“Had a change of heart, have you?” Daniel said quietly.
“Yes.” He left it at that, his thoughts full of worry about Rosalind.
Of course, that didn’t put Daniel off in the least. “So you’re not concerned about your delegation to China anymore?”
“No, damn it! You were right—I was wrong. Now can we stop discussing it? I have more important things to consider.” He drummed his fingers on the sill. “Who have we left out? Perhaps we should go over that list of theaters again.”
Daniel drew out the list, but said, “The lass has certainly got you by the ballocks, hasn’t she?”
“That’s not the only thing she’s got me by,” Griff said quietly. Daniel could torment him endlessly about Rosalind, but he wouldn’t rise to the bait. If anything happened to her, he’d never forgive himself.
“She’ll be all right, you know.” Daniel’s voice held pity. “She’s a hardy thing, your Rosalind. We’ll find her, don’t worry.”
“How can I not worry?” Griff threaded his fingers through his hair distractedly. “It’s as if she vanished without a trace, as if she—”
He broke off at the sound of a loud commotion outside his office, followed by the dramatic entrance of the one woman Griff did not want to see just then. His mother.
His clerk rushed in after her, red-faced and worried. “Begging your pardon, Mr. Knighton, I tried to explain you were in a meeting, but—”
“In a meeting, hah!” his mother snapped at the clerk. “Can’t you see he’s merely talking to Daniel?”
Griff waved his agitated clerk off. “It’s all right. Go on back to work.”
As soon as the door closed, his mother strode up to him, her slender shoulders shaking with anger. “Where the devil have you been? You disappear, and nobody will tell me where you went or when you’ll return. Though they did tell me you’d taken Daniel.” She paused in her tirade to shoot Daniel a chastening look.
“Good afternoon, Mrs. Knighton,” Daniel said cheerily. “Nice to see you again. You’re looking quite lovely today.”
“Don’t try your flatteries on me, Danny. I know your ways, and I don’t fall for them like all your tarts. I should have known you’d have a hand in this. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.” She turned her glare on Griff. “Both of you. I thought you said you’d put all that unsavory business behind you. That you and Daniel weren’t going off on any more secret trips to God knows where—”
“I was in Warwickshire, Mother.”
She blinked. “Warwickshire? Whatever for?”
“To visit our mutual friend, the Earl of Swanlea. I was invited.”
She paled to an unnaturally sickly color. “He invited you? But…but why?”
Griff shot Daniel a glance, and the man beat a hasty retreat. Daniel might have a certain affection for the only woman he ever allowed to call him “Danny,” but he knew better than to stay around when the generally mild-mannered woman was upset.
Once Daniel was gone, Griff leaned back against the windowsill and folded his arms over his chest. He’d hoped to delay this until he’d settled things with Rosalind, but now that his mother was here…
Briefly, he related the story of the letter he’d received and how he’d gone off to Warwickshire with the intention of retrieving the marriage certificate without having to marry one of the spinsters. It was more difficult to explain why he’d wanted it, for now that he’d seen the error of his ways, his motives shamed him. He knew his mother wouldn’t approve, yet he had to tell her all of it, partly because she deserved to know the truth. And partly because he wanted the truth from her.
It took her a moment to digest his tale, but when she did, she sank into a nearby chair. Silver curls bobbed beneath the brim of her bonnet as she shook her head. “I can’t believe it. Did you…did you manage to find the marriage certificate?”
“I did.” Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled it out and handed it to her.
Her fine-boned fingers stroked the paper wonderingly. “So he really had it all this time. He really…stole it. I was never sure.”
“Yes, he admitted it.”
Her gaze shot to his in alarm. “You talked to him about it?”
He nodded, then dragged in a weighty breath. “Indeed, he told me…” He paused, wondering how one asked one’s mother such a question. “He said…that is, he claimed you were in love with him before you married Father. He even claimed you told him you were still in love with him on your wedding day. That was his reason for stealing the certificate—partly to punish you for not marrying him and partly to gain what he saw as a fairer division of the Swanlea properties.”
His mother’s silence, coupled with her haunted expression, made something twist in his chest, yet a quest for truth drove him on. Shoving away from the window, he strode to his desk. “Of course, I called him a liar to his face.” He paused, half-fearing to ask the question, half-fearing not to hear the answer. “He was lying, wasn’t he?”
When she didn’t answer, he turned to see his mother crying silently, fat tears rolling down her thin cheeks. He struggled for air. “It was a lie. Tell me it was all lies.”
She lifted an anguished gaze to him. “I was so young, Griff, and lonely for attention. My father was too busy managing the theater in Stratford to pay me much heed, but Percival…he shared my love for plays and protected me when boys insulted me and made advances. He was living at Swan Park as the previous earl’s ward. That was long before I met your father, who was off at school. Percival and I…became close. He wasn’t like other men I knew. He was a gentleman, and he always flattered me. When you’re seventeen, you like to be flattered.”
Griff gripped his hands together behind his back. “But did you love him, Mother?”
