This Towering Passion

by Valerie Sherwood

  Backstage Ainsley eased Lenore onto a bench and lifted her ankle, red and beginning to swell, onto a red silken cushion which somebody had placed on a low marble-topped stool. He gave her a sympathetic look and handed her a glass of malmsey which Lenore took with shaking fingers. Lenore knew that her understudy—some new girl who had rehearsed the part this morning while Lenore was undergoing last-minute fittings of her costume—would be already dressed and waiting somewhere in the company. She looked around, wondering who her understudy was. In a moment she would come forward and the play would continue. She took a sip of the malmsey. “How did that slick spot get on the floor, Ainsley?” she groaned. “I didn’t even see it!”

  Ainsley shrugged. “Perhaps ’twas drippings from the great chargers that were carried across it for the King and Court to sup on dainties before the play began. You should have looked where you were going, Mistress Lenore.” His voice was blunt.

  Lenore gave him an angry look. She had, she was sure, studied every inch of the floor she was to walk over. But that was during the first act. Something must have been spilled on it since then, while she was daydreaming. Who had made his entrance from that particular spot during the second act? None but Blakelock, for a brief appearance—and ’twas Blakelock who had given her that sudden push which had sent her plunging onto the stage. She studied the malmsey and thought about Blakelock. True; she had struck him for impudently reaching up under her skirts to pinch her bare bottom—and he had fallen from the blow and others had laughed, but . . . she could not think he would be so vengeful as to spoil her entrance for that.

  Who had most enjoyed her discomfiture? Lady Castlemaine, surely, laughing behind her fan. And Lady Castlemaine could well have known the action of the play, for it was one of her protégés who had written this one— which was why it had been so long postponed; she wanted the King to be among the first to view it and give it the stamp of royal approval.

  Hot with fury, Lenore decided it must have been Lady Castlemaine who had caused that spot to be oiled so that she would fall and make a ridiculous entrance.

  After a brief pause, the play was now about to resume, and Lenore saw her understudy hurry forward. She could not see who it was, for people kept stepping between, but it must be her understudy, for the girl was wearing trunk hose. Lenore swallowed her malmsey at a gulp and promised herself that she would indeed play for the King’s favor when next she appeared—if only to infuriate Lady Castlemaine!

  But she was not to have that chance. For the young actress who hurried forward to replace Lenore in her “breeches part” was small and shapely and chestnut-haired—and back in Killigrew’s company once again. As she swept past Lenore, her hazel eyes sparkled with malice and her lips, as she threw the curtains aside to make her dramatic entrance, were curved in a winsome, secret smile. She cast a quick covert look at the oily spot on which Lenore had so ignominously slipped—and just before she disappeared onstage she gave a laughing nod to Blakelock, who stared innocently at the ceiling. Lenore seethed as she stared at the ripple of curtains through which her understudy had gone.

  On the other side of those curtains, they were staring at her, too. For she wore a splendid costume of cream and gold satin, did Lenore’s replacement, with creamy silk trunk hose to outline her pretty legs. The costume was rumored to have been provided at great expense by the elderly Earl of Wytton—as was the gold chain around her slender neck. She wore her luxuriant chestnut hair in ringlets, and she swept onto the London stage with flashing eyes and made it her own. The King noticed her, too, and he straightened a bit from his lounging position. Beside him Lady Castlemaine moved restively. The King’s cynical eyes darkened and grew fixed as they stared at the cream and gold “youth” who moved with such a graceful feminine walk up and down the stage. For the moment, he had lost all interest in Lenore, who had been ignominiously carted away—and even in the dark beauty, Lady Castlemaine, who sulked beside him.

  The fiery young actress’s name was Nell Gwyn.

  An instant success, Nell was promptly invited to sup with the King—to the indignation of Lady Castlemaine, who was reputed to have smashed her wineglass and later to have attacked her hairdresser in rage. She was right to be angry, for before the evening was over, everyone knew that a new royal mistress would enjoy the delights of Whitehall.

