The Lady Plays with Fire

Book 2: Goode's Guide to Misconduct

by Susanna Craig

Genres: Regency Romance; Romantic Comedy

Synopsis

In this Bridgerton era You’ve Got Mail, the clever, popular, and deliciously shocking ladies’ periodical Mrs. Goode’s Magazine for Misses only employs women who are equal to the challenge—and for one biting theatre critic, that challenge happens to include romance. 

A fast-paced, innovative, sexy historical romance with a modern twist that readers of Sabrina Jeffries, Sarah MacLean, and Julia Quinn will adore.

As the daughter of a clergyman, Julia Addison knows she’ll never be able to fulfill her lifelong dream of acting on the stage. But writing forthright reviews of the Season’s most popular plays for Mrs. Goode’s Magazine for Misses, popularly known as Goode’s Guide to Misconduct is surely the next best thing. Even better, she’s got a ticket to Ransom Blackadder’s latest irritating satire about English society. Best of all, she’s sharing a theater box with the gruff but handsome Lord Dunstane, which is enough to make Julia call for an encore . . .
 
Graham McKay, the Earl of Dunstane, rarely leaves his home in the Scottish Highlands. Why would he? Nothing about London has ever held his interest—until he meets Julia. But when Graham realizes she is the critic who panned his last play—and she discovers he is in fact the man behind Blackadder’s wicked pen—will it bring down the curtain on their romance—not to mention the magazine that published the humiliating review? Or can an unexpected collaboration set the stage for a scandalous love affair?

Release date: April 23, 2024

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 448

Sample

London, September 1810

As the carriage crept along crowded West End streets, Julia Addison’s anticipation grew, until the butterflies dancing and fluttering inside her might have been mistaken for a herd of dashing, leaping stags. Tonight marked the official start of her second London Season.

But it wasn’t a ball or a rout or a dinner party that had set her nineteen-year-old heart racing. That part of the Season was yet to come, and nothing she, as a lady’s companion, was likely to participate in. What marked the true beginning of the Season in Julia’s mind was not even the opening of Parliament. It was the fresh bill of operas and ballets and, most important of all, plays to be performed each autumn and winter at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, this year to be observed from Mrs. Mildred Hayes’s reserved box on the second tier, overlooking stage left.

Mrs. Hayes sat on the carriage’s forward-facing seat, the tip of her cane planted on the floor between her feet, both hands resting on its polished silver handle, her relaxed body swaying easily with the vehicle’s desultory progress. Her eyes were closed.

Julia marveled that anyone could sleep at a time like this. The noise surrounding them was terrific: the clatter of hooves and harness, the rattle of iron-rimmed wheels over cobblestones; men, women, and children along the pavement hawking goods and services ranging from the practical to the profane; and the shouted oaths of carriage drivers—occasionally including their own.

As she peered out the window, a sedan chair hurried by, easily threading its way through the snarl of traffic. Julia envied its occupant. No matter how burly the men hoisting the poles, Mrs. Hayes could never consent to put her trust in such a contraption. So, they lumbered through the crowded streets in Mrs. Hayes’s old-fashioned barouche, traveling at a snail’s pace, even as the minutes flew by.

They would be late. At half past six, the curtains would rise on the celebrated Mrs. Siddons acting the part of Desdemona in Othello, and Julia might as well be back in the little stone rectory in Oxfordshire, where she had had grown up, for all she would see of it.

No, there! The head of Bow Street, just visible in the distance. If she hopped down now—she wouldn’t even need to signal the driver to stop, they were moving so slowly—she could make it the rest of the way on foot in a matter of moments.

“Settle yourself, my dear. We’ll only be fashionably late.”

Julia had reached for the door handle without realizing it. Now a spasm of guilt drew her primly back into her seat. Of course, Mrs. Hayes couldn’t be expected to walk so far. The staircase to the boxes would be trial enough. And even aside from her rheumatism, such bustle did not suit her notions of either propriety or consequence.

Mrs. Hayes had spoken those words of reassurance without even opening her eyes, Julia realized. The jewel-handled lorgnette Julia had long known to be an unnecessary aid to Mrs. Hayes’s vision, not quite an affectation. But surely she was not possessed of the gift of second sight?

