Simon made a swift assessment of the heiress's charms as he bowed over her hand. Apart from a slight cast in one eye, and a sallow, spotted complexion, there was nothing much wrong with Miss Tinsley. Her fashionable gown of puce satin flattered her plump figure as much as possible; her thick brown hair had been elegantly styled, and her rubies were magnificent. Her maid was to be congratulated, Simon thought.
“Lord Simon!” Casting her eyes over him with warm approval, the heiress spoke with a slight, childish lisp. “I vow, 'tis high time we met.”
“Have you been wishing to meet me, Miss Tinsley?” he asked politely.
“Yes, of course!” she replied. “I have always wanted to have a brother.”
Beside her, Dorian looked over his program and pretended not to hear.
“What a remarkable coincidence,” Simon replied, giving the girl a wicked smile. “I've always wanted to have a sisterâseveral, in fact.”
Lucasta giggled, but without, he was sure, understanding his meaning. “You did not tell me your younger son was so charming,” she murmured to Simon's mother, while glancing provocatively at Simon over her shoulder, her left eye twitching.
Miss Tinsley, Simon noted with much amusement, had all the vanity and caprice of a beautiful woman, and none of the beauty.
“Pray, don't encourage him, Miss Tinsley,” said the dowager, opening and closing her beautiful tortoiseshell fan.
Simon turned to Miss Tinsley's father. “Good evening, Sir Lucas,” he said politely.
As lampooned in
Punch
magazine, Sir Lucas wore an ill-fitting brown wig and a waistcoat that strained at the buttons, but there was something magnificent about his massive, oddly shaped head. His face, too, was ideal for caricature: protuberant eyes; a bulbous, red nose; and thick, rubbery lips. His strabismus, more pronounced than his daughter's, made him look foolish, and yet Simon knew he must be cunning as the devil, for a fool does not rise from poverty and obscurity to become one of the richest men in England. Sir Lucas owned most of the coal mines in the north of England. Dorian, with his forty thousand a year, was a pauper to him.
“Lord Simon.” Sir Lucas's left eye stroked rapidly from side to side like a trapped animal pacing its cage. “Thank you for coming so quickly. Tomorrow would have sufficed.”
“Our mutual friend is most anxious to put the matter behind him,” Simon answered.
Sir Lucas chuckled. “âOur mutual friend!' Let us not be coy. You mean the prince regent.”
“I have the honor of serving that gentleman, yes.”
“Odious man!” Lucasta broke in. “I wonder you can serve him, Lord Simon. In your place, I would not do it. I believe he has treated his wife shamefully. And the P. Charlotte, too! Everyone knows he tried to
force
her to marry Prince William when all along she was in love with Prince Leopold. His own daughter!”
“The Prince of Wales has indulged the princess too much,” said Sir Lucas, shaking his massive head. “Prince William was the better match; a good father would have
made
her marry him. Why, Leopold is penniless!”
“What about
love?
” cried the heiress.
“You are nonsensical,” said her father. He glanced at Simon; at least Simon thought he did. With that roving left eye, it was rather hard to tell.
“You may speak to Papa after the play, Lord Simon,” Lucasta said before Simon could answer. “
We
are going backstage to meet St. Lys, but Papa hates the theatre and has no opinion of actresses. You may keep him company while we are gone.”
“Go backstage, child?” cried her father. “No indeed! I won't have my daughter mingling with
actresses
. You would be tainted by association. What would your dear mama say if she should look down from heaven and see you in company with such women?”
“Nonsense, Papa!” laughed the young lady. “What fustian you talk! You took me to see the inmates at Bedlam, and I did not go mad. I think I can safely meet an actress without losing my character!”
“Mrs. Siddons, perhaps,” said Sir Lucas. “Mrs. Siddons is a respectable married woman. But not St. Lys. I forbid it.”
“Who cares about old Mrs. Siddons?” said Lucasta. “At her last performance, she was so fat, the stage creaked. These actresses all get fat, sooner or later. Miss St. Lys will be fat, too, one day. How I shall laugh!”
Twisting in her seat, she addressed Simon, who had seated himself behind her. “Your mama and I have made a wager, my lord. Her Grace says that St. Lys's golden ringlets are natural, but I am sure they cannot be so. We must go backstage after the play. How else am I to prove that I am right?”
