Chapter 14

It made for one hell of an interesting day. The episode called for Hastings to be at his most-Alec, full of a take-charge self-confidence. Everyone else was distraught, and while Hastings also cared about Amelia's sudden distress, he alone clamped down all his reactions in order to get things done.

The actor playing the character, however, must have felt the ground crumbling beneath him. He knew he had lost the support of the cast; the incident in the greenroom had made that clear. Then he had been hit in the face with what professional muscle Jenny had. She could write him out of a job overnight if she chose to, and Alec was giving her a perfect excuse to do it.

Nonetheless Brian turned in a credible performance when all was said and done. The guy could act. Alec would grant him that.

But see if you can do it day after day for a year. That's what Alec had had to do on Aspen.

Ray and Alec stayed down on the floor until the last scene was taped. They simply stood there, the duke and his heir, arms folded, legs braced, side by side, letting their presence be felt. It dampened the chatter, it kept people from gossiping, and the day finished more or less on schedule.

"Thanks, guys." Gil flicked his finger against his forehead as if tipping a cap. He knew what the pair of them had done for him.

I didn't do it for you. I did it for Jenny. Every problem around here ended up on her lap. Alec had saved her from having to deal with this, but had he done anything to take her misery away? No. He and Ray were doing all that they could, and it wasn't enough.

They went up to their dressing room and were standing at the mirror taking their makeup off when they heard a knock on the door.

It was Jenny, her face so pale that her freckles almost seemed like drops of blood. She had her hands jammed down in her pockets. It pulled her jeans down low on her hips. He would have done anything to chase the staring anguish from her eyes. That's what he understood—doing—solving, fixing, finishing, making everything right again. But there was nothing he could do now. He was helpless.

He hated that.

Ray was turning from the mirror to greet her. Alec stopped him with a look and, with a quick jerk of the head, told him to leave.

Ray didn't blink. He asked no questions. He turned back to the dressing table, dragged a towel across his face, leaving the white terrycloth streaked with lines of bronze makeup. "I must attend to a matter," he said and disappeared.

That had been a line in today's script.

Jenny spoke quickly. "Gil told me how you helped out today. He said we wouldn't have made it through the day without you."

She wasn't looking at him. "Forget the show. I thought you were going to stay home. Why did you come?"

"I wanted to get it over with. And I wanted to say something to you."

He'd been planning on going back to her house as soon as he was through with work.

Why were they standing so far apart? When Ray had left, she had moved over to stand by the mirror, and he was still by the door. Why wasn't he next to her? Why didn't he have his arms around her? Why wasn't he kissing her, moving her against him, letting go of her only to lock the dressing room door?

Because the tight line of her shoulders, the way she had her arms folded flat against her, was making it very clear: she did not want him to touch her.

"I'm very uncomfortable about the way things ended last night. It wasn't fair to you."

"I don't care about that." His answer was immediate.

"I was using you."

"That doesn't matter." I love you. But she didn't want to hear that. "What is it, Jenny?" Then he knew. "You think last night was a mistake, don't you?"

He had known that. The instant that he had unlocked the door to her house, he had felt a certain urgent territorialness. But he had known it would be folly to act on that desire.

Yet he had done it anyway. He deserved this.

"I'm not a character on a soap, Alec."

"Of course you aren't. What makes you say that?"

"I can't solve all my problems by falling in love with you."

That was how characters on the shows solved all their problems, they fell in love. Get bounced off the board of your family company, find out that your mother is really your sister, wake up with amnesia, what should you do? Fall in love, it cures everything.

But it didn't. Not in life. Alec knew that.

Except... except... in this case, Jenny and him. Surely they were an exception. If she did love him, surely he would be able to make everything right for her, surely he would be able to make her happy.

No, no, he knew that to be absurd. Last night she had been devastated. No one could go from that to being in love overnight. Life didn't work like that. She needed time to recover her strength, her self-esteem.

But I want you to fall in love with me. Right now. I want you to come away from the wall. I want you walking across the room, saying that you love me.

He spoke. "This doesn't have to be about love. It can be about friendship, support."

She shook her head. That wasn't possible. He could pretend, he could be careful of what he said, but neither one of them would ever forget that for him it was about love.

"I have to do this alone, Alec. There's no way for anyone else to help me."

"I'll do anything for you, Jenny."

But what she was asking—for him to do nothing—would be hardest of all.

"I need some time, Alec, to sort this out in my own way. I just need some time."

