Hope Tarr - [Men of the Roxbury House 02] Read online

  Plate balanced on her knees, Daisy regarded him for a long moment. “Did it take getting used to?”

  “Did what take getting used to?”

  “Being rich. Roxbury House was nice enough, but even there we each had chores to do and lessons to learn. I’ve never had servants though I considered going into service once.”

  “I’d think staying put in one place would seem rather dull after the traveling life you’ve lived.” Only after the fact did he admit the statement concealed a question. Could a woman like Daisy ever be content to settle down in one place—with one man?

  She shrugged. “A dancer’s career is short-lived. Most girls don’t make it past thirty. On days when I perform more than one show, at bedtime I wrap my ankles in cloths soaked in mustard seed oil to ease the swelling.”

  Gavin had never considered that her dubious profession might take such a physical toll. “I had no idea.”

  She picked up another strawberry and bit into the fruit, juice dribbling down the side of mouth, making her lips look all the more luscious. The telltale tightening in Gavin’s groin was a warning that for once he chose not to heed. Reaching across, he caught the juice with the pad of his thumb as he might have done were they children still. Only they weren’t children, they were adults, and the flare of heat between them was an undeniable presence in the room. He swiped his digit along the curve of her bottom lip, tracing its contour, wishing he might taste her with his tongue instead.

  Drawing back, he cursed himself for an idiot. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. It won’t happen again.”

  Daisy shook her head, cheeks flushed as though she hadn’t stripped for him only the other day. “No, it’s me who’s sorry. I’m making a mess. I suppose I’m hungrier than I thought.”

  For the first time it occurred to him her wolfishness might be the result of missed meals rather than rough manners. She was very slender but he assumed that was from the exercise of daily performances.

  “Daisy, when was the last time you ate?”

  She hesitated, and then reached for another strawberry. “Why, I’m eating now.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She shrugged. “They were supposed to feed us one meal a day at the club but with rehearsals and what not, that didn’t always happen. The rooms I let are above a bakery, so I get more than my fill of bread and pastry, but meat and fresh fruit are hard to come by—and cost dear.”

  So that explained why she picked off the bread from the sandwiches and turned her nose up at the fancy cakes and scones. He’d assumed Paris patisseries had made her finicky, but apparently he’d been wrong about her yet again. After two weeks above a bakery, she must feel as though she was drowning in dough.

  Seeking to divert them from the awkwardness he created, he said, “I’ve placed an advertisement for an acting instructor in The Times as well as several of the more prominent regional papers.”

  He expected her to be pleased that matters were moving along but she looked anything but. “You think I need acting lessons?” She drew back, cheeks as bright red as though they bore his handprints.

  How to answer honestly without offering further offense? Choosing his words with care, he said, “When you read for a part, you have only the one chance. I want to do everything in my power to ensure you’re as prepared as possible.”

  He more than suspected her background in burlesque barely scratched the surface of what she might do. With a bit of coaching, she might make for a solid actress. To her advantage, she was already very much at home on the stage.

  She seemed to soften. “I suppose it’s no different from voice or dance lessons.”

  Relieved they’d gotten past the potentially sticky subject so easily, he took a sip of his tea. “Exactly so.”

  “That only leaves us to hammer out the terms of our arrangement.” She unsnapped her reticule and brought out a pencil and pocket-size notebook. Pencil at the ready, she looked up and said, “I’ve found that before going into keeping, it is by far best to decide the terms in advance.”

  Aghast, Gavin stared at her. “Into keeping?”

  She answered with a brisk nod. “I know it may seem unromantic to write it all down but doing so saves much time and angst for both parties when the time comes to go separate ways. In our case, you’ve promised me a stipend to cover my er … financial obligations as well as to pay for my incidentals. In return, for the month I’m living under your roof, you’ll expect to sleep with me, of course.”

  Gavin felt himself flushing. “On the contrary, I expect no such thing. I didn’t propose this arrangement to make you my mistress. As I said the other night, you are to consider yourself my houseguest.”

