She’d insisted on staying to smooth things over with Sid, as she called it, though the club owner didn’t strike Gavin as the sort who was inclined to see reason. Money, or rather bribery, would be his bottom line. He cast his gaze about the room, mentally assessing the damage. At least a quarter of the table and chairs had been reduced to kindling and most of the floor-length mirrors survived as empty frames.
He turned to Rourke, the businessman among them. “What is your reckoning of what replacing this rubbish will cost?”
Harry and Rourke exchanged smiling looks. Harry spoke up and said, “I wouldn’t worry about it, if I were you.”
Gavin shook his head. He’d given Daisy his word and, by God, he meant to keep it. “I promised to pay for the damage; otherwise the club manager will as good as own her.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Rourke looked amused. “Dinna fash, I know for a fact no reckoning will be required.”
“Are you saying the club manager has decided to forgive the debt?” Having overheard Daisy’s charged back-and-forth with the club owner, the slimy Sid hadn’t struck him as the forgiving sort.
“Indeed he has,” Harry confirmed.
He and Rourke exchanged glances and then burst into laughter. Wondering if they might be drunker than they let on, Gavin asked, “What is so funny?”
Swiping the back of his busted hand over watery eyes, Harry shook his head. “Rourke just bought the place a few minutes ago, lock, stock, and barrel.”
“I had rather have a fool to make me merry
than experience to make me sad …”
—W
ILLIAM
S
HAKESPEARE
, Rosalind,
As You Like It
T
wo days later, Gavin sat with Rourke and Hadrian in what until a few days before had served as his study, his formerly feral cat, Mia, stretched out on the arm of his chair. Reaching over to stroke her soft black and white fur, he kept one eye on the wall clock as he listened to his two friends recount the full story of how Rourke had come to be in possession of The Palace.
After leaving Daisy’s dressing room door, a furious Sid had stomped to the front of the house, intent on having his bullies drag Gavin’s two troublemaking friends out into the alley for a proper beating. Rourke’s offer to purchase The Palace outright had forestalled the violence. At first, Sid assumed the Scot was either drunk or bluffing or a bit of both, but when Rourke produced a money clip of 100-pound notes to stand as his surety, along with his business card and signed marker for the balance, which would arrive by bank draft at the week’s end, Sid changed his tune. Instead of ordering up a beating, he ordered the contents of the bar be brought out to seal the deal.
“If I can buy a castle in the Highlands, then why not buy a palace in London to go with it?” Rourke asked with a grin. It was an open joke among them that the Scot accumulated property as other men accumulated lint and pocket change.
At present, Gavin’s flat was all the property he cared to manage. With the help of his two friends, he’d spent the previous day converting his study into a miniature theatrical school. He’d even gone so far as to box up all but the most necessary of his legal texts and law school tomes to make room on the bookshelves for the dramaturgical library he hastily amassed—comedies and dramas by European masters Shakespeare and Ibsen, Wilde and Pinero, Chekhov and Zola. No Gilbert and Sullivan, though. Musical theater struck him as scarcely a step above the vulgar dance hall burlesques he’d suffered through the other night. Daisy was quite simply too fine to be locked into performing that sort of rubbish, he saw that clearly. Her rehabilitation from dance hall chanteuse to serious actress hinged on making quite certain she saw it, too.
Sipping a glass of whiskey, Rourke shook his auburn head. “Delilah du Lac and our wee Daisy one and the same woman—I can scarcely credit it.”
Gavin pulled on his cuffs and stared ahead to the study door. Daisy was due any time and the prospect of seeing her again had him feeling absurdly nervous. She’d solidly refused to let him have any hand in helping her move, swearing she had but little with her. He couldn’t say she’d been rude, not exactly, but she had been firm, making it clear she meant to settle her affairs with her promoter without his help. It occurred to him to wonder if such a strident display of independence might be masking some secret something or rather
someone,
she might be hiding from him, but for the time being he resolved to set aside that maddening thought. Even if it were the case and another man was involved, he had no claim upon her—at least not any he might yet enforce.
“Delilah du Lac was a dance hall persona only, a fiction,” Gavin replied more strongly than he intended. “Now that Daisy will be pursuing a theatrical career, she’ll either use her given name or we’ll come up with a more suitable stage name.”
Hadrian and Rourke exchanged looks. Without speaking, Hadrian walked over to the sideboard, unstoppered the crystal whiskey decanter, and poured three fingers’ worth of the amber-colored alcohol into a glass. Turning about, he offered the drink to Gavin. “Fancy a spot of whiskey to take the edge off?”
Gavin didn’t like to think his nervousness was that obvious but apparently it was, to his friends at least. He shook his head. “No, thank you.” He wanted to be clear-headed when his “houseguest” arrived.
