Czytaj książkę: «Playing The Duke's Mistress»

For my muse, Nell Gwynne.

If she’d learnt to write she’d have penned a witty play.

And for my long-time friend Erika Jacobson, playwright and fellow PhD finisher, who loves Nell too.

Acknowledgements

My thanks go first to my fabulous editor, Nicola Caws at Harlequin Mills & Boon in London, who brought this book into being. Thank you, Nicola, for your patience, tact, insight and for your brilliant editing skills.

You are amazing!

Thanks to the Wordwrights critique group for their comments on early chapters and to my critique partner Jenny Schwartz, who calls a plot a plot—writing would be no fun without our beachside café meetings. I’d also like to express my gratitude to the romance writing community, at home and abroad, for their warmth and generosity.

Thanks also to my academic colleagues, including those in the emerging field of ‘Love Studies’.

Finally, thank you to all the romance readers worldwide who keep the dream alive. Long live love!

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Author Note

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Epilogue

Historical Note

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

What! shall I sell my innocence and youth,

For wealth or titles, to perfidious man!

To man, who makes his mirth of our undoing!

The base, profest betrayer of our sex!

Let me grow old in all misfortunes else,

Rather than know the sorrows of Calista!

Nicholas Rowe: The Fair Penitent (1703)

Covent Garden, London—1852

‘No dinners with dukes,’ said Calista firmly as she wriggled out of her costume and stepped into her petticoats, one lacy layer after another. ‘You know my rule.’

‘Please, Calista,’ Mabel entreated from the other side of the painted screen. ‘It’s a private supper party.’

Calista’s fingers trembled as she adjusted the waistband of her top petticoat. She forced herself to keep a steady hand. She’d lost more weight and had to pull it tighter than usual. ‘A private supper is even worse.’

She tossed a light cotton wrapper over her bare shoulders and tied the ruffled edges loosely across her corset. She knew she ought to put on her dress or even a woollen shawl, but her skin was still warm from the glare of the gas footlights.

Mabel’s voice became a whine. ‘I can’t attend if you don’t come with me. It’s at the Coach and Horses, upstairs in one of those dining rooms. I’m longing to see it. Do you intend to keep me apart from Sir Herbert?’

Calista stepped out from behind the screen and sat down at the dressing table, resting her elbows among the pots and jars of creams and powders.

‘Last month you were besotted with a marquis,’ she reminded her friend, who was slouched on the chaise longue in a pink silk dressing gown. ‘Now it’s a baronet. It’s actresses like you who give us all a bad name.’

She softened her reproving words with a smile. Mabel had a good nature, even if she did care more for flirtation than learning her lines.

Mabel giggled. ‘A bad name has turned many an actress into a lady or a duchess.’

Calista sighed. Ever since a flurry of actresses had married into the aristocracy, many young women had come to consider the theatre as no more than a marriage market. It made it very difficult for those who aimed to become the best at their craft, as she did. Gentlemen from the audience hung around by the stage door, making advances, which Calista was forced to fend off, sometimes politely, sometimes by calling the doorkeeper to hasten the men away. The members of the aristocracy, she’d discovered, the more time she’d spent in the theatre, were the worst. They seemed to think they had offstage rights to an actress, in some form of noblesse oblige. A few so-called gentlemen behaved as if she were no more than a lady of the night. Indeed, some seemed to think actresses and courtesans were one and the same thing.

Calista shuddered inwardly. She’d determined to stick to her rule more firmly than ever before since that awful incident that had occurred a few weeks ago. She’d told no one about it, not even Mabel. It still shook her to think of it, but she had to carry on coming here, carry on performing. She had no choice.

‘I know you have your rule, Cally, but perhaps I’ll be doing you a favour if you come to the supper party,’ Mabel wheedled. ‘It’s true my dearest Herbie is only a baronet, but his cousin is a duke with an enormous fortune. Why, he’s the Duke of Albury!’

