No Mistress of Mine

Chapter 7

“Ah . . . room service for supper.” Kitty set down her fork, dropped her napkin onto the tray in her lap, and leaned back against the sofa of Lola’s suite with a contented sigh. “What a treat.”

“But didn’t you say your lodging house serves meals in?” Lola asked, beckoning her maid to take the supper trays as she poured more champagne. “Is the cook no good?”

“It isn’t that.” Kitty stretched an arm toward her on the sofa to accept the refilled glass from her outstretched hand. “But Mrs. Morris’s cook doesn’t serve champagne, Lobster Newburg, braised ptarmigan, and gateau au chocolat!”

“I suppose not.” As she returned the champagne to the ice bucket on the cart beside her, Lola noted that the serving trays were now almost completely devoid of food. “We did eat an awful lot, didn’t we?”

“Too much.” Her friend grimaced, pressing a hand to her ribs. “When I suggested yesterday that we have supper together, you should have warned me you intended to order half the menu. I’d have left my corset at home.”

“Well, at least you don’t have to worry about fitting into costumes anymore. Remember at the Théâtre-Latin how Madame Dupuy used to line us up in our corsets and give us the once-over before each show?”

“Oh, yes! What a terror she was. She’d look you over, and if you’d gained an ounce, she knew it. She’d slip her measuring tape around you, and if you weren’t laced tight enough, she relaced you then and there, tighter than you needed to be just to drive the point home. It’s a wonder some of us didn’t pass out on stage. Those were mad days, weren’t they?”

Her own champagne flute in hand, Lola faced her friend, propping her back against the arm of the sofa. “You sound as if you miss those days.”

“Sometimes I do.” Kitty faced her, mirroring Lola’s position at the other end of the sofa. “When I came home from Paris, I danced at the Gaiety for a bit. Now, I’m over there sometimes, arranging sets or painting scenery, and if I see the girls kicking up their legs in rehearsal, I feel quite a pang.”

“So why did you give it up?”

Kitty made a face, her doll-like nose wrinkling up a bit. “The usual reason.”

Lola understood at once. “A man?”

“His people didn’t think I was good enough for him, so we decided . . .” She paused, pain crossing her face, and she swallowed hard before she went on. “He decided we wouldn’t suit. He jilted me.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“At least, coming from you, it’s not meaningless sympathy. You know what it’s like to be seen as not good enough for the man you love.”

Lola decided they needed a different topic of conversation. “You didn’t go back to dancing?”

“Heavens, no. I’m twenty-nine, a bit long in the tooth for the cancan. I tried my hand at acting once—I joined a repertory company, but I couldn’t stick it. I got through one week before I quit. Unlike you, I’m not brave enough for real acting.”

“Brave?” Lola couldn’t help a laugh. “Crazy is more like it. Last time I tried this, I was a colossal failure.”

“Which is why I say you’re brave. In your place, I’d have stayed in New York, used my inheritance as a dowry, found myself some nice, respectable chap to marry, and given up the stage for good. I’d certainly never have come back here and tried again. But perhaps . . .” Her friend paused and took a sip of champagne, giving Lola a wide-eyed stare over the rim of her glass. “Perhaps acting wasn’t your only reason for returning to London?”

Lola stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, Lola, really!” Her friend laughed, not the least bit put off by her attempt at hauteur. “This is Kitty you’re talking to. We shared a dressing room in our Paris days, remember? Do you think I’ve forgotten how often Somerton called on you there with champagne and chocolates?”

“That was a long time ago, as we’ve just been discussing. And,” she added, wrinkling up her nose in rueful fashion, “Denys liked me much more in those days than he does now.”

“It seemed a mutual feeling to me, luvvy. Oh, how you used to sigh and swoon over him.”

Pride compelled her to object to that description. “I have never swooned over a man in my life. Not even Denys.”

“Tell it to the marines! I remember how he used to wait outside our dressing room while you dithered over which dress to wear or whether a gentleman like him would think you too forward if you dabbed perfume behind your ears. And when he asked you to move to London to be with him, you were over the moon!”

“I have never swooned,” Lola reiterated. “And I don’t sigh, and I don’t dither. And even if I was as silly as all that once upon a time, I’m certainly not that way now.”

“No? I saw you looking at him while you said your lines yesterday.” She paused to set aside her champagne, then she lifted her hand to press the back of it against her forehead. “‘Commend me to my kind lord,’” she quoted with melodramatic fervor as she fell back, draping herself artistically over the arm of the sofa, her glass held high. “‘A guiltless death I die.’”

