At the confirmation that she’d passed first muster, she pressed a hand to her chest and gave a little laugh of relief. “Of course,” she said. “What shall I read next?”
“Why not continue right where we left off? Read Act Five, Scene Two.”
Denys jerked upright, dismayed, but Lola spoke before he could object. “Scene Two?” she echoed, sounding bewildered. “But Bianca has no lines in Scene Two.”
“Just so,” Jacob said, and in his voice there was a hint of amusement Denys could only think was at his expense. “I want you to read for Desdemona.”
Her lips parted in astonishment, and despite his usual rule, Denys felt compelled to intervene. “Jacob, what are you doing?” he muttered. “I thought we decided weeks ago that Arabella Danvers would play Desdemona. We’ve already offered her the part and a place in the company.”
“You think about box office receipts too much, my friend,” Jacob chided him. “But never fear. Arabella will play Desdemona. Still,” he added, raising his voice so that Lola could hear what else he had to say, “I haven’t decided who shall be understudy. I want to determine if Miss Valentine has the necessary skill to take on that role should it become necessary.”
“She doesn’t,” Denys muttered, whether for his own benefit or Jacob’s, he wasn’t quite sure. Either way, the director only chuckled and waved a hand encouragingly in Lola’s direction.
Lola, however, didn’t see his gesture, for she was staring at Denys, waiting, as if expecting him to override his director’s decision, but he had no intention of doing so. Giving her plenty of rope was his only option at this point.
“You seem hesitant, Miss Valentine,” he called to her. “Desdemona is a demanding role, of course, particularly for someone of your limited experience. It would be understandable if you don’t feel you’re ready for it.”
Her chin lifted at once. “I am prepared to take on any role, my lord.”
“Then let’s begin,” Jacob said, putting an end to any more baiting on Denys’s part. “Jimmy, you may start with Othello’s bit about cruel tears.”
Jimmy complied, drawing Lola’s attention, but Denys’s gaze, however, remained fixed on her, and he watched with a hint of dread as she began. Desdemona was one of the most overdone roles in the Shakespearean repertoire, and Lola, as he well knew, had always tended to overdo it. But as she played out the scene, there was no sign of the girl whose performance six years ago had been shredded by every theater critic in London. She displayed none of the awkwardness or overdone theatrics he remembered. Her American accent didn’t seem to matter. Nor did the lack of props, scenery, and costumes. At this moment, not even Denys could doubt that she was Desdemona, the wronged innocent.
Lola, as he well knew, wasn’t innocent, and she certainly wasn’t the wronged party in their past, but in this situation, their past should not matter, only her ability. And as he watched her prove him wrong in that regard, he began to feel a hint of desperation.
She’s always been trouble, he reminded himself. From the moment you met her.
That was irrelevant, and he knew it, and Denys began to fear he’d be saddled with Lola, and all the havoc that came with her, for a long time to come.
She sank to the floorboards, heedless of the hard, unforgiving surface, and Denys watched with a mixture of artistic admiration and personal dismay as she demonstrated the murder of her character.
She reached for the sides behind her prone body, but not, he realized at once, because she needed to read from them. Instead, she slid the sheets of paper over her face, a representation of the pillow Othello had used to suffocate his wife. With her face hidden, the twitching of her body against the floorboards seemed such a convincing display of Desdemona’s death throes that it didn’t matter that Jimmy was still on his feet. It was easy to envision Othello kneeling over her, committing the act of murder.
“My God,” Jacob said beside him.
Denys knew the director well enough to appreciate that those two muttered words were an expression of artistic appreciation, and they deepened the dismay he felt.
Her body stilled. There was a moment of silence, then Jimmy seemed to realize this was his cue and began reading the next lines of the play. Denys, however, kept his gaze on her, waiting with bated breath, knowing what was to come. At last, she moved, demonstrating that Desdemona was not yet dead, and when the improvised murder weapon slid away from her face, he leaned forward in his seat, straining to hear her last lines.
“ ‘Commend me to my kind lord,’ ” she said, her voice soft but pitched to carry perfectly to the very last row of the theater. “ ‘O, farewell.’ ”
She missed her best line, he thought, but then, her head lolled toward the seats, her eyes looked straight into his, and he realized he’d been mistaken.
“ ‘A guiltless death I die,’ ” she rasped, and the words hit him with the impact of a blow to the chest.
She hadn’t forgotten anything. She’d deliberately put Desdemona’s best line at the last, so that she could be looking at him, rather than at her fellow actor, when she made the heroine’s protestation of innocence her own.
He watched as her face relaxed, and her eyes closed, and in the moment of Desdemona’s death, she looked so lovely and so without guilt that he suddenly wanted to believe that last night in Paris had all been some horrible mistake.
But his rational mind knew no mistake was possible. Lola, wearing the sheer, intimate clothing a woman only donned for a lover, moving to sit beside Henry on the settee, her words in the face of his marriage proposal so clear and uncompromising that there had been no room for doubt.
Sorry, but Henry has made me a better offer.
A glimmer of the pain he’d felt that night, pain so long suppressed that he’d almost forgotten it, came roaring back with sudden force, violent enough that he jerked in his seat.
He wanted to tell her to go to hell and take Henry’s absurd notions of partnership with her. He wanted to say that, partner or not, he would never, ever, allow her to gain a part in any play he produced.
But it was too late for that.
He thought you would be fair.
Henry, it seemed, had known him better than he knew himself. Lola had been good today, damn it all, too good to be dismissed when the only reason for it would be that she’d wronged him years ago.
“Well, Denys,” Jacob murmured beside him, sounding far too pleased with himself. “I’m not sure Miss Valentine performed quite as you expected.”
Denys refused to be drawn. “Thank you, Miss Valentine,” he called to her as he gave the man beside him an impatient glance. “You may wait backstage with the others. Next, please?”
He beckoned to the rather reedy-looking young man waiting at the edge of the stage, but he wasn’t able to avoid offering an opinion of Lola’s audition quite as easily as he’d hoped.
“Denys?” Jacob prompted, when he said nothing. “Say something, man. What did you think of Miss Valentine’s performance?”
Denys sighed, grim resignation settling over him.
“I think,” he muttered, studying the seductive sway of Lola’s hips as she walked off the stage, “my life just became much more complicated.”
Chapter 6