The Notorious Mr. Hurst Read online

  ‘Of course, I have a committee meeting this afternoon. But it is hardly a full-time occupation, Papa.’

  ‘And the Season will soon be in full swing,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Yes. And neither is that all consuming, at least, not during the day. I like to be busy, Papa, and to use my brain.’

  ‘I would like it if you just stood still long enough for a nice young man to catch you,’ Lord Pangbourne said with a sigh. ‘I suppose you want me to say that Benson should call on this manager chap—Hurst, is it?—and suggest a basis for your investment.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Hurst. But I have already called upon him and proposed my scheme.’

  His lordship choked on his coffee and put his cup down with enough force to rattle the saucer. ‘Called on him? My God, Maude, of all the shocking—’

  ‘I took my maid, Papa, and called at the theatre in the morning, not at his home, naturally.’Maude knew she couldn’t act, but she felt fairly confident in her expression of outrage.

  ‘It is still most unwise. The man is not a gentleman. And the theatre of all places!’

  ‘Well, his behaviour was most gentleman-like,’ she asserted. ‘I felt quite comfortable. I was served tea and waited upon by a maid.’ That was doubtless stretching the description of the lass who was probably the general dogsbody. ‘And everyone there was behaving most decorously.’ If one disregarded Mr Gates’s indiscretions, of course. ‘Would you meet Mr Hurst and judge for yourself? I thought perhaps we could invite him to our box in the interval on Monday. You do want to see the revival of How to Tease and How to Please, don’t you, Papa?’

  It would allow Papa to judge Eden face to face and it would reassure Eden that she had spoken to her father. He would not take kindly to being summoned to the house to be inspected, she was sure of that, but on his home ground he might be less prickly. She would order champagne with the refreshments and think carefully about who to invite to join the party for the evening. No one who would be shocked by a man wearing a diamond ear stud, that was for sure.

  The committee for Lady Dereham’s Charity for the Employment of Soldiers Disabled by the Late War—or Bel’s Battalion, as her husband irreverently referred to it—was somewhat diminished in numbers that afternoon. Bel’s cousin Elinor was on the Continent with Theo Ravenhurst, her new husband; Elinor’s mother Lady James Ravenhurst was studying Romanesque churches and the Grand Duchess Eva de Maubourg, a cousin by marriage, was at home in Maubourg and not expected in London until early March.

  Jessica had been welcomed into the committee on her marriage. It was a positive coven of Ravenhurst cousins, her husband Gareth Morant, Earl of Standon—himself a cousin—had joked. Maude would have become a Ravenhurst if her father’s intention to marry her to Gareth had come to pass and she had known most of the family since she was a child.

  The Reverend Mr Makepeace, Treasurer, was already seated in Bel’s dining room, fussily arranging his papers on the long mahogany table while assuring Lady Wallace, a lady of a certain age and indefatigable energies, that the money she had extracted from her long-suffering husband had been safely banked. Mr Climpson, Lady Wallace’s solicitor, and legal adviser to the charity, bowed punctiliously to Maude and pulled out a chair for her while Jessica waved gaily from the other side of the room where she was talking to Bel.

  The minutes read, and matters arising dealt with, they sat through Mr Makepeace’s interminable report. Maude surfaced from a daydream involving Eden Hurst and herself alone in her box at the Unicorn to discover that the charity was in excellent financial health.

  ‘In fact, our only problem at the moment appears to be finding other sources of employment for the men on our books,’ Jessica remarked. ‘We have bought three inns now, which employ all those suited for the various roles those offer.’ She scanned the lists in front of her. ‘We have placed sixteen men with various craftsmen and a further twelve in domestic service or stables, but there are still fifteen unsuited and, as you know, more come to us every week, despite the war being over now for almost two years.’

  ‘What about theatres?’ Maude asked, the idea coming straight out of her daydream. ‘Stage-hands, door-keepers, scene painters, carpenters—there must be many types of work the men would be suitable for.’

  ‘Excellent,’ Lady Wallace applauded, shushing Mr Makepeace, who started to say something about immorality. ‘What a clever idea, Lady Maude.’

  ‘But however will we find out what is available?’ Jessica asked, all wide-eyed innocence. ‘Who can we possibly ask?’

