Dissension raged in the drawing-room at Pusay. Not that this was unusual, for the activities of Miss Isadora Alvescot frequently drew down upon her head the noisy complaints of the rest of the family. But in a house of mourning, where the expectation was for quiet and solemnity, Society might consider such argument inappropriate, unseemly even.
This did not occur to the combatants, who were indeed engaged in debating the matter of appropriateness, but only concerning the performance of theatricals in the present circumstances.
‘It must be counted quite irregular, Dora, with your poor papa barely cold in his grave,’ said the plaintiff with dismaying bluntness. ‘You would not wish your conduct to be thought shocking.’
‘By whom?’ demanded the defendant, suppressing the sting stirred by the cruel choice of words, for Isadora would permit none to see her wounds. ‘Except for ourselves and Harriet, who is to know anything of my conduct? Besides, as you know very well, Cousin Matty, I do not give a fig for anything anyone may say of me.’
‘Yes, more’s the pity,’ responded Mrs Matilda Dotterell, the indigent relative who had resided at Pusay with her two children since her widowhood many years ago. ‘But you might give something for what is said of your poor mama.’
Isadora eyed her with dangerous calm. ‘I do not take your meaning.’
Her friend Harriet intervened. ‘Now, Dora, don’t get upon your high ropes. All Mrs Dotterell is saying—and I must say I agree with her—is that Mrs Alvescot may well be blamed for not guiding you better.’
She had struck the right note. Whatever Isadora’s failings, she was acutely conscious of her mother’s ineffectual nature. It would be grossly unjust for Mrs Alvescot to shoulder the responsibility for anything she might choose to do. Why, Mama could no more prevent her from doing as she wished than fly to the moon.
To her chagrin, Cousin Matty then chose to broach the matter directly to the lady of the house.
‘Ellen, I appeal to you,’ she said, crossing the room. ‘This performance of Dora’s will not do at such a time.’
It was plain to Isadora that until her cousin’s intervention, Mama had not given the matter a thought. Why should she, accustomed as she was to the impromptu plays got up by her daughter? Mama had never seen in them anything either untoward or out of the way. Isadora noted that she had taken her usual chair across from the bare expanse of carpet by the central window that constituted the improvised stage where the argument was in progress, settling her plump person in the indolent manner habitual to her, a comfortable expectation of enjoyment in her pretty, matronly features.
It was pitiful to see this ready acceptance shattered as Cousin Matty descended upon poor Mama before ever Isadora, and the small company she had dragooned into performing with her, could begin upon the poignant little piece she had fashioned out of the tragedy of Lady Jane Grey.
‘If Dora will not mind what I have to say upon the matter, then it is in your part to correct your daughter, Ellen. Pray talk some sense into her head.’
This command, thrown at her seemingly out of the blue, evidently startled Mrs Alvescot, for she blinked at Cousin Matty’s large person standing over her.
‘Me, Matty? But Dora will not listen to me. Besides, what has she done?’
‘It is not what I have done, Mama,’ Isadora put in, ‘but what I am about to do.’
She came across to perch on the arm of the chair next to her mother’s, careless of any creasing to the high-waisted black satin mourning-gown she had decided would suit very well for the purposes of her role. She had swept her dark curls up into a Grecian topknot banded about with black ribbons, satisfied that the costume lent her tall figure the necessary elegance, although she was aware that her current martial attitude was decidedly inapposite to Lady Jane.
‘Cousin Matty thinks we shall all be accused of impropriety if we perform the play,’ she said scornfully. ‘It is quite absurd. As if Papa would have minded.’
‘Now that is very true,’ said Mrs Alvescot, throwing a pleading glance at her cousin. ‘Indeed, Matty, I was just now conscious of a little ache at my heart that dear Aubrey is not here to enjoy the piece. He was so proud of Isadora’s talent, you know.’
‘Yes, and even if he was not,’ put in Isadora triumphantly, ‘I know he would have had not the least objection.’
She would not believe it of Papa. After all, he had encouraged her to the last, suggesting tomes from his library where she might find the information she needed about Lady Jane. Why, even through the months of dreadful pain and weakness, he would have her perform in his bedchamber rather than not see her play at all. No, Papa would the more likely have scolded her for restraint.
‘I am quite sure he would not have objected,’ agreed Cousin Matty in the tone of one willing to make concessions, and taking the chair to the other side of her cousin, ‘but I fear that it is not Aubrey we must consider just at this time.’