Kitty sat up, laughing, but Lola felt no inclination to laugh with her. “I have not come back to London to rekindle a romance with Denys!”

“Haven’t you?” Her friend studied her face for a moment, then sighed, looking let down. “You mean it really is about acting?”

“Partly. Denys and I are also business partners.”

Kitty cocked an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”

She proceeded to explain, and though the other woman listened with rapt attention, Lola’s explanations didn’t seem to impress her.

“Business partners, hmm?” She gave a wink. “Well, that’s a start, I suppose.”

“Really, Kitty, you’re impossible!” She made a sound of impatience, sitting upright on the sofa. “Have you really forgotten what Madame used to say? ‘The lords, they love to chase the dancing girls, n’est-ce pas? But—’ ”

“ ‘They don’t ever marry them,’ ” her friend finished with mock solemnity.

The idiom wasn’t quite true in her case, but Lola wasn’t above using it to veer Kitty off this topic. “Well, there you are, then.”

“It’s time one of our lot beat the odds, I say. Why shouldn’t it be you? You know better than most that a girl has to have big dreams if she’s to accomplish anything.”

“I have no objection to big dreams,” Lola assured her. “Just impossible ones.”

“Is it so impossible? He loved you once. Why shouldn’t he fall in love with you again?”

Lola stared at her in dismay. “It’s not like that. We are business partners. That’s going to be hard enough to manage without bringing any crazy ideas of romance into it.”

“I don’t see how you can think not to bring romance into it. You two have a history.”

“There’s no reason why we can’t just be indifferent acquaintances.”

Kitty stared at her askance. “You and Somerton?”

“Yes,” she said, even as she mentally crossed her fingers. “Platonic, indifferent acquaintances.”

“You two have been many things, Lola, but indifferent has never been one of them.”

Lola’s mind went tumbling back into the past before she could stop it—the torture of keeping him at arm’s length in Paris, the bliss of their meetings at the house in St. John’s Wood. His mouth on hers and his body on hers and the frantic, wild euphoria of afternoons in bed together. Warmth flooded through her, pooling in her midsection, flooding her cheeks, tingling up and down her spine.

“Acquaintances, hmm?”

Kitty’s amused voice was like a splash of icy water.

“Yes,” she said, scowling. “And if you keep making fun of the idea, I fear our friendship is not long for this world.”

“Sorry.” The amusement vanished from her friend’s face at once, replaced by a somber expression. “All teasing aside, I’m not sure a man and a woman can ever work together. Romance, I should think, would always get in the way.”

“That’s not true. I know plenty of people who’ve had love affairs, broken up, and worked together quite amicably afterward. It happens in theater all the time, and you know it.”

“Well, yes, for a play here and there, maybe. But you’re talking about a lifetime of being in business together. And besides,” she added before Lola could argue, “even if you and Somerton do establish a platonic relationship, very few other people will believe that’s what it is.”

“I don’t care what people believe.”

“Somerton does.”

Lola grimaced at that unarguable fact. “I know,” she acknowledged with a sigh. “But I don’t see what either of us can do about it. Over time, people will just have to accept there’s nothing of that sort between us.”

“And his sweetheart? Do you think she’ll accept it?”

Lola blinked, taken aback, though she knew she shouldn’t be. “Denys has a sweetheart?”

“That’s the rumor.”

“Who—” She paused, her voice gone and her throat dry, and she felt the need for a swallow of champagne. She gulped down the entire contents of her glass before she could voice the inevitable question. “Who is she?” she managed at last, and she was absurdly proud of the indifference in her voice.

If Kitty wasn’t deceived, at least she didn’t tease about it. “Lady Georgiana Prescott. Daughter of a marquess. Very highbrow and elegant, if the scandal rags are to be believed.”

Lady Georgiana. Of course. How fitting, how right that he should return his attentions to his childhood love, the woman his parents had always wanted for him, the perfect sort of woman to marry an earl’s son. Even as that thought passed through Lola’s mind, however, she felt a bit bleak.

“Well, there you have it then,” she said, striving to sound brisk and matter-of-fact. “When he becomes engaged to Lady Georgiana, it will show everyone there’s nothing between us.”

“You are underestimating the depths to which people’s minds can sink. Most people will assume Somerton is having his cake and eating it, too. After all”—Kitty swirled her champagne, her eyes meeting Lola’s over the rim of her glass—“he always did find you quite a scrumptious slice of cake.”

“Denys would never do what you’re suggesting! He’s far too honorable. And,” she added before her friend could say something cynical about the baser aspects of the masculine nature, “I wouldn’t let it happen. Why would I?”

