Mr Bishop and the Actress (23 page)

The door to the bedchamber creaks open. Harry says, ‘Yes, Mrs Wallace, what do you say?’

I don’t know how long Harry has stood there, or what he has heard, but the conclusion he has reached is inevitable.

‘Come in, my dear fellow,’ Rupert cries. ‘My lovely wife and I have a little business proposition to put to you.’

‘I think not, sir.’ Harry gives a stiff little bow, half insult, half formality. ‘You may go to the devil, Wallace, and you too, Mrs Wallace. I trust I will see neither of you again.’

‘Harry!’ I cry, but he has gone.

‘What about the duel?’ Wallace shouts.

Harry shouts back that the Captain may do something anatomically impossible, even on a metaphorical level, regarding the duel, as he descends the stairs.

‘Your apology is accepted,’ Wallace bellows back. ‘Whew. I thought he would have killed me,’ says my gallant soldier lover. ‘Well, Sophie, my dear, it looks like it is all over with him. You have nothing to lose now. What say you to throwing your lot in with me?’

Harry

‘
I
beg your pardon, but this seems most unlike her.’ Shad pours me another glass of brandy. We are well on our way to getting drunk.

‘I heard her say it with my own ears. With her own lips. You know what I mean.’

‘You heard a few seconds of a conversation. You didn’t hear her reply.’

‘I didn’t need to.’ I gaze at the two brandy glasses in front of me, sliding in and out of each other, trying to decide which one to grasp. ‘Perfidious Eve.’

‘She was undressed? Well, that would be damning proof indeed.’

‘No, sir! He was holding her hand, though.’

‘Dear, dear,’ says Shad. ‘What depravity. Next you will tell me she was unchaperoned.’

‘It is not a laughing matter, sir!’

‘Sit down, sit down. I know. My apologies.’ He pats my arm. ‘Now, what to do next. You still have some belongings at my house, I think.’

‘I do, sir, but before I go there I should make sure all is well with the hotel.’

‘An excellent idea.’ I don’t know why he seems so enthusiastic about my return to London, but then I don’t seem to have much grasp of reality. ‘And if you would, I have a few business matters I should like seen to. I need a new house steward, or at least a butler, and a nursemaid. If you could interview some suitable applicants at one of the servant agencies, or possibly you know of some people – it should not take too long – I would be most grateful. But what of the duel?’

‘I spoke to him in somewhat obscene terms of the duel and he seemed to think it was an apology. I wonder why I wanted to become a gentleman; you all seem to behave in a most peculiar way.’

‘Charlotte and I and the children will miss you exceedingly,’ he says. ‘I’ll stay at Bishop’s Hotel when I come to attend sessions at the House. I’ve never much liked the family house and I rattle around in it alone. But Bishop, pray tell me what the state of the renovations was when you left the country.’

‘Most excellent. Bricks and dust all over the floor and one of Bulmersh’s men crushed his thumb. I helped them knock the hole in the wall. But, sir, where is Sophie now?’

He looks grave. ‘I regret I cannot tell you that.’

Sophie

‘I don’t even like brandy.’ Charlotte and I are busy getting drunk in her bedchamber. ‘What shall become of me?’

‘Oh, come home with us. I know Shad wants to see the work on the conservatory that I’m not supposed to know about. Don’t worry about Harry.’

‘Worry about him! I’m not worried about him! I hate him! I love him to distraction!’

‘You’re spilling brandy on the bed.’ She steadies the glass in my hand. ‘If you had told him before none of this would have happened. But do you think you will enjoy running a hotel?’

‘I won’t ever know,’ I blubber. ‘Why did he follow me to Wallace’s lodgings?’

‘I don’t think he did. He would have arrived sooner.’ Charlotte’s sensible words are spoiled by a hiccup. ‘But I am full of admiration that even at fifteen you knew it to be a false marriage. You were very brave.’

‘I had no choice. I was ruined anyway.’ A fresh set of tears rise. ‘What could I have done? I loved Wallace, silly girl that I was. It was only when he went abroad that I realized I was abandoned and must fend for myself.’

The door bangs open to reveal Shad struggling out of his coat. ‘In my bed again, Sophie? Would I were a bachelor. Out, ma’am. You may sleep with the children in the nursery.’ He starts on the buttons of his waistcoat. ‘The good news, however, is that Wallace has cried off the duel as we thought he would. Why is there a brandy bottle in the bed?’

