Drury Lane Darling Read Free Page A

well.”
    “They would if Fleur was playing the lead,” Nigel said staunchly. Lady Raleigh’s nostrils pinched in chagrin.
    “Is MacBeth not a tragedy?” the actress asked. “It did very well at Covent Garden last season.”
    Pamela noticed that Breslau and his flirt were enjoying a lovers’ spat, and conjured with how this might affect her visit vis-à-vis Nigel.
    “None of the chairs left the hall,” Breslau allowed with one of his bored looks, and turned his attention to the fire, to try to kick the embers to flame.
    Pamela wished to store up some anecdotes to take home as trophies to Kent and said to the marquise, “I read that you escaped from the guillotine in a cabbage cart, Lady Chamaude. Is it true?”
    “Non, it was a cart full of rutabagas,” she replied, and told the oft-repeated story of this hair-raising experience, with a sword being plunged into the vegetables, missing her by inches. Her gown was slit from the blade, just the way Pamela had read.
    “It’s all in chapter two,” Nigel said, for he had heard the story several times and wanted to discuss his own editing of the memoirs instead.
    “I look forward to reading it,” Sir Aubrey said. “It should make a dandy tale.”
    Breslau looked over his shoulder. “You won’t want to miss it, Aubrey. You were one of Prinney’s set in those days, I think. Perhaps you remember the French refugees landing at Brighton?”
    “I recall some talk of it.”
    “The Prince Regent himself pulled me from the lugger and placed his mantle over me,” Lady Chamaude said, her eyes glowing. “He put some of us up at his Brighton pavilion. I fear he is a naughty man, but I shan’t mention that in my memoirs. Noblesse oblige,” she added.
    “But that was years ago!” Pamela exclaimed. “You must have been a child, Lady Chamaude.”
    “Oh, a veritable enfant, though I was married. We marry very young in France.” This was the trickiest portion of the memoirs, to account for having been married and on the stage while still more or less in pinafores. The landing at Brighton had occurred over two decades ago, and the Marquise disliked to admit to much more than thirty years. “Ladies marry much later in England, of course,” she added with a meaningful glance at Miss Comstock, still single. That would teach the bright-eyed chit to do her arithmetic in public.
    Help came from an unlikely quarter. “I wouldn’t put much past some of Prinney’s set,” Lady Raleigh said grimly. She had managed to cut her husband off entirely from those rakehell friends. “I remember hearing some pretty scandalous stories about the carrying on at Brighton.” Aubrey was right in the thick of it, too, but she’d soon brought that to a halt.
    “The dear prince is a changed man now,” the marquise said. She enjoyed his favor, and had no intention of embarrassing him in her memoirs. “He was a very model of kindness to me in those days. He let me ride a pretty white pony. I called her Lady Blanche, and placed three white plumes under her crown piece—the Prince of Wales’s feathers, you know.”
    No one noticed the sudden frown that assailed Sir Aubrey’s features. The incident stirred dormant memories. There had been a French refugee taken under Prinney’s wing in those days. Corinne was her name, like the heroine of Madame de Stael’s novel. A pretty, brown-eyed, brown-haired little filly she was, full of pep and vinegar. The marquise, he assumed, had heard the story and used it. Corinne would be nudging forty by now. The marquise didn’t look a day over thirty.
    His eyes slid to her profile as she regaled the company with other Brighton tales. “Oh, they were all a naughty bunch of boys.” She laughed gaily. “I remember one—I called him my groom, because he always accompanied me when I rode Lady Blanche in the Marine Parade.” She turned and cast a sapient eye on Sir Aubrey. “Perhaps you remember him, Sir Aubrey?”
    Sir Aubrey looked, and felt the hair