Isadora gazed at her blankly. ‘What in the world can you mean, Cousin Matty?’
Her friend, following her across the room, took it upon herself to answer. Harriet Witheridge was, Isadora considered, deceptively pretty. Under instruction, she was clad in a half-robe of blue sarcenet over a muslin gown in a similar pastel hue in deference partly, as her friend knew, to the full black of mourning worn by all in this house and, at Isadora’s request, to the role she had agreed to take on. The sweetness of her looks hid an unexpected strength of character, for she was inclined, to Isadora’s occasional annoyance, to treat her very much as a younger sister in spite of the other’s slight superiority in both height and years.
‘Now, Dora, you know very well that Mrs Dotterell is only concerned with how it must appear to people,’ she said severely. ‘I confess I had not thought about it before myself.’
‘Fudge, why should you?’ demanded Isadora impatiently. ‘You have known me forever, and I have been performing since I don’t know when.’
No one could argue with that. Isadora had been, from childhood up, an indefatigable actress—off the stage as well as on it, as she suspected some of her acquaintance held. So much so, indeed, that she was not nearly as concerned about the way the family was now circumstanced following Papa’s death as were the rest. If only the family might be suitably taken care of, her secret plans could go forward. If not…
Well, there the matter rested. For until the wretchedly recalcitrant heir to the Alvescot estates chose to show himself there was no saying what might befall any of them. But to suggest that she might be censured for performing a play was absurd. She looked back at the instigator of this fetch.
‘Great heavens, Cousin Matty, I wonder at you! You have lived with us for years and years, and you must be quite as certain as I that Papa did not give a fig for the proprieties in his own home.’
‘That’s very true, Matty,’ nodded Mrs Alvescot. ‘Dear Aubrey—’
‘Yes, Ellen,’ cut in her cousin smoothly, ‘but Aubrey—God rest his soul—is no longer with us, and, much though it pains me to remind you of it, we are all of us obliged to look to a different source for our standards of conduct.’
Isadora had no difficulty in interpreting this speech. ‘If, Cousin Matty, you are referring to Lord Roborough—’
‘Oh no,’ groaned one of the younger members of the group. ‘Not the Errant Heir again.’
Fanny would object, of course. At fourteen, she was thin with a sulky pout about the mouth that bid fair to turn into the pinched look of perpetual anxiety that characterised her mother, Cousin Matty. Unsuitable though she was, Isadora had lured her into portraying the young Princess Elizabeth in the play only to keep her from complaint. Up to now her young cousin’s attention had been firmly on settling on her head the elaborate crown she had devised of silver filigree and coloured beads, and no doubt practising the words of her important final line. Mention of Lord Roborough, however, drew her back into the family circle.
Isadora could not blame her for groaning. His lordship, although as yet unknown to the inmates of the Pusay household, had become a thorn in their collective flesh. Indeed, Isadora could scarcely endure to hear the sound of his name.
‘Of course I am referring to Lord Roborough,’ Cousin Matty returned, ignoring her daughter’s interjection.
‘And just why should he presume to censure my conduct?’ demanded Isadora ominously, taking the comment entirely to herself as she knew had been her cousin’s intent.
‘Well, it is his house now, after all.’
‘That is true, Dora,’ fluttered Mrs Alvescot, her plump features crumpling into lines of worry.
‘And,’ pursued Cousin Matty doggedly, ‘he is the head of the family.’
‘Oh dear, so he is. Do you indeed think he may take exception to Dora’s play?’
‘Take exception?’ echoed Isadora with heat, jumping up from her perch. ‘He had better try!’
‘I should be much astonished if he did not take exception to it,’ declared Cousin Matty. ‘These great men, you know, Dora, are sticklers for punctilio.’
‘Are they indeed? In that case, perhaps you will enlighten me as to why we have not seen hide nor hair of the wretched man these many weeks since poor Papa passed on. If he is so concerned with punctilio, I would have supposed that, if he did not find it convenient to visit us, he would have had the common courtesy at the very least to have written to Mama instead of sending word by Mr Thornbury.’
