Midnight at Mallyncourt

by Jennifer Wilde

  “Naturally,” he said.

  “If I were a man, Mr. Baker—”

  “If you were a man, Miss Randall, I’d probably have murdered you for the insolence you’ve shown. As is, I’ve had to curb a terribly powerful urge to throttle you with my bare hands. I might yet, if you don’t stop babbling on like the hysterical schoolgirl you most assuredly are not. Are you going to behave, or shall we fight some more?”

  I didn’t deign to answer. I was on the verge of tears, and the mere thought of displaying such weakness in front of him was appalling. My chin held high, I gazed across the street at the pavilion, fighting back the tears. Ordinarily I was strong and self-reliant, hard, even, because I’d had to be for the past four years, but this man made me feel weak and vulnerable. He made me terribly conscious of being a woman. He stood two or three feet away from the bench, legs spread wide, arms folded across his chest. The black silk ascot rustled against his throat. Locks of dark blond hair fell across his brow.

  “You make five pounds a month,” he said.

  “How did you know that?”

  “I know everything I need to know about you, Miss Randall. You’re a competent actress, well worth that salary, but you’re worried about your job. You hope to open a dress shop in London. You’re saving toward that goal. Recently there’s been a certain amount of tension. It seems Gerald Prince has suddenly developed an interest in you, and Prince is another man accustomed to having his own way. If foiled, he’s been known to take severe measures. If you continue to reject his suit, you might well find yourself out of work.”

  “You—you’ve been talking to members of the company.”

  “Never mind that. Am I correct?”

  “I see no reason why I should confirm or deny anything you might—”

  “I’m correct,” he continued. “You’re in a rather ticklish situation. After observing your conduct this afternoon, I believe I’m safe in assuming that you will continue to reject his suit. That means dismissal—tomorrow, next week, next month, whenever Prince finally sees the futility of his pursuit.”

  “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself, Mr. Baker.”

  “I disagree, Miss Randall. You are, alas, a woman, and a damnably attractive one at that. Your reputation went up in flames the moment you left York with the company. No respectable man would marry you after you’ve been on the stage—sad but true in this age of ours. Nor could you find employment as a governess. You’ve saved enough to keep you for a while, but as soon as that money is gone—” He shook his head, making a slight gesture that somehow managed to describe imminent doom.

  “How could that possibly concern you?”

  “Under other circumstances, it wouldn’t concern me at all. I’m not a bleeding heart. I couldn’t care less about the suffering masses. The plight of the poor, the slum dwellers, the downtrodden and exploited factory workers—let Mr. Dickens and his ilk bleed for them. I haven’t the slightest interest. Quite frankly, I find the victims of society a tedious bore. I’m interested in your own plight because I can make use of it. If that weren’t the case, you could go to hell in a carriage and I wouldn’t lift a hand to help you.”

  “Your frankness is overwhelming.”

  “It’s another of my more attractive qualities.”

  “I’ve never met a man so—so—”

  “Dastardly?” he suggested.

  “Totally ruthless!” I snapped. “You seem to take pride in it.”

  “Alas, you’re right,” he said, apparently downcast. “I have very few of the redeeming virtues, but one must accept oneself as one is, and I, it seems, am a thorough cad. You agree with me. I can see it in your eyes. Cad I am, but at least I don’t pretend to be a saint. Hypocrisy is one of the few bad traits I don’t possess.”

  He spoke with gentle mockery, painting himself as a blackhearted villain, unfeeling, unscrupulous, but I wondered if that was entirely the case. He was cold and selfish and insufferably arrogant, but I was sure there was more to the man than met the eye. Even though I loathed him, even though I longed to fly at his face with nails unsheathed, I couldn’t help but be fascinated, and I was extremely eager to hear about the ‘business proposition’ he had in mind. However, I would have gone to the stake before letting him suspect it. Chin still haughtily tilted, I tried to maintain a frigid dignity.

  Edward Baker gazed at me thoughtfully.

  “You make five pounds a month, Miss Randall,” he said. “I’m willing to pay you five hundred pounds for one brief engagement.”

