Playing The Duke's Mistress

Chapter Four

What business could he have here, and with her?

Nicholas Rowe: The Fair Penitent (1703)

‘What’s going on?’ he shouted again.

The man jerked up his head, sending his top hat spinning to the ground to reveal his too-long, sandy hair. His lips were drawn back, revealing white teeth, and his close-set eyes were narrowed like a weasel.

Lord Merrick. Darius cursed beneath his breath. ‘What are you playing at, Merrick?’

‘Nothing that concerns you, Albury,’ Merrick spat. A drop of spittle clung to the corner of his mouth, he noted with distaste.

‘I’m not sure I agree.’ Darius shifted closer, his hands clenched, and peered through the fog. Miss Fairmont’s face was white and her expression strained. Their eyes met, briefly, before he rounded to face Merrick.

‘I’m just asking this lady,’ Merrick slurred over the last word, ‘to accompany me for a drink.’

‘Do you want to have a drink with Lord Merrick, Miss Fairmont?’ Darius managed to keep his voice civil. There was no point inflaming the situation.

‘Certainly not,’ she replied.

Her voice came out a little more high-pitched than usual, but she retained her composure, he was relieved to note.

Darius picked up the top hat that had rolled to his feet, fighting back the urge to put his boot through it.

He held it out. ‘I don’t think Miss Fairmont appreciates your attentions, Merrick. Your evening at the playhouse is over. I suggest you make your way home.’

Merrick twisted to face Darius. ‘That’s what you suggest, is it?’

Darius moved another step closer.

‘Indeed.’ He made the one word a fist.

As if he’d been winded, Merrick stopped in his tracks. With a sneer he flung himself away from Miss Fairmont. ‘The wares around here are shabby anyway.’

He grabbed his hat and staggered away down the alley.

Darius rushed to Miss Fairmont’s side. ‘Are you all right?’

She nodded as she leaned against the wall, breathing heavily.

‘Thank you,’ she said simply. ‘You came just in time.’

‘He didn’t—harm you?’

‘No.’ She shuddered. ‘But he’d been drinking.’

He frowned. The situation could so easily have got out of hand.

She took another judder of a breath. Then another. ‘You know each other.’

‘Merrick and I attended the same school and are now members of the same club. We move in similar circles.’

‘Oh.’

‘He’s no friend of mine, Miss Fairmont,’ he said drily.

He was relieved to see her smile gleam through the fog. ‘I gathered that.’

‘I take it he’s no friend of yours either.’

She inhaled sharply. ‘Certainly not.’

‘Does this kind of thing happen often?’

Miss Fairmont bit her lip. ‘Leaving from the stage door every night can be somewhat akin to running the gauntlet. Unfortunately, some members of the audience consider it part of their entertainment.’

Darius frowned as he checked the empty lane. ‘Where’s the doorman?’

‘Gone home, I expect. Fred’s a good man, but even he can’t resist the kind of money that Lord Merrick throws about.’

‘A bribe?’

She shrugged her shoulders beneath her cloak, but he noted that the movement still contained a shiver. She was frightened, no matter how hard she tried to cover it up. ‘Gentlemen like that are unscrupulous. We actresses know that.’

Merrick hardly deserved to be called a gentleman after the incident Darius had just witnessed. Again, one of these uncomfortable needles of remorse pierced his conscience. Hell. In the circumstances, was he, Darius Carlyle, worthy to be called a gentleman? Was he equally unscrupulous? No, he reasoned with himself rapidly. He’d never force himself on a woman. His reason for pursuing Miss Fairmont in this fashion was unselfish, for the greater good of the Carlyle family. All the same, it made him increasingly uncomfortable. Darius had to admit his course of action was proving to be more complicated than he had ever expected.

In any case, he refused to leave her shivering in a dark alley.

He bowed. ‘I’ve asked permission to accompany you home more than once. On this occasion, I must insist.’

For a moment he thought she was going to argue again, but then it seemed she thought better of it.

