one, two, three with Fleur.”
“Couldn’t you work out some compromise?” Pamela suggested. “I mean a serious play with some comedic scenes.”
“Oil and water don’t mix. Every playwright worth his salt knows that,” Nigel told her.
“Does Shakespeare know it?” she demanded hotly.
“Hamlet don’t exactly have them rolling in the aisles,” Nigel riposted.
“What about the grave-diggers’ scene? Just write about life, Nigel,” she urged. “Everybody’s life has some good times and some bad. Fleur’s own life certainly has.”
“When I want help from an amateur, I’ll let you know, Pam,” Nigel said haughtily, and walked to the grate to stand with his hand artistically braced on his brow to aid inspiration. He found that the other hand on his waist, pushing back his jacket, added a certain something to the pose.
Pamela gave him a derisive look. Breslau had begun to wonder if it was Miss Comstock’s involvement with Nigel that held her back from responding to his advances. She appeared quite concerned at his offering for Fleur. He gave her a laughing look. “You’ll not bring him up to scratch by nagging, Miss Comstock.”
“I should hope not indeed!”
It seemed she had no interest whatsoever in Nigel, so that couldn’t account for her behavior. His eyes rested on her newly arranged hair, and the rather plain gown. Her shawl had been cast aside, revealing an enchantingly lithe figure. “I was beginning to wonder if you hadn’t changed your mind when you dared to appear in front of Nigel in such a dashing new style. This isn’t the spinster who was scowling at us when we arrived.”
“There’s no reason I must look a quiz in front of all the other gentlemen just because I don’t want Nigel to think I’m pretty,” she answered. Her tone was far from flirtatious. It had an angry buzz to it.
“You’re regretting the young blade with Fleur, the one who got away?”
Pamela called to enquire of Nigel who the gentleman was. He lifted his head from his hand a moment to reply, “I didn’t see any strange men there.”
Even when she described him in vigorous detail, Nigel didn’t recall seeing him. “Fleur is the only one he spoke to, then he left,” she said. “I think he came just to see her. What do you think, Nigel?”
“I think I’ll open with a duel.”
Pamela scowled at Breslau. “You’ve created a monster,” she charged. “Bad as Nigel was before, I can see his head is going to be swollen to a pumpkin before this play is finished.”
“Perhaps it will resume normal proportions when it is rejected.”
An angry flare shot from her catlike eyes. “You mean you don’t intend to produce it! Breslau, that’s horrid! Why on earth did you ask him to write it then?”
“It will be a learning experience for him.”
She wished to say a good deal more on the subject, but Nigel was stirring to life at the grate. His hand left his brow and began to draw random figures in the air. His head nodded as though he were speaking to some invisible listener. His lips even moved, though no sounds issued forth.
“Is he having a fit?” Pamela asked.
“A fit of inspiration, I fear.”
Nigel turned a beaming face on them. “By Jove, I’ve got it, Wes. Listen to this! You’ll love it, and so will Fleur. I shall write a dramatization of her memoirs. The woman’s had an incredible life. Did you know the Frenchies were after her to spy for them? They hounded her mercilessly. I’ve been running a few ideas through my mind and come up with the perfect opening. Her arrival at Brighton in the lugger—the crux of the whole thing.”
Breslau blinked. “How did you plan to get an ocean and a lugger onstage?” he asked.
“That’s your department. Damme, they had an elephant and sixteen horses in Bluebeard, and made money on it, too. It was a roaring success.”
“But still, an ocean…”
“A painted ocean,” Pamela suggested.
“She’s got the idea,” Nigel agreed, with the first smile shown Pamela since her arrival.
“It’s an interesting notion,” Breslau admitted. “The publicity from the book and play would feed each other, and to have Fleur playing herself—yes, it has comedic possibilities.”
“By the living jingo, it’s perfect!” Nigel said. “Fraught with—with everything. I’ll even put in a little comedy to please you, Wes. The scene where Fleur is escaping in the cart of turnip—now that could be humorous, in a bloodcurdling sort of way.”
