Drury Lane Darling

by Joan Smith

  Breslau felt like Daniel in the lion’s den, but there was no angel to assist him. Once again he turned a harried gaze toward the door. While he stared, a bizarre apparition entered the doorway and made a melodramatic pause. Trust Fleur. Her timing was exquisite, as usual. Her costume suggested that she had taken considerable pains with this role. What rare and wonderful surprise was hidden beneath her heavy black veil? Why was her left arm in a sling? Why did she look as though she’d been rolling around in a stable? Her tattered outfit of unrelieved black suggested she was playing a widow. But then Fleur always looked well in black. He felt every assurance that she would play her part to the hilt.

  “Gentlemen, the Flawless Fleur,” Breslau announced with a wave of his arm to the doorway and a bow to his leading lady.

  Pamela shrieked every bit as loud as the rest of the audience. “Fleur! She’s here, Nigel! Come!”

  They both sprang up and ran for a good view. Nigel was lost in the crowd, but Mr. Ryder wiggled her way to the front to hear every word. She watched, mesmerized, while Fleur lifted her elegant white hand and drew aside her veil. Pamela stared for one brief moment at an eye ringed in black. Over the left eye there was a smear of something red that was a fair facsimile of blood. A peek was all anyone had before the veil fell once more over the flawless face.

  Pamela expected a clamor of questions, but Fleur had her audience in the palm of her hand. The press scribbled, the caricaturists sketched, and Lord Breslau stood with folded arms, enthralled. In the silence, Pamela examined Fleur’s costume. The black gown had a long rent at the left shoulder. A glimpse of white skin peeped enticingly out. The skirt was muddied and ragged around the bottom. What on earth had happened to the marquise? It wasn’t the badger sett that had done the damage. That wasn’t the gown Fleur wore when she disappeared from Belmont.

  At last Fleur opened her mouth and spoke. Her voice was low-pitched, but every syllable was audible in the farthest corner.

  “Behold, a miracle. I am Lady Lazarus, risen from the dead. They left me for dead, my body covered with straw in a hay wain carrying me toward Dover.”

  That, Pamela assumed, accounted for the wisps of straw that still clung to her skirts. She must have glued them. Such were Fleur’s dramatic powers that no one enquired who “they” were. To forestall any interruption of her soliloquy, Fleur immediately went on to reveal “them.”

  “They” were French spies who had broken into her apartment in the country house where she had gone to find a moment’s quiet to finish her memoirs. For many years she had been importuned by them, but her loyalty was with Britain, where the Prince of Wales himself had thrown his mantle over her when she arrived on Britain’s shore, a homeless, derelict noblewoman, cast out of her own country by the rabble.

  When she refused to spy for the French, they had determined to drag her to Paris and execute her as a traitor. With God’s help and her own bravery, she had recovered sufficiently to escape the hay wain and crawl through mud to the safety of a shepherd’s hut, from whence she had made her way back home to Drury Lane.

  Breslau clapped louder than the rest. He ably diverted questions that might prove embarrassing by shepherding Fleur out the door and up to his private office to “recover.”

  “I shall return,” Fleur announced from the doorway.

  As soon as they were out the door, she clamped a sapient eye on Breslau. Her faltering voice had firmed to ice. “And we shall see who is to be the star of The Amazing Invalid, sir. Rose Flanders indeed!”

  Pamela squeezed her way to the door and followed. She fully expected to be shut out, but Breslau motioned her to the corner of his office, and Fleur didn’t seem to mind having a small addition to her audience. She angrily pulled her left arm from the sling.

  “Mees Calmstock! Has he turned you into a player as well?” she asked, staring at the breeches.

  “That is another story. We are more interested in hearing yours, Fleur,” Breslau said. “The truth, this time, if you please.”

  Fleur threw back her veil, revealing the black eye and bloodied brow to have been created from makeup. “My story can wait. How dare those scurrilous critics say Rose Flanders can act! She’s no actress, and she has played six roles to prove it. Her voice squawks like an unoiled hinge. You called this gathering tonight to announce her in the lead for The Amazing Invalid. Don’t deny it, monster.”

  “You know the old saw, Fleur. The show must go on.”