Hadrian shrugged and sipped his drink. “Our Daisy always did have a fancy to tread the boards, though I dare say she’ll find London tame compared to Paris. If even half of the rumors flying about are true, she’s experienced her share of living beyond kicking up her heels in the can-can.”
The rage rolled over Gavin with the swiftness of a thunderbolt splitting in twain a placid summer sky. “I don’t think I care for what you’re implying.”
Hadrian hesitated, but his gaze never wavered. “I’m not implying anything. I only mean she’s sure to have had a protector, perhaps several. Those Paris dance halls may cater to bourgeois families for the early performances, but after the sun goes down over Monmarte,
ooh la la.
The Moulin Rouge is known about Paris as a market for love.”
Legion of lovers. The Prince of Wales invited her to a very private supper when he was in Paris last. Talent onstage said to come as second to her talent between the sheets.
Gavin had spent the past few days replaying the rumors in his mind. As much as he wanted to believe they were gross exaggerations, Daisy’s behavior onstage and later in her dressing room certainly bore them out.
Still holding onto the hope that it was all or mostly an act, he snapped, “I wasn’t aware you’d been to Paris.”
The jibe hit home. Scarlet heat flooded Hadrian’s face and his grip on the glass tightened. “You don’t have to go abroad to experience life, or recognize it, for that matter. Any woman with Daisy’s …
attributes
and in that line of work is bound to attract a goodly share of male attention, not all of it unwelcome. Why, just the other day I happened upon a copy of one of Nadar’s photographic portraits of Sarah Bernhardt. Now there’s an example of a highly successful French actress who started out her er …
career
as a courtesan. The French don’t seem to attach the same stigma to these arrangements as we English do. Christ, Gavin, with an upbringing like Daisy’s, surely you don’t expect the girl to be a virgin—do you?”
Gavin shot out of his chair, sending Mia jumping off the armrest and scurrying for cover. Meeting his friend’s startled gaze, he said through set teeth, “You’re all but implying she’s a common whore. Would you care to rescind that remark?”
“Draw it mild, Gav, he dinna mean it like that.” Rourke stepped between them and laid a restraining hand on Gavin’s arm. Glancing down to the thick fingers curled about his bicep, Gavin realized he’d raised his fist with the full intention of planting it in Harry’s face.
Christ, what’s gotten into me?
Among their trio, he’d always been the placid one, the peacemaker, the sometimes saint, and yet a casual comment about Daisy’s all too probable past had him on the verge of coming to blows with one of his two best friends. The situation sounded an inner alarm.
Backing away, he shook off his friend’s hold. “Sorry. I don’t know what came over me. Seeing her again after all these years, the same and yet so very different, has wreaked havoc with my head. It seems I’m incapable of rational thought.”
Hadrian picked up his drink. “No worries, Gav. A woman can do the very devil of a dance through a man’s mind. When that boudoir photograph of Callie landed on the newsstands, I wanted to murder every paperboy I could get my hands on even if I was the one who’d taken the blasted picture in the first place. How’s that for irrational?”
“Unlike Callie, Daisy apparently has earned her reputation.”
Hadrian nodded. “Well, you must admit, she’s on her way to being famous, or rather infamous, on two continents—hardly shabby work for an orphan girl born with one foot in the workhouse. I, for one, say good on her.”
“Why thank you, mate. I quite agree.”
The three men swung about. Daisy stood in the doorway, a carpet bag dangling from either gloved hand.
Tearing his gaze away from her, Gavin looked between Rourke and Hadrian. Standing at stiff attention, they resembled the Queen’s Guard outside Buckingham Palace rather than two friends reuniting with a third. But then Daisy wasn’t their Daisy any more but Delilah du Lac, a celebrity whose fame had reached across the Channel. Though Hadrian was besotted with his Callie, and Rourke had set his cap for the lovely if prickly Lady Kat, they were still men with the normal male curiosity.
Gavin’s manservant, Jamison, appeared red-faced in the doorway behind her. A sparely built man of fifty-odd, Jamison had been in Gavin’s employ since he’d left his grandfather’s residence and set up his own five years before. Ordinarily it took a great deal to disrupt the servant’s implacable calm, but it seemed Daisy had managed the feat within mere minutes of her arrival. “Please accept my apologies, sir. I asked the lady to wait while I announced her, but the moment I turned my back, she—”
“Hightailed it through the foyer and barged directly in,” Daisy finished with a wink. “Truth be told, I’ve never been terribly good at waiting.”
“That’s quite all right, Jamison,” Gavin said. “If you’ll see about some refreshment, we’ll take over entertaining Miss Lake.”
