by Linda Ladd
Chapter 13
On the opening night of King Lear, Alysson stood alone in her dressing room at the Park Theater. Baskets of flowers sat on the tables and chairs around her, with more vases on the floor—roses, lilies, daisies, all lovely, their sweet perfume filling the small room. Nearly all of them had been sent to her by Douglas, but there was a large bouquet of sweet-smelling peonies from Adam Sinclair. She smiled as she brushed her hair, grateful for the kindness of both men during the past month of rehearsals. In truth, Douglas had grown a trifle annoyed during the last few weeks at the determined way Adam had paid her court.
She wound her hair into a neat chignon and pinned it low against her nape, then laid down the brush. She inhaled deeply and put her hands on her stomach, which seemed filled with dozens of hummingbirds, all beating their wings in a desperate attempt to escape. Suddenly overcome by nerves, she moved to the full-length mirror for a last-minute inspection of her costume.
As Cordelia, she wore a high-necked, high-waisted silk gown the deep rich red of burgundy wine. Golden ropes crisscrossed between her breasts, and she bent to straighten the folds of the skirt, arranging the wide panel of gold brocade at the front to best advantage. Voices chattered and called to one another in the outside corridor where all the confusion of preperformance jitters reigned.
As she sat there, listening to them, unbidden thoughts of Donovan writhed in her mind. She had learned weeks ago that she could not force him out of her mind, so she no longer even tried. Would he come to see her perform tonight? Was he already outside, in one of the private boxes, perhaps? She had not heard from him or seen him since the night of the ball at Douglas's house, but her mind had dwelled on what Odette had said that night in bed. Was she in love with him? Was that the reason she longed to see him so much? Was that the reason she wanted to share with him her happiness at being on stage for the first time? Sometimes—no, often—she had wondered if she had made the wrong decision when she had turned him down.
"Alysson?"
She whirled, not having heard Douglas enter, and he laughed at her edgy reaction.
"I'm sorry if I startled you. Are you that nervous?"
Alysson smiled. “I never thought I could be so nervous."
Douglas came forward to take her hands reassuringly. “You'll be wonderful, I have no doubt of it, and after tonight, you'll be surrounded by admirers."
Alysson looked at him, thinking how very much he had done for her. “I care nothing for that. I only hope to do well so you'll be proud of me. You have been a good friend since I came to America."
Her words had been sincere, but it surprised her when Compton suddenly held her close. His lips found hers, and Alysson closed her eyes and let him kiss her. He was only the second man to ever do so, only Donovan before him, and though his mouth was eager and not unpleasant, she felt none of the fire in her blood that left her trembling when Donovan touched her. He released her as Odette thrust open the door without knocking.
"We're on in five minutes, chérie,” she chimed, her face flushed with excitement. “And the house is full, how do you say, to the rafters?"
Alysson and Douglas laughed, and Douglas bowed low over Alysson's hand. “I wish you luck this night, but I know you have little need of it. Later we will celebrate your success at the party at my house. I think the two of us will celebrate this night for a long time, for more than one reason."
He smiled and touched her cheek, and Alysson watched as he bid Odette good luck. He was going to ask her to marry him tonight, she thought. He had hinted at it more than once in the past weeks, but she did not know how to answer him. She liked him a great deal; he had been good to her. But did she really want to be his wife? As he left, Alysson looked at her best friend.
"Are you as nervous as I?"
"It feels as if I again have the mal de mer!” Odette exclaimed, weaving back and forth in time to imaginary ocean waves. “But you will forget all about it once the curtain goes up. It is that way with all of us."
They walked arm and arm to the cavernous backstage area where the painted backdrop for King Lear's palace had been set in place. It was a magnificent creation of pillars and arched stone windows with real brass torches glowing with flames which encircled a carved oak throne with scarlet cushions. Alysson had only a line or two to speak during the first scene, and she was glad of it as she listened to the loud buzz of the audience on the other side of the heavy velvet curtains.
