Clandestine Passion (The Lovelocks of London Book 2)

She had escaped them all. Her lady’s maid Wright was not in the room. That was a blessing, for once. Catherine sat in the chair by the fireplace and put her head in her hands. She heard the door open.

“Go away, Lord Daventry!”

The door closed. “Non, it is not Lord Daventry, Madame Lovelock. It is Mademoiselle DuMornay.”

Catherine raised her head, her eyes dry. “I’m sorry, Mamselle, I don’t feel well.” She attempted a smile.

Isabella crossed to her and sank down on her knees next to her. “No, of course, you don’t. That painting is an atrocity.”

“You think so, too?”

“Mais, oui! Anyone who can’t see it is an idiote! That poor child is traumatisée.” Isabella reached out and brushed one of Catherine’s curls with her fingers. “But such beautiful hair.”

Catherine looked at the fire.“Thank you, you are kind. Of course, that poor child is me.”

Isabella turned her head to one side. “Non, pas vraiment. Perhaps it once was, but I have a hard time believing even that. I cannot think you were ever to be pitied.”

Catherine met Isabella’s eyes. “I hope not.”

“But I must ask,” Catherine held her breath, dreading the question, “what are the lines?” Isabella touched Catherine lightly on her ribs, under her arm.

Catherine laughed, relieved. “They’re from the wrappings, the bandages. I had to compress my breasts, you know, to flatten them for the role.”

“Oh, your poor bosom!” Isabella sighed in sympathy.

Catherine shrugged. She had liked playing Viola, a woman who managed to have some power over her destiny, even if she had to dress as the boy Cesario to do so. She had liked the world of the play, a fantastical place called Illyria where a woman could survive unprotected. Where a woman could be spurned and still, somehow, magically wind up in the arms of the man she loved. And she had not minded the pain of her breast wrappings. She had welcomed the bite and the ache and even the control she had to use to get a full breath in. It had distracted her from the other pain in her life. The pain caused by Roger Siddons and her own despicable weakness.

“I think,” Catherine said, and paused. “I think I will leave tomorrow. My ankle, you know.”

“Yes, bien sûr.”

“It is a lovely house, but the atmosphere is not . . . conducive.”

Isabella laughed. “Lovely?” She looked around the room. “Well, yes, this is quite the nicest room, I believe. You are a favorite.”

“Your room is . . . ?”

Isabella waved a hand. “It is sans conséquence. Yes, I agree it best you return to London, away from that bad Mr. Siddons.”

“And Lord Daventry.”

Isabella looked surprised. “Lord Daventry? Why Lord Daventry?”

Catherine was at a loss. “Well, I . . . uh, he . . . uh . . .”

“Peut-être his lordship has done something he should not have?”

“No, no, of course not. It’s just . . . he is very drunk all the time, isn’t he? And silly?”

“You don’t like silly men, Madame Lovelock?”

“I suppose,” Catherine said slowly, “I don’t like his being silly.” Although his being silly was perhaps the only thing that had kept her safe from the terrible jeopardy she felt when he was in earnest.

Isabella stood. “You should tell his lordship that.”

Catherine could feel the heat of the blush coloring her face. “I’m sure he wouldn’t be interested in my opinion in the slightest.”

Isabella curtsied and went to the door. “You might be surprised, Madame Lovelock.” She shrugged and pouted. “But it is, how you English say, none of my business. I will give your apologies for the evening to our host and the other guests. I hope that you rest well.”

The door closed behind Isabella, and Catherine was alone. To rest.

Rest.

Catherine got up from the chair, and despite her ankle, she paced the room. Hadn’t she been resting for the last decade and a half? She was not built for rest. She was restless by nature, surely.

Because only a restless, wild Kate Cooksey would have made her way to London at age sixteen, determined not to become a blacksmith’s wife or a farmer’s wife but to take to the stage. And through ambition and hard work and quite a bit of cleverness become Catherine Cooke, a leading actress of the Theatre-Royal, Drury Lane. She had been known for her portrayal of Shakespeare’s heroines. Spirited Rosalind, rebellious Katherina. Cordelia, Desdemona, Portia. And, of course, the brave, passionate, and resourceful Viola. She was all of them, and they were all of her.

There was nothing restful about her back then.