“You said it was going to open with her arrival at Brighton,” Pam reminded him.
“We’re in the preliminary stages. I’m not sure Paris ain’t the place to start. The crux of the whole thing. She had some pretty good stuff in her opening chapter.”
“You could paint the backdrop of Paris, too,” Pam said hastily.
Breslau found another objection. “Before you go any further, Nigel, you really ought to discuss it with Fleur. If the plan is to dramatize her book, then she’ll have to approve it. She’ll expect a share of the royalties.”
“Dash it, I’ll be doing the writing! I’ve practically rewritten the whole mess, if you want the truth. Honestly, you wouldn’t believe what she calls a sentence.”
Breslau had heard quite enough of the play, and said rather imperatively, “Still, you’ll have to clear it up with her before you go any further. I don’t plan to referee a plagiarism suit. You can discuss it tomorrow.”
“I’ll discuss it now,” Nigel announced. “Fleur ain’t sleeping.”
He flung out of the room and pelted off to her suite.
“Now see what you’ve done,” Pamela scolded. “Lady Raleigh would throw a fit if she knew he was going to her room.”
“Who suggested writing from life?” he asked. “Actually it’s a good idea. I wonder who I could get to write the play.”
“Breslau! Nigel is writing it! You can’t pull it out from under him!”
Breslau gave a guilty start, and silently cursed himself. “I meant who could help Nigel put a final polish on it. He’s a rank amateur. This idea is too good to risk dwindling to a mediocre melodrama.”
Her color rose, and her eyes flashed. “You’re a perfect beast!”
“Surely not perfect!” Despite his facetious reply, he knew she was right. He also knew no other lady would have told him so to his face in such angry accents. Before he had time to conciliate her, Nigel was back.
He stood in the doorway, his face the color of snow, and his eyes staring wildly.
“Won’t she let you do it?” Pamela asked.
“She’s dead,” he said in a quaking voice. “She didn’t answer when I knocked, so I went in—I wasn’t sure she could hear me from the drawing room, so I opened the door, and she was lying on the bed…stone…cold—dead.”
His words petered out to a whisper and his knees buckled. As Pamela and Breslau watched in horror, Nigel sank gracefully to the floor in a faint.
Chapter Five
“Brandy, Wes. Get him some brandy, and a feather to burn.” Pamela jumped up, her arms flailing the air futilely.
Breslau was already rushing toward Nigel. He lifted his head and tapped his pale cheeks lightly. “Bring some wine,” he called over his shoulder.
She found it easier to follow one explicit order than to think rationally. She took up her own wineglass and flew to hold it to Nigel’s lips. His watery eyes opened and looked up in vague confusion.
“She’s dead,” he muttered, and
gulped the wine.
“She can’t be dead,” Pamela said. “She was hale and hearty not fifteen minutes ago.”
“Damme, I know death when I see it,” Nigel scowled, and with assistance from Breslau, he gained his feet.
“Could she be foxed?” she asked.
Breslau shook his head. “Fleur’s not much of a drinker. She quacks herself with laudanum when she can’t sleep. That could be it."
“She wasn’t trying to sleep. She was working on chapter four,” Nigel reminded them. “If you don’t believe she’s dead, go and see for yourself.”
“I have no intention of charging into the lady’s chamber on such a fool’s errand,” Breslau stated. “You might have a look, Pamela, if you’re worried.” In the excitement of the moment, first names cropped out unthinkingly, without their even noticing it.
“I think I should,” she said, and went down the hall. Her insides were shaking, but the marquise was so very lively it was impossible to think of her being dead. In his confusion, Nigel had left the door ajar. Pamela tapped, and when there was no answer, she pushed the door inward.
By the dim light of the dresser lamp she could see there was no body on the bed, and a tide of relief washed over her.