‘Possibly for the same reason that you reek of the stuff yourself,’ Charlotte says. ‘Where is Harry?’

‘He leaves for London at first light. Sophie, pray go to bed and do not make an attempt to find Harry. I have never known a pair so incompetent at making and accepting a proposal of marriage.’

‘I don’t want to see him.’ I lurch to my feet, grabbing on to a bedpost for support. ‘I don’t want to marry him.’

A footman, embarrassed by my weeping and drunkenness, escorts me to the nursery. Shad and Charlotte are taking no chances with me now and I am so weary and heartsick I don’t care. Let them do with me what they will.

Letters fly back and forth in the next couple of days.

I see letters from Shad to Harry in the hall, awaiting collection, and find out that Harry still acts as his agent, hiring new staff. Shad does not offer, and neither do I suggest, that I write to him.

‘Well, Amelia,’ Shad says at breakfast one morning, an opened letter in his hand, ‘I have heard from the Wiltons on your behalf. They would be delighted if you joined them in Bath, as you originally intended.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Amelia says. ‘Poor Jane Wilton must miss me terribly.’

I doubt whether that little giggler misses anything that is not in her immediate vicinity, but Amelia doesn’t sound very enthusiastic at the prospect of leaving Brighton. Why should she? Brighton is far more fashionable, and sea bathing infinitely preferable to the cloudy, steamy waters of the old-fashioned city of Bath.

‘Perhaps you should go,’ Shad says. ‘Sophie could travel with you, if she’s willing.’ He cocks an eyebrow at me. It’s early in the morning, and his immediate family are the only ones awake, our hosts keeping more fashionable hours. His sons squirm on his lap, allowed the privilege of breakfasting away from the nursery, and dip pieces of toast into their father’s tea.

‘As you wish, sir,’ I reply and pour him tea into a fresh cup, his present one being almost entirely soggy crumbs.

‘Yes, brother,’ Amelia says, eyes downcast. ‘I fear I have a cold and am not well enough to travel yet.’

But later she mutters to me, ‘Sophie, I must return to London. I shall not run away, I swear it, but I must go. Can you help me?’

The only way I can help her at the moment, until her brother agrees to my idea to become a patron of a reputable theatre, is to continue to instruct her in music and teach her some of the skills she will need: how to make herself appear taller on the stage, or older, or younger; how to make the quietest whisper resonate around the house.

And I absolutely refuse to tell her of my life as a courtesan – she does not ask outright but I know she is curious – stressing that I was not a good enough actress; I was not dedicated enough nor did I work hard enough to establish myself successfully in a career on the stage. I do not tell her that I had but half of her talent for fear she will overreach herself.

Charlotte and Shad are most kind to me, treating me as though I were an invalid or an elderly aunt who needs cosseting. They provide special treats, ices, and visits to the circulating library; they encourage me to bathe to lift my spirits. The water is cold and I do not see what good it can possibly do me as I flounder in a garment like a sack and have my face slapped by waves. Charlotte insists I look the better for it. She most certainly does and she and Shad cast each other languishing glances and brush hands when we are in company.

Our hosts, the Earl and Countess of Beresford, enjoy entertaining on a grand scale, and I find myself slipping down to the servants’ quarters on those nights. There I discover that Mr Hoskins the butler has a fine singing voice, the third maidservant believes herself to be with child (she is not: I ask some pertinent questions), and the boy who brings in the vegetables longs to read and write.

I arrange for Mr Hoskins to teach him, and whet his appetite by reading
Robinson Crusoe
aloud to him. I wonder if Harry was like this as a boy, bright and ambitious and greedy for knowledge.

I dare not think of my future. Maybe I should visit the gentleman in the City who handles my investments and consider retirement, setting myself up in a very modest sort of way in a small house, but I doubt I can afford to live in London and I cannot see myself anywhere else.

The former fashionable and dashing Mrs Wallace cries quite a lot and sleeps in the nursery. She wakes very early each morning to find small children tweaking her hair and pushing her eyelids open with gentle but insistent fingers.

She is not happy, but she is not unhappy either. But I know this cannot last, and so one day I ask both Shad and Beresford for advice.

