No Mistress of Mine

Chapter 15

Denys did not want to be the one answering questions, especially not the question she’d just asked him. But he also knew trust and truth had to run both ways. “My initial motive was lust, yes,” he admitted. “But,” he hastened to add, hoping to soften the rather callous motives he’d possessed at the time, “it’s not that I didn’t think you had talent.”

She gave him a rueful look. “What you mean is that you didn’t think about my talent, or lack of it, at all.”

He gave a sigh. “No, I didn’t. Truth be told, I didn’t care. I wanted you, and I would have done anything to have you. That’s a . . .” He paused, swallowing hard. “That’s a rather frightening thing, when I think about it.”

“I’m sorry the play was such a disaster. I wish I’d been better.”

“That’s not your fault. You weren’t ready for the part. How could you be, with no preparation and no training? I suppose I knew, deep down, that you weren’t ready to take it on, but as I said, I didn’t dwell on it. I wanted you with me here in London, but every time I voiced the idea, you laughed and shrugged it off and said something about how a girl has to eat or how you weren’t about to risk losing a good place. In the end, it seemed the only way to get you to come to London was to toss what you wanted most right into your lap.”

“That wasn’t what I wanted most,” she objected, then bit her lip, as if regretting her words.

“No?” He shouldn’t ask, he told himself. He shouldn’t open old wounds this way. “What did you want?”

“You,” she said simply. “But I didn’t want to be your mistress.”

He would have liked to say that wasn’t what he’d been offering, that his intentions had been honorable from the start.

He slid his gaze away.

“You said the other night that I’m cynical,” she went on in the wake of his silence. “And maybe I am. My life before I met you wasn’t the sort that would make any girl believe in fairy tales. But when you came along, and I kept saying no, and you kept coming back, I started to think for the first time that maybe fairy tales could happen in real life. You told me you’d gotten me an audition for a play in London, and later, when I actually got the part, it seemed as if everything I’d ever wanted was being handed to me on a silver platter.” She paused and cleared her throat. “Denys, when I came to that audition, it was already a foregone conclusion I’d get the part, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” The admission felt torn out of him, those old wounds opening up.

“Looking back, I wonder that I didn’t see that at the time,” she said musingly. “It seems so obvious now. And it wasn’t as if I was some naïve innocent girl back then.” She shook her head as if in disbelief at her own lack of perspicacity. “It’s amazing how blind you can be when you’re happy. I’d begun to believe that you were my knight in shining armor, you see. That you’d love me and marry me, and I’d be a great and successful actress, and we’d live happily ever after. But life . . . isn’t like that.”

Denys shut his eyes. A couple of weeks ago, everything about their past had seemed so straightforward. In his version of events, she’d always been the one who’d wronged him. Many times, particularly right after her departure, he’d asked himself why she’d left him for Henry, but never had he been able to set aside his sense of betrayal, his broken heart, and his wounded pride long enough to see things from her side, or to admit that he had a great deal of culpability, too. Until now.

He opened his eyes, forcing a laugh. “I begin to appreciate why you don’t like talking about yourself. In doing so, the truth about oneself is laid bare, isn’t it? And it isn’t always a pretty picture. I was no knight in shining armor, Lola.”

He met her eyes across the table. “The truth is, the notion of marrying you never entered my head until after you’d returned to Paris. Only then, when I realized I was losing you, did I decide to propose marriage. You said the other night that I didn’t love you, and I can see now why you felt that way because even though I’d told you many times how much I was in love with you, that I was mad for you, that I couldn’t eat or sleep for wanting you, even I didn’t realize until you’d gone back to Paris that I loved you enough to marry you.”

He took a deep breath. “So, all those months and months I was pursing you, while you were thinking me some kind of heroic figure, my true intentions were actually quite unsavory.”

“Hmm.” She ate the rest of her sandwich, studying him as she did so, and he had no idea what she was thinking. But after a minute or two, she shook her head. “No, Denys,” she said. “It won’t work.”

He frowned, puzzled by this enigmatic reply. “What won’t work?”

“This attempt to paint yourself as some sort of cad. Sorry, but I don’t believe it. I never have, and I never will. So, to quote your own words back at you, put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

He smiled. “A fitting analogy, isn’t it? I think we are only now, tonight, truly smoking that peace pipe.”

