Terence laughed nervously. “That is a cynical thing to say.”
“Do you know,” Lizzie said, putting her hands on her hips and assuming a belligerent stance, “that is the second time today someone has told me that. I must not be as innocent as I once was. Sad, isn’t it? Getting old is hell.”
“My dear Miss Loudermilk,” Terence began, “you are ageless. The public loves you. Your very name is enough to make them line up at the box office and buy tickets by the score.”
Lizzie sniffed, only somewhat mollified. “I suppose so.”
Inside the closet, crammed as it was with gowns and other garments, Jo felt more and more as if she might suffocate. A wig tumbled from the top shelf but she caught it in time, now holding the doors closed with one hand.
The wig had been heavily powdered. The tickling inside her nose was nearly unbearable. She was going to sneeze. She could not help it.
“Miss Loudermilk, it is a very great pleasure to meet you in person,” Lord York said. “I have attended many of your London concerts over the years, of course.”
Josephine could almost hear the singer smile. “Did you see me in Paris last year?”
“The Swan Song opera? Yes, I did. But I am glad that it was not your last farewell, as advertised.”
“Well, no. More like the next-to-last-semifinal farewell. It is hard to say good-bye when the crowds scream for more.” She preened a bit and Dora sighed.
“Ye cannot retire now. Ye’d be ever so bored, Miss Loudermilk.”
“I could write my memoirs,” the singer said.
“No doubt there will be a run on the booksellers if you do,” Terence said. “Those who are mentioned will be outraged and those who are left out will be relieved. Either way, your honesty will ensure that the book flies off the shelves.”
“Quite,” Lizzie said smugly. “And now, gentlemen, I must prime the pipes.”
Lord York raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“I am referring to my vocal exercises. La-la-la and lo-lo-lo. Hee-hee-hee and ha-ha-ha.”
Dora, mindful of the prisoner in the closet, jumped up to show the men out. “She can break glass on the high notes. It is most impressive.”
Terence patted his waistcoat pocket. “My spectacles are safely tucked away. Come, Daniel, let us leave these dear ladies and look for my sister. I am sure she is not far away.”
“Good-bye,” said Lizzie. “Do come again.”
Dora did the honors and then shut the door, propping a chair under the knob.
Lizzie strode to the closet and Josephine stumbled out, gasping for air and waving the wig. “Oh, the dust—I was just about to sneeze!”
Dora took the wig and stuffed it back on the top shelf. “Ye poor thing. They are gone, as ye can see. Sit down and I will help ye get all that muck off yer face.”
“Thank you, Dora.”
Jo’s eyes were watering. She let the dresser steer her to the table and apply the soothing cream.
“Lord York seems to admire you, Jo,” Lizzie said, looking absentmindedly at her music. “La-la-la. Lo-lo-lo.”
“I can’t imagine why,” Josephine replied. She let her eyelids drift shut as Dora removed the makeup with gentle strokes. When she opened her eyes, she was just plain Jo again. She rather missed the painted hussy in the mirror.
Lord Daniel entered the great and gloomy house in Mayfair, nodding to the butler who opened the door and took his hat and gloves.
His heels clicked on the cold marble floor, a sound that echoed up the stairwell. There was no one at home but the newly hired servants, whose names he did not know. They came and went like specters, rarely speaking. The house was immaculate; meals were served punctually and perfectly; and everything he needed appeared as if by magic, without his even having to ask.
He hated it.
His brother had sacked the family retainers en masse upon coming into the title and hired this lot to replace them. Where Gerald had found such quiet, ghostly ones was a mystery. Perhaps at an undertaker’s, Daniel thought, feeling rather depressed.
But he could not ask Gerald, who was traveling—or perhaps carousing would be a better word—somewhere on the Continent and would not return for months. Daniel had the Mayfair house to himself … not that he wanted to be alone.