"It is sold out! See!” Odette whispered next to her ear, and Alysson put her eyes to the parted curtains to look out over the gilded elegance of the Park Theater. It was huge, with hundreds of velvet padded seats on the main floor behind the glowing orchestra lights, but Alysson's eyes went to the upper levels where the private boxes stretched with curving grace from each side of the stage into the darkness at the rear of the theater. By the light of the gigantic crystal chandelier she could see that nearly every seat was taken.
She drew back as the oil lamps on the lower levels were extinguished and an expectant hush came over the crowd. A soft whoosh of velvet brought the curtain slowly back, and she stood off to one side with Odette as Billy, playing Edmund, the illegitimate son to Gloucester, and two other American actors portraying the Earl of Kent and the Earl of Gloucester entered from the far side of the stage.
The play began, and moments later, she was cued to take her place behind Adam as Lear, with Rosalie and Odette, who would play her older sisters, and the lesser actors playing the attendants. She smiled at Adam as he stepped back to speak to her.
"This will be your night,” he whispered with a warm smile. “You'll steal the show from all of us."
"You are much too good as Lear for that to happen,” she insisted.
"But I am an old man, and you are a beautiful ingenue. This will be your night."
Alysson watched him move back into place, thinking it little wonder that her mother had embroidered such a fantasy concerning Adam Sinclair. She had found him kind and gentle in the last days of rehearsals and parties, and she knew she must have imagined that strange look in his eyes that day in Douglas's dining room.
Their cue was given by Gloucester, and Alysson took a deep breath and followed Adam and the others to center stage. Oil lamps burned in a row, illuminating their faces, covered with heavy theatrical makeup, but all else lay in darkness in front of them. Her heart hammered with terror, her stomach rolled, her palms grew wet, and she was appalled at herself for feeling faint as Adam began his lines concerning the division of Lear's kingdom into thirds for his daughters.
It had certainly not been this way when she had played Juliet aboard the Halcyone, and she forced herself to concentrate on the dialogue. She listened as Rosalie spoke Goneril's tribute to Lear, ready to speak her own first line, and as Rosalie finished, she did so, in the way it had been written, aside to the audience as if she spoke to herself.
"'What shall Cordelia do? Love, and be silent.’”
After those words from her, Adam said more lines, and to Alysson's relief, most of the terrible fear and trepidation inside her melted away and she began to grow calm. She had another short line after Odette's speech to Lear, then her lines came faster. She settled into her role, finding it elating to be part of the play, forgetting the crowd. She became Cordelia.
Her part allowed her to leave the stage near the end of Scene One, and since she had no more lines until the Fourth Scene of the Fourth Act, she returned to her dressing room to change into her next costume. It was a tight-fitting blue satin gown this time, with long flowing sleeves and a matching veil worn over her hair beneath a crown of gold. She sat down at her dressing table, smiling at her reflection. She had done her lines the best she could, and she was satisfied with them. And she was eager for the play to progress, because she had more lines in the last half. She had known from the beginning that Rosalie's and Odette's parts were more extensive in their roles of the ungrateful daughters, but it was the beloved youngest daughter that she had always wanted
to play. And despite what Adam Sinclair had said, this was his play, for he was truly magnificent as Lear. He was superb with the language of Shakespeare, the staccato words of rage and incredulity or the short, bitter bursts of cursing. Alysson admired him very much, and she had learned much from watching his technique.
A tap on the door arrested her thoughts, and she rose and went to answer it, expecting it to be the stagehand who cued her. She opened it, shocked momentarily at the sight of the tall Negro standing just outside.
"Jethro? What are you doing here?"
Jethro grinned at her, his teeth looking white and enormous against his wide ebony face. He twisted his hat in his hand as he spoke, his eyes admiringly on the elegant costume she wore.
"De captain, he sent me, Miz Alysson, wid dis."
He held out a small nosegay of violets, and Alysson looked down at it. “Captain Brace."
