A Reckless Desire

by Isabella Bradford

  He reached down and unfastened the compartment beneath the seat where the hamper had been tucked, and pulled it out, setting it on the cushion beside him before he opened it.

  “We must drink a toast to Mrs. Willow,” he said with relish, pulling out a crystal decanter of wine and two glasses. “To the good lady, and her success.”

  Her laughter now sounded a bit uneasy as he opened the wine and poured the first glass. He held the glass out to her, and she hesitated, looking first at the wine and then at him.

  “Forgive me, my lord, but I—I do not drink wine with gentlemen,” she said primly. “It can only bring trouble and sorrow.”

  “Hah, now, that’s a lecture from a pulpit.” Still he offered her the glass, the ruby liquid shimmering in the crystal. “I’d wager a guinea you’ve never before drunk wine with any gentleman, have you?”

  The primness continued, and with it now was a steadfastness he hadn’t expected.

  “I do not have to commit murder to know that it’s a sin,” she said. “I’ve seen enough to learn that strong drink and men can lead to—to things that will later be regretted.”

  Well, that was true. He’d seen such raucous, regrettable behavior himself behind the scenes in the theaters—and participated in it, too—to know what she’d likely witnessed, and to understand the wisdom of her reluctance. Prim or not, if he pressured her further, he’d be a bully.

  “Fair enough,” he said, staring down at the suddenly forlorn and rejected glass. “But that doesn’t mean I cannot drink to Mrs. Willow, and her success. To the lady!”

  He raised the glass in her direction and drank it down. When he set the empty glass on his knee, she was watching him thoughtfully.

  “Thank you, my lord,” she said, now more wistful than prim. “And Mrs. Willow thanks you, too.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said expansively, refilling the glass. Just because she chose not to drink didn’t mean he couldn’t. “Mrs. Willow would thank me, even if she didn’t approve of me in general on account of the glass in my hand.”

  “Oh, but she would,” she said quickly. “Approve of you, I mean. All gentlemen drink. So how could Mrs. Willow not approve of you?”

  “You tell me, Mrs. Willow,” he said, stretching his legs out more comfortably, Spot settling beneath them. “She is your creation now, and you must speak as she would speak.”

  “You mean that I should lie?” she asked uncertainly.

  “It’s as much a lie as any story or play is a lie,” he said easily. “Consider Mrs. Willow a character, a role to be played, and tell me everything about the dear lady. Where she was born, how she came to the theater, even how she escaped that ne’er-do-well husband of hers.”

  “I have a husband, my lord?” she asked, incredulous.

  “Most actresses have one tucked away somewhere or another,” Rivers said blithely. “You should know that. I’d wager even your Madame Adelaide has an unfortunate monsieur in her past. Playhouse husbands generally are rascals and rogues, on account of actresses being so tenderhearted. But I wish to know more of the roguish Mr. Willow.”

  “I don’t know where to begin, my lord,” she admitted sheepishly. “What should I say?”

  “It’s for you to decide, not I,” he said. “Go on. Think of how you’d describe your life to a friend you hadn’t seen for a long while. Surely you must have done that.”

  “No, my lord, because everyone I know in London stays together,” she said. “Or rather, they did stay together. Now I’m the one who’s left.”

  “For the better,” he said firmly, not wanting her to have any misgivings. Her life already sounded bleak enough without that. “Entirely for the better.”

  “Yes, my lord, it is,” she said, clearly striving to convince herself as well. “It is. And…and I have told stories before. While the dancers were onstage, I’d make up tales for the others in the tiring room to pass the time. They liked my stories better than anyone else’s, too.”

  “Well, then, there you are,” he said, relieved. Of course, it remained to be heard what manner of stories those were, but they would be sufficient for now. “Pretend you’re with them again, and tell us all about that wicked, wicked Mr. Willow.”

  More confident now, she chuckled, a husky little laugh that charmed him to no end. “Very well, my lord. This will be about my husband, Mr. Willow. He was an older gentleman when we first met.”

