Joan Wolf (9 page)

“What do you mean?” snapped Linton, a decided edge to his voice.
“Of course I am not giving up Miss 0’Neill.”

“Well there is no need to chop my head off,” Lord George said, giving his friend a puzzled look. “I just thought, since you usually stay at Staplehurst until April...”

“Well I am not at Staplehurst now,” Linton interrupted, his voice clipped with rising temper. A thought struck him, and he fixed glittering blue eyes on Lord George’s pleasant, good-natured face. “What has been going on here while I was away?” His voice sounded distinctly dangerous.

“Nothing! Good God, Philip, stop looking at me like that. Nothing has happened. No one has even seen Miss O’Neill except on the stage.” He looked at Linton’s face for a moment in silence and then said, “She doesn’t come into the Green Room and no one is allowed into her dressing room. I know because there are a number of men who have tried to see her. I was not the only one who assumed you may be bowing out.”

Linton drew himself up to his impressive height. “Well, you were all wrong,” he said grimly. “Good day, George.” And he walked away, leaving an extremely puzzled Lord George staring after him.

* * * *

Jessica was performing that evening, which was why Linton had stayed away. When he finally saw her he wanted her undivided time and attention. And this evening’s performance had a special significance, as he had discovered from Mr. Mowbray whom he had met in Bond Street. On January 2 Edmund Kean, at the strong but misguided insistence of the Drury Lane committee, had appeared as Romeo.

 It was not at all the sort of role suited to him. It was impossible for him to look like a boy, and the ardor of young love was an emotion he found difficult to project. For the first time he invited direct comparison to Jessica, whose Juliet was considered a masterpiece. She was playing Juliet tonight for the first time since the end of December, and the public, with Kean’s performance in mind, had come to test hers against it.

Linton waited until the play had begun before he slipped into his seat. He did not want Jessica to know he was there until he could face her directly. When she came on stage he was almost immobile, his eyes closely following her, knowing by heart her special beauty of movement and line, her springing, intense vitality that reached out and captured every man in the audience as surely as the enraptured Romeo.

When the play was finally over the audience rose, cheering and shouting, giving notice, in case anyone had doubted, that Jessica O’Neill owned
Romeo and Juliet.
They quieted only long enough for Thomas Harris to make an announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, two weeks from tonight I am happy to tell you that Jessica O’Neill will perform in William Shakespeare’s
Macbeth.”

 As the theatre went wild, Linton thought with a wry smile, so she is carrying the war into
his
territory now.

* * * *

Jessica had taken her costume and her makeup oft and was sitting in front of the dressing table mirror brushing her hair when there came a knock on the door. “I am not seeing anyone, Jenny,” she said to the girl who was hanging up her costume, and the girl nodded and went to the door.

When she saw who was there her eyes widened, but he shook his head gently at her and motioned her out. Obediently she slipped past him and he entered the room, closing the door behind him. He stood for a minute, watching Jessica at the dressing table. Her back was to him and, unaware of his presence, she went on serenely with what she was doing. Her head was tipped a little to one side as she brushed, and her hair fell over her bare shoulders, a shining rippling mass of autumnal silk glinting with threads of copper as she stopped and swung it back from her face.

“Who was it, Jenny?” she asked, and turned her head, beautiful as a flower on its stem. Her eyes met his, and he heard the sudden sharp intake of her breath. “Philip!”

“Did you miss me?” he asked, and crossed to the dressing table to raise her up. His hands on her bare shoulders, he looked for a minute into her large gray eyes, his own narrow and brilliant in his intent, concentrated face. Then his mouth came down on hers.

The hardness of his kiss surprised her. It was different from the way he had kissed her before. More demanding. Hungry. She remained passive within his arms at first, still surprised by his sudden appearance. Her head lay back against his shoulder, the mantle of her hair streaming over his arm. She felt his body, strong and hard against hers, and slowly her mouth answered to the urgency of his, her response gathering force and passion, her body arched up against his, her arms holding him closely. After a long time he raised his head. His blue eyes were blazing. “Jess,” he said.