"Of course. That's fine. I understand." She could have all the time she needed.

After she left, he turned back to the mirror to be sure all his makeup was off.

When the hell had time ever solved anything for Alec Cameron? "Give it time," they had said about Chloe's unwillingness to have a baby. "These things take time."

"Give it time," they had said about Derek's rape story. "You'll get comfortable with it over time."

"Give it time," they had said about Aspen.

And in all three cases he had ended up like Sisyphus, that poor son-of-a-bitch in Greek mythology who had been condemned to spend the afterlife rolling a huge boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down each night. Time hadn't helped Sisyphus, and it hadn't helped Alec Cameron.

* * *

The next day was Tuesday, and Alec came into work early, thinking of nothing but Jenny. How was she feeling? How had she slept? Where had she slept? In her own room, or had some impulse taken her up to the room on the third floor? Had she sat on the white wicker chair, looking out through blue-striped curtains? Had she touched the pillows? Smoothed her hand over the quilt? He would have. But he loved her. She didn't love him. She didn't have blue-and-white stripes imprinted on her heart.

Why couldn't she love him? Everything would be fine if only she would love him.

He was at wardrobe without having been aware of walking down the hall. Someone else was leaving the department as he was coming in. It was Rita. There was no avoiding her.

He stepped aside, nodding formally, silently, almost fully in character. He was a duke, she was the upstart daughter of a merchant. He did not have to speak to her.

She was having none of that. She was not going to be brushed off. She planted herself right in front of him. She was wearing a skimpy little red knit tube, so tight that the fabric puckered as it stretched between her breasts. This was not a "I've done wrong, please forgive me" kind of a dress. She too was running up the colors.

"You don't like me, do you?"

That was direct. The Duke of Lydgate couldn't respond to such directness. Alec went back to being himself. "I don't like what you did. But as for liking or disliking you... you're nineteen years old. It's too soon to tell. You're too young."

"Too what?" That rattled her. She stared at him, dumbfounded.

She used her youthfulness aggressively. She flaunted her taut skin, the smoothness of her hands, her unmarked legs. She was proud of being young. It made her impervious, invulnerable. She liked being the youngest person in the room; that proved that she had come the farthest the fastest, and she believed that that was a guarantee, that she would always be traveling at that speed. It never had occurred to her that anyone would think her youth a liability, that a man would find her less interesting for it.

"It simply wouldn't be fair to judge you yet." Alec let his voice go heavy, fatherly. He was trying to sound as patronizing as possible. "Ask me in ten years."

She glared at him. "I don't intend to be here in ten years." And she flounced off, the high heels of her strappy shoes clicking angrily. The red dress cupped and strained over her pert little butt. That was one very expressive piece of anatomy back there. She was going to need it.

My Lady's Chamber

MEMO

DATE: November 6

TO: All Cast Members

FROM: Cathleen Yates, publicist.

Thursday, November 8, a reporter and a photographer from Soap Times will be preparing a feature on Brian O'Neill and Rita Harber-O'Neill, as arranged by free-lance publicist Dennis Cointreaux. They will have access to the second floor only.

Your cooperation is appreciated.

A feature in Soap Times. The rest of the cast did not appreciate that. The angle of the piece was happy-young-honeymooners-at-work—shots of the bride and groom kissing in the stairwell, holding hands and playing cute at the security desk. To get a picture of the pair side-by-side in makeup, the photographer asked Francine to move from her usual chair. He was gracious to her, flattering, even obsequious, and Francine complied, but she didn't like it.

"The Lady Varley," she said in an undertone to Alec, "does not care to be inconvenienced."

Then Pam and BarbEllen were kept hanging around in their costumes while Rita pretended to move out of the dressing room the three of them shared. Of course, Karen and Trina offered the use of theirs, but Pam and BarbEllen preferred to stay in costume, feeling cross and taken advantage of.

"You should see her lift a box," Pam complained. "She wedges it in under those boobs of hers and then lifts. Push-up city."

It soon became clear that Rita's move into Brian's dressing room was no staged photo op. It was for real.

It made a certain amount of sense. Brian was alone in the show's largest room. She was crammed in with two others. Nonetheless the rest of the cast was outraged.

"He shouldn't be there," one complained. "He only had that room because he was Jenny's boyfriend."

"And this hall is for men," argued one of the "confirmed bachelors."

"We can't have women here."

But no one seemed to know how to stop her, and by the week's end she had established herself as queen at the head of the men's hall.