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

Mabel made a faint moan. ‘He sounds terrifying. Herbie told me to bring along another actress to keep him company tonight. I thought of you immediately. You can cope with anyone.’

Calista picked up a pot of crème celeste, her favourite cold cream. It could remove the thickest powder and paint. She wanted to help Mabel. Beneath her friend’s brazen exterior, Mabel’s heart had been bruised more than once. Still she hesitated. ‘Can’t you ask someone from the chorus?’

‘I could,’ Mabel said doubtfully, ‘but you’re the leading lady. Herbie said the duke is frightfully intelligent and to pick someone who would keep him entertained.’

‘I have no desire to entertain a duke,’ Calista said crisply. ‘He can pay to see my performance, like everyone else.’

‘Please,’ Mabel begged, her blonde curls falling over her dressing gown and her big blue eyes widening in the fashion that had brought her so many admirers. ‘I’m scared to face the duke without you. You’ll know the right things to say. Do come to supper, Cally. Herbie is the man for me. I know it!’

‘I’m sorry, Mabel—’ Calista started. With her finger hovering above the pot, about to daub in the cold cream, she stopped halfway.

The rouge on her cheeks would come away, like her costume, like the part she played. It was always the same after the tumult of applause at the end of a play when the curtain went down. When she curtsied to the audience there was a moment when she came back, when she stopped playing a role and became her own self again. It was the strangest sensation, as though she was dropped back into her body from the flies above the stage. If that feeling ever disappeared she would give up acting, she’d vowed. It was a kind of vainglory to seek applause for Calista Fairmont. The claps and shouts were for the character she created on the stage, the other person she inhabited the moment she stepped out of the wings.

Tonight, she’d played Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. From the first until the final act she became the daughter of a duke, forced to pretend to be a boy and hide in the woods of Arden. It was a role that suited her well, the theatre critics agreed, not merely for her more-than-average height and slim figure, but because of her portrayal of Rosalind’s intelligence and wit. She’d made the role her own.

Yet recently, coming back to herself at the end of the play had felt like a jolt. Tonight in particular she’d experienced a horrid sense of deflation as she had come off stage to become once more Miss Calista Fairmont, with all her troubles. It was as if a dark cloud had edged across the painted backdrop of a perfect blue sky.

In the looking glass, she studied her reflection and saw her fingers now clenching the pot of cold cream. Her hair had been pinned up while she’d played the part of a boy. Laying down the pot, one by one she released the hairpins.

Her black locks rippled over her shoulders, but the curls were limper than they ought to have been. They shone with less gloss than before. Once they had glinted as blue-black as damson plums, or so her father had declared. Columbine had asked if they tasted like plums, too, and their father had picked the girl up in his arms and laughed, declaring that surely his daughters were sweeter than any fruit, his Calista and his Columbine.

Columbine. Her young sister had caught a chill recently and it had given her a high fever. All day she had been red-cheeked, as she had continued to cough and wheeze.

Calista stared again at her own scarlet cheeks. At least the rouge disguised her pallor, and beneath her eyes the dark circles of fatigue were hidden by the layers of powder. If only she could sleep better. Lately all she could do was toss and turn all night. One worry would turn her one way. Then when she flung herself over, yet another would grip her.

Somehow, she must carry on. It might be better to try to keep her spirits high. A supper party would be a diversion from the constant cares that gnawed at her, and Columbine would be asleep at home; her sister and Martha didn’t wait up for her, not any more. In happier days there had been supper by the fire, a chance to talk and to share the play’s successes and failures. But now she walked alone.

Alone.

Her breath squeezed through her lungs. Fear had entered into her body, ever since...

No. She refused to think about it.

She put her hand to her chest and tried to breathe. This choking grasping of air must be what Columbine experienced when she had one of her terrifying attacks. Perhaps it would be good to be with company tonight and she could go part of the way home with Mabel after the supper party.

It might be safer to walk a different way.