“I do beg your pardon, ma’am.” Julia folded her hands in her lap and refused even to glance toward the window, though the increasing gloom of the carriage’s interior was a telltale sign of the lateness of the hour. “I must learn to curb my impatience.”

A smile carved Mrs. Hayes’s wrinkled cheeks, her round face a pale circle against the leather squabs, rising above her black bombazine gown. “I understand your eagerness—though when I was your age, I fear the audience would have held at least as much of my attention as the actors. Well . . . most of the actors.” A twinkle revealed that her eyes were not as tightly closed as Julia had thought.

Mrs. Hayes, who had been a widow far longer than she had been wife, was rumored to have had an affair with Mr. Garrick, one of the leading actors of her day. Most of the time, Julia found the story impossible to believe. But at the moment—her fancy helped along by the magic of the evening and Mrs. Hayes’s mischievous expression—she wondered whether it might not be true after all.

“One cannot avoid looking at the audience, ma’am,” Julia conceded, try though she might to focus all her attention on the stage. Enormous chandeliers lit the house throughout the performance, and most people—dripping with jewels and swathed in showy silks and sparkling taffetas—attended the theater less to see than to be seen.

“Surely even you will agree that sometimes it is the more interesting show.”

Grudgingly, Julia dipped her chin. “Sometimes.” Not every item on the bill could be equally entertaining.

Though, truth be told, she had never seen a gentleman in the audience who could hold her attention, who made her breath catch and her pulse quicken, like the actors who trod the boards. From the first time she had seen a traveling troupe spout their lines from a makeshift stage on the village green, she had wished for some way to join them—an impossible dream for almost every woman, but most especially the daughter of a clergyman.

The sharp turn onto Bow Street caught her off guard, so absorbed had she been by the image in her mind’s eye: a fantastical vision of herself as a celebrated actress, the audience in her thrall. “Nearly there now,” she said to Mrs. Hayes, who surely knew the route at least as well as Julia.

A moment before, everything had seemed to stand in the way of their pleasure. But now, every lurch brought them closer, as each carriage in line ahead of them disgorged its passengers, and the distance between Julia and the theater doors dwindled, measurable now in mere yards, in feet, in inches.

With her eyes raised to the theater’s grand façade, Julia descended first, the better to assist Mrs. Hayes. She turned back just as Mrs. Hayes appeared in the carriage’s opening, reaching for the cane with one hand and wrapping her other securely around the older woman’s left arm as a liveried footman took her right. Together they helped Mrs. Hayes down the two steps and onto the pavement. Once she had shaken the creases from her skirt and straightened herself, she gestured for her ebony walking stick and Julia restored it to its rightful owner. The usual clickity-clack of its silver tip against the ground was inaudible over the noise of the crowd as they made their way inside.

True to her word, Julia spared no more than a glance for the crush of patrons surrounding them on every side. Once through the doors, they made their careful way up the sweeping staircase to the elegant saloon that ran behind the private boxes, decorated with marble sculptures in the Grecian style and tufted benches upholstered in crimson velvet. Cologne was thick on the air, not quite masking the lingering scent of tobacco, the cheroots the gentlemen had extinguished outside, just a moment or two before. Conversation buffeted them like waves, a greeting here, an exclamation there. The plumes on Mrs. Hayes’s turban nodded to her left and to her right, but she never paused for more than a moment, nearly as eager now as Julia to reach their seats.

Every indication gave her hope that they had not missed the start of the performance, though it must surely be nearing a quarter of seven. Heavy crimson velvet draperies guarded the entrances to the individual boxes, giving the occupants some degree of privacy and muffling the incessant noise from the saloon. A good number of them still stood open, awaiting the occupants’ arrival. As no usher stood nearby to assist, Julia stepped ahead to sweep aside the curtain to their box for Mrs. Hayes.

Curious. The cord that fastened the curtain shut during the play had been secured from the inside. She supposed it had accidentally fallen into place, somehow. She would have to slip her hand around the corner of the door frame to release it.

