Outrageous Fortune

by Freda Lightfoot

  ‘Very grand,’ she muttered to herself as she made her way up the white stone steps which led to the polished front door, an act of great temerity in itself. But she was well prepared.

  She had raided her carefully acquired wardrobe of theatrical costume, having decided that it would be wise to disguise her identity as far as was reasonably possible. She’d chosen to wear a gown of black lace over tarlatan, deeply ruched at the hem. The neckline was low cut but not excessively so, and, in Fanny’s opinion, showed off the smooth olive skin of her throat to perfection. The black hair was dressed high and covered with a mantilla of black lace and chiffon which completely concealed her head and shoulders. A lady of mystery indeed. The whole effect was strikingly continental, almost Spanish in appearance. Fanny judged that, by the time she had dispatched her message to the maid and she in turn had passed it on to her mistress together with a description of the person who offered it, Lady Susanna Brimley would be quite unable to resist meeting her.

  She proved to be entirely correct, for in no time at all she found herself being shown into a small drawing room, charmingly decorated in pale green silk and furnished with spindly white furniture in the French style.

  ‘Her ladyship will be down directly,’ said Clara, stretching the truth a little as she found it necessary to do in this house. Lady Susanna, being a law unto herself, she had been known to bid a gentleman to wait and then leave the house without giving the poor hopeful another thought. On this occasion Fanny was not kept waiting long. Only moments later, still clad in her outdoor clothes, for one never knew when a swift exit might be necessary with these unexpected callers, Lady Susanna swept in to confront Fanny with a polite, if insincere, smile upon her rosebud lips.

  ‘You wished to see me? I’m afraid my maid did not tell me your name, which was most remiss of her.’ Susanna raised finely arched brows in mild enquiry, but Fanny remained seated and did not remove her veil. Let Lady Susanna wonder, she thought.

  ‘My name is immaterial.’

  Lady Susanna frowned. ‘I do not make a habit of receiving people who are unknown to me.’ She had moved to the door. ‘Clearly you have made a mistake in thinking otherwise.’

  ‘You will receive me readily enough when you hear what I have to say. You and a certain gentleman, now absent, have something of an understanding, I believe.’

  Susanna swirled about to regard Fanny with an expression which would have unnerved a less resolute heart. Fanny held her ground and waited.

  ‘To whom, exactly, do you refer?’

  ‘Sir James Caraddon. I have news of him which may be of interest.’

  Susanna became very still. After a moment she said, ‘I have an appointment which I must keep. Pray feel free to speak openly. I find it is usually the quickest method of disclosing any gossip one is bursting to mention.’

  How very unpleasant she is, Fanny thought, feeling a moment’s sympathy for Sir James. No wonder he’d been happy to cast off the shackles of his political life for a while if it contained such as this she-wolf.

  ‘Well?’ The voice was growing impatient and more than a little frosty.

  ‘Forgive me if I am wrong, but I was led to believe that Sir James Caraddon and yourself were betrothed?’

  Susanna drew in a sharp breath, not easy with the restrictions of her corset, and wished that it were indeed so. ‘That is none of your business. Pray continue.’

  ‘You’ll have been wondering, I dare say, where he’s been to all these weeks,’ Fanny remarked, falling into the vernacular in her keenness to get the job done and grasp Lady Susanna’s attention.

  Susanna frowned. ‘Not at all. He has been staying with his grandmother in Cornwall. He does so every year at this time.’

  ‘Not so.’ The small silence which followed told Fanny that she did indeed have her Ladyship’s full attention. ‘As a matter of fact he’s been living with a company of strolling players.’

  If Fanny had said that James had been living with thieves and vagabonds she would have got no greater reaction. Stark, appalled horror registered on the beautiful face, and the pretty, fashionably rouged mouth fell very slightly agape before snapping shut in a compressed line of outrage. ‘I do not believe it.’

  ‘It’s true, and what’s more he’s found himself a new lady friend, a young girl. I rather thought you might like to know of it.’

  Now Lady Susanna did sit down. She positively sank on to the small round backed chair opposite Fanny. dropping her cane with its bright emerald ribbons to the floor, followed one by one by her gloves. ‘I think you had better start from the beginning. I wish to know all.’

