City of Ash (48 page)

“Mrs. Langley, there was a reason Nathan had me act out madness in front of a doctor in a restaurant.”

“Of course there was. To commit me.”

She shook her head. “Because he knew I could be convincing.”

I sighed. “I will say that you were the one I remembered from
Black Jack
. I’d thought then that you had the most talent of all of them. I couldn’t even tell you who played the heroine.”

She laughed shortly. “Stella Bernardi. Treacherous as a snake, by the way. We were friends once, until she stole the leading line from me. She didn’t have much talent, but she was very good at finding rich patrons.”

“It seems to be epidemic among your kind,” I said drily.

“It wasn’t what I wanted.” Her voice was quiet. “But when Stella … well, it was the last straw. I had to do something.”

“Why?”

“I’m nearly twenty-nine, Mrs. Langley. That’s old for an actress, especially one who hasn’t yet won the lead. I couldn’t wait much longer. When Stella stole it … let’s just say I had to take desperate measures.”

“Then how providential that Nathan and I came to see
Black Jack
that night.”

I had spoken sarcastically, but she sighed. “Yes. Though I wish you hadn’t.”

That surprised me. And puzzled me. “It turned out for the best, didn’t it?”

She met my gaze. “It was the first time I’d done it. Taken a patron, I mean. I don’t mean to sound self-righteous, because I played the same tricks everyone else did—except that one. I guess … there was a part of me that wanted my talent to be what mattered.” She laughed a little, shaking her head. “And now I’ll always be like Stella, won’t I? People will always be able to say I won the line because of Nathan Langley and not because of my acting.”

“I would never have supposed you so … idealistic.”

Another sigh. “It’s stupid, I know. Believe me, it’s not something I’m proud of.”

“I don’t think it’s stupid at all.”

“You don’t?”

“No,” I said. “In fact, I think it rather wonderful.”

She laughed. “You and Bastian … how the hell do the two of you survive in the world? You’re like little lambs just asking to be slaughtered.”

“I prefer to think that God smiles upon us instead. The meek shall inherit the earth, after all.”

She snorted, not unpleasantly, and rose. “I suppose. I’d best get back. We’ll talk about the ball tomorrow, when I bring you food.”

I made a face. “I’d say I was tired of bread, but I’m too hungry to disdain it.”

“I know. If I had any money, or there was any food to buy—”

“It’s easy enough to bear when there’s an end in sight,” I said.

“Yes,” she agreed. “Most things are.”

Beatrice

T
he night before the ball, I told Sebastian I was going to the privy and I went to Mrs. Langley’s tent to bring her food and to go over our plan one last time. I had it as memorized as Penelope Justis’s soliloquy, where the words intruded even in my dreams. But I was anxious all the same. There were too many things I couldn’t control. A hundred things could go wrong, and I’d had enough performances where flies dropped from the heavens without warning and traps opened up beneath an unsuspecting foot to believe something wouldn’t.

She was to meet me at the Wilcox house that night, and in the meantime she was on her own. I wouldn’t have time to talk to her before, or to bring her any food—and that was something that was going to have to be solved and soon, because she’d eaten nothing but bread for four days and not much of that either. I had rehearsal for
Much Ado
in the morning, and then the tableau to rehearse after, and then the ball itself, so I was just going to have to trust that Mrs. Langley would do what she was supposed to do.

The next morning, I gathered up the butterfly silk gown I meant to wear at the ball, and Sebastian glanced at me as he put on his shirt and said, “No one will steal it. You can keep it under the crate.”

“I’ll need it.” I motioned to the scorched and filthy calico I was heartily sick of. “I can hardly wear this to a party, now can I?”

“I thought Greene meant to wrap you all in bunting.”

“I think he means for us to mingle beforehand.”

He made a noncommittal sound and buttoned his shirt. “Are you certain you feel up to this?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

He shrugged. “I thought perhaps you were ill. You’ve been a long time at the privy lately.”

I didn’t miss his quick glance, the question in it, how it slid away. Last night, especially, I
had
been gone a long time, but when I’d come back to the tent, he’d been half-asleep, and I thought he hadn’t noticed. When I’d crawled into the bedroll beside him, he’d wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close against his chest, kissing my temple before he fell back to sleep, and I’d felt … 
safe
, I suppose it was. Foolish, and don’t think I didn’t know it. I was beginning to have this sense that if I didn’t get myself under control soon, I would end up doing something damned stupid because of him.

And now, on top of everything else, my fear that Sebastian would prove a problem when it came to my plans with Mrs. Langley was proving out. He was so damned observant. “There was a line last night.”

“So late?”

“Yes, so late. Really, Bastian, what else could have delayed me?”

He met my gaze, considering, a little too thoughtful. “Nothing, I suppose.”

I stepped up to him, running my finger down his shirtfront, meaning to distract him. “Nothing.”

He caught my finger and kissed it. “You’ll come back here when it’s over? Or should I meet you there?”

Sebastian would not be going to the ball. He’d written the tableau, but he wasn’t one of the players, after all. “There’s no need to meet me there. Don’t wait up.”

“Ah yes. I suppose there’s Langley to consider, isn’t there?” He made a face and sighed. “I suppose it’s a good opportunity to get some writing done.”

I hated how disconcerting it was that he never did what I expected. I hated that I half wanted him to be jealous. But I was damned if I would show him that. “Good. I’m afire to know what happens next.”

“I tremble at the thought of disappointing you.” He dropped
my hand and pulled me close, kissing my cheekbone, my jaw, tangling his hand in my hair, which still hung loose, as I hadn’t yet found hairpins.

I put my hand to his chest, gently pushing him away. “If you don’t stop, we’ll be late for rehearsal.”