As her gloved fingertips found the curved metal hook and fumbled to slide the silken loop over it, the curtain was wrenched open by someone unseen, and a strong, warm hand encircled her wrist.

“And just what do you think you’re doing?” demanded a man’s voice in an unmistakable, though not unpleasant, Scottish accent.

Against the glare of light from the theater beyond, she could make out little of the man’s appearance beyond the fact that he was tall, with brownish-red hair the color of burnished copper. She was still trying to blink him into focus, and to rein in her clattering pulse, when Mrs. Hayes spoke.

“We are trying to enter our box, good sir,” she said in a firm voice, accompanied by a sharp rap of her cane against the floor. “And I will thank you to unhand my niece.”

Mildred Hayes was not Julia’s aunt. At best, she was Julia’s aunt-in-law, if such a relationship could even be said to exist. Not quite two years ago, Mrs. Hayes’s actual niece, Laura, had married Julia’s brother, Jeremy, Viscount Sterling, and moved with him to Wiltshire. Mrs. Hayes, however, had been determined to remain in London. Not wishing to abandon her elderly aunt, Laura had suggested her new sister-in-law might take her place as Aunt Mildred’s companion.

Relatively few young ladies of seventeen would have jumped at the chance to serve at the whim of a widow who, in spite of her professed Town habits, actually lived quite retired in Clapham. But Julia, faced with the prospect of returning to quiet country life at her brother’s estate, had readily accepted Mrs. Hayes’s offer. Mrs. Hayes had a reputation for being liberal-minded and good-natured.

Most important of all, she loved the theater almost as much as Julia herself.

Julia’s brother had taken her to plays now and again, when he could spare the time and the coin. She had treasured the memories of those evenings in Haymarket and Drury Lane: straining for a view of the lavish costumes and fancying she could still catch a whiff of greasepaint, even from the cheapest seats in the house. Then, she had never dared to dream of what Mrs. Hayes had since provided: tickets for the Season, every performance within her grasp.

And speaking of grasps . . .

The unknown gentleman released her reluctantly, as if she were a thief he had fully intended to turn over to the authorities.

Once freed, she longed to rub her wrist, not because it hurt—he had been neither rough nor careless, despite the quickness of his movement—but to rid herself of the sensation of his unwelcome touch.

The impatient tap of Mrs. Hayes’s cane had given way to a sniff of derision as the widow snapped open her lorgnette and eyed the gentleman suspiciously through it. “Who the devil are you? And what are you doing in my box?”

“Your box, madam?” The words were punctuated with a mocking laugh. “I think you’ll find you’re mistaken.”

All of Julia’s blinking had managed to bring the man into better focus, though his features were still cast in shadow by the glare of light behind. He was not quite thirty, she guessed, impeccably but not ostentatiously dressed, with surprisingly broad shoulders that seemed somehow in contradiction to his aristocratic bearing.

Julia turned and began to murmur to Mrs. Hayes. But before she could request to be allowed to fetch an usher, Mr. Pope, the box manager, appeared beside them as if summoned by the imperious snap of someone’s fingers. Someone’s strong, warm fingers.

Despite her earlier resolve, she wrapped her other hand around the wrist he had held, however briefly, in his implacable grip, hoping her movement was disguised by the folds of her skirt.

Mr. Pope bowed to the gentleman, as if Mrs. Hayes were suddenly beneath his notice, however respectable she might be. “May I be of some assistance, my lord?”

My lord.

Julia narrowly managed to avoid rolling her eyes. She had no good opinion of noblemen—her brother excepted, and then only because he had inherited the title unexpectedly, without the encumbrance and expectations of a fortune to go with it, and not until he had been almost a grown man, past the age of spoiling.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Hayes. “You may explain to this”—she tossed another dismissive glance toward him, her lorgnette only half-raised to her eyes—“gentleman that he is in my box, and then do me the kindness of escorting him from it to his proper seat.”

The color that flushed into Mr. Pope’s cheeks was visible, despite the uncertain light in the area between the saloon and the rear of the box, still half-shielded by the curtain. “I, er . . .”