"Yassum. For good luck, he say."
"How nice of him to remember,” she said, hiding her disappointment. “Is he here?"
"Yassum, and Massa Donovan. He sent dis."
Alysson's heart leapt as he held out a small shiny white box.
"I sorry I late wid dem, but I had a pack of trouble wid de carriage. Thar a whole passel of white folk outside dis place."
Alysson smiled as Jethro handed the gift to her and began to back away from the door. “I gots ta get back now, fore a body can bodder with Massa Donovan's rig."
"Good-bye, Jethro, and thank you."
Alysson shut the door, holding the box to her breast. He had come. Pleasure flooded her with such joyful waves that she felt giddy. She had secretly hoped for weeks that Donovan would come. Smiling, she slowly lifted the lid, wondering what he had sent, and at the sight of the contents of the box, a rush of emotion rose up to close her throat. Tears welled, and she bit her lower lip as she lifted the small crown of white rosebuds from a bed of glossy green leaves. Ribbons of silver lace entwined the tiny roses. The memories came rushing back, especially the way he had smiled when she had told him about her dreams. “I will choose the one who gives me a crown of white roses laced with silver ribbons,” she had said to him, and he had remembered. His gesture touched her heart more than-anything else he could ever have done.
A small white card lay atop the leaves, and she lifted it, recognizing Donovan's small and precise hand. I'll await you in the Mews was all it said, and Alysson stared at it for a long moment. She shouldn't go, she thought firmly, she really shouldn't. She had promised Douglas to join him for his party, and she was sure he was going to ask her to marry him. No, she wouldn't go.
She walked to the mirror and took off the gold crown she wore, carefully pinning the white roses in its place. She tilted her head to admire them, then smiled. Yes she would. She would go with him. She wanted to see him, and after all, she had always said she would choose the man who gave her white roses and silver ribbons.
The rest of the play went smoothly, and the applause as the final curtain lowered was deafening. The cast received ten curtain calls, and Alysson was thrilled as Adam led her out to the front of the stage when the crowd insistently called for Cordelia. She smiled, stooping to pick up the roses being tossed to her, but even in her moment of triumph, she thought of Donovan.
After much mutual congratulating among the cast members, she returned to her dressing room to don the new dress made especially for the opening-night party. It was beautiful, but rather daring, scarlet satin that bared her shoulders and most of her back, but she put it on quickly, anxious to see Donovan again. He most likely wanted to tell her that their annulment had become final, she told herself, but at least he had come to see her performance. She looked up as Odette entered behind her, all aflutter in jade-green silk with a large white dahlia pinned behind one ear.
"Hurry, mon amie, the party is beginning even now, and we will make our grand entrance together!"
"I'm afraid you will make it alone this time, Odette."
"What? You are not going? But you were the sensation, and Douglas is waiting for you there!"
A streak of guilt shot through Alysson, but she didn't change her mind. “Mr. MacBride has asked me to join him tonight."
Odette paused in the process of freshening her lip rouge, turning slowly to stare at her friend. They smiled at each other.
"So you have given in to him at last?"
Alysson dropped her eyes. “I don't know about that. But I do know I want to see him. Perhaps it will be the last time, I do not’ know. Will you explain where I am to Rosalie? And to Douglas? I feel very bad about not going to his party."
"Pooh! You are doing the right thing at last!"
Alysson was not so sure of that as she made her way to the rear entrance of the theater. The Mews was a narrow street just behind the Park, and on this night a long line of carriages waited there. She was momentarily shocked by the outcry when she stepped out of the stage door into the warm night air. Immediately, she was surrounded by fans who recognized her as Cordelia, and she stood in their midst, overwhelmed by their attentions.
Countless cards and sealed notes were thrust into her hands, but she hardly had time to look at them before strong fingers closed possessively over her arm. She looked up to find Donovan towering over her, and she went with him willingly as he shouldered a path through the crowded sidewalk to where Jethro awaited high upon the outside driver's seat of the MacBride carriage. Donovan assisted her inside and had barely climbed aboard himself when Jethro called to the horses and the carriage moved forward.
