A Reckless Desire Read online

  A Reckless Desire is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016 by Susan Holloway Scott

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  ISBN 9780345548160

  eBook ISBN 9780345548177

  Cover design: Lynn Andreozzi

  Cover illustration: Gregg Gulbronson

  randomhousebooks.com

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  By Isabella Bradford

  About the Author

  LONDON

  May, 1775

  “And I’m telling you the truth, Everett,” said Lord Rivers Fitzroy. “The famous Madame Adelaide Mornay is the sorriest, most wretched excuse for a queen that I have ever witnessed.”

  “Speak it louder, Fitzroy,” said his friend Sir Edward Everett as they squeezed through the narrow, noisy passage of King’s Theatre. The leading actors and actresses had scarcely taken their final bows, yet already the cramped spaces backstage were crowded with friends and other well-wishers. “There may have been one or two people in Drury Lane who didn’t hear you.”

  “Let them hear me,” Rivers said as he maneuvered around a plaster statue of Charlemagne that had figured into the second act. “She was abominable, and you know it, too.”

  “What I know is that she’s currently warming Mansfield’s bed,” Everett said, following close, “and I’ve no wish to make an enemy of a man like that. He doesn’t seem to find fault with her, at least not when he’s buried between her legs.”

  As the third son of the Duke of Breconridge, Rivers wasn’t particularly intimidated by the Marquess of Mansfield or anyone else, unlike poor Everett, who as a lowly baronet lived in constant dread of offending one peer or another. “Damnation, but it’s crowded here tonight. Who are all these rogues?”

  The gentlemen around them had the overwrought, pop-eyed eagerness that marked men in the pursuit of beautiful women who’d welcome their advances. He recognized the signs in himself, for he’d never worked half this hard to reach a palace ball populated by aristocratic virgins.

  The door of the dancers’ dressing room stood open, and already Rivers could glimpse the intoxicating delights inside. Lovely, laughing young women, all in the process of shedding their gauzy, spangled costumes without a shred of modesty; what man with breath in his body could wish to be anywhere else? He loved how they darted confidently about in the crowded room, graceful and sleek, slipping teasingly among servants and well-wishers. He loved even their scent, a heady, sensual mixture of face-powder and pomatum, rosin and perfume and female exertion.

  “Buona sera, innamorati!” he called from the doorway, cheerfully greeting them in the Italian that was the native language of so many of the dancers. “Good evening to you all!”

  “Buona sera, Lord Rivers!” they chimed back, like schoolgirls with a recitation, and like schoolgirls, they collapsed into laughter afterward, while the other male visitors glowered unhappily.

  Rivers was a favorite with the dancers, and not just because he was a duke’s son with deep pockets, either. He was tall and he was handsome, with glinting gold hair and bright blue eyes, but most of all, he genuinely liked this company of dancers. He sent them punch and chocolate biscuits. He’d learned all their names, which none of the other gentlemen who prowled about the dressing room had bothered to do. He not only spoke Italian, but he spoke Italian with a Neapolitan accent on account of having spent much time in Naples with a cousin who’d a villa there.

  He was also the only gentleman in London who’d managed last year to have a brief love affair—they called it a poco amore, or little love—with Magdalena di Rossi, the lead dancer of their troupe, and survive unscathed. Even more amazingly, he’d managed to emerge after those two months in her bed as her friend. He’d the rare gift of knowing the exact moment to end affairs to make such a transition possible (although a handsome diamond brooch had helped immeasurably). All of which was why now, as soon as he sat in the chair that was offered to him, Magdalena came to sit on his knee with territorial affection.

  “Il mio caro amico.” She swept off his hat so she could kiss him loudly on each cheek without being poked in the eye. “Our evening is complete now that you are here, my lord.”

  “Hah, you say that to every gentleman who comes through the door,” he said, and kissed her in return as he slipped his arm around her waist. Dancing had made her body firm and compact, and he’d always appreciated how her waist was narrow even without stays. “Truth has never been your strongest suit.”

  She pouted coyly. She still wore her stage paint, with blackened brows and dark rings around her eyes, and with her lips scarlet, it was a formidable pout indeed.

  “I am not truthful like you, my lord, no,” she admitted, trailing an idle finger along the collar of his silk coat. “But then, I am not English, with your English love of truth and, um, franchezza.”

  “Franchezza?” repeated Everett, sitting nearby with another of the dancers on his knee. “I can only guess what manner of wickedness that may be.”

  “It’s frankness,” Rivers said. “Magdalena has always believed I am too frank for my own good.”

  “True enough,” Everett said. “You are frank to a dangerous fault. Do you dare repeat what you told me about Madame Adelaide’s performance?”

  That instantly captured Magdalena’s interest. There was neither love nor respect between the acting side of the playhouse’s company and the dancers, with both groups claiming they were the real favorites with audiences.

  “Oh, that lead-footed cow Adelaide,” she scoffed. “Vacca! I wonder that you could keep sufficiently awake to judge her, my lord. What did you say to Sir Edward, eh? What did you say of the vile Adelaide?”

