The Chaperone's Secret

by Donna Lea Simpson

  “You worry too much, Amy.” He squeezed her shoulder and straightened. “You know our patrons aren’t going to know the difference.”

  “But it matters to me. Would you like a cup of tea, sir?” she asked, indicating the chipped pot on the table. She had, over the last three months, not only risen in stature from lowly seamstress to wardrobe mistress due solely to her hard work, imagination, and the ability of Mr. Lessington to recognize her learning and ability to design original costumes, but she had also made herself comfortable in the little room, making it her own, scrubbing and cleaning and organizing, and even furnishing to a degree. In the autumn she would need to find herself a place to stay that had a fireplace, but for now she was quite comfortable. Over the months she and her employer had shared many a cup of dark black tea, each having a preference for a strong brew over the anemic one the food mistress offered from her urn.

  “No, I don’t think I have time.” He strolled to the doorway. “By the way,” he said casually. “There was a fellow here earlier asking about a Miss Corbett. I had Jackson deny you, since I didn’t know . . . well, you showed up with no money and nowhere to go and you have not been terribly forthcoming about your past. Not that I am prying for more information,” he added, holding up one hand, “but I was afraid . . . you wouldn’t be the first young lady to be trying to evade the, uh, attentions of a gentleman of aristocratic background.”

  Amy frowned. “Looking for me? A gentleman? What did he look like?”

  “I didn’t get a look at him. Jackson merely said ‘aristocratic.’ That could mean anything to him, you know, from a canary waistcoat to a pommy accent.”

  “I’m not hiding from anyone, Mr. Lessington, I promise you that.” Amy wondered if it was perhaps the duke at long last regretting his behavior, but if the duke had been to the theater there could be no doubt as to his aristocratic bearing. Could it be Lord Bainbridge then? “And I can’t imagine who it would be,” she added.

  As her employer sauntered from the room, after her firm negative, she shrugged it off and tried to forget it. She had worked hard to make a life for herself and felt more self-reliant than she ever had in her life. Her greatest fear had always been having to find work completely on her own, with no connections, no recommendations, no references. Well, she had had to do it, and she had done it. She had turned her one bit of luck—passing by the back of Mr. Lessington’s theater when the seamstress was being ejected—into a position of respectability, and if not wealth, at least a subsistence. Her wage would go up once the Little Season started and the plays were being mounted.

  The day continued and finally it was time for the final dress rehearsal of scenes from Macbeth, the Scottish play, as it would only ever be called in the theater. Amy stood offstage and watched, particularly paying attention to her costumes and how they moved, if they interfered, if they inhibited the actors and actresses at all.

  After the requisite juggler and a musical interlude, they came to one of the most haunting scenes, in Amy’s estimation. Act Five, Scene One, and Lady Macbeth, candle in hand, wandered, sleepwalking and moaning, her nightclothes disarrayed. As the “Doctor” and the “Gentlewoman,” as the play styled the two other players in the scene, watched and conferred, the actress wandered, giving her speeches, out damn spot and the rest. But Amy noted that as she tried to rub her hands over and over, the frill on the edge of her nightclothes became tangled. That would never do!

  As Lady Macbeth exited at the end of the scene, Amy called her over. “Dolly! Let me see that nightgown!”

  The actress, one of the more obliging and less demanding, obediently approached. “What is it, Amy? It played well, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, except that the frill of this gown sleeve is going to give you trouble. Let me see it.” As the actress held out her hand, Amy examined the cuff of the nightgown. “There’s the problem,” she said, turning up a seam and pinning it with a spare pin from her dress. “One of the girls did not take this up as I indicated.”

  Just then the actress pulled her hand away and Amy looked up. “What is it, Dolly, what—”

  Standing nearby, gazing at her with his mouth open, was the last person she expected to see there and then. Lord Pierson.

