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Authors: Tamara Lejeune

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BOOK: When You're Desired
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“I was,” she said. “For ten years. You wouldn't recognize me, though. My hair was bright red in them days. People used to say, ‘Don't look now, dearie, but your 'ead's on fire!' I got so sick of it.”
“Ten
years
?” said Celia, taken aback. “Why, you can't be more than seventeen!”
Eliza nodded. “That's about right, I suppose.”
Celia was shocked, but as Eliza herself seemed quite unconcerned, she quickly changed the subject. “And where do you live now that you have left the Temple of Venus?” she asked. “In rooms over some dismal shop, I suppose?”
“Rooms over a shop?” said Eliza. “Wouldn't that be lovely! I suppose
you
live in rooms over a shop, Miss St. Lys?”
“Not bloody likely,” Celia said scornfully. “I have a house in Curzon Street.”
Eliza glanced at Fitzclarence. “Of course. I should 'ave known 'e'd keep you in a 'ouse like a gen'leman.”
“Keep me?” Celia said indignantly. “Nobody keeps me, child. I am my own mistress. It's not a very large house, but it's mine. I bought it with my own money, and no one can ever take it away from me.”
Eliza's eyes were round. “Nobody keeps you? But what about the Capting?”
Celia and Fitzclarence exchanged a glance and laughed.
“If anything, she keeps me,” said Fitzclarence.
“We're not lovers, Miss Eliza,” Celia said quickly.
“She's much too old for me,” Fitzclarence explained.
“You see, Miss Eliza, when you are as famous as St. Lys, you can't go anywhere without a gentleman escort.”
“You mean—”
“He means,” Celia said dryly, “that I ‘pie' him.”
Chapter 5
“Blimey,” said Eliza, staring. “You must be very rich indeed, Miss St. Lys!”
“I do all right,” Celia admitted.
“Must be nice,” Eliza ventured, “being an hactress.”
Celia lifted her brows. “Oh? You think it's easy, do you?” she said coldly.
“Well . . .” said Eliza, not sure what she had said wrong.
“She only meant that you make it look easy,” Fitzclarence said soothingly.
Celia did not wish to be soothed. “People always think it's so easy, but actually it's a lot of hard work. Can you act, Miss Eliza? Can you sing? Dance?”
“I can sing,” Eliza said in a small voice.
“Of course you can sing,” said Fitzclarence. “Anyone with a voice can sing. Come! Let us hear you. Do you know ‘Hot Codlins'?”
He started it for her, but Eliza quickly joined in, very loudly and off-key, making Celia wince.
“There was a little woman, as I've been told,
Who was not very young, nor yet very old;
Now this little woman, 'er living she got
By selling codlins, 'ot, 'ot, 'ot!”
“Now I'll be thinking of them 'ot codlins all night,” Eliza complained, rubbing her rumbling stomach. “Well?” she asked them brightly. “What did you think?”
They had arrived in Curzon Street. At that moment, the hackney carriage rolled to a stop and the jarvey gave a shout. Fitzclarence quickly opened the door and climbed out.
“That was extremely
interesting
, Miss Eliza,” Celia told her. Opening her reticule, she took out a card. It was pale pink with her name printed in gold. “Come to the theatre tomorrow, and we'll find something for you to do.”
Eliza cradled the card in her cupped hands. “Oh, Miss St. Lys!”
Taking Fitzclarence's hand, Celia climbed out of the hack.
“What the devil am
I
supposed to do with her?” he wanted to know.
“Well, she can't stay with
me
,” Celia replied. “I have my reputation to think of. Get her a room somewhere, and something to eat. Some hot codlins, perhaps.”
“Well, she did sing for her supper,” he said grudgingly, as Celia took out her purse and handed him a single gold sovereign. He kept his palm open until she gave two more. During the silent negotiation, Fitzclarence had become aware that they were being observed.
“Don't look now,” he said as he escorted her up the steps to her door, “but there's that nosy neighbor of yours. What's his name, Dickory? That spaniel of his must have a bladder the size of a pea. He always seems to be out walking it in the middle of the night.”
“Good evening, Mr. Dickson,” Celia called out pleasantly.
The gentleman with the spaniel whirled around, apparently startled at the sound of her voice, even though he must have heard the hackney arriving. A middle-aged man with a pleasant, if bland face, he squinted at them through thick spectacles in the flickering light provided by the street lamps. “Miss St. Lys! Is that you? I—I was just walking Queenie.”