  “I can’t be bought, Mr. Baker.”

  “I don’t wish to buy you. I wish to buy your skills as an actress.”

  “You want me to—to perform?”

  He nodded slowly, studying my reactions. Those peculiar eyebrows, one so straight, the other arching wickedly, gave his countenance a decidedly satanic cast, and Satan himself could hardly have been more devastatingly handsome. Edward Baker was unlike any man I had ever met. I was frightened, and intrigued. I felt emotions I had never felt before, and I wasn’t at all sure what they signified.

  “In a theater?” I asked.

  “No. I want you to pretend to be my wife for a month or so—six weeks at the most.”

  “Your—your wife?”

  Again he nodded. “It would be simple enough. I would introduce you as Mrs. Baker, and you would maintain the role only as long as necessary. It would be a role—nothing more. You would dress the part and act the part, displaying a modest, subservient affection toward me whenever anyone happened to be around. In private, you could hate me all you liked. I would make no physical demands on you, I assure you of that.”

  “This is—incredible,” I said, dignity vanishing. “I’ve never heard anything so preposterous in my life!”

  “There’s nothing preposterous about it,” he continued smoothly. “Let me explain further. I have an uncle, you see, and he is very rich. Very ill, too. He has only two male heirs, myself and a certain cousin of mine. He intends to leave his estate to one or the other of us. My cousin is a sullen brute, moody, temperamental, thoroughly unworthy, but, oddly enough, my uncle feels I am even more unworthy of the inheritance. Fortunately, he hasn’t yet drawn up his will. Time and again he’s told me that I need the influence of a good woman, that a suitable marriage would be the making of me. As you may have surmised, I’m not at all inclined to marry just to please him, so—”

  “So you want to deceive him,” I interrupted. “You want to make him believe you’re married, and when he makes the will—”

  “Precisely,” Edward Baker said.

  “A very clever idea.”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “Exactly the sort of thing a man like you would think of. You’d have no scruples about deceiving a sick old man.”

  “None at all,” he assured me.

  “What made you select me for the part, Mr. Baker?”

  “Because, my dear, you were brought up as a gentlewoman. Despite your rather sordid surroundings, you have class, breeding. It shines through, even when you’re playing a Cockney tart as you were in that deplorable drama I witnessed last night. It’s a quality no actress could simulate unless she had a background similar to yours. You wouldn’t have to act, really. You could discuss literature, music, the arts with perfect ease, and you could do needlepoint, pour tea properly—you could be the young woman you would normally have been had fate not intervened four years ago.”

  “You do know a lot about me, don’t you?”

  “As I said before, I know everything I need to know about you.”

  “A pity you wasted all that effort, Mr. Baker.”

  “Then you refuse the offer, I take it?”

  “Nothing on earth could induce me to consider it.”

  Edward Baker smiled to himself, as though he knew better. He stepped aside as I stood up. I brushed my topaz silk skirts. I adjusted the tilt of the wide-brimmed tan straw hat adorned with brown and white plumes. The smile still flickered on
his lips. As I started to leave, he made a mock bow, one arm folded across his waist, the other outstretched. It was a parody of courtly manners. I wanted to slap his face.

  “Pleased to have made your acquaintance, Miss Randall.”

  “The pleasure’s not mutual, I assure you.”

  “No? Pity. You and I would have been good together.”

  I moved across the grass toward the pavement.

  “Oh, one other thing—” he said.

  I turned, staring at him with cool disdain.

  “I’ll be here, at this same spot, tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock. Sharp. I’ll be waiting. I fully expect you to give my offer more consideration, Miss Randall. I shouldn’t be surprised if you decided to accept it after all.”

  I didn’t reply. I moved briskly down the street, away from the pavilion, away from the man with the dark blond hair and magnetic blue eyes. I didn’t look back, but I could tell that he was watching me. I had never been so humiliated, never so insulted! My cheeks burned at the thought of his insolence, his unmitigated gall. How dare he suggest I be part of such a wretched intrigue! My anger grew, steadily mounting, but there was another emotion as well.