  • • •

  Pierson stared at Amy in disbelief. She was dressed as she always was, in a sober gray gown, but it was adorned in the oddest way, with rows of pins along the cuff and collar. What was she doing backstage? He hadn’t believed Mrs. Bower when that good woman had asserted that Amy, his Amy, as he had rapidly begun to think of her, was working at a theater in some sewing capacity. And earlier in the day they had been vague about the possibility that she was employed at the theater, enough so that he had come back to check again and pushed his way backstage. But this job, this position was hardly respectable for a gently raised young lady!

  “Amy! What are you doing here?”

  She stared at him and smiled. The actress in front of her glanced first at one and then at the other and then retreated, whispering to a rough-looking man by the curtain rope.

  “I’m working! I am wardrobe mistress here. Isn’t it grand?”

  “Grand? No! Good God, Amy, this is hardly a respectable position for one of your . . . for you.” He moved toward her and took her hand. “Come, you must leave at once.”

  “Leave? Absolutely not! What are you talking about?” She jerked her hand out of his grasp.

  “This is no place for you to be working. Come, we’ll find you someplace else to stay. Do you have lodgings? Shall we go there and get your luggage?”

  “My lord,” she said stiffly, evading his grasp when he would take her hand again. “This is my position, and I like it. It is also my home. Mr. Lessington has been kind enough to allow me to stay here.”

  “Stay . . . here? Amy, of all the . . . a theater? This is not a fit place and you must know that!”

  “Amy, do you need my help?”

  Out of the gloom of the backstage area a very correctly dressed gentleman of middle years strolled into the dim light. He approached Amy and put one hand, proprietarily, on her shoulder.

  She covered his hand with her own and smiled at him gratefully. “No, I’m all right. Lord Pierson was just leaving.”

  “I was not. Not without you, Amy.”

  “I believe the lady said you were just leaving,” the man said. “Jackson?” he added, raising his voice slightly.

  The rough-looking fellow the actress had spoken to moved forward. “Yes, Mr. Lessington?”

  “See this gentleman out.”

  “Here now,” Pierson said, glaring at the man and wondering what he was to Amy, with his hand so familiarly on her shoulder. “What’s going on? Who are you and what are you to Amy?”

  “Jackson?”

  The tall fellow moved forward.

  “No,” Amy said. She gazed steadily at Pierson. “That’s not necessary, is it, my lord? You will leave on your own without assistance.”

  “Amy,” he said, and stretched out one hand. “I just . . . you must see that you cannot work here! A theater? With these sort of folk? It’s . . . it’s scandalous!”

  Her chin went up. “As scandalous as your own life, my lord? Please leave.”

  “I’m not leaving without you,” he said and took one step forward, grabbed her hand and pulled her into his arms. He had no idea what he was about to do until he kissed her, hard and thoroughly. His feelings were a tumult, but the feel of her in his arms calmed him.

  At first she was quiet in his arms, but then she pushed him away. “How dare you?” she cried, and turned, fleeing back into the gloom beyond the curtains.

  He started to follow but found himself lifted, bodily, by the man named Jackson and another giant of a fellow in Elizabethan dress. And then he was outside, in a back alley strewn with filth and inhabited by rats. He limped out of the alley and left, not sure where he was going, and not really caring.

  Twenty-two

  But that despairing mood only c
lung to him for a scant half hour. He did care. He cared too much to just let it go. And so he headed to a house he knew well, a mansion in the better section of London.

  It was a chance, but one Pierson had to take, and he found that, indeed, the butler admitted that Lord and Lady Bainbridge were indeed just returned from their continental voyage of the last three months. He demanded to see the marquess and was shown into the drawing room that he knew so well. Pacing up and down the carpet, he worried over his problem and wondered if he would ever find a solution.

  How did a gentleman convince a lady he had ignored for three months or more that he truly cared for her?

  Bainbridge soon joined him. “Pierson, I expected we would see you.”

  “You look fit, Bain. Congratulations . . . belatedly, of course.”

