AT THELEAPINGHARTTHEATRE ONWESTBANK,.

HENRYSTERLING,ACTOR& MANAGER.

WITH THE ADDITIONAL TALENTS OF.

THE INCOMPARABLEBLACKROSE, THE FIERCEMASTERPINCUSFURY,.

AND INTRODUCING.

THE BOLD & DASHING YOUNGMISTRESSVIOLAFINE AND.

DIVERSE OTHERTALENTS.

CERTAIN TOENRAPTURE& ENTERTAIN.

A NEW DRAMA never before played before the PUBLIC!

UNLIMITEDENGAGEMENT OPEN TO THEVAGARIES OFPUBLICTASTE.

IF YOUAPPEAR, WE WILLPLAY!.

"By a Lady of Quality." Was it the same one who had written the novel? Maybe it was someone younger, someone who had read the book as a girl and loved it and wanted to see it on the stage. "A Lady of Quality"-that meant a noblewoman. Could it be someone I knew? Someone who had been to one of the duke's parties? The duke's ugly friend Flavia had been speaking of the theatre. She was clever, but I didn't think she was noble. I tried to see her as the mysterious author, but I could barely imagine her reading the book, much less writing about it.

Did the Lady of Quality ever come to see her own play onstage? What did she think of the way the actors played their roles? And did she ever go backstage to visit them after?

TERESA DREW A HARSH BREATH, AND THEN ANOTHER.HElet her try to find control in the safety of his arms.

"I understand," he said. "It's all right. It's not your fault. You couldn't know."

"I didn't know," she whimpered like a child. "I really didn't know. How could I? No one told me."

She didn't realize how tightly she held the letter in her hand. "Oh, Lucius, he was so beautiful once. He was like a young forest god, all dappled golden. It made it harder to believe what he was capable of.

Even when I was all bloody and aching, I'd look at that face, that perfect face, and wonder if I could be mistaken, if somehow I really had done something so terrible that he was perfectly justified in what he did.

"But he never said he was sorry. That's how I knew. The other girls-I knew women married to men who merely drank, or had bad tempers. They never tell you before the wedding-maybe your mother is supposed to know-but theirs must not have, and of course I didn't have one. Afterwards, though, it all comes out. We'd sit together over our sewing and our chocolate, and one would flinch or try to hide a bruise...and so we knew. And sometimes, though not often, one or the other would say,It's all my fault, I know it is. I should try harder. I make him angry. He cries, you know, he cries and tells me how sorry he is, and begs me not to make him so angry.... And she'd show us the jewel he'd bought her, to prove how much he really loved her after all. "Roderick never said he was sorry. He would just look at me as if I weren't really there, as if my weeping were some pointless annoyance. So maybe I was lucky; at least I knew the truth." She laughed, an old, brittle echo of the drawing room. "I tried to kill him once."

"Why didn't you do it?" Lucius Perry asked harshly.

"I'm not sure." Teresa walked away from him, across the room. If she was going to speak of these things, she did not want to be held or touched by anyone. "I stood over him with the poker while he slept in a chair by the fire. We'd both been reading there, very quiet and companionable, and Roddy fell asleep. I didn't know, when he woke up, whether he would be-agreeable, or the other way. You never knew with him. I stood there with the poker, knowing I had only a few minutes and that I would have to beat his brains out. And it wasn't that I didn't want to spoil his beauty, although I didn't, really. It was just a-a ridiculous moment of clarity, when I realized that putting an end to his life would ruin mine; that it would be simple now and simple afterwards because it would all be over, but that wasn't what I really wanted. I realized I had another choice, which was much less simple but much more attractive."

She put her hand up against the windowpane, looking out at the empty winter garden. "I knew in that moment that I would leave, that it was only a matter of time. It made the waiting bearable as things got worse. I had it all thought out-what I would take, how I would get out-not where I would go, though; there didn't seem to be anything more important than getting out the door, and I was afraid to tell anyone beforehand. So one day I went upstairs, put some things in a bag, and walked out the door and into a great many complications. But at least I had something I wanted. And I have it still."

He stood waiting, listening.

