Читать книгу Regency Pleasures and Sins Part 1 - Louise Allen, Christine Merrill - Страница 19

The household in Bruton Street received no visits from Lord Arndale during the week following the Duchess’s ball. Which was not to say that he was not making himself very much felt.

Tallie heard from Zenna that she was receiving particulars of houses almost daily. Then there was a visit from a very helpful clerk who offered Miss Scott his escort to any properties she might wish to view.

‘He brought Lord Arndale’s card with him,’ she explained on a fleeting visit to ask if she might borrow a maid to accompany her. Lady Parry had agreed immediately, explaining that she had a parlour maid with aspirations to become a ladies’ maid. ‘It will be useful practise for her to learn how to behave when out with a lady.’

William reported bumping into his cousin in various clubs and once as he emerged from a house near Pickering Place. ‘Asked him what on earth he was doing there. He gave me one of his poker-faced looks and said he was calling on his agent. Rum sort of place for an agent if you ask me.’

But, disconcertingly, Nicholas appeared at every function Tallie attended. He did not ask her to dance or engage her in conversation, merely stopping long enough to give the appearance of normality before moving on to the card tables or another dancing partner.

Tallie moved rapidly from feeling relieved to being intrigued and then downright piqued—especially as she was beginning to enjoy a flattering amount of success with her come-out. The least Nicholas could do was to ask her to dance occasionally. When his parting shot at Lady Cressett’s musical evening was, ‘I am glad to see you are doing nothing indiscreet or unwise', Tallie was filled with an urge to do something quite outrageous out of sheer defiance.

Fortunately nothing occurred to her and the next afternoon she set off in the Parrys’ carriage for a cosy evening in Upper Wimpole Street to discuss the lodging-house scheme with Mrs Blackstock.

She arrived early enough to spend some time with Millie before she set off for the Opera House and listened with interest to tales of backstage rivalries, Millie’s excellent progress in her singing and the flattering number of floral tributes she was receiving.

Tallie caught Zenna’s eye. She had confided her experience with Jack Hemsley because she wanted to put Zenna on her guard if she had any further contact with him. Now she raised an eyebrow and nodded slightly in Millie’s direction. Zenna shrugged and a few moments later took the opportunity to whisper, ‘I have not seen him around, but it doesn’t mean she isn’t seeing him at the Opera House.’

‘Probably hiding his bruises,’ Tallie said grimly, remembering the sound of those blows thudding home on flesh and bone.

* * *

By seven o’clock Tallie and Mrs Blackstock found themselves alone. Zenna had been invited to visit the family of one of her ex-pupils and Millie had departed for the Opera House in a hackney carriage.

‘I’ll just spread out the details of the ones we thought most suitable,’ Tallie suggested, picking up the sheaf of house particulars. ‘If I move these things off the table … Is this not Millie’s reticule?’

Tallie held it up and Mrs Blackstock looked anxious. ‘Oh, dear, it is, she must have forgotten it. Is her purse inside?’

A quick glance found the stocking purse nestling within, along with Millie’s house key.

‘I had better take a cab and go to the theatre,’ Mrs Blackstock said with a sigh. ‘She could borrow the cab fare back from another girl, I suppose, but knowing Millie she won’t think of it until she’s outside the theatre on her way home.’

Tallie looked at the older woman’s tired face and got to her feet. ‘No, I’ll go. I haven’t seen the new production yet and it will be fun to do so from backstage.’

Mrs Blackstock accepted the offer with gratitude, but insisted on coming out with Tallie until she found a respectable-looking hackney carriage and made sure that Tallie had Millie’s stocking purse tucked inside her own reticule.

It took some while for the cab to make its way through the crowded evening streets from Upper Wimpole Street to the point where the Opera House stood on the corner of Haymarket and Pall Mall. Tallie had never been backstage before, but she knew where to find the stage door and the elderly man on duty there let her in willingly enough when she asked for Millie and tipped him a silver coin.

Tallie had to push her way through shabby, crowded corridors half-blocked with scenery flats and overflowing wicker baskets. Faintly she could hear the orchestra tuning up ahead and small knots of people hurried past, careless of whom they pushed aside in their haste.

Searching for someone who was not in such a hurry, Tallie turned into a quieter passageway. A door opened in front of her and a man wearing nothing but skintight inexpressibles, an obvious wig of red hair and a scowl stepped out. Tallie blinked at this apparition, unsure whether to scream or give way to giggles.

‘John!’ the man bawled, breaking off to glare at Tallie. ‘Where in the name of Heaven is my fool of a dresser?’

‘I have no idea, sir,’ she replied, tearing her gaze away from his naked torso. ‘Where is the chorus changing room?’

‘Boys or girls?’ he demanded.

‘Girls!’ Tallie said indignantly.

