Lady Rosabella's Ruse - By Ann Lethbridge Page 0,61
place in society because he’d been given no choice by the woman he’d married.
The cold place in his chest seemed to grow. He’d messed his chance of redemption up royally, especially if Rose was brought to bed with a son. Damnation.
The redhead worked on the second slipper. Acting on instinct, he turned to the girl hanging on his arm. ‘Let go.’
She swore and flounced off. For some reason none of the ladybirds he’d tried to sample these past two weeks had aroused his interest. None of them looked like a seductive nun, not even when they dressed up for him.
He thought about asking about the…the boy? Good God, had he grown so dissipated?
He headed for the girl still sitting on the bench beside the door.
‘Where did she go?’
She popped to her feet with a cheerful grin. ‘Who?’
‘The girl sitting beside you.’
She eyed him warily. ‘Why do you want to know?’
‘So it was a girl.’
She shrugged. He caught her arm. ‘Where did she go?’
‘Get off me.’
Fitzwilliam caught him around the shoulders. ‘Great news. We’ve been invited to the party at the chop house. I promised we’d give some of the girls a ride in your carriage.’
Garth shook him off. The redhead was gone.
‘Come on, we will miss the champagne.’ Fitz slapped him on the back.
If all the players were going to the chop house, then so was he, and champagne sounded like a very good idea.
Jammed between Bess on one side and old Jack on the other, Rosa nursed her gin. After a week of being with the company, she’d learned to order herself a mug of the dreadful stuff and pretend to drink it. The alternative was for someone to see she wasn’t drinking, buy her one and then expect one in return. It didn’t take long to spend more than you had.
She raised the mug to her lips and tried not to inhale the fumes or get her moustache wet. It tended to fall off. Bess took a swig of hers.
‘Lawks,’ she said, looking over at the door. ‘They brought the gents with them.’
‘What? I thought only the cast were allowed.’
‘On closing night anything goes.’
Neither of the two men who entered were Garth. Rosa relaxed.
Bess gave her a saucy grin. ‘Once those girls have their hooks in a couple of rich nobs do you think they’ll let them loose? They’ll squeeze ’em dry.’
Blast. If she had known, she wouldn’t have come here. She could have got her pay the following day.
Except she’d wanted to write to her sisters and send some money off first thing in the morning. Before the moneylender pressured them again.
Bess groaned. ‘It’s Forever.’
Anger at the horrid nickname roared in her blood, not at the name itself, but what it meant, quickly followed by a shiver of fear. Back there in the green room, she’d half thought he’d recognised her, but he’d been too busy cuddling his girls.
‘He was asking after you, before I left,’ Bess said. ‘I told you the gents like a girl in a trouser role.’
Breath left Rosa’s body in a huge rush. ‘What?’
Bess nodded. ‘He came over to me after you went.’
Her heart drummed in her chest. Her throat dried. ‘Why on earth didn’t you tell me before?’
‘I forgot.’ Bess took another swig of her gin.
He couldn’t possibly have recognised her. ‘What did he say? Exactly what words?’
‘He asked after the girl sitting beside me.’
‘He can’t have meant me.’
Bess frowned. ‘No one else was sitting beside me.’ She shrugged. ‘Beats me, it do.’
Her hands started shaking. Even if he was asking about someone else, she didn’t want to have to face him. To watch him with the other girls. ‘I’m leaving.’ She pushed at old Jack’s arm.
The burly scene-changer gave her a toothless grin. ‘Leavin’ without yer pay?’
‘Bess will collect it.’
‘Be careful going home by yourself,’ Bess said.
‘Don’t worry about me. Everyone thinks I’m a boy.’
The old man grumbled to his bandy legs and she squeezed past him and out of the door into the courtyard, exchanging the smell of stale beer and gin mixed with pipe smoke for the scent of horse dung and rotting garbage.
A hand grabbed her arm.
‘One moment, if you don’t mind.’
The smooth richness of the voice sent a shiver down her back. She had no trouble recognising its owner.
‘Get off me,’ she said much as Bess would.
‘Not on you. Yet.’ He laughed darkly.
‘Filthy beast.’ She pulled at her arm, but his grip only tightened. ‘Let me go, or I’ll yell bloody murder.’