"They never forgave me, the ones who stayed." Her breath misted the glass. "Ladies who'd wept on my bosom, as I wept on theirs-girls I shared secrets with of how to layer powder so the bruises wouldn't show. They are not the ones who buy my work, or send me flowers left over from their parties. They are the ones who castigate me loudly in public for leaving my poor husband when he needed me most. They are the women who won't receive me in their houses, and turn their heads away when they see me on the street."

"I won't let them hurt you anymore."

She shook her head, smiling mirthlessly. "Now you sound like one of my heroes. Maybe that's why I like you so much."

"Love me," he insisted.

"I may. I probably do. But I've tried that word before, and those feelings, and look where it got me."

"Abjuring love? Real people don't do that. Now you're the one who sounds like someone on a stage.

That's not the real world. Real people follow their hearts, wherever it takes them. Real people refuse to be put into a little tiny box. You can say you love me or you don't love me, it doesn't matter; I know you have forsworn nothing except an existence you found intolerable."

She really did smile this time. "Now you're making me sound like a heroine. Be honest, Lucius. For all that you go on about the real world with its real people, you don't really want to live in it, either."

"I like," he said in a nobleman's lazy drawl, "to have some choice of which world I inhabit, that's all." "Yes. And so do I. Which is why I am perfectly content where I am, and as I am." She went to the table, straightened some brushes there. "Really, I don't know why I made such a scene. I must be spending too much time with the theatre. China is so much more restful. All those nice patterns. I'd better get back to it."

"Well, then," he said.

"Well, then." She kissed him, long and hard. "And you have business of your own to attend to." Teresa buttoned up his jacket. "Go to your card party. Come back when you can."

ISAW HIM COME OUT THE DOOR IN A HOODED CLOAK,old-fashioned and concealing. But I knew who it was. Lord Lucius Perry walked off up the street, and I followed him. He was headed up toward the Hill, and never looked behind him.

The house he stopped at was one of the grand ones, guarded, with a wall. The gates were open, and the house was brightly lit. Not one of his secret visits, then. A party in a noble's house. I thought about following him through the gates, trying to pass as a guest, and then I thought, What for? They wouldn't want me. Nobody did. Alcuin had been right: I was athing, a sword for folk to bet on, a toy for actresses to play with. Even the mysterious Lucius Perry, the duke's pet, the Riverside prostitute, the painter's secret visitor, even Lucius Perry had places he could go, where he could sit and talk and eat and drink like a normal person, but I was nothing.

I stood outside the gate, my velvet cloak drawn tight around me against the cold. It was getting dark.

How was I going to get safely back to Riverside? I'd need to hire a torch. It was a long way, through a bad part of town, and I was tired.

"Out of the way, damn you!"

A chaise carried by two burly men nearly ran me down as they turned into the gate. My heart was pounding with shock and rage, now that they were gone by. But as they came out, I saw they bore no crest and might be for hire.

"Stop," I said hoarsely. "Will you carry me to Riverside?"

"'S a long way. You want four men for that."

"To the Bridge, then, will you do that?"

"Maybe. Cost you. Two in silver-and we'll see your money, first."

I dug in my pocket for the theatre change. Eight coppers and five minnows was all I had left. I remembered the weight of the gold chain I'd just carried, and suddenly I felt hot and angry. I wasn't the duke's messenger boy. If my uncle wanted me to do him favors, let him pay for them. The Duke Tremontaine didn't think about these things? Well then, I would.

"To the duke's house in Riverside," I said. "The steward there will pay you-three silver." He could afford it. "And if you won't take it, I'll find others who will."

They were good chair men; it wasn't too bumpy a ride. But even if it had been, I was too tired to mindmuch. I closed my eyes and saw the stage, the brightly costumed actors trying so hard to be Mangrove and Fabian, Tyrian and Stella for us all, and the men and women crowding around afterwards, with their little swords and roses. I didn't want to think about the crop-haired, trousered Viola, but she was like a sore tooth I just had to poke at. Was I like her? Did I want to be?

The Black Rose had kissed her, and then kissed me. I thought of the way the actress's hair had smelt, how soft it was under my hands, and I felt that warmth again at the cleft of my legs. It wasn't quite as fierce this time, and I remembered that I had, in fact, felt something like it before.