This was undeniable. Even Cousin Matty had been extraordinarily put out—on behalf of her cousin, she had said—by such a piece of rudeness. The family lawyer had written to his lordship at Barton Stacey in Hampshire expressly to inform him that, Mr Alvescot having died, the estate had now fallen, by an obscure family connection, to his lot. Receiving no response, Mr Thornbury, urged thereto by the unsatisfactory state of affairs at Pusay, had again written requesting the viscount’s pleasure, and received only a brief note in reply, the contents of which had been dissected ad nauseam by the Pusay residents while they waited in vain for the heir to appear in person.
‘Dora is quite right, Mama,’ put in Fanny fairly, unusually taking her cousin’s part. ‘Lord Roborough has shown himself in a very poor light.’
‘Thank you, Fanny,’ Isadora said, a trifle surprised. She added, ‘Let me tell you, Cousin Matty, that if Lord Roborough has any idea of coming the head of the family over us I shall very soon make him think better of it.’
Harriet laughed. ‘I should think you will, Dora. But you might consider poor Mrs Alvescot’s sensibilities. She is looking quite alarmed.’
Isadora stepped back to her mother’s side, her manner softening at once. ‘Now, Mama, you know very well that I will never do anything to ruin your chances. Only I cannot undertake to kowtow to the ordering of my life by a complete stranger.’
‘No, my love,’ agreed her mother, briefly taking Isadora’s hand between both her own, ‘but perhaps he will not attempt to order your life, and so we may all be comfortable.’
‘Judging by the utter lack of interest he has so far shown,’ Isadora said drily, ‘I should think that is all too likely.’
At this point they suffered an interruption. Her young cousin Rowland, all of twelve years old, who had been standing all this time, ready for his brief part as the headsman, muffled in a black cloth helmet that concealed everything but his eyes, grew impatient. Tearing off the helmet, he strode forward, somewhat red-faced from the heat of the summer sun that came at him through the glass of the central window.
‘Here, Dora, are we going to do this Lady Jane of yours or not? Because if we aren’t—’
‘Yes, we are,’ interrupted Isadora in a determined tone, fixing Cousin Matty with an eye that dared her to intervene.
That lady opened her mouth to retort, and, encountering a desperate plea in the eyes of Mrs Alvescot, closed it again with a sigh.
Triumphant, Isadora whirled about, ushering her cast into position. ‘Come, Fanny, Harriet. Take your places.’
Behind her she heard her mother’s whispered plea.
‘Oh, Matty, pray don’t enrage her any more. Her temper is particularly uneven just now, for she misses Aubrey dreadfully, though she will never let any of us see it. Perhaps it is wrong, but at least it keeps her amused.’
Grateful for Mama’s sensitivity, Isadora mentally dismissed the nonsensical idea that her preoccupation with acting was merely an amusement. It overrode everything else, for no sooner was she embarked upon her first line than all became as nothing to the present moment as she lost herself almost entirely in the poignancy of the role.
What difficulties she had experienced in her determination to do this play had all to do with coaxing from her relatives and friend performances that would not altogether disgrace her. She had compromised on the matter of dress, agreeing that mourning garb would in general provide an appropriately sombre note, so that only representational headgear denoted Harriet’s queenly role and Fanny’s princess. Rowland was content enough, having blackmailed Isadora into allowing him, if he wore the helmet, to use a real axe for his part as the headsman.
But Isadora demanded, at the very least, that these indifferent players create around her a suitably grave ensemble against which her own portrayal would be the more telling.
She was relieved to note, in that small percentage of her mind remaining free to take in what was going forward around her, that this requirement was being met. She felt the hushed expectancy that fell over the room as Queen Mary condemned Lady Jane Grey to an early death—although why Harriet in that role should sound a degree tearful was a puzzle. She had not time to ponder this, however, for she must launch into her final emotional speech.
Mama sighed deeply as she did so and Isadora was satisfied for she had hoped her haunting rendition might go straight to the heart. She had planned to cut a truly tragic figure, but she had not bargained for Queen Mary’s demeanour. Out of the corner of her eye, Isadora thought she noted the flutter of a pocket handkerchief, and in the background of her mind she heard a distinct sob.
An admonishing and fierce whisper was next to be heard.
‘Harriet!’
Poised for the climactic moment of her dramatic speech, which would signal the movement into the final tableau of execution and Fanny’s telling line to complete the play, Isadora ignored the slight distraction.
‘I have lived only to love,’ she uttered painfully in the character of Lady Jane, ‘and I have loved only to die.’
Another muffled sob broke from Queen Mary, producing an instant loud whisper from the Princess Elizabeth.
