Mally : Signet Regency Romance (9781101568057) (19 page)

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THE UNWILLING HEIRESS

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The post chaise clattered to a standstill on the wet cobbles behind the theater. There was still rain in the dark summer night, the tiny drops picked out by the weak lamps at the front of the battered old chariot.

A girl in blue dimity climbed wearily down with two bags, setting them down as she searched in her reticule for some coins to pay the postboy. It was eleven o'clock, and suddenly the London night was alive with church bells chiming the hour. The two horses shifted and the boy growled at them.

“Want change?” he demanded of the girl, in a way surely calculated to intimidate.

His ploy was successful. Janine shook her head and picked up the bags again, walking slowly over the cobbles to the stage door. Dimly through the night, as the bells ended, she could hear the sound of the audience cheering and shouting inside. Strains of well-loved tunes drifted in the air. Peg Oldfield's songs, the most popular, most whistled, most hummed songs in London. Smiling fondly, Janine reached out to the bellpull.

The doorman peered cautiously round the door, and his stern face broke into a grin as he undid the various chains which protected the theater from any unwelcome intruders. “Miss Oldfield! Miss Jan! Oh, come in, come in out of the rain!” He seized the bags and took them inside, setting them down and looking out suspiciously into the night again before closing the door and putting the chains back, locking each one.

“It's like getting into the Tower of London!” Janine laughed, untying her straw bonnet and shaking her black hair.

“Getting in to see Peg Oldfield is as rewarding as getting into the treasure house itself.” Dickon's bald head gleamed in the light of an old oil lamp as he looked at her. “My, my, you're a picture, a proper picture. What brings you back to us after all this time, eh?”

She looked at him in surprise. “Didn't you expect me, then? My mother sent for me.”

“Reckon she wanted to surprise us all, eh? Well, turn 'round, then, let's take a look at you.”

She turned obediently, and he looked her up and down, from her dainty calfskin shoes to her elegantly curled hair in its fashionable tumbles.

Then he nodded. “A proper young lady, and that's a fact. That there academy in Bath turned you out a treat, right enough.”

“Miss Tarrant's Academy for Young Ladies.” Janine pulled a face. “It was more fun back here in London.”

He picked up the bags again, bending his head beneath the artificial archway used on stage sometimes, and Janine followed him. The atmosphere of the theater was permeating her already, as always it had done. Miss Tarrant had perhaps made a lady of Peg Oldfield's daughter, but beneath the surface, the theater was all she craved.

Dickon opened the dressing room door and put the bags down again. “She'll be a while yet, the show's only just started.”

“I'll be all right here, Dickon.”

He paused in the doorway again, smiling fondly at her. “Reckon there'll be a celebration later, eh? A welcoming for you?”

“I hope so.”

He rubbed a finger against his nose and winked. “I'll
see
to it!”

She smiled as he closed the door, and then she looked around. It was a small room, lit by a single oil lamp on a table in the corner. Old posters decorated the walls, and countless costumes had been hung on hooks everywhere. A battered red velvet sofa stood to one side, some tissue paper scattered over it and a new gown tossed casually over its back had obviously just come from the dressmaker's. The dressing table was littered with pots and jars, and several wigs rested on pegs above it. There was a smell of smoke and perfume in the close air. Janine looked at the sofa again, remembering the countless times as a child that she had curled up there, watching her mother preparing for a show, or maybe sleeping there waiting to be taken home afterward in Peg Oldfield's notorious crimson and gold carriage. Everything about Peg Oldfield was notorious.

Janine's pale blue reflection shimmered in the mirror on the dressing table, and she picked up the oil lamp and went closer, setting the lamp down close to the mirror and then sitting on the stool to look at herself. The lamp light swayed for a while, a stream of smoke rising from the bright glass, but then as it steadied she could see herself clearly. She was like her mother in so many ways, with the same raven black hair, the same small, neat nose and the same clear complexion. But her mouth was not as wide and expressive—it would need a great deal of rouge to show up clearly on the stage. She looked at her eyes, so large and of such a dark blue they seemed almost violet. Perhaps her eyes were her finest point, she decided critically, widening them for a moment to study the effect. There was a flash of fire there, it was true, but was there enough to beguile an audience, to hold it spellbound throughout a show as Peg's did? Janine sighed.