“Do you plan to pull her hair?” Simon inquired politely.
“No one is going backstage,” Dorian said firmly. “I have told you before, Miss Tinsley,
ladies
do not go backstage. It would be most improper.”
Accustomed to getting her way, Lucasta frowned at him. “Don't be silly! If your mama goes with us, who would dare say it was improper?”
“Indeed,” Simon put in dryly. “Who would censure the Dowager Duchess of Berkshire?”
“I confess I have a strong curiosity to meet St. Lys,” the duchess announced, surprising both her sons. “If the management will undertake to remove all undesirable persons from our path, I see no reason why Miss Tinsley and I couldn't visit theâthe Green Room, I believe it's called.”
“Mama!” Dorian protested. “The Green Room! Have you lost your wits?”
“Would you have me forfeit a bet?” she responded calmly. “Miss Tinsley is our guest, Dorian,” she added. “One does not argue with a guest, after all.”
“Madam, I protest,” Sir Lucas began, growing red in the face. “I really cannot allow my daughterâ”
“Pshaw!” said the duchess, forgetting that one does not argue with a guest. “There is nothing whatever to be feared, Sir Lucas. His Grace and I shall go with her. I think it a very good notion. How else are we to settle our wager?”
Sir Lucas opened his mouth, but his tongue failed him as, all around them, an enraptured hush fell over the brightly lit tiers of the theatre. As if ensorceled, the audience abruptly stopped talking. All eyes swung to the stage, and three thousands caught their breath in an audible gasp.
St. Lys had arrived.
She flitted onto the stage, a tall, willowy, golden-haired beauty. Pink, as all the world knew, was the actress's favorite color, and she always had a touch of it about her person, whatever the character. Tonight, she had a bright pink ribbon tied at her throat.
London adored her. “As a goddess sometimes must assume human form to walk amongst us mere mortals,” Mr. Hazlitt had written in a review of
Hamlet
two years before, “so St. Lys comes to us in the guise of Ophelia.”
Tonight she was in the happier role of Miss Kate Hardcastle: sometimes a proper young lady, and sometimes a barmaid, but always a ravishing flirt. Mr. Charles Palmer, as Young Marlow, tried desperately to make his presence felt, but it was not to be. No one needed him. No one wanted him. He had as well quit the stage.
Lucasta moved her chair closer to Dorian's. “I prefer the opera to the theatre. Music is so edifying. Would you not agree, Your Grace?”
If Dorian even heard her, he gave no sign of it. He had eyesâand earsâonly for St. Lys. Opening her lorgnette, Miss Tinsley leaned forward to scrutinize the actress.
“I don't see what all the fuss is about,” she said, giving a toss of her head. “She is rather pretty, I suppose, but I'd hardly call her the English Venus, as some do. They call her the Saintly One, too, but that doesn't make it so! I have heardâ”
Leaning closer to him, she began to whisper. “I have heard countless tales of duels and suicides. They say she has had dozens of lovers, but no one has ever seen her with a white swelling. That's because, at the first sign of trouble, she heads straight to the apothecary for a dose of pennyroyal.”
Try as he might, Dorian could not ignore this revolting accusation. “If you are insinuating that Miss St. Lys is a
murderer
, I would caution you, Miss Tinsley. That is slander.”
“I don't say it; others do,” she protested. “I have better things to talk about than Celia St. Lys, I promise you, even if others do not. Walk into a shop and the clerk will tell you which soap Miss St. Lys favorsââPear's Almond Blossom, madam. We cannot keep it in stock.' The Saintly One polishes her teeth with Essence of Pearl. And for the complexion, we are told, nothing but Milk of Roses will answer. She has her own color, tooâSt. Lys pink, if you please, and a rose to go with it! They sell prints of her in Ackermann's, and cameos of her in Bond Street. Her face is in every shop window in town, it seems.”
She went on in this manner for the rest of the play and finished, as the curtain came down, with, “I am sick to death of Celia St. Lys!”