‘Harriet, stop that!’
Somewhere in the periphery of her vision, Isadora saw Harriet start, and it came to her belatedly that Fanny had shifted from her position and was now stationed at Harriet’s elbow. Desperately she tried to ignore the unscheduled sotto voce dialogue going on in her rear, thankful that she knew her lines well enough to be able to continue without effort.
‘What is the matter?’
‘Nothing is the matter with me,’ snapped Fanny. ‘It’s you. You’re not supposed to be crying.’
‘Hush,’ warned Harriet. ‘You are troubling Dora.’
But the leading light of the Alvescot theatricals, thrusting down her understandable annoyance, refused to allow the disturbance to interfere with her performance, although she did falter a trifle.
‘I commend…I commend me to my Maker, to He in whose bosom at this moment rests—’
‘I like that,’ came from Fanny in a piercing whisper. ‘It was not I who was sobbing loud enough to be heard all over the house.’
‘—my soul, my heart, my love, my husband,’ Isadora persisted, raising her voice over the top of the background hubbub.
‘For goodness’ sake, Fanny,’ exclaimed Harriet impatiently. ‘Will you be quiet?’
At this point, completely losing the thread of Lady Jane Grey’s discourse, Isadora paused uncertainly, casting about in her mind for the line she had lost, whereupon the twelve-year-old headsman, glancing wildly round in the sudden silence, became convinced that he had missed his cue. Uttering his only line, a hoarse grunt that he had rehearsed until his throat ached, he hefted his axe on high.
‘Rowland, no!’ shrieked his sister Fanny.
Harriet screamed. Isadora jumped violently. Rowland started and lost his grip. And two petrified pairs of audience eyes watched the heavy axe fall from the nerveless hands of the confused headsman and land with a thud on the carpet.
Instant pandemonium broke out; cries of dismay and alarm, a concerted movement away from the axe—for the handle bounced and shuddered as it hit the floor— and a sound like a rushing wind as Cousin Matty leapt from her chair and dashed across the room.
‘Rowland, you stupid boy!’ she shrieked, and boxed her son’s ears.
Mrs Alvescot, apparently under the impression that this was all part of the play, broke into enthusiastic clapping.
Isadora, standing blinking and confused in the ruined chaos of her tragedy, was turning from one to the other of her fellow players as if seeking guidance. Oddly, it was the expression of applause from her mother that brought her out of her stupefaction. Applause? They had not even finished the play! She whirled to face her young cousin.
‘Great heavens, Rowland, what in the world were you thinking of? I had not finished my speech.’
‘Yes, and I have not had a chance to say my line,’ accused Fanny, glaring at her erring brother, who was massaging his tender ears. ‘Princess Elizabeth does have the last word.’
‘Well, if you wish to complain of that, Fanny,’ put in Harriet severely, ‘you have only yourself to blame. You would keep talking.’
‘I?’ gasped Fanny, outraged. ‘You began it, Harriet—’
‘I could hear both of you chattering behind me, if you want to know,’ Isadora interrupted, irate. ‘And never mind your line, Fanny. What about my play? It is utterly ruined!’
‘I told you not to let him loose with an axe, Dora,’ said the boy’s mother, lifting the offending article and placing it carefully against the wall out of harm’s way.
‘Let him loose? He had only to lift the thing at the right moment. A child could have done it.’
‘He is a child, Dora,’ Harriet pointed out, removing the simple cardboard crown from about her brow.
‘I’m not a child,’ protested Rowland hotly, the words belied by his chubby countenance. ‘Only Fanny startled me by shouting. I thought I’d missed my turn.’
‘It wasn’t me shouting. It was Harriet. Anyway, she started it. She was crying.’
‘So it was you sniffling,’ Isadora broke in despairingly, diverted from the main issue. ‘How could you? After everything I said in rehearsal.’
‘But you do it so well, Dora,’ her friend pleaded excusingly. ‘How could I help it? Even the thought of sending you to the scaffold upsets me.’
Isadora cast up her eyes. As if they had not been over this a thousand times. ‘Harriet, Mary could not possibly have cared about Lady Jane. This is Bloody Mary we are talking about. She went on to slaughter I don’t know how many Protestants.’
‘Yes, I know,’ agreed Harriet. ‘You told me so. And I said I did not like it. I wish very much that you had not made me play her.’
‘Indeed, so do I,’ said Isadora frankly. ‘I should have given it to Fanny, except that she is not old enough.’