‘Never can tell,’ he observed obscurely. ‘Down there, turn left, down the stairs, follow the cackling. John, you idle bastard!’

With her hands clamped over her ears Tallie hastened down the corridor in the direction of his pointing hand. There was no denying that the noise betrayed the location of the dressing-room, and when Tallie peeped round the door she could quite see why.

At least two dozen girls in various stages of undress filled the room, which was overheated, glaringly lit and reeked of perspiration, cheap scent and face powder.

At the nearest makeshift dressing-table to the door a dark girl in a thin chemise was clutching a post while another in pink fleshings that left nothing to the imagination hauled on her stay laces. ‘Tighter, you silly tart,’ the first girl gasped when the second stopped heaving. ‘Tighter or I’ll never get into the costume.’

‘Fall out of it more like,’ her friend retorted with a chuckle. ‘That’ll be a crowd pleaser.’

‘Excuse me,’ Tallie ventured when they both subsided panting, ‘is Amelie LeNoir in here?’

‘Millie? Yes, over there. Here, luv, just stick your finger on that knot while I do the bow. Ta. Millie!’ She raised a voice trained to be heard from the front row of the chorus to the back seats in the gods. ‘Visitor!’

Tallie extracted her finger from the tangle of stay laces and hurried over to where Millie’s startled face appeared round a rack of costumes.

‘You forgot your purse,’ she explained, plumping down on a stool next to her friend. ‘May I watch the performance from backstage?’

‘Oh, thank you, Tallie,’ Millie said warmly. ‘Yes, of course, just take care you do not get in anyone’s way—and you won’t have to mind the language.’

Tallie settled down to absorb the atmosphere. Once her ears adjusted to the din and apparent chaos she began to pick out differences in costumes and to make some sense out of what was going on.

What had seemed to her first startled gaze to be Millie’s state of near nudity was revealed as being a set of skin-toned fleshings over which a dress, apparently made of disparate pieces of fabric, was in fact held together by panels of pink net. It still revealed slender ankles and a quantity of Millie’s well-turned calf.

Millie dusted her face with a vast powder puff and searched frantically through her cluttered table. ‘Where’s my lampblack? Jemmie!’

‘Yes, miss?’ A sharp-faced urchin appeared as though by magic.

‘Where’s my lampblack?’

‘Suzy half-inched it,’ the boy reported.

‘Well, go and half-inch it back.’

‘That’s a boy!’ Tallie gasped.

‘Yes, I know. That’s Jemmie. He’s eight.’

‘But you are all … I mean, half of you haven’t got any clothes on and—’

‘He’s used to it,’ Millie said calmly. ‘Doesn’t know any different. Thinks we’re all his sisters in any case.’

A man stuck his head round the door. ‘Overture and beginners! Shift your assets, you load of …’ A chorus of abuse and thrown objects greeted this announcement and he ducked back through he door.

Tallie had a sudden vision of what Nick would say if he saw her now and had to suppress a laugh. He hoped she was being neither indiscreet nor unwise, did he? How would he categorise sitting in the middle of the opera-chorus dressing-room?

Millie was jamming a saucy hat on her head and picking up a beribboned shepherd’s crook. ‘Right. Here we go. I’m in the first scene with the other village girls.’

Tallie spent an exhilarating hour and a half being jostled, sworn at, deafened and shocked as she jammed herself into a corner of the wings and watched the performance. At last the final curtain came down and the cast rushed off, sweaty, exhausted and apparently ready to spend the rest of the night in a continuous party.

‘Come on.’ Millie caught Tallie’s arm and dragged her along. ‘I need to get changed before they let any of them in.’

‘Who?’ Tallie found herself acting as an impromptu dresser, unhooking Millie’s costume and handing her pieces of cotton waste dipped in goose grease to clean off the make-up.

‘We get the lot: the bloods, the peep o’day boys, a few flats, some pinks of the ton,’ Millie said calmly. ‘I don’t encourage them myself, of course, but most of the girls have got followers.’

‘They are going to let them in here?’ Tallie squeaked. ‘Can we go before that happens?’

‘If I really rush.’ Millie stepped into her petticoats and reached for a walking dress hanging on a hook beside her. ‘Normally I’m never finished before they come in. So long as I’m dressed properly I don’t mind. I just get on and do my hair and things.’

Tallie fidgeted with impatience, unable to see anything she could help with to finish Millie’s toilette. The last thing she had expected was to be found in here by a crowd of amorously inclined men—judging from the very half-hearted efforts some of the girls were making to get changed, any man coming here this evening was not going to want to be discussing the finer points of the script.

‘Where are my shoes?’ Millie demanded, dropping to her knees and scrabbling under the table. ‘Oh bother, I’ve kicked one right through …’ She scuttled under the table in pursuit of her missing slipper, leaving Tallie by herself as the door swung open to admit a crowd of men.