St. Lys came out for five curtain calls and kissed her fingers to them all. Two adorable children, a boy dressed as Harlequin and a girl dressed as Columbine, came out with her to gather the roses that had been tossed at her feet. At the fifth call, St. Lys slowly pulled the pink ribbon from her neck, smiling cruelly as her adorers in the pitâgentlemen, bank clerks, and footmen all jumbled up togetherâclamored to be awarded the prize. She seemed unable to choose. She loved them all equally, perhaps. Covering her eyes with one hand, she tossed the ribbon into the pit with the other.
Anyone would have thought it was a pearl of great price. There was punching and kicking and gouging, until at last a victor emerged with the prize. By that time, of course, St. Lys had left the stage.
Chapter 2
Lifting her skirts high, much to the appreciation of the stagehands below, Celia St. Lys ran down the narrow spiral of steps leading from the bright and lofty stage down to the dark, damp depths of the theatre. Legs flashing white in the gloom, she ran through the maze of corridors to her dressing room.
This was a small apartment divided into two parts. The first was a tiny sitting room prettily appointed with a French sofa and chairs upholstered in pink damask. Here, when so inclined, St. Lys received her visitors, and made them wait. Celia went straight through the sitting room to the alcove, kicking off the high-heeled mules she had worn in the final act just to annoy Mr. Palmer, who was two inches shorter than she. In her stocking feet she stood before the full-length mirror, watching impatiently as her dresser unlaced the back of her costume. The scent of roses filled the air. Dozens of bouquets, all composed of pale pink blooms, crowded the outer room, where the actress sometimes received select visitors. She was hungry, and the overpowering scent of roses made her feel light-headed.
“I am sick of roses!” she declared.
Her adorers would have been shocked to hear it; the St. Lys they knew loved roses, especially pink roses. Then again, the St. Lys
they
knew was never cross or sad or sick or nervous. She was always happy and beautiful. “I never should have let them name a rose after me. I wish someone had named a peach after me; one can eat a peach, after all.”
Stepping out of Kate Hardcastle's heavy skirts, she kicked them away.
Clucking her tongue, Flood picked the old-fashioned brocaded skirts up off the floor, placed them gently over a chair, and continued undressing her mistress.
“Sure madam is in a pet this night,” observed the Irishwoman, as she always did, every night, because madam was always in a pet after a performance.
Bit by bit, she stripped St. Lys down to her chemise, a garment so fine it scarcely concealed the slim, graceful form underneath. Menâthe dirty creaturesâwere forever offering Flood money to let them spy upon her mistress, but to their continuous disappointment, the Irishwoman could not be bribed. She loved madam as no man ever could, and would have cut off her skinny, freckled arm rather than betray her. Lest madam catch cold, Flood tenderly wrapped her in her favorite old dressing gown of golden velvet. Once it had been sumptuous as a lion's pelt, but now it was shockingly shabby. But when Flood had threatened to sell the old thing to the rag-and-bone man, madam had smiled like the sun and said, in her deliciously low, husky voice, “You're
much
older than that, my darling Flood, and I wouldn't sell
you
to the rag-and-bone man, either.”
Celia went to her dressing table and, seated at the triple glass, began creaming her face. Though she had been blessed with great natural beauty, the harsh lights of the playhouse made the use of some cosmetics necessary. She used lampblack to darken her blond lashes and brows. She painted her lips red and rouged her cheeks bright pink. The lampblack made her eyes look intensely blue, and the crimson on her lips made her teeth look very white. Her skin was flawless. She never painted it with white lead, as the other actresses did, but made do with a little tinted powder, discreetly applied between acts, lest the Saintly One become known as the Shiny One. Offstage, she never wore cosmetics of any kindâsave a little lip balm on her small, plump mouth. Her adorers were always charmed to see St. Lys on the street, barefaced as a child, and Celia, believing herself to be quite beautiful enough without artificial enhancement, was happy to give them what they wanted.
Carefully and gently, as if removing dirt from a butterfly's wing, she slowly removed her stage “face” with a piece of soft flannel. Without the lampblack, her eyes looked round and innocent. Her mouth looked softer and sweeter without the crimson paint.