There was no reason to hurry home. It was best to let her sister sleep peacefully, even if she could not do the same any more, and she was hungry, too. She might be the leading lady of the Prince’s Theatre and earn wages that were higher than those she had got for playing bit parts, only speaking a line or two, but the pounds weren’t stretching nearly far enough. The cost of warm lodgings, food, the doctor’s bills...all now had to be covered by her income alone. She often pretended to have eaten supper before going home, in order to save the price of a meal. No wonder that beneath the rouge her cheeks were hollowed and fitting her slim body into a boyish costume was easier than ever.

Another long walk alone followed by a restless night full of worry suddenly seemed more than she could bear. Doing Mabel a good turn might take her mind off her cares.

Calista laid down her hairbrush. ‘All right.’

Her friend, who had slumped miserably on the chaise longue, stopped twirling a long golden ringlet in her hand and sat up eagerly. ‘What?’

‘I’ll come and have supper with the Duke of Albury, but I can’t promise to entertain him.’

‘You’ll come?’ A waft of rose enveloped Calista as Mabel leapt up and hugged her. ‘Oh, I’m so grateful, Cally, and my Herbie will be, too. You won’t regret it!’

Calista sighed as she put the lid back on the unused cold cream. Already she suspected she would.

* * *

Darius Carlyle, the Duke of Albury, stretched out his long legs and waited for the actresses to enter the private dining room of the Coach and Horses Inn. The small wood-panelled room, where the oak was scratched and rubbed worn in some places, was safely upstairs, away from the crowd at the tables and bar, yet noise drifted up through an open, lead-paned window from the street below. The fog had crept in earlier in the evening, but it barely muffled the sounds of raucous voices and laughter that rang out all night in this part of London.

Inwardly he groaned. He could be in his comfortable club right now, or at home in his bed in his Mayfair town house, the thick curtains drawn. Why had he allowed himself to get caught up in his younger cousin’s affairs yet again? It wasn’t the first time he’d been forced to rescue Herbert from some kind of scrape. Darius had been rescuing him ever since their childhood, when they had attended the same boarding school, and it seemed he was still forced to do so. Herbert was a fool, but he was a Carlyle. As head of the Carlyle family it was up to Darius to sort things out, as usual. No Carlyle would get into this particular mess ever again.

Actresses. His cousin could always pick them. They were like showy birds, fine feathered, their cheap clothes brightly coloured, with too much paint on their faces.

And they always had claws.

Now one of them had got her talons into Herbert and it didn’t sound as if she was going to let go.

She would be made to let go, if he had anything to do with it.

He picked up his whisky glass and tossed back the remnants. He’d use the supper party as an opportunity to assess how far the situation had gone. It would be better to be cruel than to be kind and nip the affair in the bud. He was fonder of his cousin than he cared to admit, always had been. But it was his duty to ensure the Carlyle name wasn’t dragged once more through the mud of scandal. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but it had to be done, and Darius never shirked his duty.

Herbert fancied himself in love, but he hadn’t yet made the mistake of proposing to the girl—not that it would make any difference if he had. Proposing marriage to an actress could always be hushed up as long as there was enough money thrown about to muffle the gossip. Actresses could always be bought off. He knew that much.

Darius drummed his fingers on the table. The only question was how much money it would take. Tonight he would find out how greedy and ambitious the actress who’d hooked Herbert was.

Tonight he would put an end to Herbert’s infatuation.

The Carlyle curse must be broken.

The door of the private dining room opened. In came the actresses, two of them, followed by Herbert.

Darius’s lip curled.

The woman with whom Herbert was currently besotted entered the wood-panelled room first. He’d caught a glimpse of her with his cousin before. She wore a purple feather in her improbably golden hair and a low-cut dress that displayed her ample bosom to full effect.

Beaming with pride, Herbert stepped forward. Beneath his sandy hair he’d never lost the plump round face of his childhood. He looked like an excited schoolboy holding an iced bun. ‘Darius, may I introduce Miss Mabel Coop.’

‘Your Grace,’ she said in an accent that made him wince. She swept low into a curtsy, displaying even more of her deep cleavage.