‘It’s a long walk,’ she said, still trembling a little. ‘Almost an hour.’

He gestured towards the street. ‘Then I suggest we get started, Miss Fairmont.’

* * *

The fog wrapped Calista and the duke together in a misty, damp cocoon so that they might have been the only people on the street as they made their way east, away from Covent Garden. Calista’s boots clicked on the pavement, the duke’s making a deeper echo beside her. They walked in time, she realised, as she began to get her breath back. She was still shaking after that awful scene with Lord Merrick. He’d leapt out of the fog at her and heaven only knew what might have happened if the duke hadn’t appeared.

She shuddered again.

She took a sideways peep at the man next to her. His jaw was set, hard, his eyes continually scanning around them. There were still other people out, even late at night. Their faces loomed into view like yellow moons in the gaslights that lit each street corner, their voices resounding in the fog. The clatter of horses’ hooves and carriage wheels on the road lessened as they walked further from the city centre. Here, the streets became narrower, the gaslight more scant. Only the public houses were open and the blinds were drawn over the shop windows like stage curtains that had gone down.

The shops changed as they walked further, from dress shops, stationers and tea shops to bakers and grocers. The people, too, changed. Fewer top hats were seen as they walked east, and the clothing of some of the women they passed made Mabel’s often low-cut gowns look positively prissy. The policemen carrying truncheons also disappeared. Yet if the duke was aware of the difference, he made no sign. His demeanour never changed and his hands stayed in his pockets of his loose coat. His walk remained a casual saunter as they made their way together in silence, yet she sensed his alertness to every sight and sound.

Safety. For the first time in weeks walking home she allowed herself to relax. Silence was just what she needed after the scare from Lord Merrick, giving her a chance to regain her composure.

It was some time before she broke their hush. She didn’t want to talk about what had occurred back at the stage door. Instead, she asked a question that had been puzzling her.

‘When you first came to the stage door, you said you wanted to learn more about actresses. What did you mean by that?’

‘Exactly what I said. I wish to learn more about your profession.’ He seemed to sense that she needed to change the subject from talk of Lord Merrick.

‘You do?’

He chuckled drily. ‘I suppose I’ve earned your amazement. But as I told you, I’m intrigued. I can’t promise to change my mind overnight, but I’m willing to learn.’ He glanced down the street and frowned. ‘This is indeed a long walk home, Miss Fairmont, especially after a performance. Do all actresses live so far from the theatre?’

‘We used to live closer. It’s only been a month or two since we moved this way.’

‘We?’

She hesitated before she replied, ‘I live with my sister, Columbine, and our maid.’

‘So there’s no one who might collect you?’

Calista bit her lip. ‘I walk alone.’

‘Are you not worried by the fog?’

‘The fog helps, actually,’ she said.

‘What on earth do you mean?’

She grinned. ‘In the fog I can become another person. Like this.’

She moved ahead of him so that in the vapour he might only make out her shape and shifted her body so that she appeared like an old woman, a hunched, creeping figure in the dim street.

‘Or this.’ Now she made the shrunken shape of an old woman transform to that of a man with a confident stride.

‘That’s extraordinary,’ he said, when she appeared beside him once again as herself.

‘Sometimes we use a method of inhabiting the body of an animal. To become a cat—’ momentarily she arched her back ‘—or a bear, or snake. That sense of the creature helps to shape the character of the part we play.’

‘I shall beware,’ he said drily as they fell back in step together.

She chuckled. ‘Audiences may think it is the costumes or dialogue that make a good actor or actress. But it’s movement. It’s in the body. That’s what my...I was taught.’

‘Do you find it difficult to move in and out of character?’

‘You’re the first person to ever ask me that,’ she said. ‘It’s probably the most important part of the play, when it’s finished, I mean. Some actors I know are still in their roles when they go back to their dressing rooms. They might even stay in character for a day or two. But I come back to myself when the curtain goes down.’

‘Surely it’s safer that way,’ he observed. ‘Otherwise, you might lose sight of yourself. It could be dangerous.’