“Aye, Mr. Pope.” She heard a thread of humor in Lord Scottish’s voice now, as he widened his stance and crossed his arms behind his back. “Why don’t you explain matters? I confess I’m most eager to hear what you have to say for yourself.”

“I, er . . .” he stammered again, glancing downward before turning toward Mrs. Hayes. “This is Lord Dunstane’s box and always has been. But as he comes to Town so rarely—almost never—I, uh, I took the liberty of selling the tickets again to you, ma’am.”

The reselling of tickets was a common enough practice. When those with a private box had already seen a performance, or were unable to attend, the box manager was employed to sell the tickets again to another interested party. But what Mr. Pope had done was a clear violation of both theater policy and good manners.

“Pocketed the double profit yourself, I daresay,” added Lord Dunstane. To Julia’s astonishment, he now sounded not angry, but almost amused.

The pink in Mr. Pope’s cheeks darkened to crimson. He did not refute the accusation.

Mrs. Hayes gripped the handle of her cane more firmly. “I see. Then you must forgive us for the intrusion, my lord. We, of course, had no idea.”

She had taken a box this year with every intention of asking friends to join them throughout the Season; thankfully she had not done so tonight. Now Julia thought with some embarrassment of the invitations that would have to be rescinded: Lady Clearwater and her daughters next week; later, Mama and her husband, Mr. Remington, and Mr. Remington’s particular friends, General and Mrs. Scott.

“Perhaps Mr. Pope can find us another box,” Julia suggested.

“Unfortunately, the performance for the next several evenings is . . .” the box manager began. Julia could guess what he was hesitant to say.

Sold out!

She had seen the placard, plastered over the playbill displayed outside the theater. Even if she had not, she might have guessed the state of things from the crush of carriages on Bow Street and the noisy crowd mingling in the vestibule. The size of the audience, the chaos of getting everyone properly seated, no doubt explained the delay in starting the performance.

“I paid for tickets for tonight, Mr. Pope,” Mrs. Hayes reminded him, holding up the thin ivory disk that was marked with Lord Dunstane’s box number. “Tickets you will find some means of honoring.”

Mr. Pope glanced downward into the pit, where patrons seated on long benches could be squeezed together to accommodate another person or two.

This silent suggestion was met with a harumph of displeasure. “Oh, I think not, sir.”

“I could easily find you places for next week,” Mr. Pope suggested.

Next week? Julia gulped. Not that she had grown so spoiled she imagined she would suffer some irreparable harm by waiting a few days to see Othello. It was not her own disappointment she was struggling to swallow.

Under the name “Miss on Scene,” she wrote reviews of theatrical performances for Mrs. Goode’s Magazine for Misses, and this month’s deadline was tomorrow. Lady Stalbridge, the magazine’s editor, was expecting Julia’s contribution by midday at the latest. Lady Stalbridge, the readers, and the magazine would all lose by Mr. Pope’s double-dealing.

A sudden hush had fallen across the theater, which caused the noise in her throat to be surprisingly audible, easily mistaken for a soft sob. Lord Dunstane settled his light eyes on her, taking in every detail of her appearance, her age, the modest quality of her sprigged muslin gown. A poor relation , his sardonic gaze said clearly, doomed to a future as a lady’s companion.

And yet, he did not immediately look away—at least, not until Mrs. Hayes’s pronouncement: “Unacceptable. We shall simply have to join Lord Dunstane here. As he’s alone, I’m sure he won’t mind.”

With that, she began to move deeper into the box, her cane clearing the path ahead of her, both Mr. Pope and Lord Dunstane looking on, dumbfounded.

When neither of the men made as if either to assist or prevent her, Julia stepped forward and laid a hand on her arm. “We mustn’t presume, ma’am . . .” she began.

But Mrs. Hayes kept going. “Hmph. Can’t see that we are the presumptuous ones. Now, help me to that seat, child.” She pointed with the tip of her cane.

Though well-positioned, the box—their box, as Julia had been thinking of it until a few moments ago—was one of the smaller ones in the theater, holding just six seats in two rows of three. Lord Scottish was evidently not the sort who reserved a box with the intention of inviting a dozen of his closest friends to chatter their way through the performance.

