The Theatre Royal saw Mrs Roberta Brookes
accept, not one, but five standing ovations for her final performance in Così fan Tutte last night. However, while nobody doubts her virtuosa performance was a triumph, it was her daughter Miss Charity Brookes who stole the show after she hastily stepped into the role of Despina at the last moment when the original actress was indisposed. The audience sat transfixed at the sheer beauty of her voice, many declaring she sang like an angel—which, regular readers of this column will doubtless appreciate, is gloriously ironic, considering her less than angelic reputation...
Whispers from Behind the Fan
June 1814
Twenty-One Bedford Place was packed to the rafters and she had lost sight of Luke in the melee over an hour ago. Obviously, with Charity watching the pair of them like a hawk for any signs of partiality, and because Hope was supremely conscious of the fact that she was rather partial to him despite her legendary pessimism regarding men, she had made no effort to seek him out even though she wanted to.
She had barely seen hide nor hair of him for three days since the opera, and in the brief exchanges they had managed when they had twice collided in the street, she had not had the opportunity to ask him what his sister-in-law had said to sour his mood. Because there had been no denying that during the second half, after he finally returned to his seat a full ten minutes after the performance had started, the newly minted Marquess of Thundersley had had a face like thunder itself and, for reasons she wasn’t prepared to decipher, that had worried her.
It wasn’t like Luke to be so dour and occupied, and with him imminently leaving Bloomsbury for at least the next two weeks, she was eager to get to the bottom of it before he left for Cornwall to fetch his mother and she worried the entire time he was gone.
‘Are you sure you would not appreciate the fresh air on the terrace?’ Lord Ealing was like an irritating insect. Or perhaps, with his lipless mouth and short, stick-thin body, an eel lurking in the reeds waiting to pounce on an insect. ‘Only it is rather stuffy in here and you do look a bit flushed, Miss Hope.’ The darting eyes flicked back and forth between her apparently hot face and her décolleté as if he had no control over them. If she had had the common sense to grab a shawl before the party started, she would be making a point of tightening it around her to let him know she found his gawping both rude and offensive.
‘If I look anything, my lord, it is bored.’ She never should have listened to Charity and worn this particular gown or allowed herself to be talked into eschewing the gauzy fichu she had laid out to pair with it. The single inch and a half of cleavage it revealed was proving to be problematic as it drew male stares like a magnet. Before Lord Ealing’s bulbous eyeballs had latched on to her, it had been Horace Strickland the renowned painter of horses and purveyor of profusive perspiration, and before him it had been the husband of a well-known actress who had now sunk so irredeemably in her estimation that she would never be able to be civil to him again.
And they were only an hour in.
‘Haven’t you got someone else you can bother?’
‘You know my tender heart only beats for you, my flame-haired and fulsome Aphrodite.’ Those eyes fixed to her chest as the tip of his tongue moistened his non-existent lips, making her feel dirty and exposed.
As usual, she covered those unpleasant internal sensations with outward disdain. ‘Then I fear your tender heart is doomed for ever to be disappointed, my lord, as mine barely notices you exist.’ To prove that inescapable fact, Hope glanced wistfully towards the hallway, wondering if anybody would notice if she slipped upstairs to continue meticulously copying out her finally finished manuscript. Or change her stupid gown. She most definitely had to change this gown. ‘In fact, at this precise moment, I wish with all my heart that you didn’t.’
Like the idiot he was, Lord Ealing was delighted by her insult. ‘If your continued uninterest is a calculated feminine tactic to pique my interest further, you should know it is working for I am charmed completely by you, Miss Hope. Utterly and hopelessly charmed.’
‘Oh, good grief! How unoriginal and tedious.’ Luke suddenly appeared out of nowhere at her elbow like a giant henchman, the seams of his coat straining across the pickaxe-honed muscles of his belligerently folded arms. ‘You have my solemn pledge I will never make a pun out of your name again, Hope.’ Then he seemed to increase in height as he loomed menacingly over Lord Ealing, pinning him with his icy glare as he forced him to look up at him. ‘Why are you still stood here when the lady clearly told you to go and bother somebody else?’
‘Well... I... Um...’
Her wild-looking knight swatted the intimidated gnat away with a dismissive brush of both hands. ‘Be gone, fool, before you annoy me too and then you will be sorry.’
