Ways to Be Wicked (12 page)

Tom thought it would do him a world of good to hammer and swear at things for a bit. He would see The General, he decided, then visit Josephine.

The little pile of pirate hats had quickly grown. Josephine wasn’t stringent about the needlework; she required only that Sylvie be swift. They set to work on the pantaloons next, cutting from measurements taken from each girl and refreshed each time a new show was created.

The work was soothing; Josephine wasn’t one for talking, and Sylvie felt lulled by the soft sun coming in through the window and the rhythm of her needle passing in and out of the fabric. It had been a very long time since she’d done anything quite so ordinary, and oddly, she found it refreshing. They might be a curate’s wife and a curate’s daughter, apart from the fact that they were sewing pirate hats and pantaloons.

“Josephine! I’d hoped to find you...”

Sylvie and Josephine looked up abruptly at the voice. Tom Shaughnessy had trailed off when he saw Sylvie perched on a chair opposite Josephine, a basket of sewing demurely on her lap. He looked bemused for an instant, and met her eyes so Sylvie could see it. It was as though he somehow suspected that this version of her, the quiet version dressed in a muslin gown and demurely stitching things, was somehow as wrong as a derriere-patting fairy.

He recovered from his bemusement, but remained in the doorway.

“Oh, so you’ve given Miss Chapeau something sharp to wield, have you, Josephine? I shall stand over here, Miss Chapeau, at a safe distance, lest your passions become inflamed, and you become tempted to insert me with a needle.”

“Should you continue to stand at a...safe distance. . . Mr. Shaughnessy...I shall not complain,” Sylvie replied evenly.

Suspecting that no distance from this man was in truth safe.

This made him laugh, and he came all the way into the room. Fawn trousers today, tall boots, emphasizing those long, long legs. Boots so shiny the light bounced from them as he walked. A coat in a fine mahogany-colored wool. Red-gold hair mussed, falling in loose waves over his brow, as if the wind had just artfully tossed it. The waistcoat was fawn-colored, too, striped in cream, and the buttons on it were, it seemed, brass. Surely they couldn’t be gold?

He wandered to where the two ladies sat, then paused when he saw the growing mound of pirate hats. He gazed down at them a moment, then plucked up one of them, fingering it idly, almost delicately, a moment, his expression abstracted.

And then he abruptly put it down again and strode toward the pianoforte.

“Speaking of inflaming passions, Josephine...” Tom struck three or four random keys. “We’ll need a new tune for our pirate theme, and we’ll need it straightaway, of course. I thought perhaps something to do with. . . swords?” It was a serious query. “Seems the obvious choice, anyhow.”

Josephine became brisk. She abandoned her hats to the chair, a little spill of black felt, and bustled over to Tom to take a seat at the pianoforte.

“I’ve just the tune, Mr. Shaughnessy.” She clasped her fingers together and stretched them out, then positioned them over the keys and struck a hearty, seafaring chantey-like melody.

“Me ’usband was a sailor,” she explained over her shoulder to Sylvie. “And when I ’eard about the pirates, I thought to meself, I can jus’ ’
ear
it now . . .”

She played a few bars of it while Tom listened attentively.

“Yes, I do think that will do.
Now
all we must do is compose a song that every man who leaves the theater will want to launch into when they’re drunk. Perhaps something to do with. . .
thrusting
swords?” Tom suggested, rubbing his chin in thought.

Josephine tilted her head. “ ’Ow about...”

Now thrust yer sword laddie, now thrust yer sword. . .

She paused and looked up at Tom for approval.

“Good, good,” he murmured. “It’s a beginning.” He tilted his head up, searching the ceiling for the next line. “Lord? Bored?”

“Toward?” Josephine suggested, wrinkling her nose to indicate her opinion of her own inspiration. “Snored? Roared?”

“Reward,” Sylvie murmured under her breath.

Josephine and Tom swiveled toward her.

There was a brief charged moment of silence.

“What did you say, Miss Chapeau?” Tom asked mildly.

But she’d known this man long enough now to hear the suppressed glee in his voice.