  ‘It just so happens,’ Maude said, attempting to kick her friend under the table and painfully finding the table leg instead, ‘I know someone who might be able to help.’

  ‘I was going to ask you and Gareth to join me in my box on Monday,’ she said to Jessica as the others departed. ‘And then you could have met Mr Hurst because he is taking champagne with Papa and me during the interval.’ At least, she hoped he was; she hadn’t written to him yet. ‘But if you are going to be so unkind as to tease me, I will ask Bel and Ashe instead.’

  ‘Ask us what?’ Bel came back into the room and eased herself down on a chair. ‘Oh, my feet! I have been playing with Annabelle all morning and I am quite worn out with that meeting on top of it.’

  ‘How exhausting can playing with a baby be?’ Maude demanded. ‘She’s tiny.’ A doting expression came over Bel’s face, so she added hastily, ‘Anyway, will you and Ashe be able to come to the theatre with us on Monday?’

  ‘We’d love to. Your box at the Unicorn? Do you mind if we bring another gentleman with us? Ashe has a navy friend coming to spend a few nights.’ She looked up, obviously making connections. ‘Is that where you think you may be able to find employment for some of the men?’

  ‘Possibly. I am intending to invest in the theatre and Papa wishes to meet the manager before he will support me.’

  ‘I should think he does.’ Bel narrowed her eyes. ‘You are up to something, Maude Templeton.’

  ‘As I said, investing. Of course, it is somewhat unconventional,’ Maude said airily.

  ‘And of course Mr Hurst of the Unicorn is very good looking,’ Jessica added slyly. ‘Gareth and I are definitely coming on Monday. I’m not missing this for anything.’

  ‘No!’ Bel sat up straighter, weariness forgotten. ‘Hurst? But surely I have heard of him.’ She bit the tip of her finger in thought. ‘Eden Hurst? But he is notorious for his affaires with married ladies! Ashe warned me about him, although I gather he is hardly predatory; he just stands around looking handsome and they throw themselves at him as they did at Byron. But Maude, even if he is a lay preacher in his spare time, he still has to be utterly ineligible, you wicked woman. Darling, I don’t think this is sensible; he’s received, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be ruined by associating with him.’

  ‘I wish to invest in his company,’ Maude protested, flustered that Bel had immediately leapt to the conclusion that she wanted Eden Hurst. As for his reputation—well, she refused to think about that just now.

  But Bel had seen Jessica’s face and Jessica knew only too well what she wanted. ‘Oh, very well, Jessica will tease until you know it all anyway. I intend making Eden Hurst fall in love with me. He is intelligent, charismatic, dynamic and beautiful. When I talk to him it is not like any other conversation I have with anyone. I was right when I sensed he was meant for me; when I am with him I feel more alive than you can imagine. There is so much passion in him, so tightly controlled. Passion for the theatre, I mean,’ she clarified as Jessica rolled her eyes.

  ‘He just doesn’t know yet that I am the woman for him. I intend to give him every opportunity to realise it.’

  ‘Goodness,’ Bel said weakly. ‘And then what? You cannot possibly marry him. Think of his reputation.’

  ‘If he marries me, he will not be having affaires. And why should he not marry me?’ Maude demanded. ‘He is very well off. And his father, I believe, was an Italian prince.’

  ‘But was he
married to Mr Hurst’s mother? That’s the point,’ Jessica queried. ‘Hurst is not exactly a Italian name, now is it?’

  ‘Er…no.’ She turned in a swirl of skirts and plumped down in a chair. ‘It is no use the pair of you looking at me like that. You don’t have to tell me it is going to be difficult. I want to marry an illegitimate, half-Italian theatre owner with a reputation. He is quite a rich illegitimate theatre owner,’ she added hopefully.

  ‘Maude,’ Bel said gently. ‘Money is not going to be the issue. Breeding is.’

  ‘I have enough breeding for both of us, and he is a gentleman, even if society won’t see it,’ Maude declared, beginning to be alarmed despite herself. She had expected Jessica and Bel to support her.

  ‘Yes, but what does he think about this?’

  ‘Nothing at all, as yet, other than I am very unconventionally intending to invest with him. I have been cool and businesslike. I intend to grow upon him.’

