Chapter One
December 1819
The Regent Theatre in Covent Garden vibrated with excitement. The Reverend Francis Brody waited in stillness, a rock amidst the churning waters of the impatient crowd. He adjusted his wire reading glasses on his face and scanned the playbill again.Tonight’s performance was a burletta featuring a newly popular leading lady whom he had not met.
Offering pastoral care to the cast of the current comic opera, was part and parcel of Francis’s work as temporary curate of Saint Paul’s Parish, Covent Garden, for his employer, Reverend Randolph. Attending the theatre to see their performances was not, but he found it a good way to better understand their lives by watching them work.
Around him seethed a restless crowd of fashionable young blades and less congenial men. Primed with alcohol and high spirits, the audience waited impatiently for the much-lauded performance of the latest star of the stage—the ‘delectable’ Miss Clarissa Bartlett. The theatre pulsed with a thousand conversations, laughter, and music from its orchestra.
The air of the pit, thick with the smells of perfumes, colognes and sweat, combined with the alcohol-laced breathes of many, assaulted his nose. The heat of myriad candles burning in candelabras sent a trickle of perspiration slithering between his shoulder blades.
Above him, ascended tiers of decorated boxes on three sides of the theatre. They accommodated the more genteel and wealthy patrons, who found the crush of the excitable pit not to their taste. The upper galleries seated the less affluent and only filled halfway through the evening, after the admission price was lowered. High above the audience soared an ornate ceiling.
Francis’s older brother, William, a former cavalry officer whose face had set into harsh lines during long years of war service, stood at his side. William leaned in and shouted something in his ear. The hubbub of more than a thousand voices drowned out his words. Francis shook his head to show he didn’t understand. William shrugged his shoulders and tapped the face of the fob watch in his hand.
Moments later, the orchestra, hidden in its pit before the stage, commenced a rousing overture, demanding the crowd’s attention for the start of the play. Slowly the audience took their seats and quietened in readiness. Francis folded his reading glasses into their case ready to gaze upon the proclaimed beauty.
Newfangled gas lights flared in the wings, illuminating the stage. The curtain rose to reveal a Grecian scene. Francis held his breath.
The narrator stepped forward and recited his spiel as a prelude to the performance. His voice faded away. With a sweep of his arm towards center stage he disappeared into the wing.
And there she was—Miss Clarissa Bartlett.
At the first sight of the young actress, the young bucks in the pit roared with delight and applauded.
Miss Bartlett didn’t disappoint at all, dressed as she was in diaphanous Grecian robes that clung to her lithe limbs. A circlet of gold caught up her fair tresses. Her face was a vision of loveliness to rival the Greek goddess, Aphrodite.
Good lord!Francis’s eyes widened at the sight of her, and his body reacted in a way that he, as a man of the cloth…an engaged gentlemen to boot, would prefer it didn’t. He slipped a finger under his white muslin cravat and tugged it away from the heated skin of his neck. Miss Bartlett was a soul of his parish for whom he had a duty of care. His response was wholly unsuitable!
Francis glanced at William. Even his brother’s grim face had relaxed into admiration. The pit vibrated with tense energy, excitement, and undoubted sexual arousal.
Why did women willingly expose themself to the eyes and appetites of such men as these? It wasn’t the first time Francis has wondered this and he still didn’t have a good answer.
The actresses whom he had asked had laughed in his face and advised him to go preach somewhere else and to leave them to earn their livings in the best way they knew. He despaired they did not seek a better, safer, way of life until it was almost too late and their path had turned to sorrow. Then he offered assistance if they wished it, not condemnation.
The leading lady’s performance quickly met with the audience’s approval. Francis laughed along with the rest of the audience at the comedy. Beside him, William’s rich baritone peeled forth too.
However, as the comic opera progressed Francis became disturbed by the innuendos and ribald comments made by the young bucks around him about the actress on her every appearance on stage. It showed their admiration for her looks, but also a lack of respect for the woman herself.
At the play’s conclusion, cat calls, whistles and hurrahs greeted Miss Bartlett’s repeated curtain calls. What Francis had not expected was to be both entranced by Clarissa Bartlett and affronted on her behalf.
Concern for her safety crept its fingers through his innards. Could these men be trusted to separate the character from the woman in their minds? What she exposed on stage, they might well demand she reveal off stage.
His tightened his grip on the silver handle of his walking stick. He’d come here tonight to gain an understanding about her life—and he feared he now understood all too clearly. Itwasn’t enough to gaze upon the actress, he must meet her in person…speak with her.
Soon, before the evening was over, or he might lose his opportunity to offer her help. What if he was too late or she wouldn’t listen?
Francis nudged William’s hard shoulder, urging him from the pit. He had work to do.
***
Backstage, instead of fighting through the crush of gentlemen making their way towards the green room, Francis forged his way towards the theatre manager’s office.
William hung back and came to a halt in the doorway leading there from the backstage area. “I’ll leave you now. Good luck with your introduction to the delectable Miss Bartlett,” he said, merriment lighting his eyes. “You seem as enamored as all the other men.”
“Just performing my role, William,” he answered, annoyed that his brother had read him so well.
“Of course.” William clapped him on the shoulder, his mouth working to stop the corners of his mouth curving upward.