And miraculously, just like that, he was.
Luke smugly watched the odious lord scurry across the drawing room as if his breeches were on fire, then grinned, thoroughly pleased with himself. ‘Well who knew? Intimidation is as effective a deterrent to an unwanted suitor as a romantic tryst is? Although I still prefer my method and, I suspect, so do you.’ He winked then, making no attempt to stifle his amusement at bringing up that kiss again simply because he enjoyed reminding her of it as often as possible to vex her.
Not that she needed his reminder. Her wayward thoughts revisited the dratted thing much too often of their own accord.
‘I can assure you there was nothing romantic about your drunken slobbering, Lord Trouble.’ As she shuddered in mock disgust, because the wretch hadn’t slobbered in the slightest and knew it, she fought the urge to smile back at him. She allowed only the corners of her mouth to curve upward because she was pleased with her quick response now that she had finally conquered the flustered blush which always accompanied his constant reminders. ‘But I thank you for your timely interference in my predicament all the same. Lord Ealing’s pitiful attempts at seduction were starting to grate and I promised my parents faithfully that I wouldn’t make a scene. They still haven’t forgiven me for tipping an entire decanter of port over Lord Ogilvy’s head in the middle of their last soirée, though to be fair more because they had the devil of a job getting the stain out of the Persian than because I punished Lord Ogilvy for excessive ogling.’
‘Sadly, I suspect I have only granted you a temporary reprieve from the ogling tonight.’ He inclined his head to where the eel-like Ealing sulked as he glared at them. ‘As your sunny, welcoming character has clearly made a lasting impression on him. Alongside a few others, I notice.’
If he had noticed, he should have rescued her sooner.
‘We both know it isn’t my character which attracts them like flies to the dung heap.’ Curse this stupid gown! She had only donned it because she had wanted to look pretty, and she had only wanted to look pretty because of... Instinctively she narrowed her eyes at Luke, peeved that this was actually all his fault and more peeved that it really wasn’t. ‘Why are men so reliably shallow?’
‘To be fair to my sex, it is a base animal instinct we have no control over and, as much as it might pain you to be so, you are rather...beautiful. Exceptionally so tonight.’ It galled her that she was thrilled with the compliment, when such nonsense from other gentlemen was usually met with short shrift. But Luke wasn’t most men and he had never stared at her in the lascivious way most men did. He frowned as his dark eyes swept her up and down then focused resolutely on her face. ‘Perhaps a sack might disguise the problem? Something baggy enough and thick enough that it conceals all that overt and striking femininity you were cursed with.’
‘Are you suggesting their ungentlemanly behaviour is somehow my fault?’
He laughed as she bristled, holding his palms up in surrender. ‘Not in the slightest, I wouldn’t dare say anything of the sort, so don’t you dare reach for the port and douse me with it. Those men are crass, ill-mannered brutes, ruled entirely by their urges and who should be heartily ashamed of themselves for their unseemly leering and panting. I am merely suggesting a way that you might mitigate against all the unwanted attention which you so obviously loathe as that gown is, frankly, temptation personified and it requires a strong male constitution to admire it with restraint.’
His fingers dispassionately tugged at the lace of her short, capped sleeve. ‘And the damnedest thing is that I know on any other woman, this same frock would look positively demure, plain even, as it is neither too low nor too tight and not the least bit showy. Yet...’ He sighed as he let go and shook his head as if it was all an unfathomable conundrum. ‘On you, it is a deadly weapon. So much so, you outshine every other woman in this room. And without even trying to.’
He did compliments so well and that one in particular warmed her, so she schooled her features into her blandest mask in case it showed. He was much too self-assured already, he really didn’t need any more encouragement. Not that she had any plans of encouraging him. ‘Sackcloth is notoriously itchy.’
‘It is and it’s bound to chafe. But if sackcloth is not to your taste, a nun’s habit would likely have a similar effect on all the collective lusty males in the vicinity. Or then again, maybe it wouldn’t, as there is something devilishly attractive about the forbidden and you are bound to look positively sinful in a habit too. Because you look positively sinful in everything without trying to too, don’t you—my flame-haired and fulsome Aphrodite.’