‘I’m fourteen,’ protested Fanny. ‘And I certainly would not have cried.’
‘Cried?’ echoed Isadora, raising her brows. ‘No, indeed. You would rather have relished condemning me to have my head chopped off.’
Both Fanny and Rowland burst into laughter at this, but Harriet was shocked.
‘For shame, Dora, how can you talk so?’
‘Yes, you should not jest about such things, Dora,’ agreed Cousin Matty.
‘I’m not jesting.’
Cousin Matty clicked her tongue and came up to lay a protective arm about her daughter’s thin shoulders.
‘Anyone would suppose that Fanny is not at all fond of you.’
‘She isn’t,’ claimed Isadora flatly, and her dark eyes went to her cousin’s. ‘Are you?’
Fanny grinned. ‘Well, I wouldn’t exactly send you to the scaffold.’
‘Dora, my love,’ came plaintively from the armchair across the room. ‘Do you tell me something has gone wrong? Oh dear, and I thought it went off so well.’
‘Yes, Mama dearest, something has indeed gone wrong,’ Isadora agreed, sailing across the room. ‘What should happen is that when I finish my speech I walk around in a circle and the others follow me. I kneel, Rowland raises the axe, and Fanny says—’
‘But, my love,’ interrupted her mother in a horrified tone, ‘you were surely not going to have poor Rowland drop the axe on you?’
‘Fanny would have done,’ put in Rowland, grinning as he followed Isadora across the room.
He hovered by the door a moment or two and then sidled from the room. Isadora noticed but kept mum, realising that Rowland probably depended upon his lapse from grace being better repaired in his absence.
‘The thing is, Mrs Alvescot,’ Harriet explained, coming across the room towards her, ‘that Rowland should not have dropped the axe at all. I’m afraid both Fanny and I are to blame for that.’ She glanced at Fanny, who was muttering in protest. ‘Yes, we are, Fanny. I have the grace to acknowledge it, even if you do not.’ Turning to Isadora, she took her hands, saying penitently, ‘I am so sorry, Dora. Between us we have spoilt it for you.’
Isadora squeezed the hands she held. ‘No matter.’ She grinned impishly. ‘It only goes to prove that Cousin Matty was right, and fate has decreed that the performance was not to be. I dare say it is for the best. It is only a trifle of a play, after all.’
‘Oh no, Dora, don’t say that. It is a very good little play.’ She turned back to Mrs Alvescot. ‘I do wish you might have seen the end. The raised axe was all to be part of the final tableau, you understand. Dora had conceived it quite brilliantly, I think.’
Fanny had by now joined the party, and, the excitement having begun to die down, she and her mother, together with Harriet, disposed themselves in sofas and armchairs, choosing from out of the unmatched collection seemingly set higgledy-piggledy about the room in homely comfort those seats conveniently close to Mrs Alvescot’s chair.
As Isadora knew and valued, a sense of fashion and order was entirely lacking in this large family drawing-room in the house at Pusay. Portraits and paintings had been hung around the walls with no logical or aesthetic plan. A baize-covered table at one end served equally for card games, letter-writing or the tea-tray—indeed, any occupation that happened to suit at a given moment. A pianoforte and a harp stood against one wall, the one sometimes utilised by Mrs Alvescot and the latter suffered over by Fanny.
An air of general untidiness prevailed, for books or embroidery, and the other impedimenta of daily life, were left lying where they had been used. Only the large empty square by the central window was uncluttered, since this area served—and had done so since time immemorial, so it seemed to the family—for Isadora’s stage.
Here the family congregated. More so lately, for in the household’s mourning state their visitors were few. Only their lifelong friends and neighbours came: Harriet, and her brother Edmund Witheridge, together with Harriet’s betrothed, Mr Joseph Caistor, who was staying with them at present.
‘Well, I don’t think it is brilliantly conceived,’ said Fanny judiciously. ‘I mean, what was Queen Mary doing at the execution? And as for Elizabeth—’
‘You had no objection to Elizabeth when I said you could play the part,’ interrupted Isadora, pausing in her aimless perambulations about the room, for alone among the company she had not taken a seat.
Which, she reflected as Harriet at once joined issue with Fanny, arguing the merits of the play, was perfectly true? She had written the part of young Princess Elizabeth into the play precisely because she had known that her cousin’s forthright criticisms would only be withheld if she herself had an important role.