  Jessica snorted inelegantly. ‘Maude, I am your friend, so I can say frankly that you are a very beautiful woman. The man has kissed you—passionately, by all accounts. And you are waiting to grow on him? I should imagine your financial assets are the last thing on his mind at the moment.’

  ‘He has done what?’ Bel’s face was a picture.

  ‘Kissed me. By accident. He thought I was someone else,’ Maude explained patiently. ‘It was wonderful, but he appears more than capable of restraining his animal passions when I am alone with him, believe me.’

  ‘Oh. That’s not very encouraging,’ Bel said, then caught herself. ‘I mean, what a good thing. To be fair, according to his reputation he does not appear to be dangerous to virgins.’

  Maude determinedly ignored contemplating who else Eden Hurst might be dangerous to. ‘Well, I am not concerned. I want him to fall in love with me, gradually. Not lust after me. That, too, of course, in time, but I am sure desire clouds men’s brains. Love first, then lust.’

  ‘It doesn’t work that way round,’ Bel observed, smiling. Jessica nodded in agreement as she continued, ‘I’m afraid the poor weak things work on the basis that anything female between the ages of sixteen and sixty is looked at with the eye of lust. One’s finer features, such as your mind or your skill at the harp, or your lovely nature, have to grow upon them.’

  ‘Oh.’ Somewhat daunted, Maude regarded her two friends. ‘I wanted him to be so passionately in love with me that he would disregard the difference in our positions.’

  ‘Not if he has the gentlemanly instincts you say he has,’ Jessica pointed out with depressing logic. ‘If he loved you, then he would sacrifice himself by refusing to see you any more. As Bel said, he does seem to restrict himself to married women, so he has some scruples.’

  ‘And anyway,’ Bel added, ‘it isn’t what he thinks about your respective positions, it is what society thinks.’

  Maude fell silent, wrestling with the conundrum. The only possible solution appeared to be to become his lover, then hope he fell in love and realised that, having hopelessly compromised her, he must marry her. But what if he did not fall in love and felt he had to offer anyway?

  ‘This is 1817,’ she said, raising her chin and meeting their sympathetic looks with determination. ‘Things are changing, men with wealth and intelligence are breaking into society.’

  ‘Merchant bankers and nabobs, maybe,’ Jessica said doubtfully. ‘But the theatre is simply not respectable. Not for marriage.’

  ‘In that case,’ Maude declared, getting to her feet, ‘the Unicorn is going to become the first respectable theatre in the country.’

  ‘The evening post, sir.’ Eden’s butler proffered the laden salver. ‘Dinner will be served in thirty minutes, sir.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Eden took the pile of letters and began to flick through them. He was dining at home, alone, for the first time in weeks and finding it hard to relax. His brain was still working on too many levels. There were the remaining issues with the staging for How to Tease, there were the tactics to persuade Madame to take the role of Lady Macbeth and, if she did, the problem of producing a version that would not bring down the wrath of the Patent theatres and the Lord Chamberlain for performing ‘legitimate’ drama without a licence.

  Ways of improving the scene shifting were beginning to form at the back of his mind, there was the situation between Golding, Merrick and Poole to resolve and decisions about investments to make.

  Investments. He tossed the letters down on to his desk unopened. They were not normally a problem. His instructions to his broker were straightforward enough, he simply had to decide on one or two points and send a letter to the man. No, it was Lady Maude Templeton and her hare-brained desire to invest in the Unicorn that was baffling him. And Eden Hurst did not like being baffled. Challenged, yes—he enjoyed a good fight. But not baffled by a brown-eyed lady with a pointed chin, a cool manner and a staggering disregard for convention.

  He wanted to make love to her. Oh, yes, he most definitely wanted that. His imagination had no trouble conjuring up the image of her naked on his big bed upstairs, that thick hair tumbling around her shoulders, her hands gripping his shoulders as he sank into the tight wet heat of her. But he also, oddly, wanted to get to know her. Understand her, not simply discover why she had come up with this madcap scheme. And why should he want to do that?

  Eden gave himself a brisk mental shake and returned to his post. Bills, letters from aspiring players, the opening scenes of a play written in odd green ink…He really should get a secretary for all this.