  For a half a second, Rivers hesitated, considering not repeating the opinion he’d given to Everett earlier. Not only would it serve to inflate Magdalena’s considerable pride further (an inflation that it did not need) to hear him criticize her rival, but the part about how he could do better smacked of boastfulness. He’d had a quantity of excellent smuggled wine with his dinner, enough to give him bravado, yet not quite enough to have him completely unaware of the peril of making a foolhardy statement. For as long as Rivers could recall, his father had always cautioned him against that, reminding him of the fine line between confidence and being a braggart.

  But in that half second of reflection, he decided this was confidence, not boasting. More important, it was the truth, and so with a smile he answered her.

  “I said that Madame Adelaide is the sorriest, most wretched excuse for a queen that I have ever witnessed,” he declared, heedless of who overheard him. “There is not one iota of royalty to her or to
her performance, and if it were not for the lord who’s keeping her and paying for the production, she wouldn’t have a place on this stage.”

  “Bah, that’s nothing new,” Magdalena said, disappointed. “Everyone knows that of her.”

  “But why doesn’t she make a study of Her Majesty, so that she might better play queens?” he asked. He was serious, too, for willful ignorance was incomprehensible to him; with study and application, anything seemed possible. “If she’d rather not model herself on the queen, then there are plenty of regal duchesses about London. Why doesn’t she observe them to perfect her art?”

  “Because she has no art, that is why,” Magdalena said with a dismissive sweep of her hand. “My dancers and I practice every day of our lives, hour after hour until we fall from weariness, but actresses like Adelaide are idle and useless—useless! They do not believe they need do more than display their breasts and mumble through their lines, and expect their suffering audience to be grateful for that.”

  “Madame Adelaide should take lessons from you, Fitzroy,” Everett said. “Give her training in how to behave like a queen.”

  Rivers smiled, entertained by the idea of giving lessons in regal deportment. God knows he’d seen his share of haughty, queenly ladies, and those were just in his own family.

  “I could do it,” he said, “and do it well, too. Given the time to develop a proper course of study and a woman who is reasonably clever and willing to apply herself, anything would be possible.”

  Everett groaned. “Only if the poor thing didn’t perish from boredom first. ‘A proper course of study’! My God, Fitzroy, could you make it sound any more tedious?”

  “It would be an education, Everett, not a seduction,” Rivers said. “Not that you would know the difference. But it’s only the most idle of speculation, since I doubt Madame would agree to become my student.”

  “No, she would not,” Magdalena agreed, and heaved a bosom-raising sigh directly beneath Rivers’s nose. “More’s the pity, il mio caro. It would be something to see, yes?”

  A small tiring-girl—one of the servants who helped the dancers dress—hurried up to her, bobbing a quick curtsey. In her arms was an enormous bouquet of flowers, so large that it dwarfed the young woman holding it, a vibrant splash of floral color against her white apron and kerchief. Magdalena plucked the sender’s note free, read it, and scowled, shoving it disdainfully back among the flowers.

  “Such beautiful flowers from such a ridiculous man,” she said derisively. “But it’s not the fault of the poor blossoms to have been sent by a churlish oaf. Allocco!”

  Rivers sympathized with the poor oaf. Any romantic attachment with Magdalena was fraught with such scenes. At first the drama was exciting, yes, but over time it became too exhausting to be pleasurable. He had to keep reminding himself of that as she sat on his leg, her bottom pressing against his thigh in a very enticing manner.

  Magdalena’s thoughts, however, had already gone elsewhere.

  “Tell me, my lord,” she said in the coaxing voice she employed to get what she wanted. “What if you attempted to train a lesser actress? One who was not as proud? One who, with your, ah, education, could knock the vile Adelaide from her post?”

  “Do better than that, Fitzroy,” Everett said with a bit of bravado of his own. “Take some ordinary hussy and turn her into your regal actress, the toast of London. Take this chit here. She’d do.”

  He caught the arm of the tiring-girl who had just presented the bouquet to Magdalena and pulled her back. The young woman caught her heel on the hem of her petticoats and stumbled, nearly dropping the flowers, and Magdalena rolled her eyes with disgust.

  “So clumsy, Lucia,” she scolded, bored, as if she couldn’t really be bothered to say more. “Mind you don’t drop my flowers.”

  “No, signora,” the young woman murmured, her dark eyes enormous in her small face. Although she was obviously from Naples like Magdalena and the rest of the dancers, she lacked their lush figures as well as their voluptuous beauty. She was more delicate, her skin paler, and the dark linen clothes she wore were in stark contrast to the gaudy bright silks and ribbons around her. Rivers saw that, like too many young servants, she had a waifish quality to her that spoke of long hours and low wages.

  Yet there was also an unmistakable spark in her eyes, a defiant fire that not even the somber clothes could completely douse, and Rivers guessed that she would like nothing better than to hurl the flowers into Magdalena’s face. He sympathized. He’d often felt that way himself.