She laughed unsteadily. “Where did you come from?” His eyes were on the sofa, and he didn’t answer. They could lock the door, he was thinking. But no, that wasn’t what he wanted, what he had waited all day for. He wanted time with her. Time to bury himself in the inexhaustible depths of her.

“Let’s go home,” he said, his voice harsh in his own ears.

“All right.” She looked around, then, bewildered. “Where is Jenny? I need my dress.”

“I sent her out.” He looked once more at her bare arms and throat, luminous against the white of her fine camisole. “I’ll get her and wait for you outside.”

Her eyes, gray as the dawn, met his. “All right,” she said again, very softly this time.

When she joined him in the carriage he didn’t speak, and she sat beside him, careful not to touch him. The drive to Montpelier Square seemed interminable, and by the time they arrived they were both nearly frantic. They walked together in the front door and, still not speaking, went directly upstairs to the bedroom. Jessica was quivering all over, conscious only of the man beside her, aching for him to touch her.

Her maid appeared, and he sent her away. He turned Jessica around and, still in silence, began to undo the hooks on her dress. She stepped out of it, leaving it lying on the floor, and with trembling hands sat down to take off her stockings. When she looked up he had his shirt off and she stared in fascinated wonder at his broad chest and shoulders, so astonishingly strong and muscular under that well-cut, elegant coat.

“I missed you,” she told him huskily, answering the question he had asked back in her dressing room an hour ago.

He held out his hands and she came to him, melting against him, her eyes closing. He bent over and his mouth found hers.

It was the first time she had let her barriers down. His unexpected arrival had thrown her off balance, and then the irresistible demands of her body, which had recognized him the first time their eyes had met, had taken control. A curious sense of fatalism settled over her now as she lay beneath him, relaxed and at peace, cherishing the feel of his weight as it pressed her down into the bed. She ran her hand caressingly through his hair and it sprang, sparkling like new-minted gold, from her fingers. His breathing had finally slowed. Whatever happens, she thought, I shall always have the memory of this.

Half an hour later she was closed up against him, watching him with open, remote eyes that filled his soul with bitter anger. He had given her a ruby-and-diamond necklace.

Chapter Twelve

They love indeed who quake to say they love.

—
SIR
PHILIP
SIDNEY

It was a Christmas present, he told her. He had commissioned it before he left for Staplehurst. “I meant to give it to you earlier this evening,” he said as he put it into her hands, “but I forgot.”

It was exquisite: delicate and glowing and obviously very expensive. She didn’t want it, but she knew, looking from the spill of gems in her hand to his face, that she would have to accept it.

“Thank you,” she said in a voice she strove to keep even. “It is very lovely.”

There was a long pause as he took in the deadness of her tone. She was sitting up in the center of the bed, her back straight, her hair spilling over her white shoulders, the bedside lamp lighting her thick lashes and clear profile. He stood looking at that shuttered, remote face and felt the bitterness begin to rise in his heart. “You don’t want it,” he said.

“I did not say that.”

“You didn’t have to. It is written all over your face.” He moved away from her and began to dress. “Well, it is yours,” he said after a moment. “Do with it as you like. You can always sell it; it is worth a significant amount of money.”

Jessica flinched as if he had struck her across the face, but he didn’t seem to notice. A lock of bright hair had fallen over his forehead, and impatiently he pushed it back, away from the ice blue of his eyes.

She couldn’t speak. She felt frozen, numbed to the heart by what she saw in his eyes. I have never seen him like this, she thought. “Do you want me to leave?” she asked, and in spite of herself her voice quivered.

He stood looking at her for a minute, and his mouth set like a vice. “No. I believe you said you wished to go to the opera tomorrow evening. I’ll call for you then.” He nodded to her curtly. “Good night, Jess,” he said, and left.