“Why?” Kitty tilted her head as if pondering the question. “Hmm . . . let’s see. He’s good-looking, rich, a viscount, a future earl, and a very nice fellow who once had quite a passion for you. Yes, why, indeed?”

“I ended our affair,” she reminded her friend hotly. “I left him for another man.”

Kitty shrugged, running one finger idly around the rim of her glass. “You wouldn’t be the first woman who’d broken things off with a chap and taken up with another only to realize she’d made a mistake.”

“I did not make a mistake! I left him for a man who knew what I was, who would never expect me to become something I could never be. We are both better off, and Denys would agree.”

“I’m sure he would.”

Her friend’s mild agreement only impelled Lola to hammer the point home. “Lady Georgiana will make him a much more suitable wife than I ever would have. And,” she added as Kitty opened her mouth again, “I’d never become entangled with another woman’s sweetheart! How could you think I would?”

“Sorry, sorry.” Kitty held up a placating hand. “I’m not impugning your character. But I am concerned for you. Are you certain you and Somerton can work together?”

“We have to. It’s the only sensible thing to do.”

“Very sensible,” Kitty agreed gravely, but Lola caught a distinct hint of amusement in that reply. Before she could decide, however, the other woman spoke again. “What are you doing three weeks from tomorrow? There’s a flower show that day in Regent’s Park. It’s for charity—London hospitals, army widows, or some such. I bought two tickets, thinking my flat mate and I would go, but she can’t, I’m told. Care to take her place?”

“I’d love to, but I’m not sure I’ll be free. Rehearsals run on Saturdays, too.”

“Only until noon at the Imperial, and the flower show isn’t until three o’clock. You’ll be done in plenty of time. Say you’ll come. You ought to see something of London since it’s the season, and you can’t work all the time. Unless, of course, you’re using work to keep your mind off a particular man?”

“Stop it, Kitty.”

“I know, I know. It shall be all business between you two from now on,” her friend went on blithely, “and he’s going to marry Lady Georgiana, and all’s well that ends well.”

As Lola envisioned a lifetime of being Denys’s platonic, indifferent acquaintance while he married the elegant, well-bred, and oh-so-suitable Lady Georgiana, she found the picture a bit . . . depressing. “Yes,” she said. “All’s well that ends well.”

“Then why,” Kitty murmured, “do you suddenly look like a dying duck in a thunderstorm?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Lola pasted on an indifferent expression and reached for the champagne, reminding herself that there was no point in worrying about the future. She had more than enough to worry about in the present.

“You’ve done what?”

The question was a roar so loud that even Denys, who was prepared for just this sort of reaction from the earl, couldn’t help but grimace. Conyers’s fist slammed down on the dining table so hard that the silver rattled, the footman jumped, and Monckton, the ideal personification of the unflappable English butler, nearly dropped the port decanter.

“I allowed Miss Valentine to audition for Othello, and Jacob cast her as Bianca.”

Hearing it for the second time didn’t seem to make any difference. His father continued to stare at him across the dining table, and though the smoke of his after-dinner cigar hung thick in the air between the two men, it couldn’t mask the baffled fury of his expression. “Are you mad?”

There were times in Denys’s life when his involvement with Lola had made him go rather off the rails, but this time, he knew he did not have that excuse. All he had was the truth.

“She was good, Father. She was very, very good. I realize,” he added, as the earl made a scoffing sound, “you may not think me a fair judge in that regard, but Jacob couldn’t be accused of any such bias. He wanted her for the part.”

“I’d have thought Jacob to be possessed of more sense than that. Am I the only man on God’s earth that woman hasn’t been able to captivate?”

“He called her performance sublime.”

“I don’t believe it for a moment. That dancing girl? You and Jacob are both daft. And besides,” he added before Denys could get a word in, “Bianca’s a small part. Nothing to it. Surely, any number of women who auditioned would have done just as well.”

“For Bianca, perhaps you’re right.” He paused, knowing he was about to step onto some very thin ice. “But not to understudy Desdemona.”

“Lola Valentine as Desdemona?” His father stared at him, looking as appalled as Denys had anticipated. “Good God.”

“She’s not playing Desdemona,” he hastened to point out. “She’s merely understudying the role.”

“Even so . . .” The earl’s voice trailed off, and he swallowed hard before speaking again. “You cannot be serious about this.”

“I’m afraid I am. Though I take little pleasure in the fact, Lola Valentine’s reading of Desdemona was the best of the day, and one of the finest either Jacob or I had ever seen. If you had been there, you would have agreed.”

