City of Ash (23 page)

“I’d hoped to get through the scene in less than two hours,” she said coolly.

Mr. DeWitt said, “Greene, perhaps it would be better to give Mrs. Langley a chance to study the script before you throw her to the wolves.”

“I had not thought the landscape so infested,” Mr. Greene said drily. “But I think DeWitt is right. Mrs. Langley, please come and sit down. Here, we have a chair just for you. As for the rest … we’ll go to act two, scene one, where Barnabus vows to take the sweet Delia as his own.”

I was more than grateful, both for Mr. DeWitt’s suggestion and to deliver myself from my proximity to Mrs. Wilkes before I lost my temper. This was not what I’d wanted or intended. I retreated to the table. When Mr. Greene turned his attention
back to the rehearsal, I leaned to whisper to Mr. DeWitt, “Thank you for coming to my rescue.”

He nodded. “I had told you they might not welcome you.”

“I did not imagine they would be quite so.…” I let my words trail off, alarmed to find that my eyes had filled with tears.

Mr. DeWitt’s hand covered mine, a gentle squeeze. “They’ll learn to like you as much as I do, Mrs. Langley.”

“I wonder.”

“They will,” he whispered. “Don’t let her disconcert you.” I glanced at the actors who had made my first foray among them so difficult—at Mrs. Wilkes especially, and I found myself saying quietly, “You said the company had been rehearsing this play for a week. Who had the part of Penelope before me?”

Mr. DeWitt paused. Then he said, “I think you must already know.”

He was right; I did know. It was clear that Mrs. Wilkes had had the part before me, and that she’d thought to keep it. I understood why she disliked me. I understood why she was angry, and as Sebastian DeWitt went back to his pen, I glanced up to see her staring at me, her eyes like cold little stones, and I wondered how I would ever make this up to her.

I
was already at dinner when Nathan returned home that evening.

“Forgive my tardiness, my dear,” he said, pouring a glass of wine and taking roast onto his plate.

I told him, “Mr. Greene insisted I attend a rehearsal today.”

“Ah yes. The theater. I’d forgotten. How was it—as scintillating as you’d hoped?”

I took a sip of wine. “I’m afraid I stumbled a bit. I had not thought … the part of Penelope had already been given to someone else. A Mrs. Wilkes. Do you know her?”

“Mrs. Wilkes. I know of her, of course.”

“She was quite angry.”

He shrugged. “She’ll adjust, I imagine. Greene won’t tolerate it otherwise, regardless of what right she feels she has to the role.”

“What right she has to it? What do you mean?”

“DeWitt wrote it for her, I understand.”

My appetite left me completely. I put down my fork. “Mr. DeWitt wrote
Penelope Justis
for Beatrice Wilkes?”

Nathan glanced up. “I believe so. Is something wrong?”

“Dear God, he said nothing of that. I hadn’t realized …” I could not help my distress. “Why didn’t he tell me she was the muse he’d spoken of?”

“Why would he?” Nathan frowned. “What does it matter?”

I barely heard him. “That explains everything.”

“Everything? What happened?”

“Nothing. At least nothing that isn’t completely understandable.”

“Should I say something to Greene?”

“Please don’t. I’ll find a way to make it up to Mrs. Wilkes. Perhaps I’ll buy her a gift.”

Nathan paused in taking a bite. “I’ve heard she has a sweet tooth.”

“Oh, I think something useful instead. She can’t make much money at the Regal, and she’s certainly not a star. If I could think of a way to help her …”

Nathan made a noncommittal sound.

I picked up my wine again. Beatrice Wilkes was Sebastian DeWitt’s muse. I’d thought her the most talented of the company, but still, she was so … common. Nothing as I’d imagined the actress who’d inspired such divine words to be. Shouldn’t muses be so much more vibrant and charismatic? I saw none of that in her, but perhaps.… No sweetheart or wife, he’d told me.

Still …

As casually as I could, I said, “Are they lovers, do you think—she and Mr. DeWitt?”

Nathan said, “Oh, I hardly think so. She’s an actress, isn’t she? Aren’t they all looking for rich patrons? He can’t make enough money to interest her.”

