Chapter 35

Victoria sat in the wings, her book open in her lap. She kept it open to a clean, crisp page and prepared to make notes about the performance. It seemed unreasonably hot in the theatre, but she knew it was only her nerves.

The patrons had arrived and were seated all around, prepared to watch the play that Charles had called, the most scandalous work ever written by a lady on British soil. He had spoken at length of how daring Victoria's play was, describing it in such favourable terms that Victoria's face warmed with embarrassment.

Her play could not possibly be as good as he implied, even if Charles knew—more than all of them—what made a good play.

Light footsteps sounded behind Victoria, as Loralie joined her. Victoria smiled, taking in the actress' appearance. Her dark hair was pulled back, carefully curled and embellished with silk ribbons. She made a dramatic figure in her red and gold gown, just as Victoria had thought she would.

"Are you ready?" Loralie asked. "It is almost time to begin."

Victoria forced down the lump that rose in her throat. "I am not," she said, "but I do not think I ever shall be. I—I always dreamed of this day, but I do not know what to do now that it has arrived."

Loralie smiled. "By the night's end, you will be an accomplished playwright with her first performance completed and many more to come."

"We hope."

Loralie shook her head. "No hope. It will happen just like I said. Enjoy the show, Victoria."

"Thank you."

Loralie lifted the skirts of her gown and slipped away. On stage, Abigail—dressed in a pale pink gown and representing the goddess of love—raised her arms to the audience. "Oh! Hear the call of true love!" she declared. "You have heard of my goodness, my kindness, and my desirability. You have heard that any lady or lord bereft at love has scarcely any reason to live at all, and yet I imagine that many of you have never been told of the dangers of love."

Margaret stepped onto the stage next, clad in a white gown. "And worse than Love is her cousin Lust!" she declared. "The most dangerous of all voices for a woman to listen to! I fear that my dearest friend Lady Constance is caught firmly in the grasp of both!"

Abigail feigned a gasp. "Woe to the woman who is ensnared by both!"

Victoria glanced around, searching the patrons' faces for any indication of how they were receiving the play's opening lines. They mumbled amongst themselves. One of them laughed. The only woman in the group only pursed her lips.

Victoria took a deep breath. She would drive herself mad if she spent the entire evening trying to discern how the patrons were reacting to her play.

"Hark!" Margaret exclaimed, pressing a hand to her chest. "There is my friend now! Constance!"

Margaret's gesture seemed a little overly dramatic. Victoria made a small note of it. If Margaret were going to continue to make that gesture, she would need a suitably dramatic line.

Loralie appeared in all her scarlet glory. Victoria heard a sharp intake of breath from at least one patron. It seemed as though she was not the only person who was in awe of the dramatic image of Loralie on the stage.

"What a beautiful night!" Loralie exclaimed. "What a magnificent ball!"

Margaret swept to Loralie's side. "My friend!" Margaret exclaimed. "I am pleased to see that you are here tonight."

"And I am pleased to see you! Now, where are those delightful gentlemen?"

Henry and Jonathan, dressed as gentlemen, emerged from behind the curtain spanning the length of the stage.

"Oh!" Loralie exclaimed, making her voice sly and coy. "There are the gentlemen!"

"My friend!" Margaret exclaimed, grasping Loralie's arm. "Oh, do not refer to them like that! It is unbefitting for a lady to be so coy."

Loralie tossed her hair and cast Margaret an amused look. "Get thee to a nunnery, then!"

Victoria's chest felt tight. Loralie was acting so well. She was precisely the bold and seductive actress that best suited a character like Lady Constance. Victoria ought to be pleased, but instead, she thought of her own encounters with Thomas.

In Lady Constance, she saw her own naivety and vulnerability bared for everyone to see. Victoria had thought she was so clever and brazen. She had not paused to think that maybe—just maybe—her presumed cleverness was instead simply her being overly confident.

On stage, Loralie curtsied to Henry, playing the role of Lord Belmont. Victoria averted her gaze and tried to steady her quickened breaths. She had not thought about how painful it might be seeing her own life reflected in the events on stage. That was not something that artists ever talked about, how much it might hurt putting oneself in their art and seeing it performed on stage for everyone to see.

Music began playing as Loralie and Henry shared their first dance. Victoria swallowed hard. Be careful how much you put your pain in your plays, she wrote for herself.

Loralie tossed her head back and laughed. "Oh, Lord Belmont! I will not be as easily charmed as some other women! You can offer me no experience that I have not already had!"

"Is that so?" Henry asked mischievously. "I disagree."

The play continued. Lady Constance and Lord Belmont had their romance despite the warnings of all their friends. Victoria bit her lip. Her heartbeat quickened. She knew how the play ended, and the closer it came to that dreadful conclusion, the tighter the knot that twisted in her chest. She forced herself to focus on her journal and made notes about minor changes she wanted to make to the dialogue.