  The marquess looked sheepish, for once, and said, “Look, Pierson, I really have to apologize for how we left things, but I was desperate, and I knew it was the right thing to do, and I was right, for—”

  “Bain, old man, I’m not angry,” Pierson said impatiently. “I have far more pressing things to think of, let me tell you.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course. Good God, you did not spend your whole wedding trip thinking I was here brooding over your idiotic behavior, did you?”

  “Well, yes, I rather did.”

  “I was very angry at first, but I think my pride was hurt more than anything. Now, look, Bain, I have a problem and I may need your help.”

  Just then the new marchioness slipped in, saying, “Did I hear correctly? Is everything all right, Bain?”

  “Yes, my dear,” the marquess said, holding out one hand for his bride.

  Pierson looked her over as she joined her husband, wondering what he had ever seen to love in her. She was still as lovely as ever, and with a new serenity that he knew she had never had before, but she stirred nothing within him. He was cured, it seemed, of that idiotic infatuation. Only to tumble headlong into a new one. But this time he knew it was not mere infatuation; love had lain unrecognized within his heart, like a seed beneath the snow.

  “Look, Bain, Amy is here, in London, but she won’t come with me and I need her to, and there is this older fellow, well dressed, some sort of impresario, I suppose, but he seems to have some hold over her and—”

  “Amy? You mean Miss Corbett? Pierson, what the devil are you talking about?”

  Pierson collapsed on the sofa nearest him and buried his head in his hands. He needed to get a grip on his tumbling, wildly riotous emotions. This time the kiss he had shared with Amy had done more than upset his equilibrium and make him wonder what he truly felt. This time he knew he loved her; he was sure of it. All doubt had fled on the wings of a sweet delirium by which he was still possessed.

  But calm; he must find calm.

  He sighed, scrubbed his eyes and looked at the two. “I suppose I should start at the beginning.”

  And so he did. They canvassed, as a trio, what had happened, first, that day three months or so before when all of their lives had changed.

  Bainbridge and his lady wife explained to Pierson how their antagonism toward each other had been the result of both of them trying to deny feelings that were growing. And Bainbridge had started trying to show Pierson how spoiled and impossible she was by sabotaging things and making her break out into the shrew he believed her to be underneath.

  “That was you?” Pierson said, gazing at his old friend in wonder.

  Bain shrugged. “Yes. I confessed and Rowena has forgiven me, so I can speak of it now. It was mean-spirited and I have long been ashamed of myself. I can’t imagine what came over me to do such tricks.” He looked troubled still, and sighed, finally. “I almost feel that was some other fellow, the one who would do something so despicable. But I knew she was not the little turtledove you believed her to be and I couldn’t stand for you to woo her under a false banner.”

  “You were jealous, admit it, Bain. You were terribly jealous,” Lady Bainbridge said, tapping him on the shoulder. She then turned her gaze back to Pierson. “He just wanted me for himself, and wanted you to reject me as an unfit wife,” she said, chuckling and squeezing her husband’s hand.

  Pierson gazed at her steadily, marveling at what marriage could do. He saw that now she was truly content as she never had been before. She had always been restless, he thought, searching for the next admirer, the next besotted suitor, and he had been one of them, more of a challenge perhaps because of his reputation.

  But impatient, he said, “That same morning I got a message that told me that poor old Lincoln, my land manager, had been killed in another county by robbers. No one there knew him, for he had nothing left on his body to identify him. So I had to go to his sister—Lincoln was her sole support, I had already found out—and break the news to her. I have since found her a position with a neighbor of mine, and so she is set. But before . . . that night you two eloped . . . I had . . . I kissed Amy . . . Miss Corbett, and . . .” He shook his head, trying to untangle his emotions along with his confused words. “What an idiot I have been,” he groaned.

  “Amy is working for the family she was with before, the Donegals, is she not?” Lady Bainbridge said. “In Ireland, correct? That is what my father said when I asked him.”

  “No, she’s in London, working at a theater,” Pierson explained.