  “Deceitful old bastard,” Rivers said to encourage her. “Go on.”

  She chuckled again. “He wasn’t so very old,” she said. “Only older than I, and I was very young.”

  “You must have been,” he said, reaching again for the decanter. “You’re not exactly an ancient old crone now.”

  “I suppose he must have been nearly as old as you, my lord,” she said sweetly, which made him laugh outright. “He was from—oh, from Birmingham, though he’d often pretend he was from Paris to impress ladies. A macaroni with gaudy waistcoats and gold rings in his ears. He was a comely man to see, my lord, and clever as blazes, too.”

  “Was he now, the dog!” Rivers exclaimed, delighted by her invention. He’d let her mangled vowels go untrammeled for now; who’d want to interrupt a tale like this for the sake of pronunciation?

  “Pray tell me more,” he said, encouraging. “Pretend I’m writing your story for the Gentleman’s Magazine, so make it as lurid as you wish. If you don’t, you know the scribes will.”

  “Recall that I am a Di Rossi, my lord,” she said. “I know how to be lurid. And life with Mr. Willow—dio buono, it was wicked.”

  She paused, making him wait, and then lowered her voice to a more confidential level. The girl knew how to tell a story, he’d grant her that.

  “He stole my heart, Mr. Willow did,” she continued, “and then I let him have his way with me. Oh, he was such a pretty rogue, and his kisses were so sweet! My father was a wealthy merchant esteemed by all and I his only treasured daughter, yet still I ran from that happy home to wed Mr. Willow. I loved him too well to question him in anything, and when we’d spent all the money I’d taken from my father’s strongbox before I’d run away, Mr. Willow put me on the stage to earn a living for us both.”

  “Now, that is wicked,” Rivers said, fascinated. He guessed that much of this standard tale of ruin was based upon third-rate plays she’d seen at the theater or songs she’d heard from ballad-singers—the predictable pattern of the words and story betrayed as much—but it didn’t matter.

  Here in the shadowy carriage, where all she had to give life to her tale was her voice, she was doing a first-rate job of entertaining him. She might not realize it, but they’d just begun another lesson, and she was performing so well that she’d made him forget completely her earlier singsong recitation.

  In fact, she’d made him forget everything except what would come next in her hackneyed little fiction. She’d made him believe it was absolute truth, and he could not wait to hear more.

  “Where did Mr. Willow take you to perform?” he asked. “A playhouse in some distant county?”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “It wasn’t nearly so grand as that. We’d fallen in with a small circus, with rope-dancers and all, that played in little towns and villages on market days. We’d set up a stage in the back of a wagon, and I’d wear a pink silk gown and say sad poetry to make the ladies weep, and Mr. Willow would pass the hat. I could be most piteous, my lord, and as the tears fell, their purses would open.”

  He hadn’t expected that. But then, he hadn’t expected any of this, and he was almost convinced that she was telling him the true story of her life.

  “You must have been accomplished,” he said, “to support both you and Mr. Willow like that.”

  “I was, my lord, I was,” she said confidently, and then let her voice slide toward melancholy. “They called me an angel, stepped down from the very heavens to our humble stage. But alas, it did not last between me and Mr. Willow.”

  “It never does with rascals like that,” Rivers s
aid, commiserating. There was something very intimate about sitting here in the darkened carriage with her while she told him her life’s story, albeit an invented one. Intimate, and unexpectedly seductive, too. He hadn’t noticed that about her voice before, how it had a rich, velvety quality that made him want to listen to it all night. “Did he leave you for another lady, then?”

  “Not at all,” she said, and paused again. She’d a knack for those pauses, sensing exactly how long to hold them to make him crave to hear more.

  “It was much more tragic than that,” she continued. “You see, the circus also had wild beasts for show, and one night, the tiger—a great, huge, ravening cat he was, my lord, straight from the jungle and striped all over—this savage beast broke free from his cage and dragged off poor Mr. Willow as he returned from the privy.”