Her husband Edward had fallen in love with her as Ophelia in Hamlet. Many men had. She had had to wear a brown wig and her maid’s clothes to escape her admirers outside the theater. She had had to hire a servant whose job was solely to ferry her gifts of flowers out of her dressing room or she would have drowned in blooms. Some lovely—as well as some perfectly atrocious—published verse had been dedicated to her Ophelia.

At the time, the actor-manager Mr. Kemble had explained her triumph thus: “My dear, your pain when the Danish prince rejects you is palpable. And fraught. You bring a soul-scouring pathos to the part that I have never encountered with any other actress. These men in the audience see themselves as your savior, and they imagine themselves rescuing you, earning your devotion. They want to hold this little girl with the golden hair and make her safe, tame her madness, keep her from her suicidal fate, her drowning. And it doesn’t hurt that they imagine Ophelia was a naughty little wench before her heart was broken, eager for all sorts of ‘country matters’ with Hamlet.” He had then chuckled and patted her bottom and resumed taking off his makeup.

Catherine, twenty-eight at the time, was no longer a girl and knew very well that her bosom and the sheer gown she wore in her mad scene played a part in her success in the role. And she knew that her pathos in the role as the rejected woman was convincing because it was very real.

Because of Roger.

Roger Siddons was ten years older than she, an artist of some note when they first met. He had come backstage to ask her to model for him. She had been drawn to his hunger for success, which she thought matched hers. And to his sculpted good looks. His aquiline nose, his narrow lips, the rose oil he used at his wrists and neck. His devouring eyes, his controlling hands.

Their coupling had been torrid in every sense of the word—hot, ardent, and full of tempests. Their nights together had been marked by passionate love-making and equally passionate shouting matches. Roger had struck her often, but he had never hit her on her face. Mustn’t leave a bruise—the manager of the company would have had his head.

Even worse, Roger would be cold to her and not speak to her for days, and she would be wretched, craving him, his attention and his caresses.

But he would ignore her. Unless she did as he asked.

And he had asked her to pay attention to other men—to flirt and to allow gropes and kisses—so that he might attract commissions. “It’s the same as what you do on stage with those other actors,” he had said. “You might as well do it to benefit me.”

So she had whored in her own way. For him. For her desire for him. She had permitted things. Things she could not bring herself to name even to herself.

And he would reward her with earth-shattering climaxes. And evil became intertwined with pleasure.

Then, after she had spent eight brutal years keeping daily company with her lust demon, hoping for God knows what resolution to the madness of being Roger’s mistress, he had suddenly taken up with a seventeen-year-old opera singer.

It had been the day before the opening of Hamlet. At least the heartbreak had been good for her art. And in retrospect, of course, it had been the making of her to be shut of him.

As the play was extended over and over again, Catherine used her time alone to think. She was an aging ingénue and this could well be the peak of her career. With her short stature, she would never be a Lady Macbeth or a Cleopatra or even a Duchess of Malfi.

She was tired. And she was hurt, very hurt. This moment might be her one chance for a different life, a safe life.

Her most devoted admirer, the kindest of men, the banker Edward Lovelock, won out over all others. He helped her lock the lust demon away even as she sought solace in his arms. She married him as soon as she could and learned for the first time that making love could actually make love.

Ophelia became her last role.

Her last role on the stage, that is. Because she soon realized that, of course, although Edward had fallen in love with a love-crazed and grief-stricken maiden, he really needed something else. Someone else. Someone . . . restful. The role of Mrs. Edward Lovelock was actually her greatest triumph. She had determined what the family had needed, and she had created this woman as an oasis for her beloved husband and her stepdaughters, Mary and Harry. An oasis from their grief of losing Edward’s first wife and her stepdaughters’ mother. An oasis who could calm Harry’s tantrums and direct her away from screaming and thumping her head on the floor. She had been oh-so-very restful, managing everything in the house with very little trouble to anyone else. And now, with Edward dead, Mary and Harry both married, there was nothing left to manage.

Oh, yes, there was Arabella. But Arabella—lovely, fiery, playful—did not really need her. Not the way Edward and Mary and Harry had.

Arabella could take care of herself. Arabella was just like Catherine.

Catherine stopped pacing and looked at herself in the mirror that hung in the room.

But who was Catherine Lovelock? She had pretended for so long, she no longer knew.