Love’s a Stage

by Laura London

  Giles shook his head to clear the pleasant fog in which it was enveloped and then glanced at the butler with an impatient frown. “That’ll do, Quelbream. You may go.” He waited for Quelbream to complete his disapproving retreat before continuing. “Frances, for the love of God, what are you doing here? David said you were safely home with Nick. And Quelbream was right, Richard isn’t here.”

  “I have to find him.” There was an urgent pleading expression in her eyes.

  Giles was a man of no little sangfroid, but in the past hour he had been as unstinting as the next man in toasting his cousin Landry’s success. It had never occurred to Sir Giles that he would be called upon to pursue any later activity more challenging than to lift his foot so his valet could remove his boots before putting him to bed. From what he’d seen of Miss Atherton, she could be a formidable armful, approached from a sober state of mind; and here she was, beautiful eyes shining with suppressed agitation. He took a step back, shoved his hands distractedly into his hair, and bluntly said:

  “Well, you can’t. Zephyr’s had a bet riding with Sefton that David could turn out a major piece of drama before this year was out, and somewhere after he’d broached his third bottle, he took it in his head to collect. No one knows where Sefton is except there was mention of him intending to play cards tonight, so very likely Uncle Zeph will spend half the night trying to chase him to earth. Richard’s gone along with him to make sure he doesn’t do himself a mischief, considering what he’s consumed. Now listen, I’m no one to be telling you what to do, but there’s been some hard drinking going on, which makes this no place for you, and Nick—David’s going to wring your neck in the morning for letting her leave the safety of her home.”

  “Let’s see if you can do better with her,” remonstrated Nick Vent.

  They were interrupted by an opening door and the sound of voices at the end of the hall. Sir Giles cut Nick’s protest short with a wave of his hand, saying, “Oh, Jesus, someone’s coming. We’ve got to hide the girl.”

  Vent grabbed Frances by the right arm and began to drag her across the foyer. “We’ll put her in the south drawing room.”

  “No! Alvanley and Claremont are there having a hand of piquet!” Sir Giles seized her by the other arm, and she was rent nearly in two as he hauled her in the opposing direction. “It’ll have to be the library. Wait!” Giles fumbled inside his jacket and produced a gold coin, flipping it to Vent. “Go to the kitchen and give this to Quelbream, and tell him to hold his tongue with the other servants. I’ll send for you later.”

  Frances was in perfect sympathy with any attempt geared toward the prevention of her presence being detected in this bachelor household, but she found her transition down an elegant landscape-lined hall, through a charming breakfast room highlighted with yellow glass, and into the library was accomplished with more breath-stealing haste than even she could have wished for. She saw that the effort had also taken its toll on Sir Giles, who released her arm, leaned against the wall, and winced as he massaged his temples. This action apparently bringing him some measure of relief, he stood erect and put his hand on the door to leave. Over his shoulder he said:

  “Wait here, will you? I’m going to get David.”

  “No,” cried Frances. “I—my business is with Mr. Rivington, and I don’t care to see . . .”

  Her speech was cut short by Giles, who was on her in a second, slipping his arm around her shoulders and clapping his hand over her mouth.

  “Hush! Just hush now! Or I’ll kiss you. Want me to kiss you?”

  Frances shook her head so vigorously that he gave a crack of laughter. “Damme if I don’t want to kiss you anyway. Though I won’t, so stop kicking.” He gave Frances a rogue’s grin. “You’re adorable, but what a knack you have for injecting yourself into perilous situations! If you were my woman, I’d flog you. But I don’t doubt David’s too kind. Stay here.”

  Frances’ indignant protest that she was not Lord Landry’s woman was addressed to the empty air. She was left to stare in angry bewilderment around the library.

  It was a large room, the walls covered by glass-enclosed bookcases separated by classical statues. On the west wall was an enormous Renaissance canvas of Venus sprawled lasciviously in her bath, and on the east wall the exquisite marble fragment of a nude male torso, far more anatomically detailed than Frances deemed necessary in a statue. Life-size busts of Homer and Shakespeare examined her impassively from recesses near the window. Frances turned toward the neat bundle of coals glowing in the grate. As she watched, their sharp red iridescence began to remind her of the cruel, hungry orbs behind the slits in the executioner’s mask. Fox eyes—Kennan’s eyes.