The Covent Garden Theater, from which he had just returned, was a much more inviting place. The camaraderie and coarse jokes of the idle performers had cheered him, as had the stage manager’s open friendliness. Seeing Terence again and talking over old times had been a tonic.
His mercurial friend seemed well suited to the theater and its myriad, ever-changing demands, if not the accounting part of it. Daniel knew he would have to go over the books to protect his investment. He had been blessed—or should he say cursed?—with a sense of responsibility in such matters.
He moved through the front hall, his wayward thoughts settling on Terence’s sister. So she was in London now, and keeping house for him. Interesting.
He wished that he had gone more often to the Richmond cottage. He had thought of it each time he happened to see Jo in the lanes. He had known at the time, vaguely, that she had turned sixteen, seventeen, eighteen … and then, somehow, twenty-one, still living with her parents. But he had been preoccupied with family matters during his father’s long last illness and set aside his fond thoughts of Josephine Shy. His chance meeting with Terence a few months ago had brought back memories that were poignant for all that they were few.
He had last seen her in Richmond, shopping on the main street with her mother, but she had not seen him. Had he not been in a closed carriage, rushing to London to transact some estate business, he would have stopped to talk to her then.
A basket over her arm, a bonnet tied under her pretty chin, her shapely form in clinging muslin—she was the very picture of a lovely village girl, a true English rose, just budded. And he knew she would grow in beauty as the years passed. Jo had never been conventionally pretty, but he found her irresistibly attractive nonetheless. And those few times—alas, from a distance—when he had heard her sing, as freely and naturally as a bird, were not something he would ever forget.
The women of the ton did not compare to Jo. The ones he had met and been introduced to by well-meaning friends seemed to resemble their little dogs more often than not, carefully groomed and snappish.
He could not imagine that Jo would find friends among them. But what else did she do? Keeping house for her brother hardly seemed like something she would enjoy, but Terence had said that she liked nothing better.
Daniel went into the library, where a fire burned brightly behind the grate. It was the only touch of life in the whole damned house.
He allowed himself to slump in an armchair, studying the flickering display of red and gold … and thinking far into the night.
Chapter Five
Two weeks later …
Incessant rain had brought rehearsals to a halt. The roof was leaking and there were puddles on the stage. Josephine had tired of helping Lizzie practice her scales, and wandered about in a black mood.
All of the Covent Garden players were on edge and quarrelsome, unable to practice their steps or block out scenes or invent bits of stage business to amuse the audience who would see them on opening night.
Some of the dancers had taken up residence in the boxes of the upper galleries, under strict instructions from Tom Higgins not to do any damage. Jo could see their heads and hear their faint chatter.
They were undoubtedly gossiping and telling bawdy stories of stage-door Romeos while they attended to the routine chores of mending stockings and shoes.
Jo looked out upon the rows of benches that stretched far back beyond the pit, and noticed a performer napping on one here and there. The theater was cold and drafty, and its echoing loneliness was disagreeable in the extreme.
Jo went through the door in the proscenium arch and headed for her brother’s office, wanting to see how he was faring on this dreary day.
He gave her a wild-eyed look and slammed the ledger he had been poring over shut. “Tearing out my hair!”
“Why?”
“That is an easy question to answer. The books do not balance. The entries do not add up. I am at my wit’s end!” He pushed the ledger off his desk with a sweep of his arm, and it landed atop some others on the floor. “I suspect that the previous owner was skimming the receipts. He paid no one but himself. I must make good on his debts and ours, if the show is to go on.”
“Is it that bad?”
“The prop master tells me that he is nearly out of materials and not all the sets are built. We shall have to improvise, he says.”
“It will all come round right in the end, I am sure,” Jo said soothingly.
“I am not,” Terence replied. “Have you written to our creditors?”
“Yes. Again. All of them.”
“Then there is nothing more I can do. I am counting on Lizzie, but I must confess, knowing that so much depends on one person’s performance alarms me.”