  By the time Lenore’s ankle was healed enough so that she could walk gracefully again, London was baking in the summer heat. The King left for the country to escape it, taking with him the Queen, the Court—and Lady Castlemaine. Nell he had left behind, and she was sulking. Theatregoing customers fell off so badly the theatres closed down for the summer. It was a bad time for the players, for they were supposed to work forty weeks out of the year, with Sundays off, and they received no “sharing dividends” when the theatres were closed.

  But Lenore received her royal pardon that summer and came home to the George shining-eyed. Not just immune from arrest while she worked as a royal player, she was a free woman at last! No longer wanted anywhere for any crime!

  Now at last she broke her long silence. She sat down and wrote a long letter to Lorena.

  PART TWO

  * * *

  THE ORANGE GIRL

  CHAPTER 27

  September found Lenore a regular member of Killigrew’s Company, taking part in the onstage dances and masques that were held between acts and playing occasional small parts. The glittering gentlemen who frequented the theatre were quick to notice her blazing beauty onstage, and Lenore was besieged by offers to parties and little suppers in private rooms. Although her heart was still frozen in her chest where men were concerned, some of the teasing ways of the Twainmere flirt had returned, and one day, with a light laugh, she began notching her heels again—each time for an offer, whether it seemed honorable or no.

  In time she might have slipped into the ways of the other actresses, some of whom were married but nearly all of whom had a succession of lovers. Many were little better than prostitutes—some indeed were famous prostitutes and were hooted at by a ribald audience whenever they played virtuous parts onstage. Or she might have married one of the lesser gentry who thronged the playhouses and eagerly sought the company of young and pretty actresses.

  But Lenore had made enemies—and they were her undoing.

  One of her enemies was Nell Gwyn, who was by now a favored mistress of the King and never forgot that it was Lenore who had snatched her costume from the tirewoman in favor of Emma. Although Lenore was certain Nell had caused her downfall at Whitehall, there was no way to tax her with it, and Nell eyed her vengefully, perhaps sensing in Lenore a rival who could sweep both her and Lady Castlemaine out of the way.

  Another of Lenore’s enemies was Lord Wilsingame of evil reputation, into whose home young Emma Lyddle had disappeared without a trace. Lord Wilsingame was relentless in his pursuit of actresses and a steady patron of both those famous madams “Mother” Moseley and “Lady” Bennett—from whom he bought kidnapped virgins, young girls fresh from the country who had come to London seeking domestic employment.

  Wilsingame was on hand when Lenore made her debut in a small part—on a night when the King was elsewhere. Lenore was to note that somehow whenever she played any part the King was engaged elsewhere, and she wondered if this was Nell’s doing—for Nell and Killigrew had become very close. But Wilsingame, like the other jaded London rakes lounging in the pit, straightened up and leaned forward to watch the startling beauty of this new adornment to the London stage. When Lenore had finished her first speaking part, he sent a messenger to her backstage to inform her peremptorily that my Lord Wilsingame’s coach would be waiting for her outside.

  In the madhouse of the tiring room, where the messenger had found her, Lenore—who had unpleasant memories of being turned away from Wilsingame’s house on London Bridge when she went there in quest of Emma—raised her high-arched brows and concentrated her calm attention on Lord Wilsingame’s sallow-faced young messenger, whom she rightly
guessed to be his groom.

  “Tell my Lord Wilsingame I am otherwise engaged,” she said in a clear, carrying voice.

  Wilsingame was well known among theatregoers. At the sound of his name some of the buzzing of voices stopped and several backstage visitors turned curiously to look at Lenore.

  “And tell my Lord Wilsingame,” added Lenore with deliberate emphasis, “that I will also be engaged tomorrow—and the day after that,” Calmly she turned back to considering her reflection in the mirror, and several dandies who’d been urging two young actresses to accompany them to a coffee house and had stopped to listen began to laugh.

  “That should set Wilsingame back on his heels!” cried one, and Lenore gave him a cool smile and hurried out to brush by Wilsingame’s coach and climb into a hackney cab.

