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  Richmond bustled up with his memorandum book to say that he'd devised an elaborate system of ticketing to ensure that the audience of 125 would be truly select. 'The last thing I want is for dubious types to worm their way in and spoil the atmosphere.'

  Derby caught Mrs Damer's eye. Really, their host could be laughably pompous, like his whole Tory tribe. This was meant to be a comedy, not one of the military fortifications Richmond spent his days fretting over.

  Each actress was to have twelve tickets to give away. 'It's rather unfair,' Derby murmured in Eliza's ear, 'that we actors only get six each. Have gentlemen only half as many friends?'

  'Count yourself lucky,' said Eliza with a smirk. 'Lady Mary's first thought was that the whole business should be left in the capable hands of the ladies.'

  The Duchess of Richmond came up just then and pressed a ticket into Eliza's hand. Tor your mother, my dear. Unless you need any more?'

  'No, no.'

  When Lady Mary had gone Derby asked softly, 'Wouldn't you have liked to invite some of your colleagues from Drury Lane?'

  'No,' she said after a moment, 'best not.'

  He supposed she was right. If she was going to enter these elevated circles she'd move more freely alone.

  Mr Downman—another loan from Drury Lane—came in with the seven portraits commissioned for the scene of Mrs Lovemore's drawing room: Mrs Damer and Lady Mary, Mrs Siddons, the Devonshire House ladies (Georgiana, her sister Lady Duncannon and Lady Bess Foster) and Eliza herself. Seven was an awkward number to arrange, it soon became clear. 'What would you say, Miss Farren,' the painter suggested, 'if your own picture were leaning casually against a chair, as if it had been just brought home and not yet hung?'

  'What a perfect symbol,' cried Mrs Damer.

  'Of what?' asked Mrs Hobart, who clearly resented hot being on the wall among the other eminences.

  'Why, of Miss Farren's being such a...'

  Outsider? thought Derby, stiffening. Interloper?

  '...very new friend of ours,' said Mrs Damer with a grin.

  Sir Harry puffed in just then, with a still-damp print of a caricature published that morning, called The Way to Keep Him as Performed at the Richmond Theatre. The Players all crowded round. The engraving showed the Richmonds watching a rehearsal from a theatre box with a crossed-cannons crest (a nod to Richmond's job). 'I look like a spider,' the Duke lamented.

  'And I like some vast barrel of brandy,' said Mrs Hobart with an unconvincing titter.

  'But I've no face, I'm all wig,' complained Dick Edgcumbe.

  'Every one of us looks equally dreadful,' Mrs Damer assured him.

  'No, Mrs Damer,' said Mrs Hobart coldly, 'you and your sister are fairly drawn, except that your hair and muffs are shown triple size.'

  Derby, peering over her shoulder, let out a guffaw. 'Come, I think I win the prize.'

  'It's true, man,' said Sir Harry, his eyes watering with laughter, 'you're shown half the size of Mrs Damer—'

  'A third, a quarter! With the dour face of an elderly baby. I could be put on show at a fair. Oh, I must add a copy of this masterpiece to my portfolio.' Over the years since he'd met Eliza he'd built up quite a collection of prints called things like Darby and Joan, or Miss Tittup and Lord Doodle.

  'You collect caricatures?' Mrs Damer asked him.

  'Only of myself and my friends,' Derby told her. 'I like to know what's being invented about us.'

  'How odd,' she said.

  'You think it an unwholesome habit?'

  'Rather,' said Mrs Damer with a little shudder. 'I prefer to close my eyes and ears to such stuff.'

  'Miss Farren? Do you concur?'

  Eliza's face was uneasy; she hadn't known about his collection either. 'Perhaps your sex take these attacks more lightly than ours can afford to do.'

  Lady Mary struck a pose and obliged with the famous prologue to the School for Scandal.

  So strong, so swift, the monster there's no gagging:

  Cut Scandal's head off, still the tongue is wagging.

  'But as a true Whig,' said Derby, 'I should hardly object to the famous freedom of our British press, should I? I always feel that what one laughs off can't hurt one and any man desperate enough to earn a shilling by that trade, at my expense, is welcome to it.'

