Netta stood and worked at the gown’s buttons. “I’m tired of this play. Do you think Jarvis will produce a new one soon? It isn’t as though we’re packing the house withThe Merry Wives.”The Burns Theatre was several blocks off The Strand, where the fashionable playhouses were. It catered to the lower middle class, delivering solid entertainment to those who couldn’t afford Covent Garden prices. Netta never had to worry about someone from her past coming to one of her shows, though that didn’t stop her from only taking roles that required heavy face-paint.
Cerise stepped out of the gown, her tawny skin glowing in the lamplight. “He is talking of bringing backHenry V,foolish man. The fees he must pay to perform Shakespeare are cutting into his profits. We should turn to those musical productions like they show at theSans Pareil.”
Netta ignored her friend’s familiar lament. “A different play but I could still play Bardolph.” Netta pulled on her bottom lip. “And he has a death scene in that one. That would be diverting.”
Her friend pulled on a silk wrapper and knotted the belt. “You have never been restless before. What has changed? And where have you been zis past week? I went around to your apartments twice. I even brought those Pomfret cakes you like so much to have with tea.”
“Pomfret cakes?” Netta sighed. She did love those confections. “Well, it couldn’t be helped. I have a new job.”
“At another theatre?”
Netta found her boots and bent to pull them on. “It is an acting job, but not at a theatre.” She contemplated how much to tell her friend. She could already hear the lecture. There were too many variables, too many unknowns to be safe, Cerise would say. Unless she knew every point to the earl’s plan, Cerise would never want her to participate.
And Netta didn’t want to be talked out of it. She had four thousand reasons not to.
She also enjoyed her time toying with the earl. Received a thrill each time he believed her little deceptions.
Liked when his eyes went hooded when she stood just a little too close.
The tips of her breasts tingled. Summerset dressed better than her, styled his hair with more care. He even smelled better. His expensiveeau de Colognewas a scent she looked forward to more than her morning’s chocolate. It was light and peppery and blended so well with the bergamot scent of his soaps that it made her mouth water.
He had the power to give her everything she needed, and an ego to match. He wasn’t the sort of man she should be attracted to, but her body paid no heed to her sensibilities.
Cerise narrowed her eyes. “You gamble too much with your safety,ma cherie. I worry for you.”
Netta kissed both of her friend’s cheeks. “Don’t. Everything is finally going my way.” She slid on her coat and picked up her reticule. “I’ll be by for tea as soon as I can. And save some of the Pomfret cakes for me,” she shouted as she skipped out the door.
On the street, she hailed one of the waiting hackneys. “The corner of Wimpole and Marybone streets, please.”
The driver, a regular for the after-theatre crowd, nodded and set the buggy into motion.
Netta settled back with a contented sigh. She loved this time of night, when she was still basking from her performance and the streets were full of gaiety and evening revelers. She felt like part of the crowd yet still completely anonymous.
She couldn’t say she was glad for her flight from her family, but she never would have experienced the freedom she had now if she still lived under her father’s roof. Being the daughter of a viscount was a stifling affair.
“We’re ‘ere, miss.” The driver pulled the buggy to a stop and turned to look back at her. “Shall I wait for you again?”
“Yes, thank you.” Netta raised her skirts and hopped down. The porch lamp on the third house down Marybone Street remained lit, but the rest of the home was dark. She turned her back on it and strode down Wimpole. Finding the path behind one of the houses that she knew so well, Netta slipped into the yard and made her way to the rear of her own. She and her sister had long ago discovered the small break in the fence, and she crawled under it now.
Shaking out her skirts, she stared at the back of her former home. Even in the moonlight she could see her father still hadn’t painted the rear of the house. The front façade he meticulously maintained, but the back was left to peel and rot.
She hiked her reticule high up her arm and applied herself to the ivy-covered trellis by the back porch. The ropey green vines gave her make-shift ladder a strength the thin wood did not, and in no time she was scuttling onto the roof of the porch and crawling towards one of the windows. She slid up the pane and slithered inside.
The small figure in the bed shifted but otherwise made no sound.
Netta smiled. She always was a heavy-sleeper. Tiptoeing to her sister, she lay next to her and brushed a hank of hair from the girl’s face. “Eleanor,” she whispered. “Wake up, sleepyhead.”
Eleanor swatted at her face and wiggled her nose, but her eyes remained stubbornly closed.
Netta picked up one of her sister’s curls, only a few shades darker than her own, and teased her sister’s nose with it. “Oh my Lord,” she whispered. “What a huge spider!”
Eleanor shot straight up, and Netta pressed a hand over the girl’s mouth as silent laughter shook her body. “It was only a jest, you goose. But, oh, you should have seen your face.”
Eleanor narrowed her eyes and pulled Netta’s hand off her mouth. “It wasn’t amusing.”
“It was to me.” Netta rolled back and stared up at her sister. She tried to visit a couple times a month, but every time she saw her now, a new change appeared. Eleanor was at that precarious stage in life, no longer a girl but not quite a woman. Her face seemed thinner than it had Netta’s last visit, and she mourned the loss of the child her sister had been.
“Stop growing,” she told Eleanor. “Or soon our ruse won’t work.”