So the big happy family now had a new stepmother—a tarty little thing, younger than all the grown children. And the grown children did not like it one bit.

Then Rita cooperated on a story with The National Enquirer. All for love: soap stars risk writer s revenge read the headline. The story was full of quotes from "daytime's hottest star."

"Brian and I share the same dreams, the same goals. You can't begin to know how much we love each other."

Daytime actors hated the tabloids just as much as other celebrities did, perhaps more.

"Jenny has accomplished a lot. I'm not saying that she hasn't. But she has no confidence in herself as a woman. She doesn't enjoy being female. She feels awkward and clumsy about it. She still thinks of herself as a tomboy."

No one on My Lady's Chamber had ever said anything other than "No comment" to a reporter from the tabloids. Even on Aspen no one had.

"No, we aren't worried about revenge. What can she do? We're both much too important to the show. She'll always do what is right for the show."

Alec went straight up to Jenny's office.

"What do you want?" she snapped.

The Enquirer was lying on her desk. No wonder she was snapping. "I wanted to see how you are."

"How am I? I'm just great, thank you. My ex-boyfriend's new wife is telling the tabloids that I'm missing part of my X chromosome."

"She's a tart, Jenny. She's trash."

"No, she's not. She's a fully confident woman. Look." She seized the paper and slapped the story with her hand. "It says so right here. They wouldn't print it if it wasn't true, would they?"

Alec longed to put his arms around her and comfort her. But she would shake herself free, he knew that. "You've been in this business for ten years. You know you can't expect to like everything you read about yourself. The tabloids print lies. You know that."

"I would mind if they were lies. I can deal with lies. I like lies. The bitch about this is that it's the truth."

"No, it isn't." Don't you remember yourself that night in your guest room? Hold on to that. But she couldn't. She was dismissing it, writing it off as an aberration. "Not anymore it's not."

"You know where she getting this, don't you? From Brian. That's what I can't stand, the idea that the two of them are talking about me. He's telling her everything he knows about me."

Alec could see why that would bother her. "You've got to expect that. You're the common enemy. Trashing you is the glue that holds them together."

"Oh, wonderful. I'm so proud to have a purpose in life."

* * *

"Shit." Ray slammed the dressing room door.

Ray didn't swear much. "What's up?" Alec asked.

"I can't decide whether to be thrilled or royally pissed off. I just met with Jenny. I'm getting a new story. So is Colley Lightfield."

"That sounds like good news to me." Ray was a terrific actor, and his character had great potential.

"Rita's in it too."

Oh. "I see your point."

It was to be a triangle although not a love triangle because as far as Ray could tell, not one of the characters loved one another.

Apparently Robin—Ray's character—was going to find out that he and the duke were only half-brothers. He was the result of an affair their mother had had.

"I didn't know that," Alec said.

"I didn't either. But apparently it's our own fault. Remember back in May or June when we were talking to Jenny about our dads? We were saying we were such totally great guys because we had decent dads. She got the idea then. You're a jerk and I'm wonderful because I had a father who paid attention to me even though I didn't know he was my father."

"Who is he?" In his head Alec ran through a list of the senior male cast members.

"Beats me. I'm not sure Jenny knows either. You know how she makes stuff up as she goes along."

"So what does this have to do with Isabella?" That was Rita's character.

The dowager duchess—Lydgate and Robin's mother—would make Robin promise not to say anything, at least not until the ducal succession was safe. "Technically I am legitimate and all. So if you croak and the baby's a girl, I'm the big kahuna."

"I can die in peace."

But Robin was going to want to end his financial dependence on the Lydgate estate. To that end he would court Isabella.

"Jenny says that it would be more sympathetic than that makes it sound. I don't love the girl, but I like her, and I'm decent to her. It would be a good enough marriage by the standards of the time."

Isabella would feel much the same way, that Lord Robin was a man she would do all right with. Even if she was not from as lofty a social background, he would treat her honorably. "But she knows her father wants her to have a title."

"And that's where Colley Lightfield comes in?" Colley Lightfield was the poor baron with forty jillion sisters.

Ray nodded. "So she accepts a proposal from him. But then in some incident that Jenny hasn't figured out yet, I get a pretty good inkling that he is a practicing homosexual."

So Robin had an interesting set of choices. Should he warn Isabella's father? Encourage him to discreetly get his daughter out of the engagement? But James Marble was from a different class. Robin couldn't count on him to protect the Lightfield name from scandal. What were Robin's responsibilities? Were they to his fellow aristocrat? Or to this middle-class girl for whom he had some affection?