They were in a dangerously boisterous mood, already half-drunk, clutching champagne bottles and more than ready to enjoy whatever favours the chorus girls were minded to share with them. Tallie retreated behind a rack of dresses, only to freeze as a very familiar voice reached her from the other side of the wall of mirrors.

‘Why, Miss LeNoir! Charmed to see you. I did so enjoy your performance tonight.’ Hemsley. Tallie pressed herself back against the wall, then realised that she could not abandon Millie, who was obviously responding with flattered delight to his compliments.

‘Your voice goes from strength to strength,’ he was confiding. ‘I think you are wasted in the chorus. I happen to know someone who manages performances at Drury Lane. I know he would hear you as a favour to me. Why don’t you let me drive you home this evening so we can discuss it? You don’t want to be here with this rabble—it is unsuitable for an artiste of your talent.’

‘Oh, thank you, Mr Hemsley, but I cannot drive with you this evening; besides, should you be out when you have so obviously been injured? Whatever happened?’

Tallie tiptoed closer to the end of the makeshift wall of mirrors.

‘Footpads, my dear, six of them at least. I had my cane, of course, and I flatter myself I have a good right hook, but even so, it took me some time to—’ He broke off, his drawling voice choking on the words as Tallie appeared. She glanced around, but the rest of the men were gathered round a giggling group of girls by the door; they would not be overheard.

‘Why, Mr Hemsley, what a dreadful mess those villains made of your face!’ If she had not been present when it happened, she would never have believed that mass of bruises was the work of one man. ‘How heroic of you to beat them off.’

‘Do you know Mr Hemsley, then, Tallie?’ Millie asked innocently, her face lighting up to discover two of her friends were acquainted.

‘Yes, indeed,’ Tallie said earnestly. ‘You have been having a hard time, Mr Hemsley, have you not? Such ill fortune to be attacked by footpads immediately after Lord Arndale beat you so soundly for attempting to ravish me.’

‘What!’ Millie gasped, running to Tallie’s side to put her arm around her. ‘You … you beast!’

It was obvious that Millie trusted her friend’s word absolutely. She stood by Tallie like a fierce little cat defending its kitten against a dog. ‘Take one step nearer and I’ll scratch your eyes out, you libertine!’

‘My dear Miss LeNoir,’ Hemsley was making the mistake of trying to bluster. ‘It was simply a misunderstanding—’

‘On your part,’ a cold voice said. Three pairs of eyes turned to find Nicholas Stangate lounging negligently against a clothes rail. A semi-clad dancer ran over giggling and put her arms around him. ‘Not now, darling,’ he said absently, giving her a pat on her rounded little rump. ‘Off you go like a good girl.’

Tallie made a serious effort to steady her voice, then observed, ‘If you hit him here it will start a brawl.’

‘I know. Tempting, isn’t it? I feel like a little excitement … of some kind. But we don’t want to upset the ladies, do we, Hemsley? Why don’t you run along while I take them home?’

Hemsley stalked to the door with as much dignity as he could muster. Nick did not even trouble to watch him leave and missed the look of murderous hatred he shot back at Tallie. I will make you sorry for this, those eyes promised. She shivered. She had made an enemy, a very bad enemy, and so had Nick.

Tallie turned back to look apprehensively at Nick. What was he going to do? What, more importantly, was he going to say in front of Millie and a potential audience of drunken bucks?

‘Do you have your cloaks, ladies? Then if you are ready to leave, Miss LeNoir?’ He escorted them firmly out, a broad shoulder turned to the romp in the main part of the room that was rapidly becoming raucous.

Nick appeared to know the labyrinthine passageways backstage with remarkable accuracy. ‘You have an excellent sense of direction, my lord,’ Tallie remarked slyly. Her nerves were getting the better of her, she wanted to throw herself into his arms. Directing jibes seemed safer.

‘Not at all,’ he retorted smoothly, taking the wind out of her sails. ‘I just happen to be very familiar with this theatre.’

Oh really, Tallie fumed, allowing herself to be steered towards the stage door. And which opera dancers have you got under your protection, Cousin Nicholas?

There was a closed carriage waiting, its sides black with no arms visible. Millie settled back against the silk squabs with a sigh of pleasure and smiled prettily at Nick when he climbed in after them. He slid one of the shutters off an interior lantern and the inside of the carriage sprang into life.

‘Thank you so much, my lord. I am very grateful to you. Tallie … Miss Grey was so brave to face up to Mr Hemsley like that. Why, I was quite taken in by him.’ Her pretty face crumpled for a moment, then she regained her poise. ‘I can see that I must be even more on my guard.’

