What! shall I sell my innocence and youth,
For wealth or titles, to perfidious man!
To man, who makes his mirth of our undoing!
The base, profest betrayer of our sex!
Let me grow old in all misfortunes else,
Rather than know the sorrows of Calista!
Nicholas Rowe: The Fair Penitent (1703)
Covent Garden, London—1852
‘No dinners with dukes,’ said Calista firmly as she wriggled out of her costume and stepped into her petticoats, one lacy layer after another. ‘You know my rule.’
‘Please, Calista,’ Mabel entreated from the other side of the painted screen. ‘It’s a private supper party.’
Calista’s fingers trembled as she adjusted the waistband of her top petticoat. She forced herself to keep a steady hand. She’d lost more weight and had to pull it tighter than usual. ‘A private supper is even worse.’
She tossed a light cotton wrapper over her bare shoulders and tied the ruffled edges loosely across her corset. She knew she ought to put on her dress or even a woollen shawl, but her skin was still warm from the glare of the gas footlights.
Mabel’s voice became a whine. ‘I can’t attend if you don’t come with me. It’s at the Coach and Horses, upstairs in one of those dining rooms. I’m longing to see it. Do you intend to keep me apart from Sir Herbert?’
Calista stepped out from behind the screen and sat down at the dressing table, resting her elbows among the pots and jars of creams and powders.
‘Last month you were besotted with a marquis,’ she reminded her friend, who was slouched on the chaise longue in a pink silk dressing gown. ‘Now it’s a baronet. It’s actresses like you who give us all a bad name.’
She softened her reproving words with a smile. Mabel had a good nature, even if she did care more for flirtation than learning her lines.
Mabel giggled. ‘A bad name has turned many an actress into a lady or a duchess.’
Calista sighed. Ever since a flurry of actresses had married into the aristocracy, many young women had come to consider the theatre as no more than a marriage market. It made it very difficult for those who aimed to become the best at their craft, as she did. Gentlemen from the audience hung around by the stage door, making advances, which Calista was forced to fend off, sometimes politely, sometimes by calling the doorkeeper to hasten the men away. The members of the aristocracy, she’d discovered, the more time she’d spent in the theatre, were the worst. They seemed to think they had offstage rights to an actress, in some form of noblesse oblige. A few so-called gentlemen behaved as if she were no more than a lady of the night. Indeed, some seemed to think actresses and courtesans were one and the same thing.
Calista shuddered inwardly. She’d determined to stick to her rule more firmly than ever before since that awful incident that had occurred a few weeks ago. She’d told no one about it, not even Mabel. It still shook her to think of it, but she had to carry on coming here, carry on performing. She had no choice.
‘I know you have your rule, Cally, but perhaps I’ll be doing you a favour if you come to the supper party,’ Mabel wheedled. ‘It’s true my dearest Herbie is only a baronet, but his cousin is a duke with an enormous fortune. Why, he’s the Duke of Albury!’
‘I’ve never heard of him.’
Mabel made a faint moan. ‘He sounds terrifying. Herbie told me to bring along another actress to keep him company tonight. I thought of you immediately. You can cope with anyone.’
Calista picked up a pot of crème celeste, her favourite cold cream. It could remove the thickest powder and paint. She wanted to help Mabel. Beneath her friend’s brazen exterior, Mabel’s heart had been bruised more than once. Still she hesitated. ‘Can’t you ask someone from the chorus?’
‘I could,’ Mabel said doubtfully, ‘but you’re the leading lady. Herbie said the duke is frightfully intelligent and to pick someone who would keep him entertained.’
‘I have no desire to entertain a duke,’ Calista said crisply. ‘He can pay to see my performance, like everyone else.’
‘Please,’ Mabel begged, her blonde curls falling over her dressing gown and her big blue eyes widening in the fashion that had brought her so many admirers. ‘I’m scared to face the duke without you. You’ll know the right things to say. Do come to supper, Cally. Herbie is the man for me. I know it!’
‘I’m sorry, Mabel—’ Calista started. With her finger hovering above the pot, about to daub in the cold cream, she stopped halfway.
The rouge on her cheeks would come away, like her costume, like the part she played. It was always the same after the tumult of applause at the end of a play when the curtain went down. When she curtsied to the audience there was a moment when she came back, when she stopped playing a role and became her own self again. It was the strangest sensation, as though she was dropped back into her body from the flies above the stage. If that feeling ever disappeared she would give up acting, she’d vowed. It was a kind of vainglory to seek applause for Calista Fairmont. The claps and shouts were for the character she created on the stage, the other person she inhabited the moment she stepped out of the wings.
Tonight, she’d played Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. From the first until the final act she became the daughter of a duke, forced to pretend to be a boy and hide in the woods of Arden. It was a role that suited her well, the theatre critics agreed, not merely for her more-than-average height and slim figure, but because of her portrayal of Rosalind’s intelligence and wit. She’d made the role her own.
Yet recently, coming back to herself at the end of the play had felt like a jolt. Tonight in particular she’d experienced a horrid sense of deflation as she had come off stage to become once more Miss Calista Fairmont, with all her troubles. It was as if a dark cloud had edged across the painted backdrop of a perfect blue sky.
In the looking glass, she studied her reflection and saw her fingers now clenching the pot of cold cream. Her hair had been pinned up while she’d played the part of a boy. Laying down the pot, one by one she released the hairpins.
Her black locks rippled over her shoulders, but the curls were limper than they ought to have been. They shone with less gloss than before. Once they had glinted as blue-black as damson plums, or so her father had declared. Columbine had asked if they tasted like plums, too, and their father had picked the girl up in his arms and laughed, declaring that surely his daughters were sweeter than any fruit, his Calista and his Columbine.
Columbine. Her young sister had caught a chill recently and it had given her a high fever. All day she had been red-cheeked, as she had continued to cough and wheeze.
Calista stared again at her own scarlet cheeks. At least the rouge disguised her pallor, and beneath her eyes the dark circles of fatigue were hidden by the layers of powder. If only she could sleep better. Lately all she could do was toss and turn all night. One worry would turn her one way. Then when she flung herself over, yet another would grip her.
Somehow, she must carry on. It might be better to try to keep her spirits high. A supper party would be a diversion from the constant cares that gnawed at her, and Columbine would be asleep at home; her sister and Martha didn’t wait up for her, not any more. In happier days there had been supper by the fire, a chance to talk and to share the play’s successes and failures. But now she walked alone.
Alone.
Her breath squeezed through her lungs. Fear had entered into her body, ever since...
No. She refused to think about it.
She put her hand to her chest and tried to