"It's a good story," Alec acknowledged.

"If only it didn't involve Rita."

Unlike the writers on Aspen, Jenny never gave a story to a character until the viewers cared about him. In the weeks before a story was to begin, she always gave an actor plenty of screen time to reinforce the viewers' interest in his character.

So it was clear to everyone that Rita was about to get a story.

Exactly what Rita's story line would be, the cast did not know, but they were familiar enough with Jenny's old-fashioned storytelling techniques to know that one was coming. A new character was introduced, a valet for the merchant, Rita's character's father. His introduction was the excuse for a lot of recapping, and most of it was given to Rita—a sure sign that something big was about to happen for her character.

Rita got four such scripts, one right after the other. Then there was the weekend break and on Monday a fifth script showed up, with her doing just as much.

She was ecstatic, talking endlessly in the greenroom about all the publicity she was getting—she and Brian were repeating their vows at a fan convention and she was going to wear a full-scale bridal gown, cascades of satin and tulle that she was describing in unceasing detail. She was decorating Brian's dressing room; she was insisting that wardrobe lower the necklines on her character's new dresses.

"It's such a good thing I have a phone in my dressing room," she trilled. "I'm getting so many calls. We've had to get an answering machine."

Alec was waiting for someone to stab her with the lunch-table mayonnaise knife.

"I don't get it," cast member after cast member complained. "Why's Jenny giving her a story?"

"It's like she's rewarding her."

"If someone stole my man, she'd be pouring tea once a week for the rest of her career."

"Is that what you have to do to get a story around here? Hire your own publicist?"

Alec felt like he had been here before—in the middle of a nervous, dissatisfied cast. On Aspen Starring Alec Cameron, he had felt that he owed it to the cast to do as much as he could. On My Lady's Chamber, the cast deserved whatever hysteria they fretted themselves into. His obligation this time was to the writer.

It was time to pay a call upon the lady.

He had been careful not to seek her out. He was determined to give her the time she had asked for. He also discovered that seeing her was not an uncompromised pleasure.

When a fellow had learned to live without something, he should go on denying it to himself until he can be sure of a steady supply. Air-conditioning, coffee, tobacco, enough closet space, these were all things you could teach yourself to live without. Sex, too.

Alec had not been in a relationship in some time, and that had been okay. There had been moments during the duke's efforts to impregnate the duchess when he had had to stare sharply at the ceiling for a moment or two, but he had always been able to get himself in order without much difficulty.

Then one night with Jenny, and he was having all kinds of difficulty. It was a very specific desire. Rita's twitching mounds of flesh or Karen's graceful throat did nothing for him. He wanted Jenny.

Miss Royall was at her desk outside Jenny's office. "Is she in?" Alec asked.

"She's not happy."

It wasn't like Miss Royall to worry about people's feelings. If people kept their scripts neat and their spines straight, then she was doing her job. Alec felt like he had been given a chore. Erase the blackboard, sharpen the pencils, and when you are finished, make Jenny happy.

He knocked lightly. Jenny looked up from her keyboard. She didn't smile, she didn't pop up out of her chair.

"Hello, Alec." She sounded wary.

I'm not going to jump you. You don't have to be scared of me. But she was.

"I'm here to talk about the show," he said.

"Oh." She was relieved.

What had he done to deserve this? Had he been dogging her footsteps? Had he gone to her house, climbed on her garbage cans, and chanted Romeo's half of the balcony scene? He could. He knew where she lived and he knew the part.

He had been conducting himself with dignity and self-restraint, and she was inching away as if he were a piece of unexploded dynamite.

Which, of course, he was. But he would never explode in her face, and she goddamn well ought to know that.

"Rita's about to get a big story, isn't she?"

She shrugged, lifting her hands in an empty gesture. She didn't have to discuss future story plans with an actor.

That was crap. "Why are you being so goddamn noble?" he demanded. "You're bending over backwards for Rita. Why not be as petty as everyone else? You're entitled. Why not be vindictive?"

"She wanted her chance."

Oh, for God's sake. Every actor on earth wanted his or her chance. That didn't mean they got it. "Is George making you do it?"

"Actually George offered to fire both of them."

Alec blinked. That was a surprise.

An irritating surprise. He expected better of George. Firing Rita would have been vindictive and unprofessional. Firing Brian was just flat-out stupid. His character was much too important to the show. George was being as big a baby as everyone else.