Oh, no.
Sylvie kept her face down, jabbing the needle through the flannel, then into her own fingers, and she was forced to bite her lip to keep from squeaking from the pain.

“Come now, dear, do share,” Josephine encouraged, as gently as anyone’s mother.

Sylvie cleared her throat. “Reward,” she said, more loudly this time.

And this time looked Tom evenly in the eye. It was outrageously invigorating to flirt subtly with this man. Still, she could feel heat in her face. Her eyes darted toward the hearth, as though she was tempted to blame it. Deuced thing was dark.

“And, pray tell, how would you use ‘reward’ in the song?” Tom asked the question with wide-eyed innocence. And then he held up a hand. “I’ve an idea. Josephine, begin playing the song, if you would. Miss Sylvie Chapeau will complete the line for us at the appropriate time.”

“I—” Sylvie began to protest.

But Josephine had already begun playing, her large capable hands jumping over the keys to make the tune spring out.

“Come now, dear!” she urged supportively. “Let’s ’ear it!”

And Josephine sang:

Now thrust yer sword, laddie, thrust yer sword

She turned her head over her shoulder to peer at Sylvie, wagging her eyebrows upward encouragingly, her hands bouncing their way through several bars of the tune.

Sylvie flicked a glance at Tom. His eyes had nearly vanished with amusement.

Dear God.
Josephine looked so enthusiastic and hopeful, head turned over her shoulder, those encouraging brows uplifted, that Sylvie found she simply could not disappoint her.

So she squeezed her eyes closed and sang, resignedly:

Send me, send me to my reward.

For that, God help her, was precisely what she had been thinking.

Josephine jangled to a halt.

Tom stared at her speechlessly.

Sylvie forced herself to stare back at them with all apparent innocence.

“Your...‘reward’?” Tom repeated, finally, in a voice entirely lacking inflection.

Sylvie nodded gingerly.

He wasn’t smiling. But still, somehow, his entire face was positively fulsome with unholy, triumphant mirth. It was as if laughter could not possibly do adequate justice to her contribution to the song.

“Hmmm.” He paced to and fro before the hearth. “Thrust your sword, laddie,
thrust
your sword.” He gave the words a
To be, or not to be
gravity. “Send me, send me to my—” He spun and all but purred the word to her. “—
reward.
”

She suspected her flaming cheeks rather defeated the purpose of her cool stare, which was to make him believe she was entirely unaffected.

Where on earth had the word
come
from? It had just popped right out of her.

Who knew that bawdy songs were contagious?

“Well, I must confess, I think it’s bloody brilliant,” he said, shaking his head. “It really is. And I do believe I now have the rest, as a result. Josephine? If you would begin again, and we’ll sing it together?”

And so Josephine played and sang:

Thrust yer sword, laddie, now thrust yer sword

Send me, send me to my reward,

Whether it takes one thrust or a few

I beg you to

Josephine and Tom completed the last line together, their voices blending skillfully:

Thrust...yer...sword!

“Well then,” Tom said crisply, when they were done. “We can have the girls swooning at the ‘reward’ portion of the song, and clasping their hands in entreaty at the ‘I beg you’ portion, and at the ‘thrust your sword,’ part, well— we’ll have them thrusting swords.” He grinned. “Another fine day’s work here at the White Lily, ladies. I’ll share the song with Daisy and ask her and The General to come visit you here, Josephine, to learn it. And don’t forget, we’ll need a song or two for Venus. Think of the possibilities inherent in the word ‘pearl.’ And I do believe you’ve earned your keep for the day, Miss Chapeau.”

In a quick motion Sylvie was growing to associate with him, he reviewed the time and turned to move toward the door. But then he paused as surely as though something invisible had tugged him gently back, and wandered back to where Sylvie sat, his tall frame blocking the sunlight from the window.

She looked up at him, felt again that familiar, inconvenient shortness of breath, that needle-sharp spike of awareness that accompanied his closeness.

But he wasn’t looking at her. He instead picked up one of the completed pirate hats again and turned the cunning little item about in his hands, shifting it this way and that, his expression oddly reflective, unreadable.