“Lady Chamaude,” she called toward the connecting room. “Are you all right?” There was no answer. Pamela advanced to the drawing room, where a lamp flickered in a gush of cold air. The door to the outdoors was open six inches, blowing lightly in the wind. The drawing room was empty. The folder of hand-written memoirs sat unopened on a desk, the pen sat in its holder.
Perhaps she’d felt faint and went out for a breath of air? Pamela hurried to the open doorway and looked all around, calling into the darkness. A fine curtain of rain fell, turning to soft ice as it landed. The sky was a moonless ceiling of silver. Obviously Fleur hadn’t gone out on such a night.
Her suite was situated at the back of the house. The door opened on the west side to a stoned and hedged garden. Stripped of its summer flowers, it resembled a small, dark cell, furnished with a stone bench and three large tubs holding black bushes.
As she turned to close the door, Pamela noticed a blot of white in one of the bushes. It looked like snow, but there had been no snow. She made a quick dart into the freezing rain, grabbed up the white thing and returned to the room to examine it. It was a lace-edged handkerchief. No obliging monogram decorated the corner, but a light, musky scent still hung about it.
She closed the door and turned to go back to the saloon. Impatient at the delay, the others had come to join her. She heard Breslau’s confident voice in the next room. “Probably sound asleep at her desk,” he said.
“You’d best come in here,” she called. Walking to the next room seemed beyond her powers.
The faces that soon appeared at the door were alive with curiosity. Nigel’s was still bone-white.
“She’s not here,” Pamela said, and explained her findings. “She must have left, but it’s pouring rain. I hope she wore her pelisse at least.”
Breslau strode to the study door and disappeared beyond it, into the night.
“Do you recognize this handkerchief?” Pamela asked, and handed the wet cloth to Nigel.
He fingered it forlornly and nodded. “A French needlewoman makes them for her. She always carries one.”
“At least she’s not dead, Nigel,” Pamela comforted him. “I expect she felt weak and went out for air. She must have tripped. You’d best go and help Breslau bring her back.”
Nigel went out, and Pamela looked around the room for evidence of Fleur’s recent activities. Nothing in the austere room had been disarranged. The window hangings were deep blue, the carpet a tired, old blue-flowered affair. A desk and chair, an uncompromising wooden bench that did not encourage lounging, a table holding dried flowers, and an assortment of undistinguished bibelots were the furnishings. She wandered to the desk and noticed that the pen was dry. Of course, if Fleur had felt weak, she couldn’t work. She’d decided to lie down a moment first, and had fainted or fallen asleep.
Pamela went into the bedchamber and took a peep about her. This room was more comfortable than the drawing room. The hangings had been replaced within the last decade in a pretty royal blue. The carved and canopied bed was ornate without being elegant. Its covering was undisturbed except for the dent where Fleur had lain down, and her night things laid out at the bottom of the bed. On the mahogany toilette table, a battery of silver and crystal toilet articles were ranged. Pam went to examine them. Brush, comb, hand mirror, nail clippers, nail file, a suede nail polisher, a miniature sewing set, powder, rouge, perfume. She unscrewed the cap and sniffed—yes, it smelled like the wet handkerchief. What was keeping Nigel and Breslau?
Next she cast a covetous eye on the nightgown and peignoir laid out on the bed. All shiny pink satin and blond lace. The familiar musky scent rose from them. Fleur would wish she’d brought a flannelette nightie with her. The room was freezing, though a sluggish fire smoldered in the grate. On the floor, a pair of high-heeled satin slippers awaited Fleur’s dainty toes.
So this was how an actress lived. Pam thought of the comfortable mules and flannelette nightie in her own room. On her dresser rested no battery of crystal and silver but a plain horn-backed brush and comb. No wonder Fleur looked so beautiful. Any woman would if she used all that stuff. What could be keeping them?
Finally becoming bored, she went to the clothespress and peeked in. The only clothing was the green suit Fleur had arrived in. The feathered bonnet rested on the top shelf. She thought Fleur was the sort of woman who would have half a dozen changes of clothes in two days and nights. The sable cape was gone. Fleur must have thrown it over her shoulders before going out for air. Naturally she wouldn’t go out in her evening gown.