The audience roared and stamped its feet with approval, and the sounds vibrated through the theater, drowning the faint drift of music for a moment. A tingle coursed through her body, stirring her as always it did. This time, this time she
had
to persuade her mother to change her mind. When Peg Oldfield gave up the stage, her daughter should be there to step into her shoes—

Janine studied her reflection again. One day the name of Janine Oldfield would be as great as her mother's. One of Peg's best-loved songs came clearly as the noise died away, and Janine mimed it, still watching her reflection. There should be a certain tilt of the head just there, but somehow she couldn't capture the essence of it. But it would come, it
would
come!

The jars of makeup were a clutter on the powdery surface of the dressing table, some of them open. It was the usual untidy mess Peg always left in her wake. Janine looked around at the delicate costumes hanging on their hooks, each one with sequins, ribbons and flounces. And daring necklines. The colors and materials were rich and magnificent. Beside them hung the men's clothes for which Peg Oldfield was perhaps most famous. Janine smiled as she looked at the admiral's uniform. What would Lord Nelson have to say if he returned to see himself portrayed on stage by a beautiful actress with long legs and a tiny waist, and her hat at a saucy angle? Maybe he would have approved—

She twisted off the lid of a porcelain dish and dipped her fingertips in the smooth rouge it contained. It had a smell and a texture all its own, not even vaguely like the Portuguese rouge permitted at Miss Tarrant's academy. Slowly she applied it to her cheeks, smoothing it in and delighting in the feel of the creamy salve. But if she were preparing to go on stage, then the rouge would be applied more liberally— Janine dipped her fingers in again and applied some more, wiping her red-stained fingers on a cloth which already bore the marks of varying colors, ranging from black and gray to crimson and vermilion. Then she put smudges of violet above her eyes and emphasized them with dark thick lines as she had seen her mother do. When she sat back to study the effect she thought fleetingly that she had managed to make herself look more like a streetwalker than, say, Columbine? Her glance went to the dainty gown of white gauze with its garlands of pink and white roses. Getting up she lifted the flounced gown down, holding it against her body. But it was impossible to tell the effect with the thick blue dimity already there. Returning the gown to its hook she unbuttoned her pelisse and loosened the drawstring of her gown.

The gauze clung to her as if alive, its wired bodice feeling strange for a moment. How full the gown was, and how tight the waist—not at all like the fashion of the moment. She twirled and posed, watching her reflection. Perhaps she had been a little heavy-handed with her eyes; she looked as if she had fisticuffed with Gentleman Jackson himself! Suddenly the door opened, and she turned with a gasp, relaxing as she saw that it was only her mother's dresser, Dobby.

“Oh, Dobby, you gave me a start!”

Dobby's eyes went over her for a moment, and then she set down the costume she had been carrying, folding her hands neatly before her black silk dress. “And well you might look guilty, Miss Jan! You'd best get out of that before your mother comes off stage.”

“Oh, Dobby, she'll be a while yet. Besides, she will have to face the fact that I intend following in her footsteps.”

Dobby looked away for a moment, picking up the costume and hanging it carefully on a hook. Her spectacles were perched on the end of her nose, and that, together with her long, thin nose made all the more prominent by her tightly pulled-back gray hair, made her look like some great black bird. She looked at Janine again. “It would still be better if you got out of that lot right now. It may be that she won't be on stage for her full show, it's not often that she is these days.”

Janine looked quickly at her. “What do you mean?”

“She ent well, Miss Jan, she ent well at all. To tell the honest truth, that's why I sent for you.”

“
You
sent for me? I thought—”

“Well, I didn't want to frighten you none. She won't let on as she's ill, Miss Jan, not to me nor even to herself. But there's more an' more times of late when she can't go on at all, and if'n she does, then it ent for the whole show.”

Janine stared at her. “But when—when I last saw her a month or so ago she seemed so well!”