“Hello, Queenie!” Celia called out sweetly. The spaniel instantly broke free of its master and bounded toward her.
Fitzclarence recoiled in disgust as Queenie sniffed his boots. “For God's sake, why do you indulge these people?” he muttered angrily to Celia.
“
These people
have made me rich,” she replied softly. “An actress is nothing without the affection of her public.” Bending down, she patted the spaniel's head. “What a good doggie! You must be so proud of her, Mr. Dickson.”
For a moment, Mr. Dickson stared at the beautiful actress, but then he seemed to gather his courage. “You shall have a puppy from the next litter, Miss St. Lys!” he blurted out.
“Oh,” said Celia, a little taken aback. “That is very good of you, Mr. Dickson, but I—I am so seldom at home. It wouldn't be fair—to the puppy, I mean.”
Behind her, the door of her house opened, and the huge hulk of Tonecho, her Spanish manservant, filled the doorway, a branch of candles in his fist. Formerly a sparring partner to Mendoza, the famed boxer, Tonecho clearly was not a man to be trifled with. “Good evening, Doña Celia,” he growled.
Mr. Dickson shrank noticeably. Braver than her master, Queenie gave a low, warning growl.
“It's all right, Queenie,” Celia assured the spaniel. “That's only Tonecho. His bark is worse than his bite.”
“Come, Celia,” Fitzclarence commanded. Quite out of patience with her insipid conversation with this nobody and his dog, he caught her by the elbow. “Remember, you have lines to study for tomorrow.”
Mr. Dickson gasped in delight. “Do you play tomorrow, Miss St. Lys?” he asked eagerly. “I had no idea! There was nothing about it in the
Theatrical Inquisitor
, was there, Queenie? I read the theatrical pages to her every morning.”
“I'll leave a
billet d'entrée
for you at the door, Mr. Dickson,” Celia promised as Fitzclarence pushed her up the steps. “But now I really must go. Good night! Good night, Queenie!”
“If I
were
your lover, I'd find a way to make that man disappear,” Fitzclarence muttered. “What a bloody pest!”
“He's a very nice man,” she said. Her next breath was a gasp of dismay. “Oh no! He's looking in the hack! You'd better be quick, Clare—before he sees that wretched girl!”
Hastily, she closed the door in his face. Leaving Tonecho to lock up and bar the door, she made her way past the tall porcelain Chinaman on the hall table. A mandarin, no less, he seemed to nod sagely to her as she paused to light her bedroom taper.
Five minutes later, she was curled up in bed with a well-worn copy of
Romeo and Juliet
. Resolutely, she opened it to the first page. Notes she had written at the margins three years before were undecipherable now. With a sigh, she reached for the tiny gold spectacles on her bedside table. She really ought not to have had that last glass of champagne.
 
 
Dorian, Duke of Berkshire, could not sleep. The events of the evening had upset him greatly. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw Miss Tinsley, her face contorted with jealous rage, striking the beautiful Miss St. Lys across the face. Finally, he stopped closing his eyes.
Slipping on his dressing gown and slippers, he made his way to the stairs. Berkshire House was dark and quiet. As if across a great distance, he heard the quarter chime of the clock in his mother's boudoir. Downstairs, in the library, he found his mother seated at the massive mahogany desk that had been his father's. Dressed for bed, a cap over her gray hair, she was writing busily and did not hear him come in.
“Mama?” he called to her softly, holding up the bedroom taper he had brought with him.
“Dorian!” she exclaimed, glancing up. “You should be in bed.”
“So should you be,” he said.
“I couldn't sleep.”
“Neither could I.”
The duchess set down her pen. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
Dorian walked over to the fire and added a log from the box. “I keep turning it over and over in my mind,” he said bleakly. “Poor Miss St. Lys! I ought to have done something. I ought to have stopped it.”
“What could you have done, my darling? It is not your fault. I am sure Miss St. Lys does not blame
us
for Miss Tinsley's shocking behavior.”
“It never should have happened. We should never have gone to the Green Room at all.”
“You're quite right, of course,” she said. “It was very wrong of Miss Tinsley to insist upon going backstage after the play. I was quite shocked. But then, blood will tell.”