  “Make it a true challenge, Fitzroy,” Everett said, still grasping the tiring-girl’s arm to keep her from escaping. “I’ll wager fifty guineas you can’t turn this little drab into your stage queen.”

  “Fifty guineas, my lord!” the girl exclaimed. “Madre di Dio, fifty blessed guineas!”

  “A whole fifty blessed guineas!” Everett repeated, imitating her accent, lower-class London with a foreign flip. “Fancy!”

  He laughed, and the dancer beside him tittered with him. The tiring-girl flushed, but with more of the same defiance Rivers had seen in her before; she did not look down, or apologize, either.

  Nor did Rivers laugh along with Everett. He never enjoyed scenes like this one, when those with privilege and wealth made jests of those who didn’t. The young woman had every right to find fifty guineas a staggering proposition. He doubted she earned even a fifth of that amount in an entire year.

  “Enough,” he said, a single word of warning.

  Surprised, Everett nodded. Indulgently he winked at the girl.

  “Very well, lass,” he said, attempting an empty show of kindness. “If you feel you’re worth more, then I’ll raise my stake to a round one hundred guineas.”

  She gasped, her eyes even wider as she looked to Rivers. “I’d make you proud, my lord,” she said eagerly. “I swear I would.”

  Rivers smiled, liking the young woman more by the moment. It took courage for her to speak up like this, especially after Everett had been such an ass. Her spirit intrigued him. She was a bold little thing, and he’d always had a weakness for women who weren’t afraid to speak their minds.

  “What do you say, Fitzroy?” Everett asked. “Will you take on this little scrap as your pupil?”

  “Of course he will not, my lord,” Magdalena said indignantly, sliding quickly from Rivers’s knee to pull the girl’s arm free of the baronet’s grasp. “Lucia is a cousin and an orphan, entrusted to our care and keeping, and I won’t have you ruining her usefulness for the sake of some foolish gentlemen’s wager. Back to my room with those flowers, Lucia, pronto, pronto!”

  She gave Lucia a light smack between the shoulder blades with the flat of her palm to urge her on, and the girl curtseyed and hurried away, the flowers held high in her arms for safekeeping. But as she’d curtseyed, Rivers had glimpsed regret in those large dark eyes, a genuine wish that things had gone otherwise. Could she truly want to be part of this, of what Magdalena had accurately described as a foolish gentlemen’s wager? Would she really have wanted to cast away her lot on the whim of a man she didn’t know, gambling that he could do what he’d grandly claimed?

  As Rivers watched her slender figure weave among the others, he wondered, speculating as to whether he could have made so great a transformation. He tried to imagine her commanding both a stage and an audience as she played a queen.

  Could he have done it? Could she?

  Yet as soon as she disappeared from the room, she faded from his thoughts as well, and within minutes he’d forgotten both the girl and the wager entirely.

  Lucia di Rossi dressed as quietly as she could, not wanting to wake the other two girls who shared the small room and its single bed with her. Because their room was in the attic, directly beneath the roof, the beams overhead slanted sharply from one wall to the other, and she was forced to crouch down before their tiny looking glass to make sure her hair was as smooth as possible, with no curling wisps slipping free of the tight knot at the
back of her head. She knew she’d never be a beauty, but at least she could be tidy. Satisfied, she slipped her white linen cap over her hair, and tied her flat-brimmed hat on over that. For luck, she patted the strand of coral beads that had been her mother’s, her fingers circling the little Neapolitan cameo that hung from it.

  One of the other girls stirred and squinted at her.

  “It’s so early, Lucia,” Giovanna said groggily. “Mother in Heaven, where must you go at this hour?”

  “An errand,” Lucia whispered, purposefully vague.

  “You mean an errand for Magdalena,” the other girl said. “Who else would be so cruel to send you out at this hour?”

  For the rest of the world, the hour wasn’t particularly early or cruel. Lucia had just counted eleven chimes of the church bell in the next street, and she prayed she wasn’t already too late.

  Now she merely shrugged and let Giovanna think the worst of Magdalena.

  “I must leave,” she whispered, wrapping her shawl over her shoulders. She looped her fingers through the latchets of her shoes, not wanting to put them on until she was downstairs. “You go back to sleep.”

  Giovanna grunted and pulled the coverlet over her head, and Lucia slipped through the door and closed it as gently as she could. She padded down the winding back stairs in her stocking feet, past the other closed doors, where the rest of the company remained soundly asleep. The lodging-house catered exclusively to foreign-born dancers, and the landlady respected their hours so long as they paid their reckoning on time.

  Muffled sounds from the wide-awake London streets contrasted sharply with the sleeping house, and from the kitchen in the back of the house, Lucia heard the first crashings and thumpings of the cook beginning late breakfast. At the bottom of the staircase, she leaned against the door to buckle her shoes. Then, at last, she slipped outside, and she was free.