  She gave a start as the latch clicked behind her, and Landry, dressed still in his deep-blue evening coat, came into the library. He crossed the room with a graceful stride and enfolded her gently in an embrace. His questing fingers curled into her hair, caressing the back of her neck, and his lips nuzzled at her throat.

  Frances felt a sweet burst of pleasure, quickly stifled. She might have tried to throw him off, but it occurred to her that the slightly heavy weight of his body against her was not only an amorous advance. He was leaning on her as much for support as in passion. After a moment, he said thickly:

  “I wish you were naked.”

  Frances exclaimed, and as she shook herself out of his arms, he said, “Will you do that for me sometime, Frances? Come and stand naked in my library? That would be beyond anything.”

  “Certainly not!” said Frances severely, her cheeks tinted pink. “Sometimes, I think, you have the oddest notions!”

  He laughed and pushed her unsteadily into a cane-work chair, propping himself with a dangerous bang against the glass door of a bookcase. “I’m drunk as a monk, sweeting; though I’m also devilish glad to see you. Giles tells me that Nick brought you, and you came looking for Richard. I’m bereft. Won’t I do as well?”

  Frances eyed him somewhat nervously. “You don’t look to me as if you’d be good for much.”

  This seemed to amuse him, and he swung his hand down to lightly pinch her cheek. “God, wouldn’t I love to show you how wrong you are. Why don’t you take off your cloak?” He bent to plant a kiss on her lips. “And your gown, your chemise, your . . .”

  She wriggled from his grasp and put the cane chair between them and glared at him across its narrow width. “Do you think it’s possible, my lord,” she said in tones of honeyed sarcasm, “that we might have a rational discourse?”

  “Possible, but unlikely. If it’s important to you, though, I’ll try.” He spread his arms wide in an expansive gesture and flung himself into the chair’s open arms. “Will you rub my shoulders?”

  Frances gave a long-suffering sigh, and said with exasperation, “Oh, very well. If you’ll promise to listen.”

  “I shall,” he said. “Mmmmm. Would you object if I remove my coat?”

  “Yes, I would,” she said crossly. “And I don’t mind saying that I think you are the most callous, indifferent, odious . . .”

  “Is this a new score, or are you referring to the general tune of our relationship?”

  “You know very well what I’m talking about. My head was almost struck off this evening, and you sit here in your stupid lavish mansion soaking up spirits like a sea sponge, as though it made no matter at all to you whether I lived or died.”

  He put one hand back to capture her wrist, and brought it around to caress with his lips. “Of course I care, love. That’s why I sent Nick with you. I have the deepest confidence in his ability to protect you, and besides, I hired three runners to watch the outside of your house.”

  “Three—Without consulting me? How dare you?”

  “That’s exactly what Quelbream would like to know, though he managed to convey it to me with much more diplomacy. The three have followed you here and have been lurking outside in a sinister style that, I have been assured, is giving the housemaids the notion that they are about to be ravished in
their beds.”

  “I would be surprised if they deem that any departure from the normal.” She regained her hand and set it to massaging his shoulder.

  He half turned toward her and gave her his delightful smile. “I’m wounded, Prudence! Do you think I’m the kind of slyboots who grabs kisses from the dairymaids on the backstairs?”

  Frances received an inner vision of the utterly beautiful Sheila Grant. “Perhaps you don’t now, but I’ll bet you did as an adolescent.”

  “Never. I learned my father’s views on abusing one’s dependents when I was seven years old and Giles and I lit Quelbream’s coat-tails on fire.” He laid his head sideways on her arm. “My parents’ real worry was the tendency among the junior housemaids to accost me on the backstairs.”

  “Which accounts for your being so conceited.”

  “Partly,” he admitted with a lazy grin. “By the way, who was it, do you think, that tried to do you in this evening?”