  ***

  DERBY ALWAYS went to Brooks's if he had nothing better to do; he only tried Boodle's if he was looking for sportsmen. (He was a member of White's too, by virtue of his name, but he never went there any more, since it'd become such a Tory stronghold.) He greeted a few old acquaintances as he passed through the gambling rooms; he nodded warmly at Fox, who was deep in a game of faro, elbows planted on the edge of the glossy painted table. 'Derby,' muttered Fox, looking up with red-rimmed eyes. He took off the hat he wore to blinker himself when at play and scratched his rat's nest of greasy hair.

  'How's the game?'

  Fox sucked air through his teeth. 'Fast and furious. I've been here since noon and my bum is sore. I'll paroli for quinze et le va,' he called out to the dealer.

  The frail, lanky Duke of Bedford, with his tangled waterfall of black hair, was staring down too intensely to notice Derby, who wished he knew the boy well enough to lend him his hairdresser and recommend a tailor, perhaps; how curious that one of the fabulously wealthy Bedfords of Woburn Abbey should wear such a shabby cloth coat. Young Whigs today seemed to think that dressing like stable boys proved their freedom of thought.

  Derby watched Fox lose on three cards in a row, then patted his shoulder and left the room. He'd always thought faro a nonsense; the odds in favour of the banker were second only to the demon roulette. Really, his friend's love of gaming bordered on tragic. Fox had been deep in debt since he was sixteen, and if he ever by some disaster lost his seat in the House and the immunity it gave him, his creditors would clap him in gaol.

  The fireside chairs in the coffee room were the best thing about Brooks's; they were more like beds, with writing desks, lights and padded footstools all attached. Derby leafed through the newspapers, trying to ignore the nervousness that gripped his stomach whenever he thought of going on stage at Richmond House, three nights from now.

  Sheridan dropped into the chair beside him and helped himself to Derby's bottle of brandy. He was ranting about Wilberforce's Royal Proclamation against Vices. 'I told him we'll never bring in abolition or parliamentary reform as long as we dissipate our energy on moralistic trivia. A crusade to make beggars give up bear baiting and observe the Sabbath—Christ!' Sheridan gripped his glass. The skin round his eyes was heavy and dark.

  'I don't care if my tenants at Knowsley go to church,' said Derby, 'if only they'd pay their rent every quarter without whining.' After a minute he said, 'You're looking worn out.'

  Sheridan smirked. 'Blame Mrs Crewe.'

  'Ah, yes, she's one of the most hospitable of our Party's hostesses, I hear.'

  'Not to everyone, my friend!'

  Derby wagged his finger at him. 'I'm not surprised you succumb to temptation, Sherry, but I do marvel at your apparent indifference to the dazzling charms of your own wife, on whom you haven't sired a child for the past dozen years! May I just point out that were I privileged to share the bed of that nonpareil, Mrs Eliza Sheridan, I doubt I'd ever leave it?'

  Sheridan's cheeks flushed purple. 'May I just suggest that when you know nothing about a subject you should shut your mouth.'

  Derby gulped some brandy. This from a man whose conversation frequently plumbed the depths of vulgarity?

  Sheridan spoke very low in his throat. 'I haven't shared that bed since Tom was born because my wife came within an inch of dying. She offers but I mustn't, I can't. The doctor said, "Keep your hands off her, because every time you touch her, you drive a nail in her coffin.'"

  'My dear Sherry.' Derby licked brandy off his lips. 'A thousand apologies; I had no idea.'

  A nod. 'So where were you during today's debt debate?'

  That was an unnerving habit of Sheridan's; he cou
ld change topic and mood in a blink. 'Ah, rehearsal, as it happens,' said Derby, defensive. The fact was, he had mixed feelings about Parliament settling the Prince's debts, which had run up to £300,000; just think how many roads and canals could be built for that vast sum.

  Sheridan lowered his voice. 'Well, it was a fiasco. Some pawn of Pitt's from Devonshire drops a heavy hint about constitutional dangers if the Prince were hypothetically to wed a twice-widowed Catholic lady—naming no names, but he might as well have said Maria Fitzherbert—then he bleats on about the Royal Marriages Act giving the King sole power to arrange his children's matches, the Act of Settlement reserving the throne for Protestants, blah blah blah. So our bushy-tailed Fox leaps up and says'—Sheridan put on a valiant voice—'"I am at a loss to imagine what species of Party could have fabricated so base and scandalous an insinuation.'"