“She will be a howling success,” Jo said.
“Dear me. Where did you pick up that expression?”
“Lizzie, of course. She is an original in every way. As she likes to say, there is only one Lizzie Loudermilk.”
“Thank God for that. She has been extraordinarily irritable lately. She does seem to like you, though, and I am grateful for that.”
“I have learned much about singing from her, Terence. How to project the voice, for one, and how to breathe properly so as not to strain it.”
Terence shrugged. “Yes, well, it is good advice, but you will not have an opportunity to put it into practice. I cannot let you perform, my dear Jo.”
“I don’t want to,” she said simply.
Terence studied his sister for a long moment. “What do you want to do? I suppose I have been remiss in my brotherly obligations. I should have found you a suitable fiancé by now: a worthy fellow, with a comfortable income and no major vices. You could be quite cozy, embroidering his monogram on every little thing, as wives do.”
Josephine made a face.
“Forgive me. I forgot how much you hate sewing.”
“Ginny won’t let me, you know. Oh, I do need something to do.”
Terence got up to pace upon the carpet, his hands clasped behind his back. “We have added a singing castaway and he requires a desert island. You could help the prop master.”
“A castaway? Why?”
“Read the Spectator. True stories are all the rage on stage. Hugh Newsome seemed inspired by this one. Fortunately, it does not require an erupting volcano or a naval battle.”
“We do have a ship backdrop, Terence.”
He smiled at his sister. “You seem to know more than I about this theater.”
She smiled back. “Perhaps.”
Terence found the newspaper on the floor and gave it to her. “A Nantucket whaling ship found a poor fellow who had been cast away for ten years in the middle of the Pacific. If you are bored, imagine how he felt.”
Josephine found the article and read it quickly. “He seems happy to be in London.”
“Of course. He is the toast of the town, now that he has shaved off his fearsome beard. And I have heard that he never sleeps alone. But that is to be expected after a decade of deprivation.”
“The Spectator doesn’t mention that, Terence,” she said, laughing.
“No. And they don’t seem to know, either, that the unfortunate man was rescued by a giant white bird and not Yankee sailors.”
“What?”
“Hugh thought a giant bird would add something to the castaway scene. He said it was a symbol of something. Damned if I can remember what.”
“Who will play the bird?”
“Molly. She has no fear of swinging on a wire or of heights.” He stopped his pacing and struck a dramatic pose. “The curtain will rise on a group of barren rocks. A lean and weather-beaten man with barnacles in his beard appears. The castaway crawls over the jagged rocks, singing merrily—”
“Surely he is not merry.”
“No, of course not. I am making fun of Hugh’s pretensions. He hopes to write a tragedy of epic stature.”
“Oh, no.”
“I can’t stop him if I can’t pay him,” Terence said.
“Well, what does the castaway sing about?”
“Sing a song of sunburn,” her brother improvised, “baked under the sky. I don’t know. Hugh is still writing the lyrics. And McNeel is working on the rocks today.”
Jo nodded. “Then I shall help him. Mama taught me to paint scenery upon plates.”
“A ladylike art that has ruined a great deal of perfectly good china,” Terence said. “Well, then you are a dab hand with a brush and now you have something to do. I must return to my work. Daniel is coming by shortly. He wishes to examine the books.”
Jo wondered what Lord York would think if he knew that she was the one who kept their creditors at bay. Certainly it was no more respectable than singing on a stage. He would not approve. “Must I continue to avoid him?”
“Unfortunately, I made a point of saying that you almost never come to the theater. Shall I arrange a tea party at Guilford Street, and find a suitable chaperone? Are you interested in him, Jo?”
The blunt question made her gulp. “I … I have not spoken to him in years. But I did catch a glimpse of him during his first visit.”
“Aha! He mentioned halfway through our bottle of port that he thought someone was following him. But he said he must have been imagining things. So it was you.”
Jo looked archly at him. “He is a handsome man, and according to you, a good one.”