A look of deep sorrow settled over her still pretty features. “Yes, I did love him. Very much. But I knew he had no future. He was something of a wastrel, whereas your father—”
“Was the heir presumptive to the fourth Earl of Swanlea,” Griff snapped, wondering how he could have so misunderstood everything from his childhood, how he could have let it blindly shape so much of his life.
His mother set her shoulders stubbornly the way she always did when she was cornered. “Yes. Your father had a future, a very bright one. When he came to stay at Swan Park and both he and Percival would visit me, I found I liked him. I didn’t love him as I did Percival, but I liked him. I knew if I married Percival, we’d be…poor and always looking for income. And I’d grown up poor. I despised it. I wanted something better.”
Though he certainly understood that, he couldn’t help comparing his mother’s response to Rosalind’s. Rosalind would never have married to avoid being poor—not his Athena. “Well, if it was poverty you were avoiding, Fate certainly paid a cruel trick on you, didn’t it?” he said, somewhat unkindly.
She regarded him with a melting sadness. “No. Fate meted out a suitable punishment. That’s how I consider it. I married your father for his prospects rather than following my heart, and I paid for it later.” A wan smile touched her lips. “I did grow to feel a deep affection for Leonard, you know. He was quite the rakish character. When you were born, I was so happy I thought I’d die of it. My husband was to be a wealthy earl, and I’d borne him his heir to the title. I was beside myself with joy.”
The smile faded abruptly, and she glanced away. “But such happiness isn’t meant for mere mortals, especially when gained at the expense of someone else. I treated Percival very badly. I didn’t even have the decency to…lie to him on my wedding day, to tell him I didn’t care for him. He looked so lost, so forlorn, and I foolishly thought it would help him to know I still cared.” A shudder wracked her delicate frame. “It only hurt him further when he realized I simply didn’t love him enough.”
“And he nursed that hurt for months,” Griff finished coldly. “So when you and Father flaunted your ‘happiness’ in front of him by inviting him to see me as a baby, he lashed out. That’s when he stol
e the certificate and had me proclaimed a bastard.”
Her gaze swung to his, full of remorse. “I wish to God I could have kept you from that suffering, my son. I deserved to suffer, but you certainly didn’t. I’d hoped that your father and I could shield you, could prevent it from mattering too much.” She shook her head. “Once he died of smallpox so young, however…”
Griff’s throat felt swollen and raw. “That’s why whenever I railed at Swanlea, you told me not to. Why you never railed against him yourself. Why you never blamed him or sought revenge.”
“How could I blame him? I drove him to it.” She paused, then asked shakily, “Is that what you’re doing now with the certificate, seeking your revenge against him?”
Two weeks ago, such a question would have infuriated him, probably because despite all his denials, it had been somewhat true. “No. Not anymore. That might once have been part of my intention, but now…” He scrubbed his hands wearily over his face. “I suppose I should thank you for not marrying him. If you had, I would never have been born. And neither would Rosalind.”
“Rosalind?”
An urgent need to tell her about the one he loved possessed him. “Swanlea’s daughter, the middle one. I’d hoped to marry her. But she…” He swallowed down the bitter lump in his throat and sat down wearily behind his desk. “She took exception to my plans for the certificate and ran off before I could tell her I’d decided not to use it. I haven’t yet found her. I think…I hope she’s somewhere in London.” He stared blindly past his mother. “I pray she’s at one of the theaters and not on the road being—” He broke off, unable to voice his terror.
“Do you love her?”
He nodded.
“Does she love you?”
“She said she did.”
His mother rose and came to his side, placing her hand on his shoulder. “Then do what you must to find her and win her back, my son. Because no one knows more than I how important it is to follow your heart.”
Beset by a complex mix of emotions—envy, hurt, and perhaps a little betrayal—he lifted his head to gaze into her tearful blue eyes. “Is that why you never remarried? Because you were still in love with Rosalind’s father?”
She sighed. “I never remarried because I learned the hard way that some people only love once. And there’s simply no point to marrying where you do not love.”
He shook his head, trying to take it all in. There’d been so much in his world that he hadn’t seen, too wrapped up in his own concerns to pay it any notice. “I never dreamed you felt all this. That certificate belongs to you more than to me, yet I never once considered that. I never even considered telling you about it or my plans or—”
“You’re telling me about it now,” she said, smiling. “That’s all that matters.”
She squeezed his shoulder, and he clasped her hand tightly, feeling a connection to his mother that he hadn’t felt in years. He hadn’t realized until now how much he’d shoved her out of his life, as he’d shoved away everything and everyone who hadn’t been material to Knighton Trading.
The door suddenly burst open and Daniel hurried in. “Griff, an invitation of sorts has arrived for you. I think you’ll want to look at it. It’s from Mrs. Inchbald.”
Griff sat up straighter and released his mother’s hand. “The playwright. She was in Kemble’s office at Covent Garden when I asked about Rosalind.”
“She used to be an actress there, and I believe she was on the stage around the time Rosalind’s mother would have been.” Daniel strode to the desk and tossed down a paper with a note attached. “She’s sent you this playbill. It’s for Antony and Cleopatra at Covent Garden.”
Shakespeare. Damnation, of course! Where else would Rosalind go but to the theater that not only contained a marble statue of Shakespeare, but had scenes from the plays painted in the lobby?
