“You have made yourself at home, I see.”
Catherine could not help being acidic. He was here on sufferance, solely because she was being blackmailed into doing something she had no wish to do, in order to save her silly brother’s life, and Tom was already behaving like the master of the house.
He must learn—and learn soon—that he could take no liberties with her. Alas, his next words simply went to prove that he had every intention of doing so.
The Beckoning Dream
Paula Marshall
PAULA MARSHALL,
married with three children, has had a varied life. She began her career in a large library and ended it as a senior academic in charge of history in a polytechnic. She has traveled widely, has been a swimming coach and has appeared on University Challenge and Mastermind. She has always wanted to write, and likes her novels to be full of adventure and humor.
Author’s Note to the Reader
This novel, like all of mine, is firmly based on fact, and is dedicated to the memory of Aphra Behn, wit, poet, dramatist, novelist and secret agent, who lived the life of a free woman in the mid-seventeenth century—no mean achievement. It has taken three hundred years for her reputation to be revived and her many talents to be properly appreciated.
One of her greatest achievements as an agent in Holland was to warn the British Government in 1667 that the Dutch Navy was about to launch a major attack on the naval bases of Sheerness and Chatham on the River Medway. Her warning was ignored, as she recorded in her autobiography, and for three hundred years her biographers and critics mocked her for having claimed that, had the Government heeded her report, a major disaster for the British Navy would have been avoided.
Three hundred years later, Aphra’s claim was vindicated when her letter, giving details of the proposed attack, was discovered in the State Papers. In the same way, her right to be seen as the mother of the English novel and as the writer of a number of witty and actable plays was also derided until the Sixties of the present century when her work was looked at with fresh eyes.
Contents
Prologue
“True love is a beckoning dream.” Old saying
Two men from the court of King Charles II at Whitehall sat on the side of the stage of the Duke of York’s Theatre in the early spring of 1667. One of them was short and plump and was wearing a monstrous blackcurled wig. The other was tall and muscular; his wig was blond, and his hooded eyes were blue. Both of them were magnificently dressed and were wearing half-masks so that it was impossible to detect their true identity.
They were watching a play called The Braggart, or, Lackwit in Love, which had just reached the scene where, as the script had it, the following ensued:
Enter to LACKWIT, BELINDA BELLAMOUR, disguised as a youth, one LUCIUS.
LACKWIT Ho, there, sirrah! Art thou Mistress Belinda Bellamour’s boy?
BELINDA Nay, sir.
LACKWIT How “Nay, sir’? What answer is that?
Art thou not but just come from her quarters?
BELINDA Aye, sir, but nay, sir. Aye, sir, I have come from her quarters. Nay, sir, I am not her boy—my mother was of quite a different kidney!
So, aye, sir, nay, sir!
LACKWIT Insolent child! (Makes to strike her with his cane.)
BELINDA (Twisting away.) What is the world coming to when a man may be beaten for speaking the truth!
LACKWIT Man! Man! Thy mother’s milk is still on thy lips!
BELINDA Aye, sir—but it is not Belinda’s!
By now the audience—which was in on the joke of Belinda’s sex—was roaring its approval as Belinda defied Lackwit by jumping about the stage to dodge his cane, showing a fine pair of legs as she did so.
Master Blond Wig drawled at his dark friend, “Now that she has chosen to show them, her legs are better than her breasts—and they, when visible, were sublime. A new star for the stage.”
He took in the pleasing sight that the actress playing Belinda presented to the world in boy’s clothes; lustrous raven hair, deep violet eyes, a kissable mouth and a body to stiffen a man’s desire simply by looking at it!
“Aye,” agreed Black Wig, who was also appreciating Belinda. “And a new playwright, too. The bills proclaim that he is one Will Wagstaffe.”
“Will Wagstaffe!” Blond Wig began to laugh. “You jest, Hal.”
“Nay, Stair, for that is what the playbill saith. And the doxy who affects the boy is none other than Mistress Cleone Dubois, who made a hit, a very hit, as Clarinda in Love’s Last Jest by that same Wagstaffe whilst thou were out of town.”
“Did she so? I do not believe in Will Wagstaffe, and nor should you,” exclaimed Blond Wig. “But I have a mind to play a jest of my own.”
The action of the play had come close to them whilst they spoke, as Belinda and Lackwit sparred. Blond Wig picked a fruit from the basket that the orange girl had left before them, and threw it straight at Belinda, whom nothing daunted, either as Belinda playing a boy on the stage or in her true nature when not an actress. On seeing the orange coming, she caught it neatly and flung it back at Blond Wig as hard as she could.