She smiled back, a tentative smile. “I think you might be right,” she said, and lifted her bottle of beer. “To partnership?”

He lifted his own bottle and clinked it against hers. “To partnership.”

Their eyes met as they drank, and his mind went back to the first night they’d ever dined together. He didn’t know why. Other than sharing a meal, that night had little in common with this one. It had been one of the finest restaurants in Paris, not a picnic dinner of sandwiches. They’d drunk wine, not beer. And he’d spent most of the evening trying to figure out how he was going to seduce a girl who danced like she was made for sin but who wouldn’t let him even step past her dressing-room door.

“Speaking of partnership . . .”

Her voice drew him out of the past, reminding him this wasn’t Paris, he wasn’t that wild man about town anymore, and seducing her wasn’t his priority nowadays. Hell, it wasn’t even on the table.

He took a deep breath. “Yes?”

“I know we’ve decided that it’s not necessary to make an announcement of our partnership to the acting company, but I wonder if you could make a different one.”

“What’s that?”

“Maybe suggest that certain members of the company keep their interruptions of their fellow actors during rehearsal to a minimum?”

He grinned. “So I should take your side against Mrs. Danvers? Is that what you really want me to do, partner?”

“Oh, I suppose not, when you put it like that. But the woman is so damned irritating.”

“What do I care?” He deliberately widened his grin. “I’m not the one who has to work with her.”

She sniffed. “That’s rather a selfish attitude, partner.”

“I don’t know why you need me anyway. Turn your charm on her, and she’ll come around.”

She gave him a wry look as she leaned across the table and tossed her empty bottle and the paper from her sandwich into the picnic basket. “As much as I appreciate your faith in my ability to be charming, in this case, it’s wasted. I couldn’t charm Arabella if I waved the part of Lady Macbeth and a thousand pounds under her nose.”

“You underestimate yourself.” He laughed. “I don’t know how I ever managed to gain the upper hand with you at all, honestly.”

“Because you’re so nice. I told you, that’s always been my weakness.”

“Nice, am I?” He studied her, remembering some of her other weaknesses—the way her knees would buckle whenever he kissed her ear, and the long, slow caresses that melted away her resistance, and he didn’t feel nice at all.

She must have sensed what was passing through his mind. “I should be going,” she said abruptly, and jerked to her feet. “It’s late.”

“Of course.” He forced naughty thoughts away, stood up, and reached for the picnic basket, then gestured to the doorway. “I’ll walk with you.”

“We never did talk about my proposal,” she remarked as she waited for him in the corridor, and he turned off the gas jets in the rehearsal hall.

“No, we didn’t.” He joined her in the corridor, and by the light Dawson had left burning, they walked to the end, where they paused by the door that led to the alley. “Why don’t we meet about it Saturday afternoon after you finish rehearsals?” he suggested. “I don’t believe I have any fixed engagements that day.”

“Saturday?” She shook her head. “I can’t. I have plans that afternoon.”

He wondered suddenly what her plans might be, but he knew he couldn’t ask. He also knew he shouldn’t want to know.

“Perhaps we can meet the following Saturday instead?” she suggested.

“Of course. Shall I order tea?”

“If you want it.”

“Do you want it?” The moment the words were out of his mouth, he wanted to kick himself in the head. “What I mean,” he added at once, hurling himself onto safer ground, “is that tea’s not really an American habit, so if you would prefer not to have it, just say so.”

“Tea would be lovely, Denys, thank you.” She gave him a rueful smile. “Just remind me to remove my gloves beforehand. I’m prone to forgetting that sort of thing.”

He chuckled, remembering how she’d looked, tea things in her gloved hands and a look of chagrin on her face as she’d realized her predicament. “I shall endeavor to keep you up to snuff,” he assured her.

He opened the door for her, pulling his latchkey out of his pocket as she walked through, but when he’d extinguished the last light and started to lock the door behind them, her voice stopped him.

“You should take the other exit, at the front of the theater. You’ll reach the mews more quickly that way.”

“And leave you to navigate a London alley alone and secure a hansom on your own? At night? I’ll do no such thing.”