Jessica slept very little and arose the next morning with a heavy head. She tried to study her lines but they seemed to slip from her mind as soon as she said them, and the character of Lady Macbeth eluded her completely. She ate very little and didn’t notice the worried way the servants looked at her. They had seen many women come and go in that house on Montpelier Square, and everyone was in agreement that they wanted to see Jessica stay. Peter, the footman, had seen Lord Linton leaving last night and it was clear, he reported to the kitchen contingent the next day, that my lord had been very angry. As no one had ever remembered seeing Linton angry before, this report cast a pall over the house - which was not alleviated by Jessica’s obvious depression.

She took a long time getting dressed that evening. She wore the cream silk dress that was her favorite and noticed, with a detached part of her brain, that her skin looked more luminous than usual and her breasts fuller. The maid picked up the ruby necklace from where it lay on top of the dressing table. “It’s beautiful, miss,” she breathed, and started to put it on Jessica.

It looked magnificent against the white column of her throat. The maid was fastening the catch when Jessica said in a harsh voice, “Take it off. I am not going to wear it.”

“But miss,” the maid said, shocked into speech, “didn’t Lord Linton give it to you?”

“Yes.” Her throat felt tight. Part of her wanted to wear it, wanted to please him and placate him, but the other part of her thought in horror of all the people in the theatre who would stare at it and know it for what it was: a payment. She couldn’t bear it. “Take it off,” she said again.

She was ready and waiting for him downstairs when he arrived. His gaze flickered over her briefly, noting her bare throat, then he said drily, “If you are ready let’s go. I don’t like to keep the horses standing.”

It was a long and painful evening for Jessica. She loved music but scarcely heard a note of the opera. Every nerve end in her body was conscious of him, sitting so close beside her, keeping himself to himself. Her overtures of peace were met with a perfectly courteous, solid resistance. Jessica was discovering what Linton’s family had known for years: he was not easily angered, but when he was, he was not easily pacified. She thought, as she stole a glance at him from under her lashes, that she had been right when she had first likened him to a Viking. His subsequent gentleness had seemed to negate the comparison, but looking now at his pure, clean profile, his firm, merciless mouth, it did not seem so farfetched. When the lights came up for the intermission he turned to her, and it seemed as if the cold, blue North Sea glittered in his eyes.

She gave up trying to reach him and retreated herself behind the cool, aloof expression that had been her camouflage for so many years. Their box was crowded with Linton’s friends during the intermissions, and Jessica responded to all questions and comments with a distant politeness that was like a shield between her and them. At one point she looked absently out over the opera house and her eyes came to rest, inadvertently, on the box opposite to Linton’s. There was a single man in it, standing watching her with an expression on his face that made her shiver. Lord Alden bowed to her, a slight smile lifting the corners of his thin mouth. Jessica stared right through him and, instinctively, took a step closer to Linton. Alden saw it and laughed.

* * * *

They went to the Piazza for supper, and they might have been two strangers with nothing between them but a common experience at the opera. Jessica’s face was utterly remote, her voice cool and impersonal as she discussed the opera of which she had heard not a note. He accompanied her back to Montpelier Square but did not come in. “I promised Crosley I would meet him at Watiers,” he said easily. “Good night, Jess. Sleep well.” He kissed her hand lightly and went back out through the door to the waiting carriage.

She did not see him again for five days. She fought against missing him, fought to maintain her defenses and protections. She sought refuge in her work. The production of
Macbeth
had not been Jessica’s idea. Thomas Harris, exultant at Kean’s failure as Romeo, had conceived the idea of challenging him with material he had made his own. Not only did Harris have Jessica for Lady Macbeth, but a new actor had appeared on the Covent Garden horizon. Lewis Garreg, a young Welshman, had been recommended to him by an acquaintance who had seen him perform in Shrewsbury, and Harris had given the young man a contract. He was also giving him the part of Macbeth.

Garreg knew that it was the chance of his lifetime, and he was both eager and apprehensive. He was twenty-six years of age, of medium height with dark brown hair and clear hazel eyes. He was broadly built and had a voice like an organ, a deep, rolling baritone. He had been very nervous with Jessica at first, but her friendly, calm, professional demeanor soon put him at ease. They spent several hours discussing the play and the characters and came up with an interpretation they both felt comfortable with.