Not that it had stopped Fanny’s tongue. Nothing could. Cousin Matty put no real restraint on her, and she was inclined to say exactly what came into her head.
Wandering towards the windows that flanked her improvised stage, Isadora heard only vaguely the discussion continuing as both her mama and Cousin Matty took sides. There seemed little point in entering into it herself. Besides, if she spoke, she would only make everything worse by saying that the play was less at fault than the actors were.
Of course, there might well be a better way to depict the tragedy of Lady Jane Grey’s life. No doubt Shakespeare would have found it. But, since Shakespeare had inconveniently omitted to chronicle the story, Isadora had to fend for herself, drawing on what little knowledge she had of the time, culled from Papa’s books.
Besides, she was less interested in historical accuracy than in the tragedy of a young girl, innocent and in love, and quite literally cut off in the flower of her youth.
That she was herself capable of bringing off the poignancy of the scene Isadora never doubted. But she felt the background personages must enhance it. Otherwise, why waste time and energy in dragooning her relatives and Harriet into participating?
She sighed inwardly. She might just as well not have done so, as it turned out. Should she have stuck to her guns and insisted on Edmund performing?
The thought of Edmund, who admittedly had at seventeen the same good looks as his sister, did not move Isadora with anything other than the desire to use him as an actor. But Edmund had declined to participate, since the only part available to him would have been that of Lady Jane’s husband. He had confessed to his sister that to portray such a role could only remind him of the prize beyond his reach in real life. Harriet, most improperly repeating his words to Isadora, had recommended that she write his part out of the play.
‘For you do not want him dangling after you, I know, and he is bound to feel encouraged if he is permitted to act as your husband.’
Isadora had regretfully agreed with this dictum, for she had no desire to give Edmund the slightest encouragement. It was quite ridiculous that he should have conceived this tendre for her. How could he suppose that she would consider marrying a fellow three years her junior? A boy she had known almost from the cradle too.
Her attention was recalled by Harriet, who had risen to leave.
‘I must go, Dora. We are to dine out tonight and Joseph will be wondering what has become of me.’
Mrs Alvescot smiled comfortably at her daughter’s dearest friend. ‘It is so kind of you, Harriet, to have helped Dora to amuse herself in this way.’
Isadora paused on her way to accompany Harriet to the door. ‘Amuse myself? It is more than amusement, Mama. It is acting.’
‘Exactly,’ chimed in Cousin Matty suddenly. ‘And you see what has come of it. I do trust, Dora, that you will be more circumspect in future. Especially when Lord Roborough arrives.’
‘Oh, we are back to him, are we?’ said Isadora bodingly.
‘Lord,’ groaned Fanny. ‘Mama, pray don’t start again on this subject.’
‘Be quiet, Fanny,’ snapped her mother. ‘I shall start on any subject I choose. Besides, I hold to it that for all our sakes Dora must take care not to give Lord Roborough any cause for offence.’
‘Offence?’ cried Isadora, firing up. ‘He is the one who has given offence.’
‘Let me tell you, Dora,’ said Harriet, intervening as she usually did to pour oil on the troubled waters, ‘whatever the rest of us may say, Edmund at least insists that, for his part, he cannot think that Lord Roborough will be able to find any fault with you, Dora.’
‘He would not say so if he had to live with her,’ Fanny asserted.
Isadora was obliged to laugh. ‘Well, Fanny, if by some remote chance I do suddenly have pretensions to be liked by the new lord and master of all our lives, I know I can depend entirely upon your support.’
Harriet smiled. ‘At any rate, you may depend upon mine. I will leave you to quarrel over Lord Roborough in private.’
But once she was outside the room with Isadora, who had elected to walk with her to the door, she added in a low voice, ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re planning, Dora, for I am too well acquainted with you. I shall come and see you tomorrow when we may be alone.’
‘You may do so, but you will not change my mind,’ Isadora responded, aware that Harriet, who knew all about her secret plans, heartily disapproved of them.
‘I can at least try. No, no, don’t accompany me. I know my way very well.’
‘You should, after all these years,’ Isadora laughed. ‘Very well, I shall go back and face my cousin’s warnings.’
‘Yes, but don’t lose your temper, Dora.’
‘I shall try not to.’
But this promise was put severely to the test. Cousin Matty was waiting only for Isadora’s return into the room to take up the argument again.