When I was very small, my nurse had caught me sleeping with my blanket ruched up between my legs because it felt nice, the way swinging on a tree branch sometimes did. She said, "Don't you be rubbing yourself there. Do you want to start growing a birdie, like your brothers'?"

When I asked her if she had rubbed their birdies to make them grow, she'd laughed so hard she could barely talk, and then she said, "Indeed I did; and when you're married, you'll rub your husband's to make it grow, oh yes you will."

When I was a little older, the cook's daughter took me to help her feed the fowl in the yard and explained what the rooster was doing to the hens, and how I was to think nothing of it, for every creature on earth did the same. My mother said that wasn't quite true, for men and women weren't like the brute beasts; we had to be married first for it to work.

I'd never thought of all these things at once, never connected each story to the others, and as the chair bumped along, I unraveled and interwove them.

Of course I wasn't growing a birdie now. I shook my head and snorted at my panic in the theatre. I wasn't a baby. Women had pleasure down there. I just hadn't known it could take you so suddenly like that, for no reason.

My grandmother-my mother's mother, and the duke's-had a special chapel in her house. It was because she was Reform, which seemed to mean she believed that everything wrong with the world was because the old kings had been especially evil and done things to displease the gods, and the nobles who overthrew them had been cleansing the land of impurities. She was very pious and always lit candles on the Feast of the Last King's Fall, and told me about our heroic ancestor, who had killed him in a duel.

She tried to get me to be Reform, too, but I was very young when she died, and I hadn't met anyone Reform since then. I thought about the things she'd said that had not quite made sense, and realized that what she'd meant about the kings being so awful was not so much that the kings had not always been married, but that they had gone with other men.

No wonder my uncle wasn't speaking to her when she died.

Was I really like him? Did it run in families, after all?

No. There was no way on earth I would ever take up with someone like the horrible Alcuin, let alone start getting drunk and inviting fifteen naked people into my bedroom. Not on this earth. I was not like that, and never would be. I pulled my cloak tight around me-and shivered at the memory that assailed me, the thing I'd almost managed to forget. Last Night, and the firelight at Highcombe, and the sense that my uncle belonged there, in that small room with me and the master. He belonged there as much as I did, because St Vier loved him the way the old kings were not supposed to love people, and whatever my uncle did with the others, he loved the man at Highcombe almost too much to bear. Well, if I ever loved anyone that much, man or woman, I would never do what he did. I'd been happy at Highcombe; I knew where I was and what I was doing there. And the duke had come and ruined everything, and dragged me back here where I didn't belong. He couldn't stay at Highcombe with the person he loved best in the world, so I couldn't either. He was a selfish crazy pig and I hated him utterly.

I cried then, because it was all so hopeless and I was so lonely and nothing and no one made any sense at all. This city was a terrible place. Look what had happened to Artemisia. When I first came to the city and met her, she had everything I thought I'd wanted, and look where she was now.

I wondered if she had seen the play, and what she would think of it, and what she would think of the Black Rose, and what she would think of me if she knew that Rose had kissed me. In her letters to me, Artemisia signed herselfLady Stella . Did she really think of me as Fabian, the peerless and righteous master swordsman? I was glad I had a sword to defend her; I liked being her champion. But what about the kiss that came after?

Would Artemisia kiss me, too, if I wanted her to? What if I killed Mangrove, and then stood over her and said, "Lady Stella, though your enemies sought your destruction, I have made them my own, and made them pay the price for it," what then?

I would definitely kiss Lady Stella. I wasn't sure about Artemisia, though. She was inclined to be a little silly, and not always reliable.

The chaise set down with a bump. I pulled back the curtain and found we were already at the Riverside house. I hadn't even known we'd crossed the Bridge. The house's torches were burning, and my friend Ralph was one of the guards at the door. I got out of the chaise as grandly as I could (considering my feet were so cold I could no longer feel them), gathering my cloak and my sword about me, and, "Ralph," I said, "please see to it that these men are paid. Three silver, not a minnow more. Oh, and make sure they get something hot to drink. It was a long trip."

I went inside the house. I felt as if I had been gone a hundred years, but it was just past dinnertime (the duke dined early and sometimes, when he got hungry, he dined twice). Betty was in the servants' hall. I went and rousted her, and she took my hat and cloak up to my room with me.