Harry

‘There’s a legal gentleman to see you, sir.’

I look up from the ledgers over which I have laboured this past week, well pleased that despite my late father’s haphazard ciphering and dreadful writing, the hotel runs, mostly, at a profit. Arithmetic does not mend a broken heart but it almost makes me believe in an orderly universe where things are what they seem and an added column of figures gives the same result whether you start from the top or the bottom.

Jack, the waiter who has delivered the news, lounges at the doorway to the office, one ankle crossed over the other, but jumps smartly to attention as I focus on him. I am glad to see the cloth hung over his arm is clean and so are his hands.

A legal gentleman. This does not bode well. Have we poisoned a guest recently? Smothered someone in one of our beds?

‘On behalf of Lord Shadderly,’ Jack offers.

Even worse. Has something gone horribly wrong with the renovations I supervised for twenty minutes? Did the butler and nursemaid I hired for Lord Shad run amok?

But a plump, snuff-sprinkled form pushes his way into my office, beaming, hand held out. ‘Your servant, sir! Geoffrey Trelaise.’

He is a younger son of one of the many branches of the family, it appears, a very distant branch, for this gentleman bears no resemblance to the handsome, lean members of the Trelaise family that I have met. We go through the formalities, I offer refreshment, and push my ledgers aside.

‘Well now!’ Trelaise says. ‘I’ve heard many good things about you, sir, many good things. Lord and Lady Shad send their kindest regards. I am here to clear the name of a lady, sir.’

I’m not sure whether I feel relief or foreboding. ‘And would that lady be Sophie Wallace?’

‘Miss Sophie Marsden, yes, sir.’

I debate whether I should throw this undoubted imposter out and he sees my hesitation – this jocund member of the legal profession may behave like a genial fool, but I think I should not underestimate him.

He continues, ‘But what am I thinking? Here, sir, are my credentials, a letter of introduction from the Earl of Beresford.’

The letter bears Beresford’s seal and indeed introduces the family lawyer to me.

I lay the letter on my desk and say, ‘Why do you refer to the lady by her maiden name?’

‘Read these, sir. They are copies, but as you see, witnessed and all made good, from the legal gentleman who represents that personage.’ He lays a finger to one nostril and winks.

Another flourish, like a conjuror producing a flock of doves, and another document appears on my desk. And another.

Trelaise rises. ‘I shall leave you to peruse these documents, sir. I have a fancy to visit your taproom, for I have heard the punch at Bishop’s Hotel is the best in London.’

I show him to the taproom and order punch – my mother sails forth to concoct it, for she feels she best honours my father’s memory by attempting to duplicate his fiendish brew – and return to read the documents.

I don’t know what to believe. There is an account, from a Mr Buckle, of a false marriage at which he impersonated a vicar, some ten years ago, between Sophie Marsden and Rupert Wallace.

So the marriage is false. She is not married to him and she tried to tell me.

I may have been a fool at fifteen to elope with that man, but I assure you I have not been one since, not for any man
.

But then – statements of investments, of earnings from a small house in an unfashionable part of London, leased to a physician and his family – all in the name of Sophie Marsden,
femme seule
. Not a huge amount of wealth, but enough that an adventurer like Captain Wallace might want to lay his hands on it. The lady withdraws nothing, prudently reinvesting. I see her strategy is to build a comfortable income for the future.

And it is this that persuades me, more than any protestation of love or vow of fidelity. She has entrusted me with her deepest secret – not her lovers or her indiscretions, but her financial holdings, the symbol of her independence.

The last item is something wrapped in a scrap of paper and sealed, again with Beresford’s seal. I break the wax and discover a small, pale green object. A piece of glass, battered by its journey through sand and sea-water and transformed into an object of beauty, that Sophie picked up from the beach at Brighton.

I bundle the documents together and return to the taproom where Trelaise and my mother, both of them pink-cheeked and giggling, are working their way through a large amount of punch.

‘More ginger, do you think, sir?’ My mother raises a glass to me. ‘Mr Trelaise says he has brought you good news, but he is very discreet.’ That means she’ll force the news from me later.

‘Dear lady, Mr Bishop, your health. And may I anticipate a happy union in Mr Bishop’s future?’ Trelaise raises a glass.