He was insufferable. ‘Clearly you could have rescued me ten minutes earlier, couldn’t you? But you were having too much fun at my expense.’
‘That I was.’
‘And you wonder why no woman has rushed you up the aisle?’
‘It’s a mystery to be sure.’ He raised his arm. ‘Care to take a turn around the terrace for some fresh air with me instead, and we can discuss it further?’
‘Only on the understanding that I am taking a turn purely for the fresh air and most definitely not your dull company.’
‘I assumed that was a given, Aphrodite.’
After a quick check to confirm Charity was nowhere in sight, Hope happily threaded her hand through his elbow and allowed him to lead her to the open French doors on to the terrace and freedom. They weren’t the only people escaping the crush inside, so when they couldn’t find any peace to discuss anything properly beyond small talk, in silent tacit agreement they edged towards the gate in the back hedge and escaped out into the communal garden beyond when nobody was looking. Unsurprisingly, for ten o’clock in the evening, it was deserted. Certainly quiet enough that she could finally ask about his sister-in-law.
‘What got your dander up the other night at the theatre?’
‘Nothing...’ He huffed out a groan. ‘Everything.’
‘Did the Marchioness put a flea in your ear?’ Because Hope hadn’t been able to stop herself watching the pair of them tucked away in that alcove. The strange intimacy between them had bothered her. She wasn’t prepared to call it jealousy, though suspected it might well be as she had experienced a pang of something akin to it when she watched him touch the woman affectionately. ‘She seemed upset.’ Or at least the vile woman had done a very good job of looking suitably tragic once she had cornered him alone, though those tears had dried remarkably fast in Hope’s humble opinion. Doubtless because she had got her way.
‘She did more than put a flea in my ear. She deposited another ton of unwanted responsibilities on my shoulders.’ For a moment his eyes were bleak before he shook it away with a theatrical shiver. ‘But as you know, I have attractively broad shoulders.’ Like her, Luke was the master of changing the subject when the topic wasn’t to his liking. ‘In other exciting news, not only have the decorators finally gone but I have almost managed to dig my way to the bottom of the never-ending mountain of papers I inherited.’
‘Do you understand it all?’ Because she knew it bothered him that he didn’t. After his brother’s shoddy treatment of him, he was a man who had to be in control of his own destiny, even if that meant burning the candle at both ends, though he preferred to make light of that diligent aspect of his character too.
‘I have a solid grasp on the estate matters as they aren’t too different from running my house in Cornwall—just on a grander scale. And I am pretty sure I finally understand the property aspect.’ Of course he did, because as well as wading into Parliament as if he had always been part of it, he had spent the last fortnight visiting every street in the city that he owned bricks on so he could familiarise himself with each one. ‘But the stocks and shares still baffle me. The Thundersley finger seems to be dipped in all manner of pies but I am yet to ascertain their fillings to decide if I want to keep them. I blame the names. They should be more explicit and give clues to the nature of the business rather than rely on pointless surnames which ultimately mean nothing to the consumer. If everybody used something sensible like Tregally Slate I wouldn’t be so confused.’
But they both knew he wouldn’t remain that way for long. As if he read her mind, he shrugged.
‘I’ve set the supercilious and condescending Mr Waterhouse the herculean task of writing me a detailed summary of each and every company I hold a share in as I won’t be party to any unsavoury money-making ventures or any that think they can get away with not paying their workers a decent wage for an honest day’s work.’ She liked that about him. He never settled for anything he didn’t want and fought tooth and nail for what he believed was right. She almost pitied Mr Waterhouse, who was clearly a fool if he did not realise that his new master was a formidable, driven and principled man not an arrogant, abdicating fop like his brother.
‘How did he take that?’
‘Surprisingly well, as he is currently bending over backwards to impress me. It is amazing how agreeable even the most disagreeable individuals can be when they are subjected to the legendary Duff charm...your good self included.’
As he was now subjecting her to the seductive power of his most wolfish expression, those naughty dark brown eyes twinkling, she refused to take the bait. ‘He is falling all over himself purely because you pay his wages. Deep down he dislikes you as much as everyone else does—my good self included.’