“I doubt it. Why the devil did you allow her an audition in the first place?”

“She requested one. I deemed it wise to accommodate her.”

The earl’s sound of outrage interrupted him. “Devil take it, I wish I could understand, but I can’t. I simply can’t.” He paused to down the last of his port, then went on, “What is it about that woman that impels you to abandon every scrap of good sense you possess?”

The question was one the earl had asked quite often during Denys’s misspent youth, but in this case it was hardly warranted. “Like it or not, she is our partner, Father,” he pointed out. “To some extent, we have to cooperate with her.”

“I don’t see why.”

“Then it’s clear you don’t recall the bylaws of the partnership agreement. She is within her rights to oppose me on any decision I make. An audition seemed a small price to pay for her cooperation. I didn’t think she’d actually earn a part. But she defied my expectations.”

“That woman defies many things, including decency,” Conyers muttered, waving Monckton forward to pour him another port.

Denys chose to ignore that. They’d had that particular argument about Lola often enough in the past. “By allowing Jacob to cast her in the play, with two roles for which to prepare, she’ll have no time and little cause to make trouble. And acting’s always been her ambition. In a small way, we’re allowing her to satisfy it. Where’s the harm in that?”

“The plan was to get rid of her, not pacify her!”

“I made her an offer. She refused.” He spread his arms in a gesture of inevitability. “What would you have had me do?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” The earl rubbed a hand irritably around the back of his neck. “Keep raising the offer until she agreed.”

“You might give me some credit, Father. I raised my offer as high as thirty thousand pounds, but she refused to sell. No amount, she said, would be enough. I believe she meant it.”

“In which circumstance, you were supposed to offer to sell our share to her.”

He shook his head. “That wasn’t possible.”

“And why not?”

He stirred in his chair. “I have no intention of surrendering our share of a profitable business, one that I built. When you and Henry bought the Imperial, it was barely scraping by, but now, it’s one of London’s most prestigious theaters. I made it what it is today, and I’ll be damned if I’ll surrender what I accomplished because Henry did something mad.”

“So this is about your pride?”

Denys met his father’s angry gaze with a cool, determined one of his own. “You could say that, yes.”

His father sighed, seeming to back down a bit. “I suppose I see your point. But why let Jacob give her a place in the company or a part in the play? You could have persuaded him to refuse her. Being cut to ribbons by Jacob Roth would have made her more amenable to selling, I daresay.”

“I doubt it. Besides, it’s never good policy to ask people to lie, and shredding her performance would have been a lie. I wouldn’t have dreamt of asking Jacob to do so. It would not be right. It would not be—” He paused, grimacing. “Fair.”

“Yes, yes, I suppose it sounds unethical when you put it like that.” The earl leaned back in his chair, eying his son unhappily. “God, Denys, I hope you know what you’re doing. That woman is your nemesis.”

“That’s a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?”

“Is it? I don’t need to remind you of how deeply she got her hooks into you, surely? Of how much you went into debt? Of how often you flitted off to France and neglected your estate—an estate I gave you upon your coming of age, one you mortgaged—”

“You don’t need to remind me of my past follies,” he cut in. “I’ve changed, Father, a fact you remarked on just yesterday. If you’ve revised your opinion in light of this—”

“I haven’t done anything of the kind,” Conyers interrupted, pushing that concern aside with a wave of his hands.

“Then why rehash the past?”

“Because you’re my son, damn it all, and I love you. And,” he rushed on before either of them could be embarrassed by such a frank declaration, “I have a duty to see that you don’t repeat past mistakes. Even now, I cannot help but fear that woman’s influence upon you.”

Denys knew his father was speaking from deep and genuine affection, and he had to swallow hard before he could reply. “You needn’t worry. Miss Valentine may have a part in the play, but I shan’t be directing her. In fact, I can’t see having much to do with her at all. She’s Jacob’s headache now, not mine.”

“That woman isn’t just a headache. She’s a nightmare.”

“Only until one wakes up.”

“And have you?” Conyers gave him a searching glance. “Have you woken up? Had I asked you that yesterday, I would have been sure of your answer, but this day has given me cause to doubt.”

Those words cut deep. His passion for Lola had almost ruined his life and his future and torn apart his family. It was quite understandable for his parent to be concerned, but Denys had no intention of going down that road again.

“In assuaging your doubts, Father, I must allow the past few years to speak for me. As I said, Miss Valentine is no longer my concern. Jacob is the director, and he shall be the one who has to manage her. I am quite happy to let him. In fact,” he added as he set aside his glass and stood up, “I doubt I shall even see her again until opening night.”