  Fanny was only too happy to oblige while Lady Susanna stormed and raged about the iniquity and shallow-heartedness of common males. A point of view Fanny was only too willing to share. Later, with the black veil drawn back, the emerald hat nudging the gloves in equal abandonment upon the carpet, a degree of camaraderie formed between the two women. Cordial was sipped, ideas were aired, rejected, and exchanged for new ones as the problem was tossed back and forth.

  ‘The important point to remember,’ said Fanny with emphasis, ‘is that it ain’t enough just to call Sir James home on some pretext or other. All the company will be in London by the end of the week, including Miss Charlotte Forbes. Sir James has already asked her to stay at his home and she might very well accept. He certainly don’t intend to give her up, by the sound of it. He seemed quite smitten.’

  In point of fact, Fanny was more concerned with the possibility of Fosdyke’s inviting Charlotte to stay with them at their own lodgings in Woodley Terrace. It would be typical of him. As long as the girl was in London Fosdyke would not abandon his scheming, and Fanny was certain there was much more to it than he had revealed to her thus far. Her best hope of success, therefore, was to emphasise the dangers to Lady Susanna’s own schemes and gain her support.

  ‘Then, what do you suggest?’ For once Susanna was at a loss. Her need for James was greater even than she had been willing to own. The very thought of him with another woman made her feel physically sick. She simply would not tolerate it.

  ‘I did have one or two suggestions which might suit,’ said Fanny modestly. ‘It’s always possible to manufacture trouble which will help focus her mind on leaving.’

  ‘One moment, why are you so concerned?’ asked Susanna with a sudden sharpness. ‘If it is money you are after…’

  ‘Not at all,’ put in Fanny hastily, rightly guessing that this would gain her little credibility. This woman, Fanny decided, would be more cooperative if she put her own cards on the table. Their natures were not dissimilar. ‘To be honest with you, ma’am, Lottie Forbes is not content with one man. She’s stolen mine as well as yours.’

  ‘You mean she is the lover of both? The girl is a strumpet!’

  Fanny had not meant quite that at all, but if her ladyship wanted to think Lottie was sleeping with all and sundry, why not let her? ‘She’ll not go willingly, but I think we might be able to persuade her to it.’

  Susanna found herself leaning forward in her chair, breathless with excitement. There was nothing she liked more than a touch of intrigue. ‘How?’

  ‘Best way is to make life in London as uncomfortable for her as possible. Fosdyke wants rid of Sir James right enough, but he wants to keep little Lottie, which don’t serve my purpose, nor yours neither for that matter. As long as Lottie is in London, Sir James could see her at any time.’

  Susanna nodded, then flicked a hand impatiently. ‘Go on, go on.’

  ‘Nor is Fosdyke one to depend on a single course of action. He sent me to see you, to ask you to work out some way of bringing Sir James to heel, as he called it. But he won’t rely on my being successful. He’ll have other plans to back this one up.’

  ‘And they are?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, but I reckon it might have something to do with this production of Hamlet. Fosdyke ain’t usually so fond to do it, it being so dismal. And the last performance is on Friday. I reck
on it’d be as well for you to be there. You get Sir James in your grasp, then all we have to deal with is Miss Charlotte Forbes, nice as you please.’

  * * * *

  Charlotte watched Act Three from the wings in bleak misery. Even Sal failed to cheer her as she passed by her, going on stage with a worried frown creasing her brow. Fortunately it was in keeping with the scene as, after a few words with Polonius, Queen Gertrude was faced by Hamlet’s accusations of offending his father. Charlotte paid no attention as James came off stage and even turned her back on him as he went behind the arras. If only he had been honest about his betrothal with another she might have been able to bear loving him so much. But to flatter and tease and even kiss her in the way he had was quite unforgivable. He had used her, and she, poor fool that she was, had drunk it all in.

  Hidden behind the curtain, Polonius was supposed to overhear the conversation between Hamlet and his mother. James had little to do except move the curtain a fraction at appropriate points in the dialogue and then when the Queen cried out for help, to join her cry. ‘What, ho! Help, help, help!’