  Gaze never lifting from his face, she said, “Are you saying you don’t want to sleep with me, Gavin?” He thought she looked a little hurt.

  He shifted in his seat, feeling almost as uncomfortable as he had when she’d forced him to be part of her act. “What I may want or not want is beside the point.”

  Regarding him from beneath raised brows, she pressed, “What is the point, then?”

  He felt the dreaded thickening settle into his tongue. “The point is to … to comport oneself in a manner that is p-proper and moral and, well, c-correct.” Good God, scarcely an hour alone in her company, and he was reduced to the stammering idiot of his youth.

  She tossed back her head and laughed. “Dear Lord, Gavin, what a stuffed shirt you’ve become. It’s not as though I’ll mind sleeping with you.” She slid her gaze over him, and he felt himself warming not only from embarrassment but also from desire. “I rather think I shan’t mind it at all.”

  “Be that as it may, ours is a platonic arrangement.”

  “Platonic?” She frowned as though puzzling out the word.

  “We will be friends, good friends, as we’ve always been, but I won’t press for more.”

  She seemed to find that funny. “I assure you, Gavin, I’ve had any number of men call themselves ‘my very good friends,’ and it’s not stopped them from taking me to bed.”

  He shook his head at her. Really, what else was he to do? “Do you always speak so … freely?”

  She answered with a blithe smile and a toss of her head. If she caught the censure underlying the question, she was choosing to ignore it. “Unfortunately, not nearly as often as I’d like. The aim of an entertainer is to please, after all. Not just the audience, but also the stage manager, the chorus director, the promoter. Why, even the lighting crew has a say up to a point. It’s not often I have the chance to tell someone exactly what I think.”

  “I see,” he said and the odd thing was he did. They might be occupy opposite ends of the social ladder and yet he, too, had made it his lifetime’s work to please others, first his grandfather and later his colleagues and clients, judges, and juries, doing his utmost to live up to the St. John legacy.

  In truth, he didn’t know whether to feel flattered at how quickly she’d come around to feeling at ease with him—or stung that in the respect category he apparently ranked somewhere between the dustman who swept the stage between performances and the crew of stagehands who cleared and set up the props. He settled on mildly put out.

  “In future, should you wish to temper your running commentary with a modicum of courtesy, I won’t take it amiss. Pretend I’m someone important, if that helps you.”

  She answered with a mock pout, a look he found at once sultry and adorable. “My, my, aren’t we touchy today.”

  “That would be because we have been up and about since dawn unlike some persons who apparently prefer to spend the morning lying abed.” The latter was a veiled reference to her insistence she couldn’t possibly call on him before noon.

  “I’m sure I’m up and about the same amount of time a day as you are only I keep theater hours.”

  “We’re not in the theater at present.”

  She grinned, the smile unearthing the matching pair of pretty dimples on either side of her softly poin
ted chin. “Aren’t we, now? Haven’t you heard, ducks, all the world’s a stage?”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I;

  when I was at home, I was in a better place:

  but travelers must be content.”

  —WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Touchstone,

  As You Like It

  Later that day, Daisy stood in the center of her rented rooms, the contents of her closet spread out upon the floor at her feet. She’d paid the month’s rent in advance and there was no reason not to keep the place until that time. If things with Gavin didn’t work out, she would have an escape route, a haven, though at the moment she was very much looking forward to leaving behind the ever present smell of baking.

  Packing the rest of the things she meant to bring with her should be easily accomplished. Had Freddie and the Lakes accompanied her, the move across town would have been a far more complicated affair. No matter how many times they’d moved or how short the stay planned, Flora always insisted the trunks be unloaded, the china and furnishings and sundry accoutrements of civilized life all unwrapped and laid out, the clothing unpacked and hung in closets or folded neatly in drawers. By the end of the first day, there wouldn’t have been a single storage box or traveling trunk in sight. Dear Flora, she was in so many ways a remarkable woman.