‘And believe me, he gets paid handsomely too. Can you fathom that he gets five times what I pay my best manager at Tregally? I swear the cost of everything here is so extortionate it’s criminal. Did I tell you I had to pay fifty pounds and eight shillings for a sofa! And I knocked the swindler down! He originally wanted sixty.’ He looked quite ferocious when outraged, even though she knew without a doubt Luke didn’t truly have a ferocious bone in his body. He would have made an atrocious pirate. Although, to be fair, he probably wouldn’t have had to plunder and pillage because he would have thoroughly charmed his unwitting targets out of their booty instead. He had a talent for disarming people. ‘But at least the room is finally finished. Would you like to see it?’
‘What? Just me and you? All alone in the dark. In a bachelor’s house! Unchaperoned? Do you want my mother to kill you?’
‘In case you haven’t noticed, we are all alone in the dark unchaperoned already and as we never have a chaperon on the balcony, I fail to see what difference it makes.’ But from the suddenly wicked glint in his eye, he was well aware why she wouldn’t dare take him up on the offer. Here, with the sounds of her mother’s soirée invading the silence, they weren’t really alone in the truest sense of the word and on the balcony, the double sets of railings were their strict chaperons.
‘You are incorrigible.’
‘That I am, Hope—but you like me for it.’
‘In your dreams perhaps.’
He smiled, unoffended. ‘Enough about my woes. How go things with your monster?’
She considered lying, but knew it wouldn’t wash. ‘The jig is up, he has received his well-deserved comeuppance and the book is finally done.’
He stopped walking and beamed at her. ‘That’s splendid news! Are you happy with it?’
‘I have come to the conclusion that I am too much of a nit-picking perfectionist to ever be truly happy with it, but I am happy enough that I’ve spent the last few days making copies to send out to other publishers.’
His face clouded with instant sympathy. ‘Crocker and Co. rejected it?’
‘Cooper and Son have remained depressingly silent.’
‘It has only been a few weeks. I’ll wager they’ll have made an offer by the time I get back from Cornwall, but you are wise to spread your net wider. It is never advisable to have all your eggs in one basket.’ Then his feet paused again. ‘And speaking of Cornwall and the jig being up, does this mean I can finally read it? I am going to need something to keep me sane during my interminable and solitary journey to the south west.’
Flapping butterflies instantly invaded her stomach and swiftly turned into gulls. ‘I am afraid I still need the original to make the copies.’
‘But you promised.’ Two dark brows kissed in consternation a split second before he crossed his solid arms and glared. ‘And if I know you, madam, like I know I do, you have already made at least one full copy and are merely making excuses to fob me off again.’
Hope tried not to wince at the accuracy of the charge but it was too late. She wasn’t bland enough, quick enough, and he saw it.
‘I knew it! You have a copy raring to go and have probably already earmarked it for the next publisher on your list.’
Also true. She had made a list of all the people who would receive the elusive H. B. Rooke’s macabre manuscript.
‘How come you are prepared to allow two faceless publishers to read the damn thing, yet you refuse to trust me with your work even though you know I love a good Gothic novel and cannot wait to read yours? I thought we were friends, Hope. Friends trust one another.’
‘It is because we are friends that I am reluctant to share it with you.’ Phantasma meant so much to her—what if he hated it?
‘Yet I share everything with you unreservedly, Hope, because that is what good friends do. All my trials and tribulations, all my many failures, fears and each of my tiny successes.’
‘You never have any failures, only successes so you have no concept of what failure or rejection feels like.’
He dismissed that with a roll of his eyes. ‘If your ultimate goal is to see your story on the shelves of Hatchard’s where anyone can read it, I fail to understand why you keep putting up pathetic barriers to keep me from doing so.’
He made a good point, an entirely logical and sound one, but her writing was just too personal. So personal, logic didn’t come into it.
‘Because this book is me, Luke. My thoughts. My demons. My essence. Sharing it feels too much like bearing my soul and I...well...am not sure I am ready to bear it to you in its entirety yet. No matter how many times you throw that gauntlet down and dare me to do it.’
‘Asking you to trust me is hardly throwing a gauntlet down.’ He was hurt by her defensiveness. ‘If I have made you feel pressured rather than encouraged, then I am truly sorry for that was never my intention.’
‘You haven’t...’ As her friend, he at least deserved the whole truth. ‘I have never trusted easily and men least of all.’