  Her mind in a turmoil, Charlotte continued to watch Fosdyke strutting about the stage as Hamlet, raging at his mother. Barely concentrating upon the action she watched his reaction to the swaying curtain, thinking what a fine actor he was, saw him stride over to the arras as he had done each evening, crying out which rat it was that hid from him. And, wrapped in her own wretched misery, she did not move as Hamlet’s sword sliced through the curtain into the traitorous heart of his old friend Polonius. It was only when she heard a muffled cry and the thud of a falling body that the awful truth catapulted into her heart.

  Lady Susanna was sitting demurely in the audience, tolerating, if not actually enjoying the performance. But her finely attuned ears and highly strung disposition caused her at once to suspect foul play. She was on her feet in an instant, pushing her way through the crowds who did their utmost to stop her screaming and make her stay in her seat. But no one, save for Sir James himself, had ever bested Susanna and she forced her way through, causing pandemonium and uproar to break out in her wake.

  She rushed on to the stage, knocking aside an astonished Queen Gertrude, and out through the wings. There she found exactly what she had feared: her darling James injured unto death, and his beloved head resting in the lap of a young girl who could only be the strumpet herself.

  ‘My darling!’ she squealed in high pitched terror. ‘Someone help. My beloved is dying!’

  ‘A doctor has been sent for,’ said Charlotte calmly, her voice sounding as cold as stone, even to her own ears. So this was the woman he preferred to herself. Evidently a woman of wealth as well as great beauty. Very tenderly she relinquished her place to Susanna. ‘He will not die. He’s been struck in the chest but the heart is not pierced, bad but not fatal. Stay with him while I fetch a blanket.’

  ‘Yes, do girl. He shall be leaving with me as soon as the doctor has tended the wound,’ said Susanna authoritatively. ‘My carriage is outside, be so good as to go and fetch my groom John.’

  ‘Don’t fuss, Susanna,’ said a weakened James, teeth gritted against the pain. ‘I shall be perfectly all right once the doctor is fetched.’ He tried to sit up but was very firmly prevented from doing so.

  ‘You will do as you are told, my beloved, for once in your life,’ purred Susanna, for at last she had him exactly where she wanted him. ‘Hurry, girl, don’t just stand there gawping.’

  Obediently, and without protest, casting only a lingering glance back at the pain-racked figure of Sir James cradled in the arms of his betrothed, Charlotte did as she was bid.

  * * * *

  ‘It was an accident.’ Fosdyke sat in the green room, head in hands for all the world like a man in the throes of anguish. ‘How could this have come about? I was sure that area behind the curtain was empty. Did he change his position? Thank God for that padded coat. Undoubtedly it saved him from what could have proved a fatal blow.’

  In fact, Fosdyke had banked upon it, for a dead Sir James would have proved something of a problem; an injured one got him very neatly out of his hair.

  Charlotte sat listening to all this quite unmoved. She felt numb, as if she was incapable of feeling any emotion. The only thought which rattled around in her head was that James had gone. He had been driven away in Lady Susanna’s fine carriage, under protest admittedly, but with a rug firmly tucked about his long legs and the fervent admonishment that he must take greater care in future what kind of riff-raff he mixed with ringing in her ears.

  ‘Are you listening to me, Lottie?’

  Charlotte jumped. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘We were discussing our departure,’ said Fosdyke in kindly tones. ‘I would like to strike the set tonight and stow everything in the wagon right away. If you would have your bags packed and ready by seven in the morning, Lottie, we could be in Woodley Terrace by noon if we get a good road.’

  ‘Woodley Terrace?’

  ‘Our lodgings. You remember I told you of them.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Of course.’ A part of Charlotte wanted to protest, to say that she had other plans. But James had gone and he seemed to have taken all her will power with him. ‘Very well.’

  When they did arrive at the lodgings the following day in good time for the midday meal, Charlotte’s depression had, if anything, worsened. She could eat little of the game pie so carefully prepared by Mrs Barker, the landlady. The only bright spot was that Charlotte was to have a room to herself since Fanny had moved her things in with Fosdyke.

  Lying in the narrow bed that night she felt the need to speak very firmly to herself. She would not be depressed or allow a morsel of self pity. She had only herself to blame for her predicament. She should never have allowed Sir James to kiss her in the first place, for it was quite improper. Certainly he had meant nothing by it. Didn’t all young gallants make free with actresses? He would not have expected her to fall in love with him, and would laugh fit to bust if he knew. She must turn her mind to more positive things.