  “In London . . . a theater?” Rowena appeared shocked and appalled. “I wrote and told my father to take care of her, to be good to her, and he told me just recently—he has forgiven all, now, of course, since he found out that Bain married me the same day we eloped—that he had sent her back to Ireland.” She covered her face with her slim white hands. “All that time . . . all the time we were roaming around Greece and Italy, poor Amy . . . and she was so good to me, and I so foul to her. I never thanked her, and I was so wretchedly beastly to her . . .”

  Bain pulled her hands away gently and said, as he sat down beside her, “My dear, it was more my fault than anyone’s for convincing you to elope. We’ll make it up to her and take her away from that wretched theater. She can stay with us, I promise you.”

  “You’re so good, Bain,” she said, her smile watery.

  “But she won’t come,” Pierson broke in, before they began to bill and coo like lovebirds. “I spoke to her already, but there is some fellow there who had me thrown out. She says she is wardrobe mistress. I . . . I kissed her again. She must hate me; she pushed me away.”

  “Let me get this straight: you kissed her in front of others, and after just finding her again. Did you not think you might be taking the poor girl by surprise? After all, she doesn’t know how you feel, does she?” The marquess was staring at him as if he was a lunatic.

  “Well, no, but . . . I don’t know!” A deep sigh shuddered through Pierson and he miserably felt his ineptitude. “Whenever I’m around her I act like the most absurd fool.”

  Bainbridge studied his face for a minute, and then said, “I think I’ll go and talk to her myself.”

  “Would you? Only if I go with you, though. I will not stay away.”

  The marquess nodded. “It’s the least I can do, after stealing my lady away from you.”

  • • •

  “Amy, who was that gentleman?”

  Mr. Lessington had left her alone for a couple of hours and she had retreated back to her cubbyhole, but she had known sooner or later she would owe him an explanation. He stood at her door now with a serious expression.

  “Come in, please, sir. Come and sit for a few minutes, if you have time.”

  “I do. Dress rehearsal went smashingly, with one of the witches falling and spraining her ankle. Enough to prevent it being too perfect, you know, or I would worry.”

  She smiled over at him as he came in and closed the door behind him. He humored his actors, Amy knew, though he was notoriously not superstitious himself. A bad dress rehearsal meant a good first night, and even with just bits and pieces of the Scottish play being perform
ed, that was an especial necessity. “I’m glad it all went well. I wish I had seen the last part.”

  “You were distracted. Now, who was that young man I had Jackson eject?” He came in and sat down, crossing one leg over the other. Puss deigned to scamper over to him and leap onto his knee, her habitual perch whenever he was near.

  Amy sat down in a chair opposite him and gazed down at her hands. They had become work-worn over the last few months, with calluses where the needle sat as she did the long hems and fine stitching necessary. She did little of the actual stitching herself now that she had risen to wardrobe mistress and costume designer, but the calluses remained. “His name is Lord Pierson, a viscount and—”

  “I know who he is by reputation,” Mr. Lessington said. “He’s notorious. I believe he is one of those impulsive young men always looking for a good time, always flirting with actresses and other ladies of their ilk and skirting disaster by a hair. How is he connected to you? And why did he kiss you?”

  Well, that was direct. Amy bit her lip. She supposed her employer had a right to know some of her story. She was secure in her position now and did not fear dismissal. She had worked terribly hard to come to this point and knew her story would not jeopardize that.

  “I can’t say why he kissed me, sir, as I am not privy to his thoughts. But . . . well, that was not the first time. I’ll tell you the story, and it will lead up to the moment I met Mr. Jackson in the back alley of your theater. But I would appreciate it, sir, if you would keep this to yourself.”

  “Amy,” he said, ruffling Puss’s fur under her chin, the way she liked, “I am wounded you would think you even had to say that!”

  She told him the story, lightly skipping over certain areas, such as her own growing tender feelings toward the viscount, and emphasizing his reformation and growing devotion to Lady Rowena and how crushed he must have been when she eloped with the marquess.