  It was even more disturbing.

  Chapter Two

  IT WAS twenty minutes before time for the curtain to go up, and backstage was in chaos as I stepped through the door that opened from the dingy alley I had just traversed. The stage manager was yelling at the crew who were raising the brilliantly painted backdrop depicting the interior of the Vatican. Girls clad in wrappers, their hair in paper curlers, raced up and down the flimsy metal staircase leading to their attic dressing rooms, and our chief character actor, Donald Hampton, was throwing a tantrum because the robe he wore as Pope Alexander VI had a great tear down one side. Gerry, cheeks flushed, brown eyes venomous, was fiercely admonishing one of the stage hands who had misplaced a prop needed for Act One.

  I stepped over ropes, moved past stacks of painted flats that leaned precariously against the damp brick walls. Despite the din, I could hear the orchestra playing beyond the dusty blue velvet curtains and a low buzzing noise that I knew was the audience beginning to arrive. Sally, who was to play Guilia Farnese, was still in the pink satin gown she had worn to dinner, her blond hair in becoming ringlets, and she stood at the foot of the metal staircase, chatting vivaciously with a tall, slender middle-aged man in gleaming formal tuxedo and a black opera cape lined with white satin that swept the floor. He was the man who had given her the diamond bracelet last night, I knew, and with such an affluent protector on the scene, she wasn’t at all perturbed when Gerry left the poor stage hand in a state near nervous collapse and strode angrily over to the staircase, bellowing that it was high time she got into costume. Sally made a face at him, gave her gentleman a peck on the cheek and moved indolently up the steps.

  It was always like this, always noisy, always frantic, the very air charged with a frenzied excitement. I had loved it once. Once I had found it vastly stimulating, and I had been enchanted to be a part of this larger than life world of high color and glittering magic, but the magic had long since vanished. I saw the dust, the dirt, the soiled costumes, and flaking paint, and what I had in the beginning considered artistic temperament I saw now for what it really was: nasty temper, petty jealousy, senseless outbursts over trifling matters. Perhaps it wasn’t like this in the real theater, where professional pride and professional ethics took first place, but here in our tatterdemalion company the glamor survived only for those who were snugly ensconced on the other side of the footlights.

  “So there you are!” Gerry thundered, storming over to me. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t get here!”

  “I’ve never missed a performance yet,” I said calmly.

  “Don’t get cheeky! I’ve taken all the cheek I can take for one night! That bloody stage hand—” He curled his right hand into a fist, slamming it into his left palm. Gerry was always melodramatic. He never stopped acting, onstage or off.

  “Curtain’s about to go up,” he cried, “and you’re just getting here! Acting as insolent as that slut, Sally. She hasn’t long to last, I don’t mind telling you! When we leave for Chester, we’ll be short one blond ingenue, mark my words! Thinks she can sass me—”

  I gave a weary sigh. “I’d better go change, Gerry.”

  “Tonight is very important!” he continued. “A number of influential men from London’ll be in the audience. I understand Richard Mansfield’s being difficult again—” he added, rage abating. “They may want to replace him. That could be the reason they’re here, Jenny. Mansfield’s a pedestrian actor. I’d be superb in that role he’s doing at the Drury Lane. More than superb—I’d be magnificent!”

  Poor Gerry, I thought. He still clung to his illusions, still believed this touring company was merely a stop-gap in-between grander things. Although his fame had once surpassed even Mansfield’s, that eloquent actor currently the darling of London, Gerry would never be asked to replace him. He would never be asked to replace anyone, but he had to believe, he had to posture, he had to bolster up that incredible ego that was still as towering as his talent once had been.

  “I really must get to my dressing room—” I began.

  “Hold on a minute,” he said. His handsome, aging face was petulant, dark eyes glowering, mouth curling at one corner. “I want to know about that chap who came around last night, Jenny.”

  “What chap?”

  “The one who came backstage, after you’d gone. He collared everyone in sight, asked the most impertinent questions about you. Took Laverne off to a restaurant—God knows what she told him! Who is he, Jenny?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” I lied.