  Charlotte thumped her pillow, turned over and curled herself into a ball for comfort. She determinedly began to plan out her campaign. To find her mother, that was what mattered. She must keep her mind firmly upon her quest and not allow it to wander into less productive areas.

  Yet how was he? Had he recovered? And how could she find out? Certain she would not sleep a wink for the well of misery in her heart, Charlotte was surprised to find the sun streaming through the window and a loud banging on her door.

  ‘Breakfast in ten minutes in the dining room, Lottie.’ That was Fanny, sounding unusually cheerful.

  Charlotte quickly washed and dressed and ran downstairs to join Fosdyke and Fanny who were already at the table.

  ‘And what do you plan today, Lottie? A long sleep no doubt, if you’re as tired as us. Perhaps a walk in the park this afternoon?’

  ‘As a matter of fact I planned to begin my tour of the theatres today.’ Charlotte had since told Fosdyke just a little about her purpose in coming to London, in the hope that he might be able to advise her.

  ‘Today? Good heavens, is that wise? You must be quite worn out. Take a day or two to rest and recuperate, Lottie dear, before you start pounding the streets,’ said Fosdyke, helping himself to a large portion of haddock.

  ‘I’m anxious to find word of my mother. I have no time to spare.’ Charlotte cleared her throat. ‘I was wondering if you could see your way to settling with me this morning.’

  ‘Settling?’ Fosdyke looked blank though he understood well enough the question.

  ‘I think Lottie’s wanting her wages,’ put in Fanny with a simper. ‘Thought you were willing to work for your keep and transport, missy?’

  Two bright spots of colour mounted Charlotte’s cheekbones. ‘I – I, well, it is only that I have no money left, and I understood that Sir James made some sort of arrangement with you.’

  There was a short silence and then Fosdyke was reaching into
his pocket and drawing out a coin or two. ‘Of course, me dear, of course. He said that I should take care of you and I will, Lottie, do not doubt it. Here is five shillings which will see you through the next few days, I am sure.’ He beamed at Charlotte, who felt a sickening thump as her heart plummeted.

  ‘I’d much rather have the whole amount at once, if you don’t mind,’ she said bravely. ‘So that I know exactly how I am placed.’

  ‘How you are placed, my dear?’ Fosdyke’s habit of repeating what she said was beginning to irritate Charlotte. ‘You are placed very safely and securely with us, as you can see, and need never worry again. Now, if you must visit these theatres then begin with the Haymarket and Drury Lane. And take a cab.’ There was little chance of the mother being there, or anywhere else for that matter after all this time. She’d soon grow tired of looking. ‘The city is not a fit place for a young lady to walk in alone, unless you would care for Fanny to accompany you?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ protested Charlotte hastily. ‘I shall be perfectly all right on my own. As you say, I can always take a cab.’

  In the event she did not. If five shillings was all the ready money she possessed for the next few days, what with transport and food, plus other incidentals, she must spend it sparingly. Who knew when Fosdyke would think to repeat this beneficent act? This troubled Charlotte sorely, for she knew that until Fosdyke did pay her the wages due to her, she was dependent upon him entirely for food, lodging, and even clothing. If James were here he would speak up for her, but he was not.

  Only then did it occur to Charlotte that she did not even have his address, and she stood stock still on the pavement while the shock registered. Nor did he have any idea where she was residing either. For all she knew she might never set eyes on him in her life again. He had as good as vanished from the face of the earth. The thought filled her with utter despair.

  * * * *

  After five days of trekking down countless streets, Charlotte lost count of the number of theatres, inns and even stable yards where plays regularly took place, that she had visited. She asked questions till her voice was hoarse but only got doleful shakes of the head or curt dismissals. No one could remember ever having worked with or seen an actress either by the name of Eleanor or Ella Forbes, or Pierce. Charlotte could think of no other possible names and as a description could only say that her mother was reputed to look very like herself, except with auburn hair. The five shillings was almost used up, and though she had twice ventured to ask for more, Fosdyke had simply complained of the number of outstanding bills he still had to pay. He as good as accused Charlotte of ingratitude since she was warmly lodged and well fed at Woodley Terrace.