“That were one of her better times, and that were why she went to Bath to see you then. She don't want you to worry none, but I reckon 'tis time she were made to face up to it.”

There was something so very final and hopeless in the dresser's voice that Janine sat down suddenly on the old stool. “Dobby,” she whispered in a frightened voice, “what are you telling me?”

Dobby blinked back the tears and took the girl's shaking hands. “Sweetheart, you mustn't reckon on Peg Oldfield being around for too much longer.”

“Oh, no! No!”

Dobby's fingers tightened gently. “You mustn't let on as you've been told anything now—promise me?”

Janine looked up into the dresser's kindly, concerned face. “I promise.”

“That's a good girl. Now then, let's get you out of this before she comes and catches you.”

“Dobby, I meant what I said earlier. I want to be like my mother, to be as famous as she is if I can.”

“Peg Oldfield didn't pay good money to send you to that there academy, having you taught to read and write proper, to speak French and such like, just to have you tripping on the stage. 'Tis as a
lady
she wants you to live, not as a actress.”

“I'm Peg Oldfield's daughter, Dobby—not a lady.”

Dobby straightened. “Peg's more of a lady than most people will ever know, Miss Jan. You don't know the half of it, not the half of it.”

Janine stood to let the dresser help her out of the gown. They were suddenly quiet, for there seemed nothing suitable to say. Beyond the room the sounds of the theater went on, with the chattering, laughing chorus as they hurried up to the stage from their large dressing room nearby, and the deafening cheers of the audience as Peg Oldfield sang her most famous song.
When I grow up, I'll go to sea; a jolly jack tar, that'll be me
— Janine closed her eyes, imagining Peg in her tight, patched trousers striding across the bright stage, her striped jacket revealing a decidedly feminine shape, a cheeky lock of black hair tumbling from beneath her hat—

Dobby gasped suddenly. “That's her last song, she's brought it forward! Oh, my Lord, she mustn't catch you with all that stuff on your face.”

Janine picked up the stained cloth again and began to wipe the makeup off, and Dobby moaned. “Lord above, you didn't put it on without that there oil, did you? We'll
never
get it all off quick now!”

“Oh, Dobby!” Feverishly Janine continued wiping, but the smears of violet, black and red made her look like the picture of a North American Indian she had seen once.

The final cheers began, and with them the thump-thump of the audience's feet as they called Peg back again. But she didn't return, for in a moment she was opening the dressing room door.

Her presence filled the room as she stood there, her hands on her hips, eyeing Janine as she hastily buttoned her pelisse. The magnificent dark blue eyes came to rest on her daughter's stained face. Without a word she strode to the dressing table and picked up a bottle of clear oil, pushing it into Janine's hand. “Wipe it off with this,” she said shortly.

Dobby cleared her throat. “A drink, Miss Peg?”

Peg nodded wearily. “Something good and strong, if you please, Dobby.”

“But—”

“No buts, not tonight; just do as I ask.”

Dobby's eyes met Janine's in the mirror, and then the dresser went to a cupboard and took out a bottle of cognac. Peg poured herself a very liberal glass and drank it in two gulps, pausing with her eyes closed as the fiery spirit made its way down her throat. Then she looked at Janine again.

“If I ever see you with that paint on your face again, missy, I'll tan you to within an inch of your life, is that clear?”

“Yes, Mama.” Janine bit back the anger and frustration.

Peg smiled suddenly, her face lighting up. “It's good to see you again, sweetheart, but why have you come? Why didn't you let me know?”

“I—I wanted to surprise you. Miss Tarrant's Academy has closed for a while—er, measles.”

“Measles? Good heavens! So, you've come to stay with me for a while?”

“Yes.”

“I shall love having you.” Peg sat down and began to remove the makeup she had so skillfully applied, and Janine watched her. It had been six weeks since last she had seen her mother, but the change was marked. She had lost weight so that the trousers which originally had been skin-tight were now loose. There were shadows beneath her eyes which were revealed by the removal of the makeup, and there was no sparkle in the beautiful smile as she caught Janine's eyes. “A sorry sight, eh?”