  “So much for loyalty! Perhaps I should have spied for the French after all. Max, Spiedel—they are all unfaithful.” The powerful voice added a vibrato on the last syllables.

  Breslau felt an urge to clap. He sat down and folded his arms. As he was attending a performance, it wasn’t incumbent on him to remain on his feet. “Where have you been?” he asked.

  “What are you paying her? That insipid, simpering—Anglaise!”

  “No contract has been signed. Come now, you’ll have to tell me the truth sooner or later. You tell me where you’ve been, and I’ll tell you whether or not your plan has worked.”

  “Ass! Of course it hasn’t worked. Max running straight to Lady Margaret for comfort. Let him, what do I care? If a mistress-ship is all I’m good for, I could have that from a duke or a prince inside of a week. Let Mr. Spiedel trot the boards of Covent Garden. He’ll learn soon enough what a life he’s pitched himself into. As to you giving Rose Flanders my role! Ha, she’s only a novelty. She won’t last a week. You’ll come begging to me to save your bacon.” A defiant smile parted her lips, and silvery laughter tinkled in a shower around them.

  Pamela leaned closer. Fleur disdained to have a seat. She strode back and forth as she spoke, arms waving.

  “You want my story? You shall have it. To begin, I was not quite determined to disappear when I went to Belmont, though I took certain precautions in case it should prove necessary. I left Maria behind, and brought only the necessities with me. It was Max’s pusillanimous behavior that decided me. His mother might live for decades. I will not wait on her death to become respectable. The plan was there, in abeyance, vous comprenez?”

  “Absolument.”

  “I arranged with a friend, Mr. Halton, to have a carriage waiting in case I required it. He will do anything for money, that one, even make love to Meg Crispin. My butler drove it. Halton was to be in touch with me at the assembly. I told him to bring the carriage around to the side road. He made a scouting expedition a few days earlier, and we chose a spot close to a little spinney.”

  “We know the place,” Breslau nodded. “I rather wondered that you knew Sir Aubrey raised sheep. Halton told you?”

  She nodded. “A little slip, that, but no one seemed to notice. I went for a walk before dinner and discovered an old raincoat and galoshes at the rear vestibule. You recall the weather was uncertain. Sable dislikes the wet, and my slippers were nearly new. After the assembly, I left Belmont to meet Mr. Halton, and when I was halfway to the spinney, I remembered I had left something behind.”

  “Max’s glove, or Lady Raleigh’s diamond bracelet?”

  Fleur gave a squinting look at these interruptions. “The glove. Max left it at my apartment one evening, and I kept it in case I should require an excuse to be in touch with him after one of our squabbles. I brought it with me quite by accident. I thought Lady Raleigh might leap to the conclusion I had been entertaining a gentleman if she saw a man’s glove in my room with my lingerie, so I went back for it.”

  “And the bracelet?”

  She gave a Gallic toss of her impertinent shoulders. “A little pourboire. I merely reminded Sir Aubrey of all we had been to each other, and he wanted me to have it for old times’ sake. Naturally I didn’t leave that behind! When I went back for the glove, Nigel came tapping at my door. I didn’t want to waste time talking about the memoirs, so I lay down and thought he would think I was asleep. In the confusion, I forgot the bracelet. I heard him gasp—in fact he reached out and touched it. He noticed I was cold from being outdoors. I lis
tened at the door when he left and heard the idiot announce to you that I was dead, if you please.” She laughed a mirthless laugh.

  “That was when the inspiration struck me! I had planned only to be kidnapped by French spies and turn up after Max and Spiedel had had time to consider how abominably they had treated me. And after the papers had made a great brouhaha about it, of course,” she added calmly.

  “You will appreciate the value of free publicity, Wes. But then I said, Why not repay Max for his cowardice? Let them think I am dead, and let him have the experience of being under a cloud of suspicion. Let him see how it feels to be despised by society when you are innocent. As I returned to the spinney, I fell into a hole and twisted my ankle. I lay there an age, till finally Halton came and rescued me. ‘What is this?’ he asked. ‘It looks like a bloody grave.’ He is a city-bred lad, you know. He thinks milk comes from a jug. And that is when I decided where I should leave Max’s glove and my shawl. The shawl, to confirm that both Max and I had been there.”