Herbert’s eyes popped.

‘Charmed.’ For a moment Darius wondered if his cousin had gone mad. Could any man willingly contemplate a lifetime of listening to that voice?

He turned to the other, taller woman who had entered the room.

Darius frowned. The young woman’s face was simply covered in paint. Her cheeks were a bright red and she wore thick powder over what appeared to be a fresh complexion. Why did actresses get themselves up in such a fashion? He loathed such artifice.

However, her garments were less showy than her friend’s. She wore a grey woollen cape and beneath it a dress of dark blue that only revealed the upper part of her décolletage. She was thin, too thin for his taste, although her collarbones, he noted, were particularly delicate.

His eyes returned to her face. To his surprise she met his gaze with deep-blue eyes fringed with dark lashes. Her expression held a hint of humour, as though she was aware of his rapid assessment.

Unexpectedly he experienced a flare of physical attraction. He suppressed it instantly.

‘I’m Miss Fairmont,’ she said after a moment, when it appeared Herbert was unable to wrest his attention from the charms of Miss Coop for long enough to perform introductions. Her voice was low and husky, with no discernible accent.

‘Eh, what?’ Herbert stammered. ‘So sorry, allow me to introduce you properly, Miss Fairmont, to my cousin, the Duke of Albury.’

Darius inclined his head. ‘Delighted.’

In reply she made a sketch of a curtsy.

He frowned again. The young woman appeared to be well schooled in manners. Her curtsy held unexpected dignity. There was no flash of cleavage from her, but a dip with a straight back that would present well even at court. Yet the gesture held a challenge. It was not insolent, but showed a certain self-possession that spoke of independence.

He watched as she removed her cloak and laid it on a chest by the door. Yes, much too thin, he thought, as she moved towards the table in the middle of the room, but her walk was elegant, almost mesmerising. She was nowhere near as obviously pretty as Miss Coop, yet it was she who held his attention.

‘Do sit,’ Herbert urged. ‘Supper will be brought momentarily.’

Like a butler, he pulled out a chair for Miss Coop, who rewarded him with another flash of cleavage.

Darius returned to his place at the head of the table, already set with a white cloth, plates and cutlery. Miss Fairmont sat at his right, Miss Coop at his left. From the left he smelled a floral fragrance, so strong it could spoil the bouquet of a good wine. From the right, to his relief, it was clear that Miss Fairmont seemed not to have doused herself in cheap scent. She sat with her back straight, her hands in her lap.

‘Would you care for some champagne, ladies?’ Herbert asked. He brandished a bottle from a melting bucket of ice.

‘Ooh, yes,’ said Miss Coop.

Miss Fairmont shook her head. Darius also declined. Instead he poured a little more whisky into his glass from the bottle he’d ordered up earlier. He’d need it tonight, even if drinking whisky at dinner wasn’t the done thing. In such company he supposed it barely mattered, although he noticed Miss Fairmont gave his glass a perceptive glance.

‘I’ve ordered lobster,’ Herbert told Miss Coop as he shook out his napkin.

She clapped her hands. ‘Oh, that’s my favourite, Herbie!’

Pet name terms already, Darius thought grimly. Mentally he’d already estimated an amount to offer Miss Coop. He nudged the price up a few hundred pounds.

‘Do you care for lobster, too, Miss Fairmont?’ he asked the young woman seated to his right.

‘Yes, thank you,’ she replied.

‘We’re always starving when we come off stage, aren’t we, Cally?’ Miss Coop giggled.

‘Well, it is hard work,’ Herbert said admiringly. ‘I say, you were very good tonight.’

‘I spoke two lines,’ Miss Coop said proudly.

‘You were marvellous. And so were you, Miss Fairmont,’ Herbert added hastily.

Miss Fairmont smiled. It was an unaffected smile with no vanity in it, which was unexpected from an actress. ‘Thank you.’

Darius gave her a sideways glance. Again she coolly met his gaze.

‘Did you have a speaking part, too?’ he enquired.