After Mrs. Hayes was seated in the front row closest to the stage, Julia moved to take one of the blue-upholstered chairs in the back. Lord Dunstane spoke from behind her. “You’ll be more comfortable—see better—from the seat beside your aunt.”

With a mute nod, more surprise than acquiescence, she accepted the middle chair. In another moment, he had taken the spot to her right. Of course he would expect to have the best view—or at least, the best remaining view—from his own box. She refused to turn her head in his direction, not even when a wry laugh gusted from his lips, as if he were incredulous at his own misfortune.

She wanted, uncharacteristically, to fidget. But why should Lord Dunstane make her agitated? After tonight, he would doubtless never give her another thought. Sooner, in fact, she thought, when she recollected his glance of disdain and pity. Once the performance began and gave them all something else to think about, he would forget her existence entirely.

Nevertheless, she could not remember ever having been so aware of the strange intimacy of a theater box, where people sat, almost shoulder to shoulder, snug within their private world and yet on display to anyone who cared to look.

And people would look, from below or across the way, everyone eager for a glimpse of something new or unexpected.

Lord Dunstane—a striking-looking Scotsman who came to London so infrequently that Mr. Pope had believed his deception would go undiscovered, but who nonetheless reserved a box at Covent Garden for performances he would never see—certainly fit the bill.

For just a moment, Julia considered slipping into one of the empty seats at the back of the box after all. But before she could make her move, the curtain rose.

Determined not to look, Graham could still see the young woman out of the corner of his eye. The shell of her ear, the velvet curve of her cheek, the tilt of her nose . . . she was a shadow in his peripheral vision, a distraction, a constant reminder that he was not spending the evening as he had intended: alone.

It had not been the act of a gentleman to catch the young woman by the wrist and restrain her, as if she were some mere pickpocket. But the appearance of that slender hand beyond the curtain of his box had startled him, and he’d reacted instinctively to guard his solitude.

Rather than succeeding at warding off an impertinent thief of his privacy, he now found himself in the intolerable situation of sharing his box with perfect strangers. If he had not been certain the old lady would cause an unpleasant scene—and more important, if the play had not been about to start—he would have insisted upon their removal. Churlish of him? Yes, of course.

No one who knew him would have expected anything less.

Well, at least he could not be expected to socialize with them. Watching the performance was a silent activity. And they had not even been introduced.

The lack of an introduction proved something of an inconvenience as the play went on, however. Beside him, the young lady began to lean forward, evidently enraptured by what he would have called a mediocre performance. He shifted slightly in his own chair and sighed.

But his sigh fell on deaf ears. Or its meaning was misunderstood.

Rather than disappearing, her profile inserted itself more insistently into his line of sight. She had a long neck he supposed some fool would describe as swan-like. And a pert chin to go with her pert nose, entirely inappropriate for a meek lady’s companion. And a thoroughly unfashionable abundance of dark brown hair that would surely fall to her waist when unbound . . .

“Ahem.” He cleared his throat once, softly, hoping as much to disrupt his own reverie as hers. He had no business thinking about a young lady’s unbound hair, how it would caress her shoulders and cling provocatively to the curve of her full breasts. Most ungentlemanly of him. He was churlish, yes, but not a cad.

“Ahem.” More loudly the second time, when his first effort did not have the desired effect—either on her posture or his thoughts.

When she had intruded so thoroughly into his line of vision that he could focus on little else, could hardly even see the stage, he was driven to lean forward himself, lay a hand on the front railing of the box, and say, “I beg your pardon, miss—”

“Addison,” she supplied without ceremony. Without fully turning her head. And then added for good measure, “Shhh.”

Unaccountably, her reprimand made a laugh rise in his chest. Surely a reaction to the absurdity of his predicament.

She had shushed him! This . . . this girl, really—she couldn’t be more than twenty—whose lot in life no doubt meant her experience with the theater was that of an occasional sweetmeat, a luxury doled out in dribs and drabs by her crotchety aunt. That would explain her despair when it had seemed the outing would be denied. Her single-minded focus on the stage. Her . . . enthusiasm.

The word sent a shiver of distaste through him. He could not reme. . .