  “Very clever. But why did you invent the story about your good-luck shawl in the first place?”

  “For effect. I had planned to drop it in the spinney to show where the kidnappers had taken me away. A few clues to keep the newspapermen happy and give the account of my disappearance more length. I tossed a handkerchief into the bushes as well.”

  “The badger sett had the corners squared. When did you do that?”

  “Another inspiration. Someone had been digging there before. Sealing up the hole, I think. I was afraid the wretched little beasts would crawl out and bite me, but I noticed the entrance had been filled in with earth.”

  “Nigel said something about his mother having the holes filled up. The badgers were after her honey,” Pamela said from the corner. “But there was fresh digging, and a shovel there.”

  “I had seen the shovel when I was looking for a raincoat and galoshes for my flight,” Fleur explained. “My gown was destroyed when I fell in the hole, and after I was in the carriage, I had to send Halton back for my things. Rather than decide what I needed, I told him to pick up the lot. He brought the shovel back to the badger sett as well and enlarged the hole. He was supposed to return the shovel to Belmont when he took back the raincoat and galoshes, but I assume he forgot it. I trust he hid the coat and galoshes. I didn’t want Sir Aubrey involved.”

  “They came to light, but it’s no matter,” Breslau said.

  Pamela risked another question. “Where did you have Mr. Halton take you when you left? We’ve looked at your apartment, and Mr. Spiedel’s, and Mr. Halton’s.”

  “I was with friends,” she said vaguely.

  “In Kent, actually,” Breslau added with an arch smile at the marquise.

  “Well, there is no necessity to hide it from you, Wes. I joined the Coventry players at Chatham. But how did you know? We took the most impossible route from Belmont, over mere cattle trails, so no one would see us.”

  “When you weren’t in London, I scanned the itinerary of the traveling players. People usually go home during times of crisis. You have told me more than once that other actors are your real family. Those at Chatham were the closest. Naturally you would want to be near enough that you could read of your disappearance in the newspapers the day they were printed.”

  “I even knew Tuck’s players were there!” Pamela exclaimed. “I saw them perform The Beggar’s Opera.”

  “And survived? I compliment you, Mees Calmstock. So you weren’t fooled by my little trick?” the marquise asked, turning to Breslau.

  “I own I was confused—for a while. How long did you plan to remain away?”

  “Not past Saturday. You didn’t think I’d let Rose have the busiest night of the week! Her sudden rise to eminence hastened my return,” she added with an astringent look. “Did you plan to announce her as your leading lady tonight?”

  “Only if you failed my summons, Fleur. I thought those announcements might bring you back.”

  Her fine eyes flashed with fire. “It was all a trick? You haven’t offered Rose the part?”

  “Not yet.”

  “And the other announcement—Max?” she asked hopefully.

  “Lady Margaret is visiting friends in Surrey. Max is desolate at his own laggardly behavior. You might get a proper offer, if you play your hand carefully.”

  “I hardly dare to ask…John—Mr. Spiedel?” Fleur’s theatrical manner deserted her. It was genuine concern that glowed in her eyes now. “Is it true he’s going to Covent Garden?”

  “Your son has various avenues suddenly open to him.”

  “Ah, you figured out he is my son. You are too clever for me, Wes. What an abominable husband he will make you, Mees Calmstock. You should do as I planned to do, and marry a foolish man. So much more comfortable. Well, it is only fair Spiedel’s father do something for him. I admit I have been active on his behalf. Which one—”

  “Three, to date. He tells me Sir Aubrey has offered him cash, Lord Alban a position.”

  “A position? He usually gives cash.”

  “Yes, a fair bit of it over the past six months. Mr. Spiedel hasn’t seen much of it, has he?” Breslau asked. “A Mr. Webb is also eager to do something for the lad. What have you against his going into the theater, Fleur? It’s done pretty well by you.”

  “You call this well?” she asked with a haughty stare. “Having to trick a man like Maxwell to marry me? I, a marquise? In England, the stage is not respectable. It is otherwise in France, where people have a proper understanding of the theater. But then the stage there is ennobled by such geniuses as Racine and Corneille.”