“I must admit I’d be surprised. She doesn’t seem his sort.”

“Hmmm. Well, she must have a charm you’re blind to.”

“I suppose.”

Nathan said, “By the way, at the club today, a friend of mine expressed some interest in your theater experiment. He’d
thought of trying such a thing himself. Reading seems to have started an epidemic. I told him he might watch a rehearsal.”

I blinked at the change in subject. “You should have him speak to James Reading.”

“Oh, I will. But he may wish to speak to you as well.”

“Is he important?”

Nathan smiled. “Exceedingly so.” He pulled his watch from his vest pocket and glanced at it, then pushed back his chair and rose, throwing his napkin down, leaving his dinner half-eaten. “Now you must forgive me, but I’ve an appointment. I shall be out quite late, I think. Don’t wait up.”

Beatrice

I
was still angry when it came time to go to rehearsal the next morning, and tired as hell because I’d been up late studying the rest of Marjory’s lines. There were fewer than I’d had as Penelope, of course, but still it took hours. By the time I went to bed, I was beginning to like the idea that I was playing the woman who put Penelope Justis into the hands of the villainous Barnabus Cadsworth, even if she didn’t mean to. Now, if only the waterfall he dropped her from was real.…

Fortunately, Nathan hadn’t shown up last night—I wasn’t sure what I would have done if he had. After the performance, I’d found the box of candy I’d left in his carriage in my dressing room, along with some American Beauty roses—pricey things, those, and lovely, even if they had no scent—but no note, which
was just as well, as I didn’t want to forgive him yet, as stupid as that was, and I knew it, but I couldn’t help it. His wife had been as insufferable as I could have predicted. I’d spent the entire rehearsal wondering if she knew about me and her husband, and I’d finally decided she didn’t and toyed with the idea of telling her. Nathan hadn’t said
not
to tell her, though what man wanted his wife to know about his mistress? It seemed stupid on his part, actually, to put us in the same room together. It would serve him right if I told her everything. But then I remembered how Nathan had slapped me, and I didn’t want that either; I didn’t want him angrier with me than he was already. He was a rich man, and he already had Lucius on his side, and to go against him directly was suicidal. But I wanted my revenge as well—on both of the Langleys, and I didn’t need it to be explosive to be satisfying. I could be subtle enough if I tried.

When I showed up for rehearsal at ten, the scene painters were still working on the backdrop. The prompt table had been dragged out; now it was placed downstage near the footlights. There were three chairs, two of them spindly and the last one, which I recognized from Lucius’s office, I knew was meant for Mrs. Langley. There was always a chair for a star, whenever we worked with one, but seeing that chair there for her … it made me angry all over again, so when Sebastian DeWitt appeared behind me suddenly with his “Good morning, Mrs. Wilkes,” I snapped, “It’s too damn hot to be a good morning—or don’t you sweat like the rest of us?”

“ ‘A serpent’s tongue hid by a flowery face.’ ” Aloys fanned himself with a folded
Post-Intelligencer
. “What is it, Bea? Can’t resist stinging such a pretty bud this morning?”

I sighed and smiled my best at Mr. DeWitt, who, thankfully, seemed stunned by it. “Forgive me. I’m not myself this morning.”

Jackson said, “Who is? It is dreadfully hot.”

“I fear I should quite shrivel up and blow away,” Mrs. Chace said, plopping herself down on the edge of the stage, already red-faced, her grayed strawberry blond hair tumbling from its pins as if she’d walked twenty miles instead of a block and a half to get here.

“You’ve a bit more shriveling to go before that might happen, milady,” Jackson said.

Brody chortled; it turned into a snort.

Mrs. Chace glared at him. She wiped her neck with her handkerchief. “Well, I feel quite
evaporated.
”

Mr. DeWitt went to the prop table and began laying out his pencils and pens. His fingers were already black with ink, as early as it was. Mr. Geary strutted onto the stage. “Are we quite ready, ladies and gentlemen? Where is our star?”

“Not here yet,” Susan said.