  “No!” exclaimed Rivers, with exactly the right amount of feigned horror and shock—although to be honest he hadn’t expected poor Mr. Willow to meet with such an exotic fate. At his feet, Spot groaned in his sleep, likely in sympathy with the tiger. “Did no one come to his rescue?”

  “No, my lord, they did not,” she said succinctly, “for no one knew that he’d been taken. All that was ever found of him were the rings from his ears, golden rings that I wear to this day on a ribbon about my neck to remember him by. Shall I tell you another tale, my lord?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Willow, if you please,” he said, smiling though he doubted she’d see it, or him, in the darkened carriage. Here was another useful gift he hadn’t known she possessed, and from the way she’d begun, he guessed her store of tales might well be inexhaustible. It was a good thing, too, since they’d still hours of travel before them, and he’d every intention of letting her continue amusing him until they reached the Lodge. “Pray tell me what happened to you after the lamentable demise of Mr. Willow.”

  “I shall be honored, my lord,” she said, clearly pleased. “Most honored.”

  He settled back to listen, smiling still. Not only was his wager with Everett all but won, but he’d also bet this was going to be the most entertaining journey he’d ever undertaken.

  She took a deep breath, as if launching into a river instead of a story. “It all begins after I parted ways with the circus…”

  Lucia woke with the sun full in her face, and not the slightest notion of where she was. That was enough to wake her fully, and with a start she sat upright in the bed.

  It wasn’t her bed, that was certain. Instead of the narrow little cot beneath the slanting eaves, she was sitting in a wide, high, luxurious bed with tall carved posts, a pleated canopy and curtains, and a veritable sea of snowy linen around her. The bed took up much of the space in the room, a curious square chamber with windows on three sides and a ceiling swirling with ornamental plasterwork. She’d a vague memory of drawing the velvet curtains to one set of windows so she could see the view last night, or, more truly, very early this morning, with the setting moon and the first gray light of dawn making shadowy ghosts of the trees and meadows. For that was what she’d seen: trees and meadows and gardens, as far as was possible from her usual morning view of chimney pots, slates, and sooty skies.

  Those curtains were still drawn open, which accounted for the midday sun that had awakened her. Her clothes were still folded neatly over the back of a chair where she’d left them last night, with her little trunk open on the floor beside it. She remembered now, and smiled.

  She was at Breconridge Lodge, somewhere far, far away from her old lodgings in Whitechapel, both in miles and in manner. She’d come here with Lord Rivers in his coach, and she’d kept them both awake nearly all the night through by telling him stories, fancies she’d made up as she’d gone along. To her amazement, he’d listened, every bit as rapt as the girls and hangers-on in the tiring room. She couldn’t believe that he had, any more than she could really believe that she was in this room, in this place, in a bed grander than any she’d ever seen, let alone slept in.

  She’d been so weary by the time they’d arrived that she’d only the sleepiest of recollections of it, of how Lord Rivers had bowed and bid her good night in the front hall, how a footman had carried her box upstairs to this room for her, and a maidservant had pulled back the coverlet and plumped her pillows for her.

  And all because somewhere on that long carriage ride, she’d ceased to be Lucia di Rossi, and had instead become Mrs. Cassandra Willow.

  She chuckled to herself, and slipped from the bed to go to the window. Her room seemed to be in some sort of square tower at the end of the Lodge, which accounted for the windows on three sides, and on the top story. Green lawns and trees were spread before her, divided by the long, straight drive to the gates, beyond her sight, that had marked the entry to the property.

  It seemed impossible that one person should own the house in Cavendish Square and all this as well, and yet she recalled Magdalena saying how Lord Rivers was the poorest of his family, on account of being the third son and not the first. He himself had jested last night about how humble his country place was, a tiny corner of land carved from his father’s enormous estate, and yet to see this now by day made his jest beyond her comprehension.

  Lightly she tapped her fingers on the glass, thinking. From the height of the sun—and the emptiness of her stomach—she guessed it was already afternoon. His lordship had promised that they’d continue her lessons today, but he’d set no time for beginning. She hoped she wouldn’t be late on account of sleeping too long; he’d already made it very clear that sleeping seemed a special irritant to him.