Tallie leaned over to pat her arm and shot Nick a warning glance. Millie did not need any lectures on the dangers of her position.

He simply raised an eyebrow at her and said, ‘Had you considered using your talents in any other way, Miss LeNoir?’

Millie smiled. ‘I know I am not good enough to be a soloist. My voice is not strong enough.’

‘For the stage perhaps you are right. But what about private parties, musical evenings, select gatherings of that sort? You would have to be very careful about what offers you accepted and you would need to employ a driver and a chaperon, but you could make an excellent living, I would judge, and be far less exposed to insult and unwanted attractions.’

Millie just stared at him, her eyes wide, then she clapped her hands together in delight. ‘Oh, yes! Oh, my lord, thank you—it would be just the thing.’

‘I can make some recommendations to start you off,’ Tallie offered. ‘Soon you will make your own reputation. And, Millie, I had been wondering what present I could make you—may I employ a chaperon for your first year?’

They dropped an ecstatic Millie off at Wimpole Street. Nick waited until he saw the front door close behind her, then rapped on the roof of the carriage with his cane. As the wheels began to turn, he said, ‘Well?’

‘I had no idea he would be there,’ Tallie said defensively. ‘I had no idea they would let any men into the dressing-room at all. I only went because Millie forgot her purse.’

‘I know. I went to collect you from Mrs Blackstock’s and she told me where you were.’

‘Oh. I thought …’

‘You thought I had gone to the Opera House on much the same errand as Hemsley, did you not?’

‘I did not know what to think, only that I was very glad to see you!’ Now was not the time to throw his familiarity with backstage in his face. Tallie searched round for another means of attack. ‘Collecting me alone in a closed carriage is somewhat unconventional is it not?’

‘We are in a closed carriage now, as you can observe. You may also have noticed that I am able to restrain my carnal appetites. If you can refrain from lowering the window and crying “rape”, I think we can brush through the experience without having to resort to wedlock.’

Tallie reviewed a number of possible responses to this, including throwing herself into his arms, slapping his face or insisting on him stopping the carriage and getting out. None of these would approach his own standard of infuriatingly cool indifference and she badly wanted to surprise him. ‘Well, that is a relief,’ she said warmly.

Tallie had intended to provoke him, but she was not prepared for his reaction. Nick tipped back his head and laughed. He laughed without any restraint, a genuine, uninhibited roar of amusement, crinkling his eyes shut, stretching the long tendons of his neck as he threw his head back, removing every trace of constraint and control from his face.

She stared, torn between fury at being laughed at and fascination at the transformation. The carriage slowed, then stopped outside the Bruton Street house. Nick mopped his streaming eyes and regarded Tallie with a grin.

‘Tallie, you are enchanting.’ He leaned forward and planted a brotherly kiss on her cheek as the groom came to open the carriage door for her. ‘Now in with you or Aunt Kate will be worrying.’

The groom might be standing there pretending to be invisible with an expression of well-trained indifference on his face, but his presence effectively silenced any retort that Tallie might have made. Always supposing she was able to think of one.

‘Goodnight, my lord,’ she said with a chilly formality that provoked an equally formal half-bow, marred somewhat by the fact Nick’s shoulders were still shaking. Tallie swept up to the front door without a backward glance and was relieved that Rainbird was already opening it.

‘Good evening, Rainbird,’ she said brightly. ‘Is Lady Parry in?’

‘She retired early, Miss Grey. May I get you anything?’

‘No, thank you, Rainbird. I will retire too—could you send my maid up?’

The minute she was in her room Tallie regretted that last request. Now she had to act with calm and dignity while Susan helped her undress, unpinned her hair, put away her jewellery. What she wanted to do was find another cushion and beat the stuffing out of it.

Instead she sat in her wrapper while Susan plied the hairbrush and calmed herself by mentally listing all Nicholas Stangate’s numerous faults. He is cool, he is manipulative, he is domineering, overbearing and suspicious, he kisses innocent young women, he makes me lose my temper and my self-control. That was a satisfyingly long list.

Tallie bit her lip and decided in all fairness she should catalogue the few—very few—virtues Nick possessed. He loves his aunt and looks after William with a great deal of tact. He rescued me from Jack Hemsley twice. He behaved with chivalry when he found me in the attic. He is highly intelligent. He has a sense of humour. He looks … He is very handsome. When he kisses me I want to … I want him never to stop. He makes me lose my temper because … because …

Her thoughts stumbled to a halt. ‘Thank you, Susan, that will do. I do not require you any further tonight.’

The fire flickered and crackled in the grate, hypnotically drawing her eye. Tallie gazed at the flames and let her mind go free. Why did Nick crack right through her painfully acquired poise, her calm common sense?

‘Because I love him,’ she said out loud to the room. ‘Because I love him. ‘