By opening night, she wondered how she would endure two more months of this. She stared at her reflection in the mirror of her dressing room, at her colorless face and the circles under her eyes, and she tried to rouse herself from her apathy. She could not reenter London’s theatrical world as this haunted creature. Her career as a dramatic actress might only span two months, but it wasn’t going to begin with her looking like this.
She opened the fitted case that held her stage cosmetics, but she’d barely finished applying powder to her face and rouge to her cheeks when the door of her dressing room opened. Lola looked up from the rouge pot she was closing and froze as her eyes met those of Earl Conyers in the mirror.
“Leave us, please,” he said to the other girls preparing for the performance, and they scurried out of the room at once. Her own understudy, Betsy Brown, was the last to go, and she gave Lola a curious glance as she ducked past the earl and closed the door behind her.
Lola closed the pot of rouge, took a deep breath, and stood up, reminding herself that she was about to go on stage in front of an audience that fully expected her to fail, and somehow, that made facing Denys’s father a bit less daunting. By the time she turned around, she was composed and calm, and had even managed to paste a little smile on her lips.
“My lord,” she said, bowing her head a fraction. “This is most unexpected. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I doubt it is a pleasure for you, Miss Valentine, and it is certainly not one for me. I shall come straight to the point.”
“Must you?” She widened her smile deliberately and gestured to the bottles of champagne open on the table in the center of the room—gifts to the girls from admiring stage-door johnnies. “Surely you’ll have a drink first?”
He shook his head, but Lola strolled over to the table to pour one for herself, for she could certainly use it. A filled flute of fortifying champagne in her hand, she turned toward him, lifting the glass with a sardonic flourish. “You may now come to that point.”
The inference that she was giving him permission made the earl’s face flush with color, but he didn’t take issue with it. “I came to inform you that I have sold my share of the Imperial.”
Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this, and Lola couldn’t quite hide her surprise.
“Yes,” he said, and it was his turn to offer a little smile. “So you see? Your attachment to my son is over.”
“Does Denys know about this?”
“Lord Somerton,” he said with emphasis, “will be informed when he returns from Kent.”
“I see. You didn’t even bother to consult him?”
“What would be the point? I know his opinion on the matter already.”
“Then you know the Imperial is something of which he is extremely proud, as he should be. And yet, you have sold it out from under him without a thought.”
“You are to blame for that, young woman.”
That flicked her on the raw, and though she didn’t want to make more trouble between Denys and his father than she already had, she couldn’t resist a smart reply. “My, my, who’d have thought a guttersnipe like me had so much power.”
He ignored that. “Your new partner is a certain Lord Barringer, and he intends to bring you a very generous offer to buy you out. I would suggest you consider accepting it.”
“Why should I? Your money didn’t make me go scurrying off last time. Why should someone else’s money do so?”
“Because there will be no reason for you to stay.”
She might have already decided to go, but for the life of her, she just couldn’t bear to admit it here and watch Conyers gloat. “Denys is not a reason?”
“He is the future Earl Conyers. He must marry, and she must be a girl of good family, but as long as you are here, and he is under your spell, he will never consider it. And he certainly cannot marry you.”
“No? Why is that?”
“My dear Miss Valinsky, I know all about you.”
Lola tensed, a sick dread knotting her stomach.
“When you returned to London,” he continued, “I hired Pinkerton men to investigate you. I’d have done it years ago, when you were here before, but at that time, I had deemed my son’s infatuation with you a temporary madness. He’d been involved with women like you before, you see.”
She tried to don a blasé air. “Must have been the shock of your life when Denys decided to marry me.”
The earl set his jaw, looking grim. “It was. And though you refused my money, you did have the good sense to accept Henry’s offer and go back where you came from. When you returned two months ago, however, I immediately set the detectives to work. I know your father was a drunk, and you are a bastard. I know about the dockside taverns where you . . . danced, shall we say? And,” he added, his dark eyes so like Denys’s, and yet, filled with a contempt she’d never seen in his son’s gaze, “I know about your association with Robert Delacourt. I know you are nothing more than a whore.”
She sucked in her breath, feeling as if she’d just been backhanded. That, she supposed, was the intent.
Almost as if he read her mind, he nodded slowly. “Mr. Delacourt is well-known to Pinkerton’s in New York. They know all about him, and they know all about his girls.” His gaze raked over her. “Girls like you.”
She shook her head. “But, you don’t understand—”
“Leave London,” he told her. “If you don’t, or if you ever return, I will give Denys the report from Pinkerton’s. We’ll see if he still wants you after that.”
Denials and explanations died on her lips, for what was the point of them? “What makes you think I haven’t already told Denys all about my past?”
He studied her for a moment before he answered. “Because I believe you genuinely care for my son, and you care what he thinks of you. If you didn’t, you’d have taken the money I offered you when you left for Paris, or you’d have jumped at his proposal of marriage when he offered it, and let him find out after the wedding what you truly are. I think you see as clearly as I do that you could never make him happy and that matters to you.”
She swallowed hard and said nothing. The earl and his Pinkerton men might have gotten some things wrong, but not that. That part would always be true.
“So,” he went on in the wake of her silence, “what is left for you here but to be his mistress? Until he eventually tires of you?”
For pride’s sake, Lola worked to marshal what she had on her side of the ledger. “I am a woman of business. I still own half the theater. I am still an actress, and London is still the world capital of theater. I am building a new career here—”
“A career? Oh, my dear.” Conyers gave her a pitying smile. “I witnessed your last performance here firsthand. I’ve no doubt this evening will be similar. The theater has been a passionate interest of mine since I was a very young man, and I have never seen an actress with less skill than you. My son can’t see it, of course, but others are not so blind. When you fail, Barringer won’t consent to allow you an audition in any Imperial production, and I doubt other producers will allow you that privilege either.”