“Does it matter?”

“I can’t afford the forfeit, especially now. And Lucius has never forgiven one in his life. Except for Mrs. Langley’s, of course.”

“How bitter you still sound.”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Because she’s gone, perhaps? She can’t take anything from you now, Bea. Why begrudge her the past?”

How quickly he leaped to her defense. It made me think of the way she talked about him, her possessiveness even as she forced herself to admit his admiration for me, and the way I understood why he’d liked her, which was more than I could say for why he liked me. I couldn’t keep myself from saying, “Of course. Take her side as you always do.”

“She’s dead, Bea.”

“But you would give your entire fortune to see her alive again. Isn’t that what you said? What
good
friends you must have been.”

“I enjoyed talking with her.”

“Just talking? Or did you end up fucking her after all?”

He made a sound of exasperation. “No, I didn’t fuck her. She didn’t need a lover, she needed a friend.”

I felt chastised and foolish, but I didn’t take it back. “So if she
had
needed a lover, you would have obliged?”

He only smiled. “Is that jealousy I hear? Shall I throw you to the bedroll and show you just how little you have to fear?”

“I can hardly be jealous of a dead woman,” I said, marching toward the tent flaps. “We’d best be going.”

Sebastian sighed, but he followed me. “If we must.”

T
he ballroom at the Wilcox home was on the top, T-shaped floor, at the end of a long hall that held rooms for changing, just as Mrs. Langley had predicted. Once we all arrived, Susan
and Mrs. Chace and I went into one while Brody and Jack and Aloysius went into the other. Ours was small, with dormer windows that looked south over the city—a perfect view of the burned district and its crumbling walls of brick. I’d changed into Mrs. Langley’s silk gown before we arrived, though I’d needed Susan to help me pin it in spots to make it fit, and since my only bustle had burned in the fire, there was all this fabric pooling in a train and dragging so the pins that held up the bodice bit into my shoulder. The moment I could find a needle and thread, I would be altering the gown; at the moment it was the most uncomfortable one I’d ever worn, though lovely. I didn’t mean to wear it for the tableau, but I needed Nathan to see me in it before, which was not going to be that difficult, because Lucius had informed us that we were to circulate among the guests and make ourselves suitably charming. Just now, I guess, we were the only luminaries in town but for the Sells Brothers Circus, which had been scheduled to perform before the fire, but the mayor had refused them a permit and the city council was arguing about whether or not a circus was appropriate in light of the destruction, and no one would invite a clown or a trapeze artist to a drawing room ball in any case, so we were all there was.

And the damned room was full. Everyone who had any money at all must have been jammed into that ballroom. I was half surprised people weren’t hanging from the decorative ivy twined around the pillars, because
up
was the only place left to stand. There were servants bearing trays with sherry, and others with oysters, but they weren’t moving through the crowd so much as being pushed and jostled through. The talking and laughing was so loud it drowned out the quartet jammed up into one corner.

“Nothing like publicity to foster philanthropy,” Aloys whispered to me as we stepped into the crush. “Everyone wants to be a hero when it’s reported in the newspaper.”

It could be that he was right. Or it could be that Mrs. Wilcox just had a small ballroom, and all these people might have fit in the salon at Frye’s if it were something more than a pile of ash. But it did seem to be more people than I thought existed in Seattle society, and I found myself wondering what Mrs. Langley would say about it, and then I remembered that she was no doubt
making her way here even now, and what we were about to do came back to me in a rush, and I was nervous again.

Except for the tableau, I had only one task tonight that I cared about, and that was to make sure Nathan saw me in this dress both before and after the performance. So I quelled my nerves. This was nothing more than another show, a part I meant to play. I followed Aloysius into the crowd and searched for Nathan.

It took me a while to find him. I was stopped by one man after another—I was surprised at how many of them seemed to know who I was, though I suppose I shouldn’t have been. I’d seen society in their boxes night after night. But none of them had ever acknowledged seeing
me
before, so it was strange to be told by an aging, bespectacled gentleman whose suitcoat was made of the finest wool I’d ever seen that “your antics onstage are always one of my chief delights, Mrs. Wilkes,” and, by another man, younger this time, with a dark mustache, “I saw you in
School for Scandal
. Truly no one has such superb comic delivery.”

I admit it was heady. I was feeling quite the star before an hour passed, and the sherry pressed into my hands didn’t hurt either. By the time I saw Nathan standing at the far wall, talking to some man who looked officiously important, I couldn’t even remember that I’d been nervous. I made my way toward him through the crowd, past some woman with dark hair who stared at me as if I were one of those curiosities in Barnum’s museum, and nudged the blonde who stood beside her so she could stare too. The train of the damned skirt was so long and bulky that people kept stepping on it, pulling me up short, and finally I draped it over my arm, and the bodice slipped lower and lower until I had to jerk it up as surreptitiously as I could, and I wondered how the hell Mrs. Langley had got about in this thing.

But when I got to Nathan, he stared at me as if he were stunned, and that made it all worth it. “Mrs. Wilkes,” he said, when he’d recovered his breath. He took a great gulp of his sherry and then introduced me to the man beside him whose name I didn’t remember the moment after he excused himself and left us.

“The dress becomes you,” Nathan said to me when he was
gone. He put the empty glass on the tray of a passing servant and grabbed another.

I tried not to think of what he’d done the last time I’d worn it. “You were kind to invite us tonight. Lucius is beside himself with glee.”

Nathan sipped at his sherry. “It was my pleasure. As I’m providing funds to rebuild the theater, it seemed prudent to pique the potential audience’s interest.”

“We’re all very grateful.”

He leaned close, watching the crowd as he did so. In a low voice, he said, “I look forward to seeing how much so tonight.”