“Maybe she’ll send a maid to fill in for her,” Brody said.

“We’ve got Bea for that. After all, she’s Mrs. Langley’s proxy in other ways.” Jack guffawed.

In irritation, I said, “We can’t start without her. She has lines on nearly every page. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve better things to do than wait around for someone who thinks she’s a star when she hasn’t a lick of.…” I trailed off as Jackson put his finger to his lips and shook his head, and then I heard Lucius’s booming voice behind me.

“What ‘better things’ might that be, my dear? Have you decided against accepting the part of Marjory?”

I turned to see him emerging from the wings, Mrs. Langley behind him. “You’d fine any one of us for being this late.”

“But Mrs. Langley hasn’t signed a contract, and thus she has no idea of the rules, which are more precisely meant for actors who can’t remember their place.” Lucius smiled, but his eyes were fierce. I looked away—of course I did. Lucius was a money-grubbing toad, but I was here by his sufferance, and I should have known to expect nothing more. I was the fool who’d trusted him. And it wasn’t really him I was angry with anyway.

“I
am
sorry. There was an accident on the road.” Mrs. Langley came forward.

Said sincerely enough, though she had that infuriating society way about her that made me angry just on principle.

Lucius strode to the table. “Well, then, the day whiles away. Shall we begin?”

Mrs. Langley followed him. She took off her hat and reached
into her bag to pull out the script pages, though the rest of us had been off book for days now, and I waited for Lucius to tell her she couldn’t use it. Of course he didn’t, the hypocrite, just as he wouldn’t fine her either—and no lack of contract had ever stopped him before, whatever he said.

Lucius called out the scene. The rehearsal was what all rehearsals were: studied exercises in chaos, but Mrs. Langley’s inexperience forced us to rehearse scenes four or five times. I was torn between resenting that she was ruining the part I would have been so brilliant in, and taking delight in how she stumbled about the stage, in how stiffly she read the lines. At any other time, I would have found it amusing. Today, it only made me angrier.

Though Mrs. Langley could not know it, she was the victim of the company’s merciless guying. There had never been so much stumbling, flubbing lines, or crossing up stage right and stage left. All meant to keep her confused. It didn’t seem to faze her, actually; she had this smiling dignity that would have cowed lesser actors. But my fellows were bent on taking their revenge for me, and she didn’t manage to guilt them into behaving. Lucius sat there simmering, but you know, what could he do when the whole company was in revolt?

“I do not think I can speak this line,” Mrs. Chace called out, plopping herself down beside me where I sat on the edge of the stage. “I simply refuse to say it. Mrs. Cadsworth would never be so cruel as to not let Penelope rest!”

“She is a villain, madam,” DeWitt said in exasperation.

“Still she is, in her heart, kind. I insist you rewrite the line. I shall say instead something like: ‘My dear Miss Justis, you are weary. You must sit a spell.’ And I shall say it standing to your left, Mrs. Langley.”

DeWitt said, “She means to get Penny to her son before Keefe discovers them.”

Mrs. Chace said, “Perhaps an accident could delay Keefe.”

“There is no accident.”

“It would erode a great deal of the tension, my dear, if you took time to rest during what is in essence a kidnapping,” Aloys
pointed out. “Speed is imperative. I am after all hoping not to be discovered as I wait to meet you. I cannot pace about the street forever without rousing suspicion.”

“I cannot say it,” Mrs. Chace said stubbornly.

“I’ll be happy to take the line,” I put in. “Perhaps Marjory could be secretly working against Penny.”

Brody laughed beneath his hand.

DeWitt’s sigh was loud and long-suffering. “It needs to be Mrs. Cadsworth’s line. Marjory is racing back to tell Keefe what has happened. She cannot both be trying to find her brother and in town.”

I gave him a bright look. “Perhaps you should rewrite it then. We could put a song in between, and no one would notice she was in two places at the same time.”

“A brilliant idea, Bea,” said Jackson. “That is exactly what you should do, DeWitt.”

DeWitt jammed his face into his hands, threading his fingers through his hair. Mrs. Langley looked uncertain.