At last the sound of footfalls and subdued voices was heard in the next room. Pam waited for the men to join her, fully expecting to see Fleur with them. She carefully closed the clothespress door and stood innocently in the middle of the room. When the men came in, she looked from one to the other, bewildered.
“Where is she?” she demanded.
“We couldn’t find her,” Nigel said.
“You have to find her, Nigel. She’s fainted, out in that cold rain. She’ll catch pneumonia.”
At this point, Pamela noticed that Breslau looked—not quite guilty, but somehow knowing. “What’s going on? What haven’t you told me?” she demanded.
“It will be best if we continue our discussion in the saloon,” he answered, and took Pamela’s elbow to lead her to the door.
She shook him off impatiently. “If she’s missing, we should notify someone. Did you find any trace of her? I don’t understand.”
“Pam’s right,” Nigel said. “There’s no saying Fleur—”
Breslau gave him a warning glance.
“If you don’t tell me this instant, I shall notify your father, Nigel,” Pamela stated firmly. It was the likeliest threat to bring him to heel.
“We might as well tell her,” Nigel said. “She’s like a dog with a bone, Wes. We’ll not get a moment’s peace till she knows everything. We certainly don’t want Papa making a fuss. And Mama! Lord, she’d have me filleted and fed to the vultures. I hope Fleur has the sense to get back before dawn.”
“Where has she gone?” Pamela demanded, her voice rising.
“You tell her, Wes. I have to run up to my room for a moment.”
Nigel vanished, and Pamela allowed herself to be returned to the saloon on the understanding that she would be told all. Breslau, that mountain of confidence, appeared decidedly ill at ease.
“There’s nothing for you to worry about. Fleur has gone to visit a—a friend,” he said.
She pinned him with a disbelieving stare. “The vicar?” she enquired in a tone of heavy irony.
“Hardly.”
“I didn’t come down in the last rain, Breslau. Ladies don’t go slipping out in the dead of night in the freezing rain to pay a social call. Now
what is really going on?”
Breslau was unaccustomed to such brash behavior from young ladies, and pokered up. “If you insist on knowing, she’s gone to visit a gentleman,” he said curtly.
Pamela’s eyes opened wide. For a moment she was speechless, then she asked, in a squeaky voice, “A love tryst, do you mean?”
“That’s a somewhat Elizabethan turn of phrase, but you’ve got the general idea.”
“Who?”
“She didn’t leave a note.”
“Then you don’t know for sure. How could she be having a rendezvous? She doesn’t know anyone here.”
“Fleur has a broad circle of acquaintances throughout the country.”
“A woman wouldn’t go to such uncomfortable rounds for a mere acquaintance. I wonder if it’s that handsome young stranger she was talking to at the assembly.”
“Very likely.”
“But he doesn’t live around here or Nigel would have recognized him. She wouldn’t meet him at the public inn, surely. She’s not that rackety, is she, Breslau?”
“We had achieved a first-name basis a while back,” he pointed out with an arch look designed to divert her thoughts.
It failed miserably. Pamela was scrambling through her mind and hit unerringly on the culprit. “General Max!” she exclaimed. “I knew there was something havey-cavey going on.”
“The slander is in your dish, madam. I didn’t mention names. And it would be better if you not air your suspicions to your hostess.”
She glared. “I’m not a complete Johnnie Trot.”
“If you’d care to have a seat, Miss Comstock, then you would permit me to do likewise. I’m tired, at the end of a long day.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, sit down. I think better when I pace.”
She began pacing up and down in front of the grate, while Breslau followed her silently with his eyes. The light from the grate struck her curls, burnishing them with copper highlights. Divested of her shawl, Pamela’s slender figure made a pretty sight as she paced back and forth, like a preacher preparing his sermon. After a few turns, she drew to a stop in front of Breslau’s chair.