Miss Coop squealed. ‘A speaking part? Calista has the main part!’

Darius raised an eyebrow. ‘You do?’

She nodded.

‘Miss Fairmont is quite famous,’ Herbert explained. ‘I thought you knew.’

‘My apologies,’ said Darius.

‘It’s quite all right.’ The corners of her mouth curved. ‘I wasn’t familiar with your name either.’

He drew back.

‘I take it you’re not a theatregoer.’ She seemed unconcerned that he hadn’t heard of her. She didn’t pout or exclaim at his ignorance. Instead she reached for her glass of water and sipped. Her lips were pink and full.

Darius shook his head. ‘I don’t care for play-acting, Miss Fairmont.’

He became aware of her studying him as she replaced her glass on the table. Her head was lowered, but he sensed the acuteness of her dark-blue stare.

‘Miss Fairmont has played many roles of note,’ Herbert went on. ‘Juliet, Rosalind, Ophelia...’

‘And the fair penitent?’ Darius asked.

Her head jerked up. ‘You recognise the source of my name. I thought you said you disliked the theatre.’

‘Not the theatre, Miss Fairmont.’ He glanced towards Miss Coop. ‘Play-acting is what I despise.’

When she spoke, Miss Fairmont’s voice held a sharpness that brought him back to look at her. Her lips had tightened. ‘I understand.’

Now he could sense her fragrance as heat reached her cheeks, making them even redder. The scent of her warm body reached him, too, along with the faintest waft of lavender from her hair.

‘I don’t understand!’ Miss Coop exclaimed. ‘What on earth are you two talking about?’

‘My name, Mabel,’ Miss Fairmont replied swiftly. ‘It comes from a play by Rowe, called The Fair Penitent.’

‘The main male part is Lothario, I believe,’ Darius drawled.

‘The seducer of women, yes,’ she flashed back in reply. ‘The kind of man who sees all women in one light.’

‘I told you my cousin was clever,’ Herbert said proudly to Mabel.

‘You did, Herbie.’ She beamed at him.

‘Perhaps he isn’t as clever as he thinks,’ said Miss Fairmont.

Her head was held high, revealing the bird-like shape of her collarbones and her long neck. Darius was reminded, suddenly, of a swan that glided on the lake at his country home. It had bitten him, once.

Herbert looked from one to the other. ‘I say, what’s the matter?’

‘Is something wrong, Cally?’ Miss Coop asked.

‘We’re here under false pretences, Mabel,’ the actress said with scorn. ‘For all his contempt of play-acting, the duke has turned in a fine performance.’

Mabel Coop’s hand went to her bosom. ‘Herbie, what does she mean?’

‘I’ve not the faintest notion,’ Herbert replied, slack-jawed.

‘Ask your cousin to explain,’ Miss Fairmont said.

There was a scratch at the door and suddenly two of the inn’s servants entered, bearing aloft silver-domed platters. They laid them on the table.

‘Leave the lids,’ Darius ordered when one of them made to begin serving.

He waited until the servants had left the room. No doubt they would hover outside the door to listen to the conversation between two gentlemen and a couple of actresses. It made it all the more pressing to end this affair immediately. Herbert clearly had no idea what he was getting himself into.

Beside him he noted Miss Fairmont’s slender fingers were gripped together.

‘I suppose we can get straight down to it, Miss Coop. I had hoped to handle this with some finesse, but since Miss Fairmont presses the point...’ A glare in her direction was met with an answering flash of her eyes. With effort he wrenched his attention from her to focus on the blonde actress. ‘You’re a young woman of obvious charms, Miss Coop, but if you have ideas about marrying my cousin Herbert I’m afraid I must put them to rest.’

Her big eyes instantly brimmed with tears. ‘What? Oh!’

‘I say, Darius,’ Herbert protested. ‘We’re here for a pleasant supper. Steady on.’

Darius ignored him. ‘I’m the head of the Carlyle family. My cousin will under no circumstances marry an actress.’