  “By the way,” repeated Frances, incensed by his casual tone, “I know it was Edward Kennan. If only one of the stagemen had caught him! You can’t imagine what it was like, being dragged toward the guillotine like an animal to slaughter. I had a dreadful fancy that’twas the grinning jaws of some terrible underworld monster come to devour me. And all the audience, sitting behind so terribly silent, as though it were all a part of the play. The horror of that moment was—David, are you asleep?”

  “No,” he said, suspiciously groggy. “You were about to describe the horror of the moment.”

  “I was, but I can see it’s not the least use, since your concern appears to be near none.”

  He rose from the chair, placed his palm flat on her chest, and backed her up against the glass bookcase. Then he took her chin in his other hand; an emerald fire glowed in his eyes. “I care, I care, I care! What in God’s name must I do to prove to you that I care? You damn little cynic.”

  Frances gave a squeak of alarm. “Watch yourself—you almost put your hand through the glass. I’m sorry if I said anything to—” Her lips were stopped by a hard, probing kiss. When he drew away, he said huskily:

  “That’s better.” He kissed the tip of her nose. “What did you do to poor Kennan to make him want to decapitate you?”

  “Poor Kennan! He’s a vicious, scheming blackguard!” she said indignantly, then stopped and looked up at him with doubtful surprise. “Does that mean you believe it was Kennan?”

  “I saw his face in the corridor, when he turned and walked away—he had murder on his mind. Besides, Alvanley and I half suspected for more than a month that Kennan has been stealing Fowleby’s paintings.”

  “And you’ve done nothing?” she said challengingly.

  “Without proof?” He shrugged. “Alvanley did try to talk to the Duke, but Fowleby almost had him bounced out on his ear. Am I to understand by your tone that you are doing something about it?”

  “Yes! Because, you see . . . I can explain that later! What matters now is that we catch Kennan, stolen painting in hand. That’s why I was looking for Mr. Rivington. I want him to take me to Beachy Hill.”

  He tucked his finger under a lock of her hair and wound it slowly into a shining ringlet. “Frances, you must remember I’m feeling dim. Beachy Hill?”

  “It’s the base of Kennan’s smuggling activities. He’ll be there tonight because it’s the dark of the moon, don’t you see?”

  “I see it in plural, as I’ve seen everything else since the second bottle.”

  “The smugglers always land when the moon is dark, and Kennan has just stolen one of the Duke’s paintings and would be most eager to be rid of it. Of course, he can’t sell it in England because it would be too well known, so he’ll send it off with the boat when they go to pick up a cargo of illegal rum,” she said earnestly. Frances waited for a sign of interest and finally challenged him, “Well, what do you say?”

  “Farewell painting.”

  “How can you be so flippant?” she demanded angrily, then realized it was a method hardly likely to put him into a responsive frame of mind. “Naturally, though, it’s not your painting, so perhaps as a favor to me would you be willing, please, to go with me to Beachy Hill and bring Kennan to justice?”

  He stared at her blankly, then started to laugh. But for the circumstances, Frances would have thought him a handsome sight as mirth brought tears to his eyes. Finally he was forced to stop for breath, and leaned back in the chair, banging up against the glass bookcase, which swayed and rattled again. He looked at her with humorous amazement as she watched sternly, hands on her hips.

  “Frances,” he managed, “you cannot—you really cannot seriously mean that we leave—right now?”

  “What’s wrong with right now?” she said in frowning hauteur.

  “First, I have a houseful of guests. Second, I’m so drunk I can barely stand. And third—God, I don’t think there has to be a three.”

  “It would be a terrible inconvenience to you, and I have no right to ask . . .”

  “My poor girl,” he said, the hard lines of his laughter softening into a smile, “I’ve always considered myself to be a reasonably selfish person, and what I’ve ever done to persuade you otherwise is more than I can imagine. Frances—Beachy Hill, boats going out, that means the coast, doesn’t it? Where—Sussex? That must be over three hours, even making good time, which we couldn’t in the dark. Rest assured I’ll do whatever is needed to protect you from Kennan, but the last thing you need is to become further entangled in his affairs, and the last thing I need is a starlight odyssey into Sussex.”

  “You’re saying no, then.” She drew herself up with pride.

  His eyes were gentle but he agreed. “I’m saying no.”