  “I didn’t like his looks, didn’t like ’em at all. What’s he want to ask all those questions for? What’s he got in mind? He comes ’round again tonight, I intend to have the stage manager throw him off the premises.” He was watching me closely, his eyes full of suspicion.

  “Do that,” I said, totally indifferent. “The curtain is about to go up, Gerry. I’d best hurry—”

  I left him standing there with his legs spread wide, fists resting on his thighs, a majestic figure in his Borgia costume and short golden goatee. Moving down the narrow stairs to the basement, passing the damp brown walls, I stepped into my dressing room. The sofa, dressing table, wardrobe and tall screen took up almost all the floor space, and the room smelled of greasepaint and stale powder, of dampness and soiled, dusty velvet. Gowns hung on pegs. A feather boa was draped across the screen. The roses Edward Baker had sent set on the dressing table in a tall silver vase, their rich red petals already beginning to wilt.

  Stepping behind the screen, I took off my street clothes, slipped into a wrap and sat down at the dressing table. I felt unusually low tonight, weary, depressed. Ordinarily I was immune to the tensions backstage, but tonight they seemed to have affected me deeply. The squabbling, the flaring tempers, the confusion: All had taken their toll. Or was I merely deceiving myself? Were they the cause of my mood, or was it something else? I gazed at the roses, touched one of the blooms. Petals shattered and fell on the table like crimson scraps. After leaving him there in the park across the street from the pavilion, I had determined to put all thought of Edward Baker out of my mind. I had gone to my dreary hotel room, and I had taken dinner in the even drearier dining room downstairs, but I hadn’t been able to forget him, no matter how I tried.

  I remembered his words, the fate he had predicted in such vivid terms. Everything he had said was true. I couldn’t deny that. If anything happened and I lost this job, I would indeed be in dire straits. Other ages might admire actors and heap them with honors, but in our own age, with the exception of those rare few like Mansfield who became the playthings of society, people on the stage were considered little better than charlatans and harlots. It would be impossible for me to find a decent job, and the only men who would have anything to do with me would be rogues like Sally’s current
admirer, middle-aged, married, eager to toy with me for a few months before thrusting me aside for a newer amusement. The money I was saving toward that dress shop wouldn’t last long. I frowned, hating Edward Baker for making it so vivid, bringing it so close.

  What if Gerry dismissed me? He was bound to do so if I refused to submit. I was on the verge of tears again, and that alarmed me. I hated any sign of weakness in myself. Tears were for those without stamina, without spirit. I wouldn’t think about it. I wouldn’t! I’d get through tonight, one more day behind me. Tomorrow would come, and I’d get through it, too. I had given up self-pity a long time ago, and I bloody well wouldn’t start pitying myself now. Damn Edward Baker!

  Peering into the dressing mirror, I studied my face. There were faint shadows about my green eyes, eyes that seemed even darker because of those thick, black lashes, and the skin seemed to be stretched tautly over my high cheekbones. My features were too classic, too cold to be considered beautiful in this age when plump, pink and white prettiness was the mode, and my waving auburn hair gleaming with copper-red highlights was not the favored shade of blond, but I was arresting, if not beautiful, unusual, if not the standard ideal. Tall and slender, my figure elegant instead of full-blown, I lacked the immediate allure of girls like Sally, but men turned to look a second time nevertheless. Edward Baker had looked, and he had liked what he had seen.

  What a strange, enigmatic man, I thought, applying a light coral pink salve on my lips. Was he really as cruel, as ruthless as he seemed, or was that merely a façade? I smoothed soft mauve-gray shadow over my lids, then thickened my lashes with mascara. He was smooth, poised, thoroughly composed, but one sensed a cold, savage quality just beneath the surface. I remembered the way he had twisted my wrist, his blue eyes frosty, features impassive. A dangerous man, I told myself, and yet he had something that seemed to draw one to him, made one long for just that sort of danger. I supposed there were many men like that, but I had never encountered one before. It was just as well that I’d never see him again. Any kind of affiliation with a man like Edward Baker would only bring disaster.