‘What do you have against actresses?’ Miss Fairmont demanded from his right.

He twisted to face her. ‘Must you force me to be blunt?’

Her chin tilted higher. ‘Please. Let’s not play-act.’

Darius shrugged. ‘Actresses are no more than title-hunters.’

Miss Coop gave a shriek.

‘That’s an outrageous thing to say.’ Miss Fairmont hardly raised her voice, yet the anger in it reached him. ‘Women have been on the stage since the days of King Charles the Second. How long will it take for us to be granted respect for our craft?’

‘Acting isn’t a craft,’ he said scathingly. ‘For women, it’s merely a version of the oldest profession, at which they are well versed.’

‘Men are actors, too,’ said Calista.

‘Male actors act,’ Darius conceded, with a derisive look at Mabel’s décolletage. ‘Females of the species merely display their wares.’

‘Now, Darius,’ Herbert blustered from the other end of the table. ‘That’s a bit much.’

Darius took up his glass of whisky. ‘Miss Fairmont is correct about my motivations. My desire is not to spend time in the company of actresses. It is to discover the price of avoiding such company in future. Let’s get down to business. How much money will it take to ensure you leave my cousin alone, Miss Coop?’

Now tears trickled down the blonde woman’s chin into the crevice of her cleavage. Her bosom heaved.

Miss Fairmont leapt to her feet. Except for the two spots of redness in her cheeks her complexion appeared pale, almost waxy. ‘You’re being extraordinarily rude. Don’t speak to my friend in such a manner. You have no right. You don’t know her.’

Darius banged his glass down and stood. Miss Fairmont came to just above his shoulder.

‘I know of actresses. Every actress in Covent Garden wants to marry a lord or a duke. It’s become an epidemic. Perhaps you’re the same. Are you angling for a title, too?’

‘How dare you!’

‘Lady Calista. Countess Calista. Duchess Calista,’ he mocked. ‘Is that why you’re here tonight? Is that your secret hope, like all actresses?’

Against her white skin Miss Fairmont’s blue eyes were as brilliant as sapphires. ‘Is it beyond your imagination that some actresses might not want a coronet? I am one of them. I answer to the stage, not to a duke.’

‘Come, come,’ he sneered. ‘You’re indulging in play-acting now.’

‘Not at all,’ she said. ‘My family goes back four generations on the stage. I have a lineage as proud as yours. My mother and grandmother were actresses, and my father...’ her voice wavered ‘...my father was a playwright. You’ll never understand what the stage means to me. You talk of the actresses who left the stage to marry into the aristocracy. I’m sure many of them regretted it and longed for the stage when their husbands refused to allow them to act again.’

‘As I’m sure many aristocrats regret their marriages to actresses,’ he shot back. ‘I’ve seen it myself in the circles of my acquaintance. It never works. It leads to ruination. As head of the family it’s my duty to ensure no Carlyle becomes embroiled in such a disastrous match again.’

Her eyes snapped blue fire. ‘You seem to think being a titled wife is such a prize. Why, I’d rather be a mistress than a wife to an aristocrat like you.’

‘My mistress?’ He raised a brow. ‘At least you’ve made your price clear.’

‘You’re twisting my words,’ she said through pinched lips. ‘I merely mean to say that being a duke’s wife is not what every actress wants.’

‘Every actress has a price.’ He spun on his heel and faced the sobbing Miss Coop. ‘Well? What’s yours, Miss Coop?’

The actress’s lower lip wobbled. ‘I just wanted some lobster.’

Darius released a stab of a laugh.

Miss Fairmont moved swiftly around the table. Even in anger her walk maintained that elegant glide. ‘Come along, Mabel. We’re going home.’

‘Herbie...’

Herbert’s napkin fell to the floor as he stood. ‘I’ll call on you tomorrow, Mabel,’ he said nervously. ‘I promise.’

‘Come now,’ Miss Fairmont urged, helping her friend up and pressing a white handkerchief into her hand. ‘Please. Don’t stay here for such insults.’