She shuddered at that last word.

Another acute glance came from beneath his top hat. ‘Is there really no one who might walk you home?’

‘Not at present.’ She stopped under a gaslight and pointed across the street. ‘Those are our rooms over there. Thank you for keeping me company.’ She hesitated. ‘There’s something else. I wanted to return this.’

From her reticule she pulled out the black-velvet pouch that held the ruby bracelet. It had made her so angry earlier, but after tonight she found she wasn’t angry at him any more.

‘I ought not to have sent it to you, Miss Fairmont,’ he said quietly. ‘It was an error of judgement.’

She studied his face as if searching for more clues as to his character. ‘That bracelet. It doesn’t seem...like you.’

He stiffened. ‘Your astuteness surprises me. I’ll admit it isn’t entirely to my taste.’

Her forehead furrowed. ‘But you thought it would be to mine.’

‘It was a regrettable error. I thought it the kind of thing actresses like.’

‘Do you know many actresses?’ she asked curiously.

He dodged her question. ‘Please, accept my apology. It seems I’m making a habit of apologising to you. It appears all actresses are not what I expected.’

She smiled as she curtsied. ‘I might say the same of dukes.’

At that he laughed. The two brackets she’d noted around his mouth were laughter lines after all. The expression took years off his age. She had thought him to be over thirty, but now she realised he must be eight and twenty, at the most.

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said.

‘And thank you,’ she added softly, ‘for what you did tonight, back at the theatre.’

‘That was my pleasure, too,’ he said rather grimly. ‘Goodnight, Miss Fairmont.’

‘Goodnight, Your Grace.’

Calista picked up her skirts and darted away, into the night.

* * *

Darius stared across the street at Miss Calista Fairmont’s slender, vanishing figure.

He uncurled his fingers. His fists had been clenched for the whole journey, hidden in his coat pockets. He rarely walked so far abroad in the city, especially at night. All his senses had been on alert, his body ready to spring into action. Most of his walks he took across his country acres, with his Labradors at his heels. Yet she covered the long distance at such a late hour and showed remarkable courage on the dangerous London streets. She had made a play of it, but he was sure it must terrify her, even without men like Lord Merrick around. By God, there weren’t even adequate gaslights here, they were so far from the better part of the city. Now Darius understood the circles under her eyes. To perform a demanding role like Rosalind and then to walk for an hour without a meal... Her thinness was now also explained.

He frowned and glanced down the street. The poor lighting made it difficult to see too far, but he made out the row of small mean buildings. There was a public house on the corner, and he could hear raised voices, two men having a brawl. Surely it was only a matter of time before some other drunken lout bumped into Calista and saw the beauty that she was.

All she had to protect herself was her extraordinary skill in transforming her body into another shape in the shadows. He had known Miss Fairmont wore skirts, but such was the masculine posture and presence she had emanated that he would have sworn it had been another man coming towards him in the dim cloud of night.

Darius stiffened. She was an actress. It wouldn’t do for him to forget that. Yet it horrified him that a woman of her talents lived in such an area. Her posturing in the fog wouldn’t fool everyone. Not if they saw that face. And that smile. It lit up the fog, brighter than a gas lamp.

He took a closer look at the brick-fronted, two-storeyed building into which she’d disappeared. She’d referred to rooms. That must mean she didn’t even have a house to herself and her sister. It seemed the sole income for the small family was being provided by Calista’s skills on the stage and that wasn’t enough pay for decent accommodation.

Under his breath he released an expletive.

Nothing had gone as he intended. Not at all. Like an actor himself, he’d been prepared to play Lothario, had planned what he might say to flatter and perhaps even begin to seduce her. He’d made his list of ways to woo an actress. He’d seen it all before, had learnt the hard way what women like that wanted. Flattery had been at the top, for actresses thrived on attention, or so he’d thought. But Miss Fairmont would have none of it. She despised flattery of her art and loathed the attentions of men like Lord Merrick.