  Derby grinned at the mimicry.

  'Then Fox splutters—listen to this, Derby—and he claims to be speaking on Prinny's authority; he says of the hypothetical wedding, "The thing not only never could have happened legally, but never did happen in any way whatsoever.'"

  'Very firm hair-splitting. Well, there wasn't any such wedding, was there?' added Derby after a minute.

  Sheridan scratched the skin round his nose. It was red and raging, as always in times of strain.

  'Oh, Sherry.' Derby drank more brandy. 'Tell me there wasn't a wedding. The Widow Fitz is only Prinny's mistress, surely? He may be a wild fellow but he's not stupid; he'd never have—he wouldn't do something that would debar him from the throne.'

  'What's a wedding?' muttered Sheridan with a small shrug. If it's not legal, because of the various Acts aforementioned, is it a true wedding? Can anything really be said to have taken place, December before last, in the lady's house in Park Street?'

  Derby dropped his face into his hands. When he looked up, Sheridan was drinking deep. 'Did you know at the time?'

  'None of us knew except Georgiana, damn her. What kind of loyalty to the Party d'you call that? She claims to have been ever so miz about it, but she gave them her own ring, because Prinny had tried to run himself through with his sword!'

  The heir to the throne threatened suicide at least once a year. 'When did you guess, then?'

  'Oh, I can't tell. We all believed what we wanted to believe,' said Sheridan through his teeth. 'Now I've got Mrs Fitz on my back like some harpy, wanting to know how I could stand to hear Fox deny her wedding in the Commons and imply she's a whore. I've got Fox running to me, tears in his eyes, to say Mrs Fitz's uncle came up to him in this very club this afternoon and broke it to him that he'd been misinformed. How could I have kept it from him, how could our good-hearted Prince have betrayed him so? But the point is, Derby, you know as well as I do, our Party needs Prinny, because Old George hates our guts. The only way the Foxites are ever going to get into government is when our fat young friend succeeds to the throne of England and kicks Pitt off the top step.'

  His voice had risen. Derby glanced around. Brooks's was a Whig haven, yes, but to speculate about the death of the King was to go rather far.

  'So what I'm saying,' Sheridan snarled, 'is that marriage or no marriage, Prinny's our man and we stand or fall with him. He can wed a five-year-old Eskimo for all I care; he can fuck a vixen. No offence to the Widow Fitz,' he added almost normally. 'She's a lady above criticism, as I shall explain to my fellow Honourable Members.'

  He was reaching for the bottle, but Derby held on to it. 'You won't spell it out that they're married.'

  'Of course not. I'll spell nothing out, not even my own name; I'll be the tongue-twisting Jesuit the papers call me. Prinny says I have to defend Mrs Fitz's honour somehow, without losing him the throne.'

  'That'll take quite a speech.'

  'Luckily I write well with a knife to my throat,' said Sheridan, draining his glass and standing up.

  It was true; he'd only finished one of his plays when Tom King had locked him in a room overnight. 'When's the vote on paying Prinny's debts?' asked Derby.

  'Thursday.'

  'Oh, but that's the night of our performance at Richmond House.'

  Sheridan rolled his eyes. Derby could tell he was thinking: a damned play and not even a real one. 'We commoners will just have to manage without you, My Lord.'

  'No, what I mean is it might be the perfect pretext for a delay. Pitt and Fox are both on the guest list—as are you. Why don't I get Richmond to propose to the PM that the House should adjourn till next week, to allow everyone to attend our performance?'

  'Which would give me and my pen another few days.'

  'Exactly.'

  Sheridan grinned. 'So the Smith-Stanley brains have survived a millennium of inbreeding.'

  Over the years, Derby had learned never to gratify Sheridan by showing shock at an outrageous remark. 'You're too kind.'

  'Oh,' Sheridan remarked over his shoulder, as he left, 'I see you're in the World.'

  What an odd remark; Derby would have gone after him to ask what he meant, except these comfortable chairs were so difficult to get out of. In the World? Of course he was; he'd been born into it.

  Only half an hour later, when he was idly trawling through a piece on the balance of trade in the Gentleman's Magazine, did Derby hear Sheridan's phrase in his ears again. He clicked his fingers for a footman. On the fifth page of The World he found himself in a column headed THEATRICAL INTELLIGENCE.