  Traveling alone for the first time in her life, Daisy hadn’t brought much with her in the way of personal possessions. Beyond her gowns and costumes and cosmetics, all of which counted as tools of the trade, there was the cherished framed photograph of Freddie, an old rag doll she’d had with her forever and had always called Lucille though she couldn’t recall why, and the stuffed animal cat Gavin had given her long ago but likely forgot all about by now.

  Looking back over her afternoon, she had to admit it had been an extraordinary day. Funny how in life one often went for long patches of time without experiencing any appreciable shift and then all at once something occurred to set the wheel of change in motion and a lifetime might be lived in a single, solitary day.

  After the tense tea, Gavin had taken her on the promised tour of his flat. She’d been amazed and, in spite of her resolve not to soften toward him, touched. He’d given up his private study and made it into a library of plays and other theatrical texts. That someone, a man, had gone to so much trouble for her both humbled and astonished her. For the span of several minutes all she’d been capable of was to stare about her like an idiot, mumbling “Fine, how very fine” when he pointed out the newly stocked bookshelves with their leather bound library of plays.

  That he didn’t seem to expect to sleep with her both puzzled and offended her. A man refusing sex on the basis of satisfying his scruples was as foreign to her as riding on the backs of elephants rather than horses or choosing chocolate-covered ants over tea biscuits. Barring one or two lovers who from time to time fancied a good whack, she wasn’t used to being the sexual aggressor. Men had been chasing after her since she’d put on her first pair of high heels. The oddity of the situation struck her as enormous, but if she were honest with herself, she had to admit the strange circumstances titillated her, too.

  Were it in her nature to be content, rather than planning his seduction, she would be counting her blessings that he wanted her in any capacity at all. If not exactly in dire financial straits, she certainly skirted the edge. The jewelry she’d amassed from her more well-heeled lovers had all been sold, the funds used to pay for Bob Lake’s medical expenses. Consumption, or tuberculosis as it was coming to be known, was a cruel disease and battling its ravages a costly proposition. Treatment included periodic sojourns at sanatoria where the mountain air was believed to be of great benefit. As a result, she had little enough money to convert into English pounds and even that was nearly gone.

  Even so, the move to England was meant to be, she could feel it. Had she remained in Paris, eventually she might have become one of myriad English expatriate artists who stayed past their prime, whiling away her free hours in cafes and pouring her pittance of a salary into absinthe and opium. Now that she was once more on English soil, her fourteen years in Paris lent her considerable cachet. In addition to The Palace, there were innumerable clubs and variety saloons she might have played. It was a lot to give up—but there was much to be gained.

  She hadn’t exaggerated when she told Gavin a dancer had a short-lived career. Knees ruined and spirits broken, retired dancers might turn to teaching but more often than not they turned to drink. On the other hand, a woman might find employment in the theater the whole of her life. There were always parts such as Lady Macbeth which called for more mature actresses.

  Practicality aside, treading the boards in London had been Daisy’s dream for as long as she could remember. Even with so many years and so much hurt between them, she couldn’t help feeling a wellspring of gratitude whenever she thought of how Gavin had turned his flat, and his life, inside out to please her. Perhaps he was acting out of guilt more so than friendship. Regardless of his motive in helping her, she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. She remembered how he encouraged her when they’d put on their little plays in the attic of Roxbury House and felt a tear dampen her eye.

  Good show, sweetheart … What a brilliant little actress you are, isn’t that so, lads? Gavin’s voice, or rather the younger version of it, echoed inside her head, a ghost of a long ago time and place.

  Daisy scraped a hand through her hair, forcing her thoughts back to the present. She couldn’t go back in time and change the course of events, no one could, but she was determined to make the most of the future.

  After Daisy left to finish packing up her flat, Gavin took his first opportunity to sit down with Sir Augustus. By prior appointment, he met the manager of Drury Lane in the smoking room of The Garrick.