Dropping her bags inside the door, Daisy swept into the room. Smartly turned out in a princess-cut emerald green carriage dress and matching hat festooned with blond fringe, she looked elegant and imminently respectable albeit more stylish than the typical Englishwoman. With the exception of a telltale tinge of color accentuating the high curve of her cheekbones and wantonly full mouth, she might have passed for a society beauty back from a shopping excursion to Paris. But had he really expected her to show up in broad daylight wearing full stage paint and short striped skirts?
Rourke rushed forward and captured her in a hearty hug, lifting her from the floor. “Why, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” Setting her down, he held her at arm’s length. “I always knew you’d grow into a beauty. Turn about, lass, and let us have a look at you.”
Obviously used to being at the center of male attention, she obliged by stepping back and executing a perfect little pirouette
sans
blushing or begging off. “I’m glad to see you haven’t changed a jot, Patrick. You’re as charming a rogue as you ever were, only far better looking and taller than I recall.”
Rourke grinned. His lack of height had been a sore point for him when they were boys. “Aye, you’ve the right of it, sweeting, only I’m a prosperous rogue these days—what respectable folk call a
businessman.
”
Daisy looked suitably impressed, and Gavin saw how her gaze took in the gemstones twinkling from Rourke’s earlobe and the little finger of his right hand. Fighting a twinge of jealousy, he explained, “Rourke has done a great deal better by himself than setting up shop. He’s what is known as a railway magnate—or ‘robber baron’ as the Americans fancy saying.”
Daisy swiveled her head back to Rourke, who nodded. “Aye, stealing railway shares from under the quality’s toffee-covered noses isna all that different from pinching their watches and purses, save the law can’t hang you for it nor lock you up, either.”
She turned to Hadrian. “And you must be our very own Handsome Harry all grown up. Why, you’re just as fine looking as you ever were, only more so I dare say.”
He planted a kiss on the proffered cheek but, catching Gavin’s gaze, swiftly stepped back. “You’ve a glib tongue, my girl, but so long as its compliments you’re serving up, I’ll gladly take them—only the name’s Hadrian now. You’re not the only one to take a stage name.” He punctuated the admission with a wink.
Watching the three of them slip into flirting and teasing with good-natured Cockney ease, Gavin felt very much the outsider. Even though he lived in an East End tenement for his first thirteen years, he’d never been a part of that world, not really. Despite the menial work she’d undertaken, his mother had always borne herself as a lady and had imparted her fine manners and cultured speech to Gavin from the cradle.
Remembering his duty as host, he invited everyone to take seats. “Tea should be along shortly.”
Daisy sat on the settee. Smoothing out her skirts, she gazed at the whiskey glass Hadrian held and said, “I wonder, do you have any sherry or perhaps a nip of that lovely looking whiskey? I could do with a drop.”
Gavin winced, but predictably Rourke declared a round of whiskey to be a capital plan. Gavin made a mental note to take up the topic with Daisy at a later time. For the present, rather than embarrass her in front of their friends, he rose and poured out the drinks.
Hadrian grinned. “Still determined to do everything we lads do, I see.”
“Indeed, only better.” Her drink in hand, she shot him an unladylike wink. “Bottoms up, lads.”
The threesome laughed and touched glasses. Gavin sat stiffly, looking on.
The arrival of the tea tray forestalled further awkwardness. To his surprise, Daisy set her drink aside and served them all without being asked, performing the ritual competently, if not expertly.
Cup and saucer balanced on her lap, she asked, “What did you lads think of my act the other night?”
Compliments poured forth from Rourke and Hadrian, but Gavin kept silent, wondering if she wasn’t baiting him. Afterward, they chatted about a variety of topics, including the world’s first moving picture show, which had debuted in New York City the year before. Hadrian was curious as to what effect, if any, the new medium might have on the future of theater. Not surprisingly, Daisy was a staunch defender of live performance though she admitted to some curiosity to see the former for herself.
The conversation wound down with Gavin contributing nary a word. Hadrian set aside his cup and saucer and rose. “If you’ll pardon me, I’ve promised to fetch my wife home from her office. No doubt she’s too knee-deep in paperwork or placard making or some other worthy task to miss me overmuch, but the plain fact is I miss her—damnably.”
Rourke popped up beside him. “You’ve your bride in pocket, but I’ve yet to bag mine. A wee bird whispered in my ear that a certain wild Kat means to take her filly for a trot about Rotten Row this afternoon, and I’ve a mind to show up there myself.”
Goodbyes were said and their two friends filed out into the foyer. Resuming his seat, the moment Gavin had been dreading and anticipating in equal turns arrived. He and Daisy were alone.