“He may be too good,” Terence said wryly. “But if you find him attractive, I see no need for missish simpering. I did promise Mama and Papa that I would find you a husband, and Daniel might do very well. He remembers you fondly and said as much when we visited Lizzie in her dressing room.”
Really, she wanted to say. And it was ever so nice of you to tell him I was a brat. She was not at all sure that her eccentric brother would prove reliable as a matchmaker.
“Have you told him about the singing castaway?”
Terence shook his head. “Not yet. He will not be pleased. He wanted us to offer noble dramas on elevated subjects.”
“Oh, he will enjoy the spectacle of a great white bird, like everyone else.”
“I hope so. Any excuse to have a performer fly. The crowd will go wild even if Daniel does not.”
“You are becoming an impresario, Terence. I think that the theater suits you. Despite the financial difficulties, you seem to be having a wonderfully amusing time.”
Terence laughed. “I am at that. It is like being mayor of a city. A very strange sort of city where day and night change places, and everything is pretense. The houses are nothing more than teetering façades and the doors open to nowhere. As for the inhabitants … they are entirely mad.”
“But certainly entertaining.”
“Yes, and perhaps I am a little mad myself.” Terence ran a hand through his hair. “Now then. I am sure you have met the prop master.”
“In passing. His name is McNeel, is it not?”
“It is. His workshop is in the building next door, but there is a connecting corridor.”
“It must be the only one that I do not know.”
“I will show you the way.”
He offered his arm to her with a gentlemanly flourish, and Jo took it.
In due time, the two Shys found themselves outside a door marked with the words McNeel’s Stage Properties and Special Theatrical Effects—Keep Owt. They opened it and went in.
Jo looked about, wrinkling her nose at the strong smell of turpentine. Terence made the necessary introductions and explanations, and left them to it.
McNeel showed her a cluster of artificial rocks, turning them this way and that in different group
ings. A ladder was built into the back of the biggest one.
“So ye want to paint? Ye will need a smock, Miss Shy.” He indicated a rack of baggy, paint-spattered garments.
She picked the smallest and least dirty, and slipped it on over her dress. “My brother says you are making a desert island. How exciting!”
McNeel shook his head. “I cannot get the color quite right. They lack something. Rockiness, I suppose. They are too alike.”
She looked at the rocks, which were painted a uniform gray. “I think that they are very nice,” she said encouragingly.
“They need detail.”
The door banged and Jo turned around. Molly entered, wearing a wrapper over a nondescript dress and eating shelled nuts from a paper sack. Josephine was surprised to see a big green-and-yellow parrot perched on the dancer’s shoulder.
“Will ye look at that!” said McNeel. “Molly, may we put the parrot in the castaway scene? I can make him his own wee palm tree to sit in.”
“He likes me shoulder better,” Molly said. She popped a nut in her mouth and gave one to the parrot. He took it with great dexterity, turning it round in his black, leathery claw before putting it in his beak and eating it.
“He is wonderful,” Jo said. She had never seen a parrot up close and longed to feed him a nut herself.
“That’s me Nippy,” Molly said proudly. “He’s a love and much less trouble than a man. Goes right to sleep when you throw a cloth over his cage. Show me a man who can do that.”
Nippy let out an awk of agreement.
Jo reached out a hand to touch his beautiful plumage.
“Ow, Miss Shy, be careful. Nippy by name, nippy by nature.”
Jo let her hand drop. His beak was impressive.
“Now then,” McNeel interrupted. “Have ye tried out the wire, Molly? The lads and I rigged it this morning before the roof leaks started.”
“Aye, it is ever so much fun to fly. I gave a great screech that brought everybody running as I swung to and fro. Me feet never touched the puddles.”
“That roof must be fixed before opening night.” McNeel sighed.
“How will yer brother find the money for that, hey?” Molly asked Jo.
Lisa Noeli Page 4