  They settled in at a window table with glasses of whiskey. Sipping their drinks, they chatted desultorily for a few minutes about politics as well as the difficulties of keeping a theater such as Drury Lane financially afloat. According to Sir Augustus, the emergence of so many supper clubs and music halls was cutting into his trade.

  Hoping to sidestep that dicey subject, Gavin said, “You must be wondering why I asked you here.”

  “I must admit to some curiosity on that score,” the older man allowed.

  Gavin girded himself to begin. He’d never been terribly good at asking for favors, but he reminded himself that this boon was for Daisy, not him. “A dear friend of mine would very much like to audition for your production of As You Like It.” Reading his companion’s pained look, he hastened to add, “She has considerable experience in the entertainment field in Paris and most recently in London.”

  Sir Augustus frowned. “Tell me her name. Perhaps I’ve heard of her.”

  Gavin hesitated. He bloody detested her stage name and had vowed to himself he would never address her as such. “Her name is Daisy Lake but she goes by the stage name of Delilah du Lac.”

  “You don’t say? I’ve heard of her to be sure, who hasn’t?” he added, and the slight smirk to his smile had Gavin thinking he wasn’t only referring to Daisy’s reputation for a nightingale’s voice and high can-can kicks. “I heard she was playing The Palace before it closed down.”

  “Quite,” Gavin replied. “But she has considerable stage experience beyond that. She was a regular player at the Moulin Rouge.” The latter, he hoped, would afford some cachet.

  Sir Augustus shook his head. “Be that as it may, in my experience these showgirls are all cut from the same cloth, plenty of dash but thin on substance. I need a seasoned actress for Rosalind, not simply one who looks well in breeches, though that surely doesn’t hurt.”

  Gavin hadn’t been thinking of the role of Rosalind for Daisy but rather one of the play’s lesser parts. “I assure you, we’re not reaching so high as Rosalind for a first play. Even a small speaking role such as that of Hymen would be a start.” He stopped himself when he realized he skirted the edge of beggin
g.

  “Very well, I’ll see she’s put on the list. The audition is a fortnight from today. I’ll have my secretary send the information ‘round to your office. She’ll be called upon to recite a monologue from memory. But our casting schedule is tight. We’ve no time to waste, so mind she comes prepared, Mr. Carmichael.”

  “She will, Sir Augustus. She really is quite good, and in two weeks from now she’ll be even better. I trust you will find yourself pleasantly surprised.”

  Sir Augustus sent him a skeptical look and held up his empty glass, beckoning the waiter to bring a fresh drink. “I hope so, Mr. Carmichael. I doubt it, but I hope so.”

  The next morning at breakfast, Daisy tossed the detested elocution manual across the table. “What rubbish this is. I should be reading plays, not stuffy grammar books. How much longer before I can read for a real part?”

  The retired actress who answered Gavin’s advertisement came with a strong set of credentials, both regional and London-based. Gavin had asked around at the Garrick and confirmed she’d been quite a name in her day. The only drawback was that she was coming from Surrey and it would take another several days to close up her cottage and otherwise settle her affairs. In the interim, he didn’t intend for Daisy to be idle. Time was, after all, of the essence.

  At tea the other day, he couldn’t help noticing her diction wasn’t quite all it could be. She tended to swallow her h’s and murder her r’s albeit only in certain words. Perhaps it came from being raised abroad or perhaps she’d always spoken thus and he never noticed before because at the time he, too, had spoken a similar dialect. His grandfather had beaten the Cockney coarseness out of him with a cane and occasionally a strap, but in Daisy’s case a softer approach was warranted.

  Unfortunately, she detested the elocution manuals he brought home so much that at times he almost thought she might prefer a good flogging. In the course of their afternoon lessons, three so far, Gavin gathered Daisy shared the common human failing of doggedly pursuing perfection in those areas in which she already excelled and skipping over those in which improvement was most needed. She would practice a libretto again and again until she struck each note just so, and yet when it came to smoothing out the cadence of her Cockney-accented English interspersed with the occasional French phrase she was all too willing to throw up her hands and be done with it.