His assumption that snaring a good marriage prospect and living a life of luxury were what she cared about flicked her on the raw. “If security and luxury and marriage were the only things that mattered to me, I’d have married you.”
He stiffened, telling her she’d just stepped onto thin ice, but when he spoke, his voice was politely stiff. “Quite so.”
“Hell,” she said, regretting her impetuous retort. “I didn’t mean—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he cut her off. “What if we make it twenty-five thousand? Thirty,” he added, when she continued to shake her head.
The ease with which he raised the amount of his offer told her he was prepared to go even higher, but no matter the amount, it remained irrelevant. “Stop, Denys. Please stop. This isn’t about money or what money can buy. It’s about my dream.”
He stared at her, horror dawning in his face. “Oh, God,” he groaned, raking a hand through his hair. “I remember the two of us having this exact same conversation about six years ago.”
“Yes, and A Doll’s House did not change my mind. Despite that failure, I still want to become a respected dramatic actress.”
“I don’t know whether to admire your tenacity or question your sanity.”
“Henry’s legacy gives me a chance to do what I’ve always wanted to do.”
“I fail to see what your aspirations to act have to do with the Imperial or with me.” He folded his arms, looking grimmer than ever. “Perhaps you’d better explain that part.”
The hallway of the Savoy was not where she’d have chosen to discuss it. On the other hand, he was standing still and listening to her. She might not get a better chance than this.
“Henry believed in me. He never doubted that I could act.”
“Good on him. But as far as I know, he never financed an actual play for you, did he?”
“He would have done. Eventually,” she added, feeling defensive all of a sudden. “But he never got the chance.”
“Or he never intended to do so because he had already learned from my mistake, and he was just jollying you along all this time so he could make money off you. Either way,” he went on before she could take issue with his assessment of Henry’s motives, “the fact remains that he didn’t renew your acting career himself. He chose to foist you on me.”
“I’m not being foisted on you! I’m your partner. I’m prepared to assume all the responsibilities that come with that position.”
“Ah, but owning a theater wasn’t your dream. Your dream was about acting.”
“The two things are not mutually exclusive, as you well know. Many actors own or manage their own theaters. Sir Henry Irving, for example, manages and acts at the Lyceum. He directs, too.”
“Sir Henry Irving has the bona fides to back up that sort of hubris.”
“I have bona fides, too, Denys. I have accomplishments. My one-woman show has been a hit for five seasons running.”
“Which is still musical revue. A Doll’s House aside, you have no real acting experience.”
“That’s not true. I’m acting every moment I’m on stage.”
“It’s not the same thing, and you know it. So, what is expected of me, then? Because you’re my partner, I am now required to put you in my plays?”
“Our plays,” she corrected. “And hiring the season’s acting company is not your decision, or mine. It’s the manager’s. And choosing who in the company is cast in each play is up to each play’s director. You relinquished control of all that when you took over for your father.”
“As I said earlier, you are well-informed. And since Jacob Roth is my theater manager, as well as the director of our first play of the season, you are here to butter him up.”
“I wasn’t buttering him up! All right,” she amended, as he gave her a skeptical look, “maybe I was, but so what?”
“You think a few smiles over lunch will gain you a place in the company? Or did you offer him something more?”
Lola bristled. “I am not even going to dignify that with an answer.”
“You needn’t pretend it’s an alien concept to you,” he shot back, his voice tight. “But Jacob won’t play that game. He’d never put a woman who can’t act in one of his plays just because he wants to sleep with her.”
“I didn’t become your lover because of your contacts in theater, and I never used our relationship as leverage for my ambition to act. Never. A Doll’s House might have been a failure, and my poor performance might have been the reason why, but I never asked you to finance that play for me.”
“That’s true,” he admitted, but the bitterness in his voice told her there was no victory for her in the admission. “Putting you in that play was my folly and mine alone. It was also one of the most painful performances I’ve ever witnessed.”
Lola sucked in a sharp breath, surprised by how much it hurt to hear him say that even though she knew it was true. “That was a long time ago.”
“Not so long that I’ve forgotten what happened. Do I need to remind you how all the critics shredded you into spills? How we had to close the play after only a one-week run? How your fellow actors blamed you for bringing the entire play down?”
“All right, you’ve made your point,” she muttered, hating that years of hard work and proved success could not seem to erase her biggest, most spectacular failure. “But it was the first dramatic role I’d ever done, and I’d had no training. Since then—”
“The Imperial is a Shakespearean theater,” he cut in. “Have you any experience in Shakespeare? Any at all?”
She thought of all the time she’d spent studying, all the mornings when, still bone-tired from the previous night’s show, she’d gotten out of bed to attend acting classes, to study with tutors, practicing roles such as Juliet, Lady Macbeth, and Desdemona, reciting passages from Hamlet or The Tempest, until now, she knew the lines of Shakespeare’s greatest heroines by heart. “I have training in Shakespeare, including Othello. I know the role of Desdemona backward and forward—”
“In other words,” he cut in incisively, folding his arms, “you’re a dedicated amateur.”
“I am not an amateur! I have vast experience on stage and a proved record of successful performing. And I’ve spent all my spare time training for dramatic acting. Henry hired tutors, I went to classes. He even worked with me himself. He taught me so much—”
“Yes,” Denys cut in, his voice icy. “I daresay he did.”
Frustration welled up within her, for though Denys was the only man who’d ever backed her in something that didn’t involve using her body in a provocative way, she knew damn well he hadn’t done it because he thought she had talent.
“Considering our prior relationship,” she said coolly, “I don’t think you have room to take the high ground on what Henry did for me, do you?”
He stiffened, demonstrating she’d made her point. “Either way, A Doll’s House was a huge mistake, and I never make the same mistake twice.”
She took a deep breath, reminding herself they were supposed to be on the same side. “Denys, I realize you lost a lot of money—”
“Sod the money. My involvement with you cost me something far more important than money. It cost me the respect of my family, something it’s taken me years to earn back.”
“Having spent over a decade strutting around a stage, displaying my body for men to look at, I think I know a little something about lost respect, too,” she shot back.