"Feather's ruined," she said. "Good show, then, eh, my lady?"

"It was all right."

"Never mind, we'll get you another. Dinner's past; I'll bring you up a tray."

"Take it to Marcus's room, then; I want to go see how he is."

"Sick is how he is," Betty said firmly, "and Cora is nursing him. But I've been wanting to talk about that," she continued ominously. My heart skipped a beat. Was Marcus sicker than we'd thought? Had his throat turned septic?

I grabbed Betty's hand. "What? What is it?"

"Sit down," she said, and I sat. "Don't be in such a twitter, my lady. You know I've got some experience of the world..."

"What's that to do with Marcus?" "I've made some mistakes, we all have, and I don't want to see you making the same ones." She shook out my cloak, and started unbuttoning my jacket. "There, do you see?"

Not Marcus, then; only her usual rambling about her past. "I'm hungry, Betty; just get my dinner, will you?"

"You're growing," she said. "I'm going to have to start corseting you tighter. It's a pity; I could push them up just so to make the most of what you've got...But it would ruin the line."

"I don't care about the line. Can I have my dressing gown? I want to go see Marcus."

"Now that," she said, "is what I'm talking about. You haven't got a mother, and your uncle doesn't care, but I'm here to tell you that you shouldn't be visiting that boy alone in his room, let alone half-dressed."

"Don't be ridiculous. Anyhow, Cora's there."

"Cora's there and he's too sick to move. But what about afterwards, I ask you?"

"Afterwards what?"

My maid stood over me, shaking her head. "Youmay be the little innocent, but that boy never was-and he's plenty old now to play the fool with you, my lady."

For a moment I wanted to hit her. But then I looked at her red round little pudding face and remembered it was only Betty, after all.

"Don't worry," I said. "Marcus is not like that, and neither am I. We talk, and we play shesh, and anyhow the duke keeps us too busy to get up to anything." I felt a rush of warmth toward her. She might not be much, but she did care about me, in her way. And so did Marcus, of course. It was funny that, when I'd been so miserable in the chaise, I had forgotten all about him.

chapterIX.

THE NEXT TIME IT PLEASED THEDUKETREMONTAINEto attend a meeting of the Council of Lords, he seemed to be the subject of more than usual interest. Whenever there was a lull in the proceedings, people would turn to look at him-pretending to be talking to a neighbor, or checking the procession of the sun out the window, but their heads turned in his direction. What have I done now? he thought. It couldn't be Galing or Davenant, that was old business. Were they only just getting wind of the events of the Rogues' Ball? Surely not. But it was something to do with Katherine. When they met in the hallway outside, Lord Ferris himself remarked pleasantly, "A spirited girl, your young niece. The next time you have business for her in Council, you should bring her with you, though. She's a bit rough around the edges, particularly for a Tremontaine lady."

"Like the former duchess," Alec replied, "my niece professes no interest in politics." He said it automatically, because it was an easy dig at the man who had once been the duchess's lover and political mouthpiece; the rest of his mind was busy wondering what the Crescent was talking about.

"Teach her, then," said Ferris. "It will keep her off the streets, and out of other people's business."

"My niece is quite safe on the streets," the duke said frostily. "I've seen to that."

YOUR NIECE IS PERFECTLY CHARMING," THEBLACKRose told him when she visited him that night in Riverside, in the red velvet chamber. "Is she really your niece?"

"She's really my niece. My sister gave birth to her, a few years back."

"Then you should be more kind to her."

"What?"The duke dropped her leg back on the bed.

"She's very young. The young are hungry, very hungry for all sorts of things, and half the time they don't even know what they are. Doyou know?"

"I'm perfectly kind to her," he said. "I sent her to the theatre, didn't I?"

"Do you even remember when you were her age?" The actress stroked his back with her foot. "You must have been a perfect horror. All arms and legs and rage and nameless lusts."

"That," he purred, "is precisely my point. I'm not having her go through what I went through, or what my sister did, either."

"You're a funny man." Her foot moved down his body. "You don't get this close to many women, but it would never occur to you to ask me what it is a young girl wants."

"I don't care what she wants. I know what's good for her."