  “The Spur,” she told the driver in a ringing tone, glancing back to see Wilsingame’s gaze follow her in astonishment as he listened to the report of his sallow-faced messenger. Lenore smiled to herself all the way to the Spur—for she had changed lodgings when Mistress Potts had begun to sleep late and had objected to Lenore’s rising early for rehearsals at the theatre in Vere Street.

  The next night the same play was repeated, and Lord Wilsingame, his appetite for this insolent flame-haired beauty whetted by her refusal to notice him, sent back-stage by his sallow-faced messenger a large nosegay and a pretty pair of glass earrings—and another summons to his coach.

  This time in the tiring room there was a group of dandies clustered about Lenore, urging her to a party to held at Dunster House. She was laughingly turning them down when the nosegay and the earrings were thrust reward her and the sallow-faced groom bleated out Lord Wilsingame’s invitation. Nearby a dandy in rosy silk edged another clad in russet velvet. From the corner of her eye Lenore could see them watching her with interest, and coldly she remembered Emma Lyddle, who had been passed on by her Baronet to Lord Wilsingame—and disappeared from London.

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  With a bright, fixed smile she presented the nosegay to a passing tiring-woman, who curtsied in astonishment. Around her the company tittered.

  “Take this bauble back to Lord Wilsingame and tell him I have seen better.” Lenore’s tone was disdainful as she tossed the earrings back to the startled messenger with a light, contemptuous laugh. Around her the party of young dandies roared with merriment.

  In his coach outside, Lord Wilsingame, benumbed with shock, studied his returned gift with glazed eyes.

  Beside him one of his friends nudged another, heavy with gold lace. They exchanged droll looks, and a third, de Quincy, drawled, “She is playing with you, Wilsingame —like a cat with a mouse. Soon she will take you at a bite and be done with you!”

  Wilsingame grew red with mortification.

  “Come now, admit ye’re outmatched!” coaxed de Quincy with a sadistic grin.

  Wilsingame’s discomfiture deepened. “I vow I will bed the wench!” he grated. “And no later than the morrow! Like other wenches, she has a price—and I’ll meet it, for I mean to have her!”

  His words could be heard by several others in the crush of coaches surrounding the theatre entrance, and by the next day word was all over London that Lord Wilsingame was in the market to buy Mistress Chastity’s favors—indeed he had vowed to bed that Iron Virgin this very day! Not surprisingly, a large and interested audience was on hand to watch Wilsingame’s messenger—his face no longer sallow but flushed with importance—march up to Lenore in the tiring room after the play.

  Lenore saw him coming out of the corner of her eye but did not pause in rearranging her hair before the mirror. “Mistress Frankford!” he cried.

  “Yes?” murmured Lenore in a bored voice, concentrating all her attention on a recalcitrant curl that defied her comb.

  “Mistress Frankford.” His voice rose pompously, for he was well aware that he had an audience. “My Lord Wilsingame has instructed me to give you this.”

  He held out a handsome blue-enamelled box. Heads craned to see it.

  Lenore sighed and laid down her comb. She turned and gave the boy a disinterested look but made no move to touch the box he tendered.

  “Tell my Lord Wilsingame enamelled boxes do not interest me—I have several at home.” It was a lie, but it had the ring of truth. In the tiring room, one could have heard a pin drop. Not even the spurs of the gentry jingled, for everyone was hanging breathlessly on her words.

  “But mistress!” The boy’s voice cracked in his excitement. “Please to look what’s inside! My Lord Wilsingame said to tell you ’twould match your eyes.”

  Lenore raised her eyebrows and opened the box. She pulled out an amethyst necklace, each stone vivid and deep violet and ringed about with diamonds. A fabulous gift—scarce an actress in the theatre he could not have commanded for such a price! A collective sigh went over the assembly as Lenore let the diamonds and amethysts trickle like water through her fingers.

  So Wilsingame thought he could buy her . . . and after his treatment of poor Emma! Lenore’s expression hardened. Ah, he had played into her hands tonight! Bent on making him suffer, she held up the glittering necklace for all to see. The diamonds sparkled alluringly in the wavering candlelight, and the amethysts seemed to smoulder with a fire of their own. In the hush, everyone waited expectantly for her to capitulate before this handsome gift.