For the role of Miss Hardcastle, her golden hair had been dressed in a loose pompadour with tight ringlets cascading down her back. Tilting her head, Celia considered the important question of whether to draw the pins, and quickly decided against it. She knew from experience that her hair could be unruly. Once free, it might not allow anyone to wrestle it into a new shape. Besides, her public liked her a little old-fashioned, not quite so à la mode as the haughty ladies of the ton.
Her stomach rumbled, recalling her to more important questions.
“Why
do
they send me flowers? Why don't they send cake? Or champagne?”
Flood was painstakingly inspecting Miss Hardcastle's clothing for stains and rents. She looked up in alarm. “Best you stay away from cake, madam! Let alone champagne! Your breeches for the new play is made up alreadyâand not an inch to spare in any direction!”
“Nonsense,” Celia said indignantly. “If anything, I've lost weight. I hardly know myself, I look so hagged! I vow I must look
thirty
at least.”
“Thirty!” Flood cried. “No indeed, madam! Though 'tis true you'll never see twenty again,” she added, quite unnecessarily, in her mistress's opinion.
In fact, Celia was twenty-fourâpositively ancient for an actress. Every day, sleek and ravishing fifteen- and sixteen-year-old beauties turned up at auditions, as hungry for fame and fortune as Celia herself had been when she had first arrived in London.
“It's so unfair,” Celia went on. “A player-man can be old and fat, short and smelly, and nobody bats an eye! But let an actress have so much as a
laugh line
at the corner of her mouthâand out she goes on her arse! My time is coming, Flood. Oh yes, it is, I know,” she insisted as Flood protested vehemently that that day would never come. “I'll show up at the theatre one day, and there will be another woman's name painted on my door.”
“Sure they could never replace
you
, madam,” Flood told her firmly. “Did not Mr. Hazlitt himself declare you to be the finest actress in London?”
“Certainly; now that Mrs. Siddons is retired, and poor Mrs. Jordanâ” A sudden swell of tears compelled Celia to stop. Dora Jordan, the famed comic actress, had died the previous year, after having fled to France to avoid her pressing debts. She had been Celia's friend. Rushing to console her mistress, Flood encircled her with bony arms.
“It's tired you are, that's all, madam,” Flood crooned. “You want a nice, hot bath, and a good night's sleep.”
“No indeed,” Celia said indignantly, pushing her away. “I'm not
yet
an old woman! I want a nice hot supper and a night on the town with my handsome young man. Is he here?”
“I'm sure I don't know who you mean, madam,” Flood said coldly.
Even though he was the son of Mrs. Jordan, and therefore half-Irish, Flood did not approve of Captain Fitzclarence.
Rising from her dressing table, Celia went behind the lacquered screenâlast seen on the stage in Sheridan's
The School for Scandal
âat the very back of the room. “You know exactly whom I mean,” she said sharply, snatching a pink silk sacque from a peg behind the screen. “You may tell Captain Fitzclarence that I'll be with him directly. And tell him I'm
hungry
.”
Flood might purse her lips and shake her head, but Celia knew her servant would obey. Obedience was delayed, however, by a light tap at the door. Mr. David Rourke, actor and stage manager of the Theatre Royal, stood on the outer threshold, having opened the door before Flood could do it for him. “Are you decent, Celia darling?” he called out, one hand over his eyes.
Though madam was safely behind her dressfold, Flood hurried to close the white muslin curtain that separated the inner sanctum from the sitting room. To Flood's certain knowledge, no man had ever passed beyond that muslin curtain, and no man ever would if she had anything to say about it. For good measure, Flood placed herself in front of the curtain, arms spread wide, a forbidding scowl fixed upon her scrubbed, red face.
“Celia, my love?” Rourke called playfully. Having appeared that evening in the role of Tony Lumpkin, for which he was justly celebrated, the Irish actor was still in full makeup, his face an ochre mask. As far as Flood knew, Rourke had never done her mistress any wrong, but that did not mean he wouldn't try, given half a chance. He was a man, after all.
“I am not your love, Davey Rourke,” Celia called back in the same singsong. “You always call me your love when you cannot pay me. Fifty pounds, if you please.”
Rather than his usual excuses, Rourke produced a banknote, which Flood carried to her mistress beyond the muslin curtain. Celia glanced at it over the top of the screen, and Flood placed it securely in the no-man's-land of her own scant bosom.