‘I cannot understand you, Dora,’ she complained. ‘Your poor mama has been left with little enough of her portion, but you have none at all. While as for myself and my children—’
She broke off, whisking a handkerchief from her sleeve and applying it to her eyes. Mrs Alvescot instantly threw out a hand in distress.
‘Oh, poor Matty, don’t cry. You know you will always have a home with me, no matter what happens.’
Isadora would not have argued with this. The Dotterells had ever been so much a part of the family that it had never occurred to her to consider a life that did not include them. For the first time she realised that Cousin Matty must be entertaining some very real fears for her own future. Who was to say that Viscount Roborough would consider himself responsible for these relatives, even supposing that he was prepared to assist Mama out of her difficulties? Mama, of course, would not dream of abandoning her cousin. But how would they all live?
All the more reason, then, for Isadora to pursue her own schemes.
‘But you cannot afford to keep us, Cousin Ellen,’ Fanny pointed out, as if she had read Isadora’s mind. ‘For my part, I think you should write to Lord Roborough and tell him the true situation.’
‘Mr Thornbury told him the true situation,’ Isadora said, taking a seat by her mother. ‘He even wrote to warn him months ago, before he wrote that Papa had died, for we all knew very well that Papa would not recover.’
Mrs Alvescot nodded vehemently, setting aquiver the frill of her pretty mob cap, the only touch of white in the otherwise strict severity of her mourning costume.
‘Now that is true, for Aubrey instructed Thornbury to do so because the connection is so remote. Dear Aubrey. He knew so well what a toll his illness had taken on our finances. It distressed him particularly that you, Dora, could not have your season.’
‘Oh, fudge, as if I cared for that.’
A season was just what she did not want. It would ruin all. She must not enter Society in that guise. But in any event nothing would have induced her to leave the house in such circumstances—what with Papa so ill and Mama so distressed. Papa had wanted her to accept Lady Witheridge’s invitation to her to come out with Harriet in London last year, but she had resolutely refused.
‘But Aubrey told me I had nothing to concern myself about,’ went on Mrs Alvescot cheerfully. ‘He was certain that Lord Roborough would come to our rescue.’
‘If he doesn’t, we shall have nothing to look forward to but penury and disaster,’ prophesied Fanny gloomily.
‘Well, you had better steel yourself to them, then,’ said Isadora frankly, ‘for I have no expectation of his coming to our rescue.’
‘But, my love, your papa said that it was his duty to do so,’ protested Mrs Alvescot.
‘I quite agree,’ said Cousin Matty.
‘Well, Papa had every reason to be sanguine,’ Isadora offered, ‘because he clearly knew nothing of this viscount.’
‘Nor do you,’ Fanny pointed out.
Isadora ignored this obvious truth. ‘Besides, Lord Roborough probably sees no reason why he should rescue us, nor even why he should keep a fatherly eye on us, as you seem to think he must, Cousin Matty. He is only distantly related to us, after all. And Thornbury says he has children of his own to think of.’
‘That is true, my love,’ agreed Mrs Alvescot, ‘but you forget that his note stated that he clearly understood our predicament and that we need not move from the house.’
‘As yet,’ quoted Isadora, adding cynically, ‘and that is all he said.’
‘For my part, I am thanking God for this small relief,’ said Cousin Matty devoutly. ‘Imagine if he had requested our instant removal. What in the world would we have done?’
‘He may yet tell us to remove,’ Fanny reminded her.
‘No, no, Fanny,’ argued Mrs Alvescot. ‘Remember that he has a title. He has estates of his own—very substantial ones, I imagine—so what need can he have for this one?’
Isadora curled a sceptical lip. ‘I have no wish to distress you, Mama, but I fear that a man who is so callous that he cannot even write a letter of sympathy is not going to concern himself over whether he needs another estate.’
Fanny gazed at her with narrowed eyes. ‘I see what it is, Dora. You don’t wish him to rescue us at all. What you want is an excuse to take up acting in earnest.’
Cousin Matty exclaimed in horror, but Isadora had no answer to make to this beyond a look cast at her young cousin that bode her no good at all. It was left to Mrs Alvescot to express the opinion of the family.
‘Indeed, I have often thought what a pity it is that you might not tread the boards, as they say, Dora. I am sure you could have become quite as great a tragedienne as Mrs Siddons. Only it is quite ineligible, and I am sure Lord Roborough will not countenance such a thing for a moment.’