  She washed and dressed herself swiftly, wearing the only other clean linen petticoat and jacket she’d brought with her. She’d have to ask if there was a laundry in the house, where she could wash her clothes; she’d so few things of her own, she couldn’t go for more than a few days without laundering. She knew from Magdalena’s lady’s maid that the gentry judged people by the cleanliness of their linen, and she’d no wish to offend Lord Rivers because the cuffs of her shift were grubby. She plaited and pinned her hair into a neat knot, covered it with a fresh linen cap, and then tucked her trunk beneath the bed. Despite what his lordship had told her about thieves, in her experience it was always better not to leave temptation in plain sight.

  She opened her door cautiously, not quite sure who or what she’d find on the other side. There was a hall paneled in dark wood with more of the same busy plasterwork overhead that was in her room, plus several enormous paintings and gilt-framed looking glasses on the walls and a few chairs and benches beneath them. But she saw no servants or anyone else, and with a thumping heart she began down the hallway toward the main staircase she’d been led up the night before. She realized she was tiptoeing, as if she were an interloper who didn’t belong amidst such grandeur, and with a conscious effort she made herself walk more firmly. She’d every right to be here; she was his lordship’s guest, as he’d assured her again and again.

  Yet when she passed a low arched doorway that led to a much more humble set of stairs, used by servants, she quickly ducked inside it. She told herself that this would be the fastest way to the kitchen, and to something to eat and drink, pretending that this wasn’t an excuse. The truth, of course, was that she felt much more comfortable here, slipping down these back stairs as she had all her life, and in the kitchen and servants’ hall she might meet with her newfound friends among the footmen.

  She had enjoyed last night’s journey with his lordship, enjoyed his attention and his praise, but she still did not feel at ease with him. True, he’d tried to set things to rights after that unpleasantness about her memorizing his precious passage, but she hadn’t forgotten it. He could declare her to be Mrs. Cassandra Willow all he wanted, but she didn’t yet believe herself to be Mrs. Willow, and she wasn’t sure he did, either. Inside—and outside, too—she was still Lucia di Rossi, running down the back stairs to beg a cup of tea or coffee and a slice of bread from the cook.

  She followed the stairs to the basement floor, an
d then followed her nose down a short hallway to the kitchen. Preparations were already under way for dinner, and the smell of roasting meats and onions made her mouth water. In her experience, cooks were jolly and generous, and eagerly she opened the door, anticipating being offered a taste or two of whatever was simmering on the hearth.

  But as soon as she opened the door, she realized the warm welcome she’d anticipated would not be forthcoming. Lord Rivers’s cook was a thin, brittle-looking woman with an oversized ruffled cap and red-checkered apron. Standing over a large copper kettle with a long ladle in one hand, she made a sharp little bark of displeasure when she saw Lucia over her shoulder. With the ladle still in her hand, she turned and made a perfunctory bob of a curtsey, and didn’t wait for Lucia to acknowledge it before she spoke, either.

  “My stars, Mrs. Willow!” she exclaimed crossly. “Creeping about, startling a body like that! What are you doing downstairs, eh? You belong upstairs with his lordship, not down here spying an’ prying where you’ve no place to be.”

  “For-forgive me, please,” Lucia stammered, stunned by this reception. “I’d no intention of spying on you, Mrs., ah, Mrs.—”

  “Mrs. Barber,” the cook said, brandishing before her the ladle with ominous efficiency, “not, ma’am, that it’s any affair of yours. You’d best know that I take my orders direct from his lordship, not any of his guests.”

  “I’d no intention of giving any orders, to you or anyone else,” Lucia said, only now noticing the pair of cowering scullery girls peeling apples. The way she’d said guests made it clear that his lordship had brought other women here before her, and it was easy enough to guess that they hadn’t been aspiring actresses.

  She smiled bravely, determined to appease the cook. “I can see that you’re busy, Mrs. Barber, but all I wish for is a cup of tea and perhaps a slice of bread, and—”