Life Mask Read Free Page A

wrangling, Fox had resigned, taking half their Members with him, and the Party had broken like a china plate.
    These days Richmond served in young Pitt's Tory Cabinet, which grieved Anne when she let herself think about it; how could he have discarded his passion for Reform? But it touched her that he held no personal animosity towards the Foxites (well, except for Fox himself). These theatricals were a proof of something she'd always believed: that political differences shouldn't be allowed to strain the delicate fabric of social life.
    'Now in a few months, Mrs Damer,' said Miss Farren, her voice deepening as she began to take charge of the little group, 'it's you who'll have to brave the lights as Mrs Lovemore in the Richmond House Theatre.'
    Anne's pulse skidded; she drained her wine. 'Is that my role?'
    Derby grinned at her. 'Among my whole acquaintance I'd pick no other leading lady.'
    So it was to him that she owed it. 'But I'm the least experienced of our number—'
    'If it comes to that,' said Richmond, 'I've trod the boards more than any of you, but forty-one is high time to retire gracefully.'
    'Besides, it's character that matters,' Derby told her.
    'And your face, which promises much,' said Miss Farren with a slowly ripening smile. 'Besides, you're already so celebrated for your sculpture, you can't shrink at the prospect of a little more fame.'
    'Oh, I can, I assure you,' said Anne, laughing.

    T HE E ARL OF D ERBY and Sir Charles Bunbury were roasting their boots at the Green Hawk in Croydon. After riding all this way to see a promising two-year-old—as prominent members of the Jockey Club, they vied with each other to buy up good stock—they'd found the road cut off by snowdrifts. 'But how can you stand it?' asked Bunbury, thumping his punch glass down on the table.
    Derby gave a languid shrug.
    'You love the fair damsel. Am I right? I'm right. I know it, even an old sportsman like me.' Approaching fifty, the Baronet still had broad shoulders, a strong mouth and plenty of short wiry hair. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. 'Every scandal sheet from Land's End to John o'Groats knows it. How long's it been? Five years?' The caricaturists were cruel to Derby, the latest print on display in a shop window showed him as a swollen toddler on a horse, floundering along behind his carriage in which Miss Farren sat with elegant, averted head, her mother a grim-faced duenna at her side.
    Derby allowed his mind to float back. 'I first saw her walk on stage in the role of Lady Teazle in Sherry's School for Scandal.'
    'I mean when did you and she start—or rather, when did you start not—'
    To forestall him Derby said, 'I've been on visiting terms since '81.'
    'Six years. Gad,' said Bunbury, ladling some more punch into his glass and topping up Derby's with a splash, 'that's a long stretch to waste. A man never knows how long he has left.'
    'I wouldn't call it a waste,' objected Derby. 'I see a great deal of the lady; she often dines with me and stays to play whist. She uses my carriage.'
    'Sounds much like being married.'
    'Except that we never quarrel.'
    Bunbury let out a bark of laughter.
    That wasn't quite true, Derby reflected. He and the actress never spoke in heat, but there were significant silences. He was still smarting from yesterday's mistake. He knew the unspoken rules—that they were never to be alone without Mrs Farren, nor use first names, and that Eliza wouldn't accept anything from him but fruit sent down from his greenhouses at Knowsley in Lancashire, or an occasional brace of partridges after the annual Foxite shooting party in Norfolk. But in celebration of her successful début at Richmond House (where it was clear to Derby that everyone had adored her at once), he'd taken the risk of ordering a little basket of hothouse white currants and hiding a string of pearls among their translucent beads. He'd convinced himself that Eliza might let it pass, on this special occasion, if she were