“It’s only a few dozen feet from here to the Strand, and only a few blocks from there to the Savoy. I shall be quite all right.”

“I am not allowing you to walk alone, and I don’t care if your hotel is only a few blocks away. This is not a debatable point, Lola,” he added, as she began to argue.

“Denys, you can’t do this. The Strand is a busy street, filled with carriages carrying your sort of people back and forth to the theater. And the Savoy is just the sort of hotel where someone you know is likely to be out front getting in or out of a taxi. We’d be seen.”

“It’s a bit too late to worry about that. I’m sure we were seen together that day at the Savoy when I dragged you into that lift. And at Covent Garden, too. We are living in the same city, working together, seeing some of the same people. I agree that we shouldn’t draw attention to our partnership if possible, but it’s pointless to duck and hide. If we’re working together, we’re going to be seen together—sometime, somewhere, by someone. You said it yourself the other night: When we were having an affair, we tried to be discreet, and everyone knew. If we make no effort to hide this partnership from the start, it won’t stop people from thinking things, but perhaps they’ll grow tired of speculating about us more quickly and move on to some other scandal.”

“I doubt your family will see it that way.”

“Leave my family to me. I’ve informed my father that I intend to carry through with this new arrangement, and if he doesn’t like it, he’s well within his rights to take back control of the company. He has chosen not to do that. He trusts me.”

Even as he said it, Denys felt a flicker of uneasiness, for he suspected it was going to be a long time before he was worthy of that trust where Lola was concerned.

She sniffed. “I’m sure Conyers doesn’t consider you the problem. I’m the one he doesn’t trust. Either way, I still think it’s best if we aren’t seen sashaying along the Strand side by side.”

“Very well. You will at least allow me to escort you to a taxi stand and see you safely into a hansom. It would be unconscionable for me to allow any lady, even if she were not a friend of mine, to walk home alone at night.”

“Friend?” She tilted her head, giving him a dubious look as if she might not have heard him right. “Are we becoming friends now?”

Friendship would make the partnership easier and more pleasant. His gaze lowered. But only if he could manage to remember it was platonic.

He jerked his gaze back up to her face and forced himself to say something. “I don’t know. We could make the attempt, I suppose. We’ve been everything else, after all,” he added, striving for a nonchalance he didn’t feel in the least. “Why not try being friends?”

She smiled that wide, radiant smile, and as always, he felt as if he were standing in the warmth of the sun. “Friends it is, then,” she said. “But—” She broke off, drawing her brows together in a seeming attempt to look stern. Given the faint dusting of freckles across her nose, the attempt failed utterly. “But if we’re to be friends, you can’t call me Miss Valinsky ever again.”

He laughed. “I have been duly warned. May I call you Charlotte?”

Her stern expression dissolved, and her nose wrinkled up. “Not if you expect me to answer.”

“Don’t you like the name Charlotte?”

“It’s not that. I meant just what I said. I’ve been Lola Valentine for a long time now. If someone called me Charlotte, I’m not sure I’d realize that person was talking to me. In fact,” she added softly, ducking her head, “I’m not sure I even remember who Charlotte is anymore.”

“I think you do.”

She looked up, seeming startled by the certainty in his voice. “What makes you say that?”

“If you didn’t think that girl was still somewhere inside you, you wouldn’t have told me I didn’t really know you.”

“Maybe.” She shook her head. “I don’t know. But, either way, I’m accustomed to being called Lola, so perhaps you should just continue to address me by that name.”

“If that’s what you prefer. And it does make things easier for me. Fresh starts are all very well, and I’m trying my best to adapt to this new situation, but calling you by a different name would take some getting used to.” He gestured to the alley behind her. “Shall we?”

“Why don’t I wait here, while you hail me a cab?”

He agreed to that compromise, and a short time later, he was standing at the entrance to the alley, watching her walk to the hansom at the curb. Fresh starts and being friends were all very well, but as he studied the brilliant fiery glints in her hair beneath the streetlight and the graceful dancer’s sway of her hips as she moved, Denys could feel his desire for her still lurking deep within him, and he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to think of Lola Valentine as just a friend, even if her name was really Charlotte Valinsky.