What a dunce he was. Rosalind must be Mrs. Inchbald’s “cousin.” His heart pounding, Griff read the note first. All it said was “You may find this performer interesting.” He glanced at the top of the playbill. It was for tonight’s performance, the first. He scanned the bill, hoping against hope until he noticed a circled item that listed the actress for the part of Iras as “Miss Rose Laplace.” Nothing else.
“The woman who married Percival was named Solange Laplace,” Griff’s mother said, reading the playbill over his shoulder. “Does that help?”
Griff nodded as relief coursed through him. “It’s her, thank God. It has to be. And if Mrs. Inchbald was the ‘friend’ Lady Helena spoke of, then Rosalind is at least safe, for the woman is well respected and responsible. Though I do wonder why Mrs. Inchbald decided to send this to me today when she said nothing about Rosalind yesterday.” He stared down at the playbill. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll be at that performance tonight, you can be sure.”
Then what? He had to see Rosalind, if only to make sure she was happy and well. He wanted so much more, but he feared he didn’t deserve it, and she’d surely feel the same. She might even truly want to remain on the stage. Well, she could perform on horseback at Astley’s amphitheater every day for all he cared, as long as she agreed to marry him.
But what if she wouldn’t even see him? Or worse yet, suppose she saw him and refused his offer of marriage again? He didn’t think he’d survive that. Yet how the devil was a man to convince a woman he loved her when she’d lost her faith in him, when she thought he cared for nothing but himself and his company?
You will do anything for Knighton Trading—whether consorting with smugglers or defaming innocents—so what place could a mere woman like me have in your life? Well, I can’t marry a man who cares so little for me.
It suddenly came to him what he must do. Rosalind wouldn’t believe mere words anymore, and he couldn’t blame her. But he could offer her something she would believe.
He glanced at the time for the play, then at the clock on the wall. He only had five hours to manage everything. It would have to be enough—because he couldn’t wait another day. Not for this.
“Mother,” he said as he rose from his chair, “I’m afraid I must leave you. I have some urgent matters to attend to before the play.”
She arched one silver-streaked eyebrow. “I hope you plan to bring me to this performance tonight. I should like to meet my future daughter-in-law.”
“I warn you, it’s by no means certain she’ll agree to marry me. I’ll ask her, but I won’t try to change her mind if she refuses. I did that before, and the result was disaster.”
“She’ll marry you. I know she will.” His mother eyed him fondly. “How could anyone refuse my son?”
“For my sake, I hope you’re right and not just speaking from motherly affection.” He forced a smile. “I suppose this would be the right time to ask for your blessing.”
“As if you’d pay me any heed if I didn’t give it,” she teased. “You don’t care in the least if you have my blessing. You never have, you rascal.”
He stared at her, realizing for the first time how much his ambition must have cost her, how often he’d thoughtlessly left her alone to worry while he pursued his own dreams. Why had he never seen it before?
Because he hadn’t had Rosalind to show him all his faults before.
Impulsively, he caught her hand and kissed it. “I confess that if Rosalind will have me, I plan to marry her even if you do protest. But I don’t think you will. I may have disappointed you in the past, Mother, but this is one time I think you’ll be pleased. And yes, it does matter to me that I have your blessing.”
Her eyes again filled with tears as she gazed into his face. “Of course you have my blessing, dear boy. And you could never, ever disappoint me.”
Scowling at her tears even as a lump caught in his throat, he dragged out his handkerchief and handed it to her. “Then stop that crying, will you?” he said gruffly. “I swear, you and Rosalind with your tears—you’ll drive a man mad.”
As she sniffed and made good use of his handkerchief,
he turned to Daniel. “All right, man, let’s go. You and I have business to take care of at my solicitor’s.”
“Business?”
“Yes. I’m going to do what most decent men do when they plan to marry: I’m getting rid of my mistress. The woman I love won’t have me unless I do.”
And without bothering to explain his enigmatic statement, he strode from the room.
Chapter 23
For my part, I confess I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do, in looking about and finding out one’s acquaintance, that, really, one has no time to mind the stage…One merely comes to meet one’s friends, and shew that one’s alive.
Fanny Burney, English novelist, diarist, and sometime playwright, Evelina
Rosalind paced backstage, surprised she wasn’t more nervous. She’d seen the packed theater—it ought to terrify her, yet it didn’t. She wasn’t sure why. It might be different if her family were here or…
She squelched that thought at once.
Mrs. Inchbald approached to survey Rosalind’s costume with obvious approval. “I’m delighted to see they made it fit. Your first appearance shouldn’t be marred by a shabby costume.”
“Once again, I’m in your debt. If I’d realized I’d be better off providing my own costumes, I’d have brought clothes from home to remake.”
She glanced down at the flowing gown Mrs. Inchbald had loaned her. Its gold threads and filmy fabric made it look more Egyptian than anything in the properties room, though it consequently displayed a scandalous amount of flesh. Then again, a dressmaker could only accomplish so much when the original wearer of a costume was as slender as Mrs. Inchbald and the new one as full-bodied as Rosalind.
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