  “You omit the great comic writer, Moliere,” Breslau added with a laughing eye.

  “Back to your old hobbyhorse. I will not be limited to comic roles, Breslau. Did tonight’s performance not show you I am capable of greater things?”

  “You have an undeniable talent for melodrama.”

  “For tragedy! Which is not to say I couldn’t be persuaded to do The Amazing Invalid, if the price is right…” She looked a question at him.

  “I might convince the directors to go as high as thirty-five.”

  “Siddons got fifty. I couldn’t accept less than forty-five.”

  “Forty it is,” he agreed, with a good understanding of Fleur’s strategy.

  “And a promise of a tragedy for my next role.”

  “Your next role will be Lady Chamaude. Nigel is hot at the task. It is for you to decide whether that is tragedy or farce.”

  “My life? He stole that from my memoirs! He won’t get away with it.”

  “Royalties to be hammered out before production.”

  The marquise wore a pensive look. “My life should be dramatized. It is true I’ve had a very—dramatic existence. As to tragedy or farce—it is reality, Wes. We shall advertise it as theatrical realism. By the by, I shan’t take a sou less than fifty percent of the royalties. Raleigh will rifle my book for his dialogue. I have a great deal of unforgettable dialogue in the memoirs. What lines I wrote for the Prince Regent!”

  “That will be for you and Raleigh to decide with the publisher. I have only one other stipulation. No more blackmail, Fleur.”

  “Blackmail? You mistake the matter. Each of my gentlemen friends was in alt to hear he had fathered a son. Men are such egotists. I demanded nothing. I merely went and gave a performance that showed how much I had done for our son, and how little the father. All my friends were gentlemen, sir. No blackmail was necessary.”

  “Sir Aubrey appeared less than happy.”

  “No, only less than wealthy. I could have made something of the man, had I met him before he was married to his Methodist. It is fitting that John have a chance in life.”

  “Perhaps you’re right, but he has his chance now. No more blackmail. And now it is time to rejoin the gentlemen from the press. Better put on your veil. The kohl on your eyes is running.”

  Fleur drew out a handkerchief and mirror and attended to this detail. “Did
my disappearance cause much disturbance at Belmont?”

  “Not as much as the disappearance of Lady Raleigh’s bracelet. Sir Aubrey will want to buy it back, I fancy. He’s at the Reddleston Hotel now.”

  “What is he doing here?”

  “He came to see Mr. Spiedel. Who is Spiedel’s father, Fleur? Do you know?”

  Fleur gave a Gallic shrug. “It’s difficult to say. But I know who his mother is. He’ll not want while I am alive.”

  “He doesn’t know he’s your son?”

  “I was afraid he’d want to follow my footsteps into the theater if I told him. I had him adopted by friends, the Spiedels, to hide his illegitimacy, but I have always kept close to him. Since his coming to London, we have grown closer. He thinks I am a friend of his mama’s.”

  She stopped at the doorway. The aura of the actress fell away again, and she looked like a worried, lonesome woman. “Do you think I should let him join the theater? He has great talent, you know. The theater hasn’t done so badly by me.”

  “Would you really want to be in any other line of work?”

  She shook her head. “No, with all its ups and downs, there is no life like it,” she said musingly. “There is a part in The Amazing Invalid—the heroine’s younger brother… It might make a suitable debut for John. The role would have to be padded. He only gets a dozen lines.”

  “That’s not impossible.”

  “I wouldn’t want him to go to the Garden. We would end up rivals. It would be such a pleasure to work with him, to teach him the subtle nuances—he tends to rant when the lines require no more than a whisper. An amateur’s failing—you know what I mean. It is the way Rose Flanders played Emily tonight. It would be such a consolation to me to have him near. Yes, I’ll do it,” she decided.

  Her harried air fell away, and a smile of relief seized her mobile countenance. “He’ll be another Garrick! A Kean! Kemble is nothing to him. Let me tell him, Wes.” An expression of noble grief replaced the smile. She was back in her role of the Flawless Fleur. “If I can’t tell him I’m his mother, let me play Lady Bountiful at least.”