  “Take this pretty trinket back to my Lord Wilsingame,” she said negligently, dropping it back into the blue-enamelled box and shutting it with a snap. “For I doubt not he goes with the gift. Tell him I’ll be no man’s doxie—but if ’twere a role I chose, I’d be a royal doxie—not his!”

  The story was so good it was repeated to the King, who was reported to have laughed over it uproariously.

  Lenore did not admit to herself that by her cavalier treatment of Lord Wilsingame she was not only striking a blow for poor Emma, she was revenging herself on all men who would use a woman and leave her—she was making Wilsingame pay for all the heartaches she had suffered when Geoffrey left her.

  In selecting Wilsingame for her vengeance, she had made a dangerous choice. Made ridiculous at Whitehall— where he was inordinately jealous of his reputation, for he would have gone to any lengths to seek favor with the King—Wilsingame abruptly stopped his pursuit of Lenore . . . but he did not forget. Lenore knew that from the way he watched her from the pit, his cold, hard gaze insolently studying her breasts and hips and then flicking contemptuously over her face—hard as a slap.

  Lenore only shrugged. What cared she how Wilsingame felt about her? She was one of the royal players and, as such, subject to discipline only by the Lord Chamberlain!

  In any event, she had decided on a new path. She had written Lorena several long letters (much inflating her position in the theatre) and had scrupulously enclosed what little money she had been able to save. Come next summer she meant to go to Twainmere and claim her daughter, to bring Lorena back to London with her—yes, and to dress her well and educate her! She would need money to do that, and she meant to get it.

  The road to Whitehall still lay open to her—she had but to reach out at the right moment and seize it!

  She made that decision one night when her petticoat had been torn on one of the stage props and she realized she must buy a new one—for the actresses had to furnish their own petticoats as well as shoes and stockings, scarves and gloves. The price of a new petticoat would keep her on half rations for a week! Lenore glowered down on it— and called for a tirewoman. As she swept onto the stage in her mended petticoat and a handsome green satin gown trimmed in silver lace from the Great Wardrobe (a castoff of Lady Castlemaine’s, the tirewoman had whispered) Lenore had reached an internal boiling point. What future was there for her in the theatre? She would never make enough on her meager “sharing dividends” to have Lorena with her! Ah, but she could mend her fortunes! She would do it as Nell Gwyn had—by taking a royal lover!

  Having made that decision, Lenore lifted her head and delivered her
lines in such ringing tones that there was a small round of applause from the appreciative audience.

  Lenore turned to acknowledge that applause with a smile—and froze in fury.

  She was looking into the face of Gilbert Marnock.

  For a moment her senses swam and she was submerged in memories. She was back again in her lodgings off Magpie Lane on a bitter cold winter night. She had waked to find herself bound by Gilbert’s clutching arms, weighted down by his lean body. She could feel his hands impudently pawing her breasts and his hot breath searing her skin as she wrestled with him in her bed in Oxford.

  From backstage Ainsley saw her shiver and reel on her feet. He wondered if she was coming down with some distemper, and would they all catch it? But she quickly recovered herself and went on with her lines.

  “What ailed ye there as ye turned to the audience, mistress?” he asked her curiously as she stepped offstage. “For a space there, I thought ye would fall!”

  “I remembered something,” said Lenore grimly. “Something I’d prefer to forget.” Her face was so pale and set that Ainsley, though curious, forbore to question her further.

  That night Lenore wore a large black wig and a vizard mask when she went home from the theatre. She had no desire to encounter Gilbert again, and she had the uneasy feeling he might seek her out.

  She was right. He sought her out at rehearsal the very next morning.

  Lenore could not know with what care Gilbert had dressed for his planned confrontation. For two hours before, his hairdresser had been combing and pomading his caramel curls, which were more luxuriant than any wig and cascaded over his rose satin shoulders. He had cursed his barber, and he struck his valet when he discovered a spot on his satin knee breeches. Accepting the cuff with servility, the man—who wore Gilbert’s livery—hastily brought Gilbert another suit, this one of violet taffety, and helped his cursing master into it.