  “Well,” she said with dignity, “then there’s nothing more to be said.”

  “About Beachy Hill, no,” he said, not without sympathy.

  “If you won’t go, you won’t go.”

  “All too true,” he said.

  She began to walk reluctantly to the door. The empathy in his expression did not mislead her into thinking that his mind could be changed. What profit to argue with him further? And indeed, he was hardly to be blamed. Why should he do this for her? Whatever had she done for him? It was asking much, indeed, of one who was in some ways little more than a stranger. The Blue Specter would not end his haunting this night; and her father would rest more yet in prison. The thought brought an ache to her tender heart so great she could scarcely bear it. That he should be so meanly lodged for one day longer because of her failure was too fearful a consequence. Landry must be persuaded! Frances thought of explaining the whole of her father’s situation to him. If Lord Landry wouldn’t go to Beachy Hill for her, whom he knew, what would make him go for her father, whom he didn’t know? Reasonably selfish, he had said. But how was she to translate the trip into his own self-interest? She turned to look directly into the affectionate mocking green eyes.

  “I have to go, really I do. I don’t know where to locate Richard Rivington, and even if I did, there’s no guarantee he’d be any more willing than you are to take me. And in looking, I’d lose valuable time. You must take me, David. And if you do—I sh-shall make it worth your while.”

  Frances saw grimly that for once she had reached a thought before him. It was the last thing, clearly, that he had expected her to say. His eyebrows rose and he strolled toward her slowly, holding her gaze in a quizzical regard.

  “What, precisely, are you offering?”

  Her cheeks burned with shame; there was a lump in her throat; she looked at her toes. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  There was a silence before he said:

  “Anything?”

  “Anything.”

  He gave a low whistle. “You are full of surprises. You’re not under any illusions that I would be chivalrous in my interpretation?”

  “No,” she said in a breathless voice. “I understand what I’m promising.”

  “What a strange girl you are,�
� he said mildly, and put his hands on her waist and pulled her close. “Payment in advance.”

  She gently pushed him away and frowned at him. “Payment on delivery.”

  His laugh echoed softly through the library. “Done,” he said.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Frances was no horsewoman. Her own family was too poor to own horses; where they went, they walked. The only wealthy family in their parish was the foundry-owning Lynchams. The daughters of the house were giddy misses with nothing in common with Frances save age, but the stern hand of polite usage had dictated that they include Frances in certain of their entertainments. Since these usually consisted of riding to scenic vistas with which Frances was well familiar, in the company of a set of young people whom she didn’t like, only Frances’ good manners prevented her from pleading a toothache on the mornings of these excursions. A parson’s daughter, even one so respectably connected as Frances, ranked low in the social priorities. Frances was loaned the oldest, most cantankerous mare in the stable, with the apt pet name of “Bonebuster,” and sat on a saddle, the ill-tanned leather of which had split in ten places before the Americans had taken arms against colonial rule.

  It was not surprising, therefore, that Frances’ past experience brought a look of trepidation to her pink-cheeked face when Landry suggested they ride to the coast. She wasn’t dressed for riding! Landry informed her with typical male nonchalance that his mother had a habit upstairs that she had worn last season for riding in the park. Frances was too shy to mention a possible disparity in size; instead, she said she was afraid the habit might be done some damage.

  Landry gave her an ironic grin. “Frances, if you knew my mother, you’d realize that she’d as soon wear the same riding habit to Hyde Park for two years in a row as mount her stallion backwards.”

  When Frances appeared one half hour later in an imperial red riding costume, accented à la militaire (of a cut so dashing that it spoke volumes for the sophistication of Landry’s mother), she found the worst of her suspicions confirmed, for the snorting, dancing animal Nick Vent had brought to the mounting block for her could only be the aforementioned wild stallion. Landry had gotten to the small cobbled yard before her; the yellow lamp glinted off his golden hair as he sat easily on the back of a prancing Arabian. He laughed when he saw the doubtful look she directed toward her mount; Nick Vent said kindly that she was not to worry, Castor was the sweetest-going prad in his lordship’s stable, not one of those pretty-bodied killers that Landry himself was so fond of riding.