Chapter One
Lisbon Theater
London, England
December 1854
“Touch me and risk your death!” Lillian snarled, raising a carved blade above her head. “I loathe the day I attempted to heal your heart, for it is clear that you’ve none to heal. Only a black, cold lump of charcoal resides in your chest and I shall not–bloody hell.Line!”
“I shall not risk smearing my own with soot,” a voice whispered urgently from behind the burgundy curtain at the edge of a long, oval shaped wooden stage.
Lillian cast her gaze toward the massive chandelier that hung directly over her head. Half of the candles were out, their wicks worn down to useless nubs. The other half were doing a pitiful job at illuminating the theater. Even as she watched, another sputtered and died with nary a whimper.
Taking a deep breath, she forced herself to refocus on the task at hand. There was no use worrying about adequate lighting if she couldn’t remember her lines. Then again, people weren’t going to pay for her to recite them in the dark. Her voice was good–a velvet, husky timbre that she could deepen on command–but it wasn’tthatgood. It was her face they really came to see. And if they couldn’t do that…
“I shall not risk sullying my own with soot,” she snapped.
“Smearing,” said the voice from the wings.
Lillian took a deep breath as her arm holding the blade–its edge dulled for safety–began to tremble. Memorization was not something she ordinarily struggled with. While the other actors in their small company spent hours poring over theirscripts, her mind had a way of imprinting her lines so that they flowed from her tongue without her even having to think about them. But today was different. Today her tongue felt heavy and cumbersome.
“Smearing. I shall not risk smearing my own with soot and…oh, bollocks.” Letting her arm drop on a sigh of defeat, she gave her fellow actress, a slim brunette with her hair chopped short to resemble the man she was pretending to be, an apologetic grimace. “I’m sorry, Emma. Can you rehearse your act three scene with Marjorie and we’ll pick this up later? There’s something I have to do in my office.”
Emma shrugged. “Not a problem. Oi, Marjorie! You’re up.”
A middle-aged woman, short and stout and perfectly suited to play a variety of wise matronly characters, hustled up the stage steps while Lillian leapt nimbly off the edge and strode through the audience seats, trying not to notice how threadbare they’d become. Or how too many of them had begun to collect dust from sitting empty.
The sad truth of it was, she reflected as she entered her office, a cramped closet tucked away beside the larger room they used for costumes and handmade props, the Lisbon Theater hadn’t turned a profit in nearly two years. Not since the larger, flashier, and far more popular Canterbury Music Hall had opened up just four blocks away.
Shiny and new, it offered a brand new experience for its devoted audience of hundreds. One where they could enjoy food, drink, and dancing along with the show. It also had the benefit of two wealthy, influential benefactors: the Earl of Yardley and his unmarried son, Lord Markham. Whentheywere in attendance, the line stretched out the doors and all the way down the street to the front of the Lisbon Theater…rubbing Lillian’s nose in the fact while she was struggling to fill half her seats, the music hall was struggling to fit all of its patrons inside.
Slumping into her chair, she tipped forward and let her head hit her desk with a dullthud, the sound of her skull striking wood muffled by the stack of bills and unpaid notes that had been piling up since spring.
In less than a month, it would be Christmas. And when the New Year came to pass, she would either remain the owner of a miserably failing business, responsible for all of those who relied on it for their livelihood…or she’d be forced to sell the only thing of consequence that her father had left her when he’d died.
Sir Harold Snow had been a good man and a wonderful father that had made the great mistake of falling in love with the wrong woman. In his own words, always spoken with a certain gruffness, Lillian’s mother had dazzled him from the first moment he saw her on stage. An opera singer of some note, Esmerelda had sung her way straight into his heart. When their affair had resulted in a baby, she’d briefly auditioned for the part of a doting mother and wife. Butherheart had belonged to the stage, and before Lillian was a year old she returned to it, never to be seen or heard from again.
Lillian did not miss her mother. You couldn’t miss what you had never known beside a portrait of a blue-eyed, blonde-haired woman with a coy smile that had hung in her father’s study until the day he died. During those rare moments when she thought of Esmeralda, it was always with a vague, distant sort of annoyance that she had been born from a woman who had been the careless cause of so much hurt.
“Come in,” she said when a light knock sounded at the door. Lifting her head, she managed a half-hearted smile for Marjorie when the older actress squeezed into the study. “Is rehearsal over already?”
“We’re getting dinner at Blue Pig,” said Marjorie, referring to the acting troupe’s favorite pub right around the corner. As ramshackle and run-down as the theater, it was the onlyestablishment they could afford and was a regular haunt for any manner of local performers. “Then returning to run a few more lines. Ye should come with us, dear. Have ye eaten anything today?”
“I’m not hungry,” Lillian replied automatically, although her stomach would have begged to differ. The truth was she didn’t havetimeto eat. This morning she’d met with her father’s solicitor, a weasel-faced man that had made her head spin with fancy tallies of figures and numbers that had revealed what she already knew: she hadn’t any money. Then it was off to the dressmaker where she’d begged and bartered her way into three more gowns for their upcoming production, the wigmaker, and finally meetings with not one, not two, but three potential benefactors for the theater that had all immediately declined except for the last.
“I would love to show my support for your cause,” Lady Wimple had proclaimed, stroking the glowering head of the enormous white cat perched on the middle of her lap.
“You–you would?” Lillian had been so caught off guard she’d nearly dropped her teacup.
“But of course. I have long been an advocate of the arts. And a woman-owned company? What a delight. Things aren’t like they used to be, are they? No, no they’re not. Just tell me what you need, and I shall endeavor to provide it.”
“I’d say our most pressing need is better lighting,” she’d said eagerly. “This production in particular–”
“When would I have the opportunity to introduce my granddaughter to Lord Markham?” Lady Wimple had interrupted. “We’re free tomorrow at noon.”
And with that, Lillian’s empty stomach had dropped like a stone. “I am here on behalf of the Lisbon Theater. Not the Canterbury Music Hall. I believe you may have the two confused.”
“Lisbon Theater?” Lady Wimple had replied, looking mystified as her cat had released a disdainful hiss. “Never heard of it. Is Lord Markham involved?”
