A Wicked Conceit (Lady Darby Mysteries #9) - Anna Lee Huber Page 0,8
the cross-section of a jail, with compartments for four cells, two up and two down. At one climactic moment, Brock escaped from his shackles and scampered toward the fireplace, where he had earlier been seen scraping away at the brickwork. He dislodged the bars blocking the chimney flue and then clambered inside, disappearing from the audience’s view, only to emerge from a hole opening in the floor of the cell above. From this chamber, he busted through the door and then climbed out the window to emerge on the flat roof of the jail.
But one trip through this course of obstacles was not enough. Brock declared he’d forgotten his blanket, and my heart lodged in my throat as he proceeded to retrace his steps in reverse back to his original jail cell. He collected his blanket and then made the trek for a third time, to the audience’s gasps and exclamations. When he returned to the roof, he ripped the blanket into strips, tied them together, and climbed down the side of the building to freedom.
While impressed with the entire performance, including the novel staging, I was also disheartened. This was no slapdash melodrama. It was a rip-roarious success. And likely to run for weeks if not months on end. The book had already been popular, but this play would launch it to even greater heights.
When the second act ended, I wanted nothing more than to remain in Philip’s private box, such were the nerves swarming inside me. The third act would be where the thinly veiled characters portraying Gage and me would make their entrance. But at just three weeks shy of the baby’s projected birth date, I could not avoid the ladies’ retiring room a moment longer. Especially not when the imp inside me had been pummeling my insides for the past half hour. Anticipating my dilemma, Gage escorted me from the box before the curtain had even fallen.
Once I was in a more comfortable condition, and my every thought wasn’t focused on making it to the retiring room before I embarrassed myself, I could hear the murmured conversations of the women congregating on the other side of my private partition. Some were cooing over how dashing Bonnie Brock seemed, though whether they were talking about the man himself or the actor who was playing him, I couldn’t tell. They didn’t seem to differentiate. Just as they didn’t seem to fully grasp the fictional aspects of it being a scripted play and not reality.
“Who do you think his father is?” one lady asked.
“I heard he’s some member of royalty,” her friend answered.
“Lady Jersey told me he’s a foreign dignitary,” a third woman added.
I rolled my eyes, suspecting Lady Jersey knew little better than anyone else, though she would never admit it. The next few comments were lost to the rustling and resettling of my gown, but as I reached for the door handle I clearly heard the next question.
“Do you think it’s true, then? Was Lady Darby his lover?”
I stilled, not so much surprised to hear they were gossiping about such a thing as that I was trapped here, forced to listen to it.
The ladies continued to speak about me using my courtesy title. I’d long since ceased requesting acquaintances to call me Mrs. Gage instead, for such an appeal merely baffled society. They couldn’t understand why I would willingly relinquish the title granted to me by marrying my first husband—Sir Anthony Darby—that I was permitted to continue to use by courtesy, if not right, when I’d wed my lower-ranked second husband. But then most of them did not fully grasp what I’d suffered during my first marriage, and I was not going to illuminate them.
“Why would he be interested in a woman like Lady Darby?” Scorn dripped from the second lady’s voice, which I now recognized belonged to Lady Wilmot. I was more surprised by her presence in Edinburgh than her disparaging opinion of me. After all, she was close friends with Lady Felicity, the woman Gage’s father had chosen for his son’s bride. That Gage had possessed a different opinion and chosen me instead had been a source of heated contention between father and son for months following our nuptials.
“Men must see something in her,” her companion declared, before adding wryly, “Sebastian Gage married her, after all. And we all know his taste is unassailable.”
I could practically see Lady Wilmot’s eyes narrowing at this taunting insult to her and Lady Felicity.