‘That is a shame.’ His face fell further and she could tell her clumsy words had wounded. Hardly a surprise when she had effectively just lumped him in the same boat as the Ealings and Harlingtons of the world when he shared none of their abhorrent traits. ‘I cannot help being male but despite that unfortunate birth defect, I have always trusted you, Hope. And unreservedly too.’
And heaven help her, she was sorely tempted to trust all of him, and that alone was too momentous to contemplate when the eternal and often justified pessimist in her feared she was bound to be making a mistake.
‘Have I not proved my mettle as a decent and reliable friend to you yet?’
Of course he had and that was part of the problem. Luke never did anything by halves. Whether that be supporting her in a lie in front of her family or saving her from amorous men.
He was too decent. Too reliable. Too thoughtful and way too tempting. He also listened to her, encouraged her and believed in her. Too perfect a man, all things considered, for her guarded, wary heart to believe could possibly be true.
She turned away while she tried to put her unsettling, warring feelings into words, hugging herself unconsciously until she was brave enough to face him again. ‘If you must know, your honest opinion terrifies me.’
She trusted him enough to confess that at least.
His eyes seemed to look into the same soul she was so desperately trying to keep hidden. ‘Why?’
It was the sympathy which undid her and the understanding, lop-sided smile, as if he saw it all anyway but respected her dreams too much to trample all over them.
‘What if I cannot write, Luke? What if all the publishers I approached last time were right and Mr Cooper was merely fobbing me off gently when he said they couldn’t make money printing anything written by a woman? What if I have been fooling myself all these years, working towards nothing and I really don’t have the same level of talent for something as my brilliant parents and sisters do?’
As delighted as she was for Charity for her well-deserved success, the odd one out, cuckoo-in-the-nest middle sister inside of her wished it hadn’t come before hers. Having all the newspapers singing the youngest Brookes’s praises so soon after they had done exactly the same for Faith, had completely shredded the last of Hope’s confidence and left her feeling inadequate and panicked about her future.
‘What if all I really am is this?’ She gestured to her body and the stupid, feminine gown she shouldn’t have worn expressly for him. ‘All show and no real substance. The only Brookes with no real talent for anything beyond attracting shallow men without trying and sending them cross-eyed with lust.’ Why was she suddenly confessing her deepest, darkest fears when she had never once confessed them to anyone before? Not even her sisters knew the confident bravado she wore like a shield hid a seething pit of insecurities which ran the gamut of everything from her fear of being an impostor as a writer to her ingrained self-consciousness about her overly womanly body. ‘What do I do then?’
She expected him to laugh at her foolishness. Instead, he simply sighed as he took her hand and squeezed it, giving her the ridiculous urge to lace her fingers in his and hold on for dear life. ‘Trust me with your book, Hope, and if it is truly a reflection of everything that you are, I have no doubt it is destined to be brilliant.’
‘And if it isn’t and you hate it?’
‘Then as your friend I shall be honest enough to tell you, so that you can fix it. Because if you want it bad enough you will fix it, Hope. I know this because we are kindred spirits, you and I. Both too stubborn and determined not to succeed no matter what the odds.’
She dithered, wanting to entrust him with her precious manuscript, while fearing the fact that she wanted to. She was used to being self-sufficient. She had never had a mentor to guide her in her dreams in the same way her sisters had with their parents. They encouraged her, of course they did, but not in quite the same way as they did Faith with her art and Charity with her music. She had never had anyone who valued the sublime power of the written word with the same ferocity as she did. That alone deemed him worthy. So why was she still scared?
Perhaps because no matter what, Luke always knew the way and landed on his feet when he arrived while she always stumbled, never quite knowing where she was going. She released her hand from his.
‘You think we are kindred spirits?’ If only they were. ‘I envy you your innate self-confidence and ability to master and then conquer every challenge life throws at you. You glide effortlessly over every hurdle with a big, lopsided grin on your face, knowing exactly what needs to be done and charming everyone to your way of thinking to make it so, completely unhampered by all the insecurities, barriers and disappointments we mere mortals are saddled with.’ How wonderful it must be to be him. ‘You are fearless, Luke, not fearful. Whereas I am all bravado.’
He reached for her hand again and wrapped it in his. ‘Then pick up the gauntlet, Hope, and be fearless. It really is as simple as that.’