Dorian looked at her incredulously. “If you knew she was wrong, madam, why did you indulge her? It is clear, I trust, that I shall not be making Miss Tinsley an offer of marriage.”
“No indeed,” she agreed very readily. “I have already struck her from the list.”
“You have a list?” he asked, momentarily distracted.
“Of course I have a list,” she replied. “Miss Tinsley is no longer on it. You need never see her again. I have been writing to the other patronesses,” she went on. “Miss Tinsley's vouchers to Almack's are to be revoked at once. As of tonight, she is no longer welcome in the first circle of society. She will find her level, I daresay. With a dowry of three hundred thousand,
someone
will marry her, but it will not be anyone
we
know.”
“Fortunately, the Duke of Berkshire has no need to marry for money,” Dorian said coldly.
“No indeed,” she said. “But I did think I ought to just let her
try.
However, it's clearly no good. We must cut our losses and move on.”
Dorian stretched out in one of the chairs beside the fire. “Who is next on the list?”
“Lady Rowena West. Pretty girl, just seventeen, quiet and pretty-behaved. Her father is the Earl of Ambersey. Her fortune is but twenty thousand pounds, but I understand there is a grandmother who might do something for her if she marries well.”
“Do you not think, Mama, that it would be better if I—if I were to choose my own wife this time?” he said.
“Dorian! You do not know what you are saying,” she protested. “Choose your own wife! My dear! That is how mistakes are made.”
“You chose my first wife,” he said quietly.
She bristled. “That was not my fault. Her family concealed from me the fact that she was sickly. If I had known she enjoyed poor health—”
Dorian held up his hand. “It's no one's fault, Mama. I don't blame you. I simply want the freedom to choose my own wife in my own time. I would never marry to disoblige you, if that is what you fear. You want a daughter-in-law of large fortune and good breeding.
I
want delicacy of mind and sweetness of temper. I want good health and—and laughter. I want conversation. I want a companion, not—”
“A moment, please,” she said, stopping him while she took out a clean sheet of paper. “You were saying?” she prompted, her pen poised over the page.
Dorian sighed.
She set down her pen. “You are tired, my darling. Go to bed. Tomorrow we will begin again. We'll call on Lady Rowena, shall we? I'll send a note to her mama in the morning to make certain she is kept home for you in the afternoon.”
Dorian grimaced. “Seventeen? What have I to say to a child of that age? Don't any of these girls have elder sisters?”
The duchess recoiled. “Elder sister!” she repeated indignantly. “We need not settle for that. My dear Dorian, if a girl is not snapped up by the end of her first season, then there is something wrong with her. If you do not find someone soon, and fix your interest, all the good ones will be taken.”
Dorian rubbed his eyes wearily.
“Of course we need not call on Lady Rowena tomorrow, if you do not wish to,” she said hastily. “I can arrange for you to meet her at Lady Torcaster's ball on Saturday, if you prefer. I am sure she has been invited. If not, I can arrange that, too.”
He shrugged. “Frankly, I'd rather be down at Ashlands for the foaling.”
His mother looked at him for a moment. “You are tired,” she said gently. “Perhaps we have been concentrating too hard on the business of finding you a wife. You are a bundle of raw nerves. You need to relax. A man must think of
pleasure
as well as duty, after all. Why don't you ask Miss St. Lys to dine with you tomorrow night?”
Dorian started in his chair. “Mama!” he said, blinking at her in astonishment.
“What?” she replied, looking back at him frankly. “You have to see her tomorrow, anyway, to give her the ten pounds I promised to her for her foundlings.”
“I thought I would send it.”
“Send it! Don't be silly. She expects you to bring it to her. She wants you to. If she didn't, she wouldn't have given us her direction. Eighty-one Curzon Street.”
“Eight-four,” he corrected her unthinkingly.
She smiled triumphantly. “There! I knew you liked her. Indeed, who would not like her? She is beautiful, charming, spirited . . . In a perfect world, she would be the heiress with three hundred thousands. Ask her to dine with you. I'll make the arrangements for you, if you like. The squab at the Pulteney Hotel is simply breathtaking.”
“I shall do no such thing,” he said. “After what happened tonight, I'm sure she never wants to see me again.”
“Nonsense. I could tell she was attracted to you. And she is
exactly
the sort of woman whom the Duke of Berkshire
ought
to have in keeping.”
BOOK: When You're Desired
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