"This feels almost like an abduction,” Alysson told him, as he settled into a seat across from her. “Is it?"
"Maybe it is,” he answered. “Would that frighten you?"
Black eyes held her for a long, uncomfortable moment, the expression in them reminiscent of their first meeting in London when he had hired her to play his lover, and Alysson felt a ridiculous chill undulate up her spine.
"Should I be?"
He smiled. “No."
It was rare indeed for Alysson to see such a smile from him, and one so warm at that, but it made him look even more handsome in his dark evening cape, and she found herself very glad to be with him again. It had been such a long time.
"May I ask where you're taking me?"
"I have ordered us a late supper. A celebration of your debut."
"You saw the play?"
"Yes, and you were wonderful. But you already know that.” His eyes dropped to the cards in her hands. “You do know what those are, don't you?"
"I suppose they are congratulatory notes,” Alysson replied, then looked at him in surprise when he laughed.
"They're offers from gentleman admirers who are quite as eager as I to sample your considerable charms."
Alysson smiled at that, sure he was quite wrong, as she opened one and read it, but the deep blush that followed revealed that Donovan had been right.
She lowered her long lashes from his amused smile, feeling very foolish and inexperienced but even more embarrassed that he had been the one to witness her naïveté.
Chapter 14
Only moments later, the carriage stopped at Donovan's town house on Wall Street, and he assisted her down to the dark, cobbled stableyard, then led her up through a pair of tall doors into some sort of foyer. The house was quite dark, with black hulking shadows cloaking the walls, but Donovan led her to where a single lamp burned at the base of a carved staircase. Alysson looked around curiously as they climbed the steps, and Donovan stood back before a door on the second floor. Alysson preceded him into a large masculine bedchamber, where a table had been prepared for them in the sitting room section at the far end, the flames from the tall white candles reflecting on a glittering array of silver and crystal atop a lace tablecloth.
Donovan seated her there and sat across from her, taking a chilled bottle of champagne from a silver bucket beside him. He opened it, carefully pouring them both a glass. He handed one to her, then smiled, eyes glittering like obsidian disks.<
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"To your success tonight and the achievement of all your dreams."
Alysson smiled, feeling very relaxed and comfortable with him for a change. She let down her guard somewhat, feeling that he was her friend instead of a man of whom she must constantly be wary.
"Thank you for sending me the roses,” she said earnestly, touching them in her hair. “It meant a lot to me."
"I wanted to send them. Are you hungry?"
Alysson realized that she was, and she nodded. “I have had nothing today at all. I was much too nervous to eat."
He said little, watching as she helped herself to the fresh strawberries and thick rich cream. Flaky biscuits were kept warm in a covered silver dish, but as she tasted one, she was more aware of his dark eyes moving with slow and thorough appreciation over her bare shoulders. The way he looked at her was almost like the caressing warmth of his fingers upon her flesh, and the sensation it initiated soon robbed her of appetite. She leaned back finally and met those unsettling black eyes.
"Why did you bring me here, Mr. MacBride?"
Donovan smiled. “Why do you think?"
Alysson looked at the champagne and fruit, the soft candlelight, then across the room to the draped bed already turned back for the night.
"Perhaps to seduce me?"
Strong white teeth flashed against his dark skin. “And is that the reason you came, English?” he countered, raising his goblet as if to toast her.
Alysson stood then and moved away. She stopped beside the fireplace, fingering the gold fringe on the servant's bellpull.
"Perhaps I only came to inquire about our annulment. I believe Douglas Compton is ready to ask me to marry him."
Donovan's muscles tightened, and he looked at her delicate profile silhouetted against the orange glow of the fire.
"Is that the only reason you came here?” he asked softly. “To find out if you're free of me?"