“Thank you, Mr. Rourke,” Celia called out sweetly while Flood, resuming her post in front of the curtain, glared at him.
“You're welcome, Celia darling,” he replied. “And now that that's out of the way, I was hoping we might discuss tomorrow night.”
“I'm quite looking forward to it, Mr. Rourke. I haven't had a night off since the season began.”
There was a warning in St. Lys's voice, and Rourke hesitated before venturing to speak again. “You've not heard about poor Mrs. Copeland, then?” he said after a long pause.
“What about her?” Celia asked, without much interest. Miss Hardcastle and Miss Neville might be the best of friends in the play, but the two actresses in the roles were no such thing.
“She's breeding again.”
“So?”
It was not uncommon for an actress to appear onstage while breeding. Mrs. Jordan had borne the Duke of Clarence a dozen children, maintaining her career all the while, and even the great Mrs. Siddons had played
enceinte
âthough, of course,
she
had been a respectable married woman. From time to time, high-toned religious types complained about the appearance of impropriety, but by and large, London audiences had been trained not to notice an actress's expanding silhouette. Celia herself had never been “caught.”
“I'm afraid Lord Torcaster has forbidden her the stage in her present condition.”
Mrs. Copeland was the Earl of Torcaster's mistress and, as such, had to abide by his lordship's edicts or else lose his lordship's “protection,” which was rumored to stand at a thousand pounds a year.
“She's not showing,” said Celia crossly.
“His lordship has spoken. She is to be removed to his country house for the duration. She leaves tonight. Indeed, she is gone.”
“But who will take her part on Friday?” Celia demanded, coming at once to the part that concerned herself. “We shall have no Miss Neville!”
“Miss Archer has been practicing,” he told her. “She's much improved. And Miss Vane is coming from Bath. You'll like Miss Vane. She'll be with us on Monday, God willing.”
“Belinda Archer!” Celia cried indignantly, thrusting her stockinged feet into high-heeled slippers. “Are you mad? That girl could scarcely manage her lines
tonight
, and she was only my maid! Her mother has gotten to you, I see.”
In her youth, Sybil Archer had taken Londonâand some said the Prince of Walesâby storm. But tonight she had played Rourke'sâand indeed, Celia'sâmother, in the part of old Mrs. Hardcastle. Mrs. Archer's glory days were firmly behind her, but she had a daughter, a pretty eighteen-year-old, whom she hoped to bring out to great acclaim.
“Why don't you give Belinda
my
part?” Celia went on angrily. “Why don't I just quit? It's what you all want!”
By now Rourke was used to her threatening to quit and he reacted quickly, pouring oil on the troubled waters. “Nobody wants you to quit, Celia darling. Everybody loves you.”
“Sybil Archer has been trying to get rid of me since the day I arrived,” Celia declared, only slightly mollified by his twinkling Irish charm, “but I'm still here!”
As if to prove it, she swept aside the muslin curtain and stood before him, fully revealed, an angry golden-haired goddess with blazing sapphire-blue eyes. Her full, white breasts swelled against the top of her pink gown as she breathed. She was magnificent.
“That you are, darling,” Rourke said wistfully as he gazed upon the beauty before him.
“What about
Twelfth Night
?” Celia pursued. “Who will play OliviaâMiss Vane? If so, then we have no Sebastian!”
“Miss Archer knows the part. She has been studying.”
“Good God!” Celia said violently. “I might as well retire now!”
“Retire, is it? And you in your prime?”
Celia glared at him. “
In my prime?
” she howled. “Well-preserved! Is that what you mean? You think I'm old, don't you? You want me to quit! Very well; I quit!”
“Nobody wants you to go, love,” he murmured softly, softly. That was how one had to tread with these beautiful, brittle butterflies of the stage: softly.
“I shan't be doing
this
when I'm old and gray,” Celia declared, her blue eyes suddenly cold and hard as they contemplated the future. “I can bloody well tell you that! And when I go, by God, I'll be sitting on a pile of money, so I will. They say even Mrs. Siddons is hard up these days. But not me, Davey. Not me! All I need is one more good run.”