  Some say Lord D—y acts the part of an unhappy husband so vastly well at R-ch—d H—se because of his own marital Estrangement.

  Derby folded the paper and read on.

  When the unhappy Countess of D—y was recently lying on her sickbedit was whispered that the Earl in question made anxious enquiries every day and many believe that but for pride's sake he would grant her pardon for her criminal Elopement nine years ago with the Duke of D-rs-t. Her lovely Contrition may yet prove THE WAY TO KEEP HIM.

  Derby found his fingers closed round the crumpled page. His throat was locked. How dare these money-grubbing journalists? He would have preferred to see himself linked in print with any female in Britain rather than his own wife. What if Eliza saw this item? Someone would be sure to show her. Please God she wouldn't believe it.

  Contrition, my arse! Self-pity, that was as much as Betty could manage and it had no hold on him any more. In the privacy of his own head Derby could admit that he wished above all things that he were free. He'd had his chance when Lady Derby had run away from Knowsley, but he'd gone no further than a private separation. An Act of Divorce in the Lords would have been slow, costly and a source of great satire in the press, but by now it would have been long over. Other members of the World survived such exposure, didn't they, and no one thought the worse of them for it nowadays? Why had Derby, at twenty-five, been so rigid in the ways of his ancestors, so convinced that the best thing to do with this marital humiliation was to bury it in silence? The years had rolled by and it was too late; if he suddenly sued the Duke of Dorset for criminal conversation with a consumptive invalid he'd be laughed out of court.

  By now Derby could have been a single man again. Which meant that at any time in the last six years, say, he could have taken his freedom and thrown it at Eliza's slim feet. He could have knelt and said—

  No, don't think of it.

  He wouldn't care what mockery it earned him; he'd be more than willing to defy his forebears for her sake. This time, if only he were free, he wouldn't let discretion or reserve be his guide. If Eliza would be his on no other terms but marriage then, by God, he would get down on his knees—

  Stop. You've no right to think of it.

  Derby lay there in his chair, looking into the flames, his throat burning.

  ***

  THE NINETEENTH of April came at last and the World was arriving at Richmond House. Eliza stood in the wings and peered across the small dark stage, tried to think whether there was anything she'd forgotten. She could hear the band of musicians tuning up; Richmond had drafted them i
n from his own Sussex Militia, impressive but hot in their scarlet uniforms. (Apparently they weren't happy about their drink rations.) 'Such a delightful occasion,' a female voice in the audience carolled. 'All the fun of theatre without the squalor.'

  Eliza listened hard.

  'I couldn't agree more,' said a man. 'I rarely go to Drury Lane any more and Covent Garden is just as noisome. It takes an hour for one's carriage to get through the traffic and then one has to squeeze through the sweaty mob in the corridors. I lost my mother one night, not to mention my left shoe!'

  A little rain of bright laughter. They're in a good mood, they'll be indulgent, Eliza thought. They'll need to be.

  'Who's there?' Mrs Damer stood at her shoulder in her Act One costume, embroidered gauze on white festooned silk, with wheat-sheaves of diamonds in her hair and a girdle of diamond stars. 'My mother's,' she said a little sheepishly, seeing Eliza's eyes on the jewellery. Eliza herself was wearing a simple Indian muslin tonight, to distinguish herself from the Players. Mrs Damer put her face to the crack in the curtains. 'I see the Cumberlands—'

  'What, the playwright?' asked Eliza.

  Mrs Damer laughed. 'No, I ought to have said the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland.'

  No, I ought to have understood it, thought Eliza.

  'Here's Mrs Garrick, the Sheridans—I campaigned for the Foxites with Mrs Sheridan once, she's such a beauty, still—'

  'Never mind her beauty,' said Eliza, 'it was her voice that was spectacular.'

  Mrs Damer nodded. 'Such a shame that he made her retire from singing when they married. As if there were anything shamefill about a woman using her God-given genius! Oh, so many people,' she wailed. 'Good, Walpole's been given a seat at the front. Though I mustn't meet his eye; he'll put me off.'

  'Are you a trifle nervous?'

  The eyes turned towards her were huge and dark.

  'Don't think of that last rehearsal; one can't judge a performance till it's on the boards.'

  'I am frightened, horribly so,' admitted Mrs Damer. 'And the French lady's arrival only makes me worse.'