"I suppose you were the one who told him not to."

She shrugged. "Did you notice how Terence and Gil had stopped giving either of them close-ups and how makeup was starting to harden her look?"

No, Alec hadn't noticed and he usually noticed such things. "I suppose you stopped it all before I saw."

"Yes."

This was wonderful, perfectly wonderful. Everyone was angry at Brian and Rita, everyone wanted revenge. None of it would have been good for the show, and because she cared about the show, Jenny—the person with the greatest right to be angry—had to be the moderate one, the professional one.

Alec wanted her to be fighting, he wanted her to be raging and storming, but how could she? Everyone else was stealing all her lines.

She was trapped. She was stuck in some sort of long, dark tunnel. She didn't care if she were found.

She was sitting with her chin in her hand. She let her head tilt so that her cheek was bearing the weight.

* * *

The next Tuesday they taped the first of Rita's big scripts. She did a terrific job. She was funny and pert, suffusing the most routine recapping lines with Isabella's lively personality. Even Ray was impressed. "I've been doing this for two and a half years," he said, "and I'm just now getting the hang of scenes like that."

The next day she distinguished herself again. Was it possible that she really was going to be the next Chloe Spencer?

The third day she had trouble with a couple of her lines. It was nothing much, and if she had been playing the scene with an experienced actor, he would have been able to cover for her.

But David Kendall, the young actor playing the valet, was new to daytime and so it took a couple of takes to get the scene right.

By Friday she was clearly unprepared. Alec could guess what had been happening. To get these performances she—and quite possibly Brian—had had to spend every waking minute preparing. She had energy and stamina, there was no doubt about it, but you couldn't spend four days learning one script if you had five scripts in a row. That was one thing about daytime: the scripts kept coming. It was a never-ending conveyor belt, script after script, episode after episode—they never stopped.

The weekend break didn't help her. She had too many personal appearances to have much of a chance to prepare. So through the next week she was desperate, scrounging, just trying to get through the takes, writing her lines on props or the cuffs of her costume. She was alone out there; no one was going to help her. Edgar Delany accidentally—Alec did believe that this was a genuine accident—held on to her hand at a moment when she needed to flip her wrist and read her line. Francine accidentally—and Alec wasn't so sure about this accident—filled a teacup so that the line written inside it disappeared.

"Oh, my dear, I do apologize," Francine drawled majestically after Gil called for a cut. "I simply forgot. No one has ever needed to do that on this show."

"Some of us already know our craft," Lord Varley said nastily.

Rita was flushed, furious, but she didn't reply.

She started relying on the teleprompter which gave her scenes a vague distracted quality as her eyes shifted toward the camera to read her lines off the rolling screen.

And the teleprompter could only do so much. One day in the middle of dress Terence's voice boomed out over the loudspeaker. "Okay, people. Take five. Rita, please go learn your lines."

Rita froze. This was total humiliation. A production assistant handed her a script, and she took a step or two, moving toward a corner of the Bond Street set. Everyone else was standing around, whispering, waiting for her.

She couldn't concentrate. Alec saw that. Her eyes weren't moving across the page; her lips were drawn into a right fierce line. Controlling herself was all she could do. She couldn't possibly focus on the script.

She needed help. It was too bad that Brian wasn't there. He could have gone to her; he could have run her lines with her.

Brian was in today's cast. Alec had a scene with him. There he was, over by the Chinese room. He was idly stretching his neck and shoulder muscles, not looking toward Bond Street where his wife was. This has nothing to do with me. His body language was screaming the message. It's not my fault, not my problem.

What a rat. He ought to be over there helping her. But he wasn't. He saw that her ship was sinking, and he wasn't going down with it.

Rita hadn't moved. The five-minute break was nearly over, and she had hardly looked at the script.

Brian's muscles were all nice and loose now. He began to examine his lapels.

Alec grabbed a script. An instant later he was at Rita's side. "You can do this, my girl," he said to her. "You know you can."

"I don't need your help," she hissed.

"You won't for long, but you do right now. What page are we on?"

She didn't answer. He looked over her shoulder at her script, found the right place in his, and fed her her line. After a moment she cooperated.

She was a quick study, and even though it wasn't much of a performance, they all got through the day.

"I was surprised you helped her," Ray said in their dressing room afterward.

"Someone had to, and that thing she married obviously wasn't going to."

"He sure made a bad bargain, didn't he?"

"Actually I think she did worse. What would you rather be married to, someone who needs help or someone who refuses to give it?"