At this, Isadora jumped up and moved to the door, uttering dangerously, ‘Will he not, indeed? Well, if he chooses to show his face here and tell me so, I shall be ready for him, believe me.’
With which, she whisked herself out of the room. Arguing over whether the heir would do anything to help the family out of their predicament was one thing; being reminded that he had the power to stop her pursuing her plans was quite another. Well, he might have that power. But not for long, for she was but a few months short of her majority.
Passing along the upper corridor, Isadora headed for the stairs, hoping she would not run into Rowland outside. She wanted to be alone. Hopefully, he would be in the stables, as usual, trying to persuade old Totteridge to allow him to ride Titian. Totteridge could be trusted to be steadfast in refusal. Rowland could never hold Papa’s restive mount.
A pang smote her. Was it only a matter of six weeks? It felt like a lifetime.
Come, Isadora Alvescot, this would not do. She had promised Papa that she would not grieve—not unduly. Death, he had insisted, would come as a merciful release. She must hold to that. In general, she could do so, plunging herself into her acting. Only, when Cousin Matty would insist on bringing up the question of their possibly having to leave home…
She pushed the thought away as she ran lightly down the long staircase that curved to the hall. That would not happen. Yet if she was wrong, if the viscount
did turn them penniless from their home, then it was only a matter of time before she would be in a position to put the family back on its feet. For Fanny was right, infuriating though that was. Whether or not Lord Roborough came to the rescue of the family made no difference to Isadora. Not only did she wish to become an actress in earnest, she was going to become one. Not as Isadora Alvescot, of course. She would have to think of another name.
Fanny might have nosed her secret out, she thought, as she crossed the hall to the front door and let herself out of the house, but she did not think her cousin really believed she would do it, any more than did Mama or Cousin Matty. They had not seemed surprised to hear Fanny accuse her. No doubt the wretch had told them already. She had probably been listening at the keyhole when Isadora had been discussing the matter with Harriet.
She wondered, as she sped across the wide expanse of lawn to the gazebo that headed the start of the flowering gardens, if that was what had made Cousin Matty harp on and on about Lord Roborough.
But all thought of the Errant Heir left her as she reached the leafy bower that invariably formed the background to those performances she gave out of doors, and where, alone, she practised her speeches, peopling the lawn with an imaginary audience of vast proportions. She had headed here by instinct rather than design, knowing that the best cure for the disturbing thoughts awakened by the discussion in the drawing-room was to devote herself to her art.
Disenchanted with Lady Jane after the fiasco upstairs, she chose instead to try out again that speech of Juliet’s before she took the drug that was to make her appear dead in order to escape with Romeo. It was a section of the play that was still giving her a little trouble, and she meant to have the entire role of Juliet perfect for her launch on an unsuspecting public.
As always, no sooner did she throw out the lines, Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again, than she was lost in a world of her own.
The uncertainty of Juliet grew into fear, the girl’s imagination stirring at all the hideous possibilities that might ensue.
‘What if it be a poison. . .?’
With one hand, Isadora held an imaginary vial away from her at the full length of her arm, gazing upon her empty fingers as if she truly saw there this thing that might, while it promised happiness, deceive her into death.
As she began to enumerate the visions of waking in the tomb among the bones of her ancestors that filled Juliet’s mind—Where bloody Tybalt, yet but green in earth, Lies festering in his shroud—the horror of the image was reflected in her voice, which shook with fear as her breath came short and fast.
Her voice grew in power with the further embroidery of Shakespeare’s persuasive text, so that at the last she was almost shrieking out the plea.
‘Stay, Tybalt, stay!’ Her hand came close as she raised the imagined vial and cried out, ‘Romeo, I come! This do I drink to thee.’
With which, she thrust her fingers to her mouth, threw back her head, and swallowed. Her eyes closed, the invisible vial dropped from her fingers, and she began to sway.
But before she could fall, supposedly drugged, to the ground, an alien sound penetrated her absorption: a slow hand-clap that echoed in the still summer air.
Isadora blinked, opening her eyes. Bewildered, she looked about for the source. It was not difficult to find.
Almost directly before her, although several feet away, stood a total stranger. He was some years her senior, strong-featured, and from his head to his heels strikingly attired in black. His hands rested together as they ceased to clap.
‘Bravo!’ he said. ‘I have seldom seen a more startling demonstration of grief.’