  One plain white wrapper of fine quality paper, sealed with a crest pressed into the dark blue wax; that looked more interesting. He cracked the seal and spread out the single sheet.

  Lord Pangbourne requests the pleasure of Mr Hurst’s company for refreshments during the second interval at the Unicorn on Monday next.

  ‘My God, she has told him.’ Eden stared at the invitation, reluctant admiration stirring. No sign of a horsewhip, not yet at any rate. Perhaps the earl was as unconventional as his daughter, or perhaps he thought to show her just how unsuitable a person Eden was for her to associate with by putting him into a social situation.

  That was the logical answer. And in order to remove the puzzle of Lady Maude from his life, all he had to do was to turn up and act as Lord Pangbourne would expect. Eden toyed with the combination of clothing and manner that would make him appear louche, dangerous and entirely impossible.

  His on-stage style was already established; he just needed to develop that to the point of caricature. He had seen enough old-school actor-managers to be able to assemble the worst characteristics of all of them. And then even the most indulgent father would take fright and bundle his daughter off out of harm’s way, leaving Eden to manage his theatre in tranquillity.

  He picked up the paper and as he did so the faint scent of gardenias wafted to his nostrils. So, this firm black hand was not that of the earl or his secretary. Lady Maude herself had penned it. Eden smiled thinly. Was her father even aware he was going to have a visitor to his box on Monday night?

  Chapter Five

  ‘It is fortunate that the private boxes at the Unicorn are spacious, for this one seems very full of large men tonight,’ Jessica remarked to Maude on Monday evening as the Derehams entered with their guest. Lord Pangbourne, with Gareth at his side, was greeting them, giving the friends the opportunity to study Ashe’s naval acquaintance.

  ‘Why not fall for him?’ Jessica whispered. ‘He looks so distinguished in that uniform and he is very good looking and not too old either. Not more than thirty, do you think? A younger son, of course, but excellent connections. Your father would be delighted.’

  ‘I have no interest in other men, as you very well know,’ Maude hissed back, too tense to enjoy being teased. The officer was tall and rangy in his dark blue uniform, his hair close cropped, his eyes, as he turned to be introduced to the two young women, a deep and attractive blue against weather-tanned skin.

  ‘Lady Sta
ndon, Maude, this is Captain Warnham. My lord—Lady Standon, my daughter Lady Maude.’

  Greetings exchanged, the captain settled his long frame between Maude and Jessica. ‘It is a long time since I have been inside an English theatre,’ he commented, looking around with interest. From the boxes opposite came the flash of light on lenses as opera glasses were raised to scrutinise comings and goings. It would be all round the ton before long that a handsome naval officer was newly in town.

  ‘You have been at sea for many months?’ Maude enquired, fanning herself. The theatre was crowded and the heat rising from the gas lamps added to that generated by the crowd and her own anxiety.

  ‘Three months in the South Atlantic, ma’am. I am back for some weeks before sailing for Jamaica on another mission.’

  ‘The West Indies? How fascinating, I have always wanted to go to those islands.’ Maude, her twitching nerves over Eden momentarily forgotten, leaned closer. ‘They always sound so romantic and exotic.’

  Captain Warnham smiled. ‘They have their charms, I am sure, but they also have slavery, hurricanes, tropical disease and pirates.’

  ‘And sunshine and blue seas and parrots and waving palm trees,’ Maude said wistfully, thinking of the drizzle that affected London.

  ‘My husband and Lady Belinda have a cousin in Jamaica, do you not, Bel?’ Jessica raised her voice to catch Bel’s attention.

  ‘Jamaica? Yes, Clemence Ravenhurst. We are expecting her father to bring her over to England this summer to stay so she can have an English come-out next Season. I expect your ships will pass in mid-Atlantic, Captain.’

  They began to chat, Bel and Gareth explaining what they knew about their youngest uncle, a highly successful West Indies merchant.

  Now he is in trade, Maude thought resentfully. The youngest son of a duke and no one thinks the worse of him for it. But, of course, Lord Clement Ravenhurst was a very successful man and did not soil his own hands with the details of his luxury goods business. Presumably wealth and birth wiped out the stain of trade, if you had sufficient of both.