"But now, we must pause for a moment!" declared Margaret. "For you have seen the beginning of our tragedy! You have seen what happens when love is doomed to fail, but now, I wish to show you what may happen when true love triumphs!"

Victoria started and stared at the stage. She had not written those lines. It would not have surprised her if Charles had added a little dialogue, but Margaret delivered her speech with too much gravitas for those to be idle lines of dialogue. Rather, the delivery made it sound as though Charles had added an entire scene or plot thread into the piece.

"Oh, how cruel is Fate!" a man's voice reverberated through the room, but the speaker, whoever he might be, had not yet taken to the stage.

Victoria furrowed her brow and bit the inside of her cheek. It seemed as if Charles had also added entirely new characters to the play. She supposed that she understood. There were always some changes between a written play and its performance on stage, but these additions seemed substantial enough that Charles really ought to have mentioned them to her before the performance.

"How cruel is Fate that I have lost my love!" the man continued. "Worse, I have lost her to my own folly!"

She knew that voice. Victoria's breath hitched, and she stared with wide eyes as Thomas took the stage. A lump rose in her throat, making it difficult to breathe, much less speak. Her thoughts fell apart like a piece of crystal dropped to an unforgiving floor. Why was he here? What was he doing?

Thomas turned to her and raised a hand, yearning and desperate towards her. "Fair Victoria! My love and my life! I am here to express my errors before everyone in the hopes that, once I am humbled, you might find it in your gentle heart to show a scrap of pity for me!"

Victoria could not string together a coherent thought if her life depended on it. Here was Thomas, without any explanation, revealing their romance to everyone. She seemed to feel everything and nothing all at once.

"You see, gentle lords and ladies," Thomas said, gesturing to the patrons. "When Lady Victoria's father died, he stipulated that I would lose half the business that he built with my father if I did not wed this young lady. At first, I was distraught! That business was the love of my life if love I had! But then, I saw the lady there, just as she is tonight, and watching a performance with such intensity that I found myself enraptured by her. I had found a love that surpassed the one that I felt for my work."

Victoria swallowed hard. She glimpsed movement on stage and noticed Loralie watching her with an encouraging expression. Had this been something that she had arranged?

"And my only wish was that this lady love me as fiercely as I loved her, and I feared that she might wish to marry me only out of some obligation to honour her father's wishes. I did not tell her about the will, and I know that I should have. Instead, I let this lady—the fair Victoria—learn about the will from her wicked stepmother," Thomas said. "Lady Victoria left me, believing herself betrayed. And rightly so!"

Victoria's heart hammered against her ribs. She looked at Loralie, who motioned with her hand for Victoria to join them on the stage. Victoria swallowed hard. This was not how she had imagined the night progressing. Here was Thomas, admitting his folly before everyone. It was theatrical and unexpected and—

And distracting. And special.

Victoria's breath shuddered. At some point, she had climbed to her feet. Her book remained forgotten on the floor.

Thomas stepped towards her, as close as he could while still on the stage. "I beg you; forgive me, Victoria. I know that I acted rashly. I know that I should have told you. I swear that I never meant you any harm, though. I only ever wanted to give you the choice to choose my love. I know that you have no rational reason to choose me, but I beg you not to let your stepmother come between us. Listen to your heart, my Lady, rather than what your head may say."

Thomas fell silent. Victoria heard the distant murmuring of the patrons talking to one another. It was impossible to say whether they assumed this was merely a scene in the play or if they understood that it was an unexpected interruption. Victoria swallowed past the lump in her throat. Loralie caught her gaze yet again and beckoned for Victoria to join them.

Victoria curled her fingers into the skirts of her gown and turned away from the wings. She entered the long corridor, which ran all the way behind the stage. Thomas had come seeking her forgiveness, even though the troupe had turned him away again and again. A warm feeling swept through her. Victoria quickened her pace, nearly running over the familiar carpets and nearer to Thomas.

She emerged on stage and Thomas turned abruptly. His eyes were wide, and his expression hopeful. "Victoria," he said.

Victoria glanced at Loralie, noticing for the first time that Lord Worthington stood beside her. The troupe was all gathered together, lingering at the edges of the stage. They had planned this all together.

"Do what will make you happy," Loralie said, offering a script. "Lord Bedford wrote his own monologue. Now, what you will say is left to you."

The script was an earlier version of her play, open to the pages where Lady Constance and Lord Belmont had confessed their love for one another. Victoria's eyes burned. They had all come together like this, hoping that she would accept Thomas' plea for forgiveness. They were trying to give her the happy ending and the love match she had always dreamed of but often thought impossible.

She curled her fingers tightly around the script. "And if I do not believe him?" she asked, searching Loralie's face. "If I do not want to love him?"

"Then, you do not," Loralie said. "The choice is yours, Victoria. It always has been."

Victoria took a steadying breath and squared her shoulders. As she approached Thomas, she did not try to mimic the charming way that Loralie always behaved. Instead, she was merely Victoria—in love and heartsick and about to make a choice that might very well change the rest of her life.