He lowered it back to the chair, slowly, thoughtfully this time. “Do you suppose...” he began. And then he turned to Josephine and continued with a more decisive air. “Do you suppose you could make a very small pirate hat?” He held his hands up and apart, then studied them, and adjusted the space between them to the size of a small melon. “About. . . this size? By. . . tomorrow?”

Josephine looked a little puzzled. “Certainly, Mr. Shaughnessy.”

“Thank you.” He turned to leave. “And I shall see you downstairs in the theater in an hour or so, Miss Chapeau. The General and I have an announcement to make. After rehearsal, do come to see me. Perhaps we can then discuss your...reward.”

A grin flashed at them, he bowed once, a gorgeous flourish of a bow, and was gone.

Summoned for Mr. Shaughnessy’s special announcement, seven lovely women stood on stage—five young and plush, one young and slender, and one from whom the bloom had fled several seasons earlier, leaving behind a fully blown rose: a lived-in face, hennaed hair, and a rump that many Englishmen insisted that visitors to London should make a point of viewing with deference and awe, the way one viewed the Tower of London or White-hall. A national treasure, was Daisy Jones’s arse, they declared.

Daisy Jones herself stood several feet removed from the lovelies, as if aware of the contrast, or not wanting to dilute her queenly status by breathing the same air as the other girls.

“Jus’ look at ’Er Majesty. None too pleased to rub elbows wi’ the likes of us,” Lizzie murmured.

“ ’Er bosom is down around ’er elbows, now, anyhow. Wouldna want t’ find meself rubbin’
that
by accident, anyway.” This was Molly.

An explosion of giggles. High, incensed color rose in Daisy’s cheeks, but she neither turned her head nor moved an inch.

“Ladies, you may have heard, thanks to your
many admirers
who cannot seem to stay quiet...” Tom said it teasingly, and the girls giggled. “. . . of the new production I’ve planned. It will be a
tour de force,
a thing of beauty and sensu
al
ity...” he gave each syllable the loving, thorough attention of a seducer, weakening the knees of more than one girl on stage. “And it will require just the right girl to make it a success. We are calling it—” Tom paused.

“Venus,”
all the girls said with a sigh.

Everyone, that is, but Daisy, who remained silent and dark as a thunderhead.

“Quite right. And The General and I will be watching over the next few days to see which of you we believe will personify Venus.”

The General whipped his head around at this, seized Tom’s arm, and yanked him backward out of earshot of the girls.

“Are you
mad,
Shaughnessy?” he said, his voice low and furious. “They’re all going to be
impossible
if they think they’re in competition with each other. I thought we discussed that Molly would be Venus.”

“Or...they’ll outdo themselves, behave beautifully, perform outrageously onstage, and we’ll have crowds in here up to the rafters night after night this week, at which point we’ll disclose who our Venus will be, a decision that you and I will make together.”

The General glared at Tom.

Tom waited patiently.

“Or...a bit of both,” The General conceded, slowly, reluctantly, seeing the potential brilliance of the tactic.

Tom grinned. There was a pause.

“Probably Molly,” Tom said briskly. The businessman in Tom said this in a lowered voice. The dreamer in him saw an entirely different Venus rising up from the sea: a lithe one, with crackling green eyes and a shard of a wand in her hand, daring the audience.

“Probably Molly,” The General agreed just as briskly, in the same lowered voice.

This was based more on the size and number of bouquets sent to her than on anything else at the moment. They were practical men, and it was a fiscal, not an aesthetic decision. More men at the moment would probably want to see Molly rising up out of the sea scantily clad in the shell. She hadn’t Daisy’s vocal range, but her voice was clear and her interpretation of the lyrics was more than convincing; she was fresh, and had a following of sorts as well as a beautiful bosom. She was Venus from St. Giles, Molly was.

Whereas Venus of Paris was up there looking uncomfortable in that row of dancers, stoic, proud, staring back at him, again looking faintly wrong in a damsel costume that required altering. A bit like a real princess disguised as a princess.

Tom gave The General an encouraging pat on the back. “Good luck! You
are
giving cutlasses to them, are you not?” He said it almost innocently.

“Cutlasses,” The General repeated slowly. “Brilliant! Of course, Tommy. I’ll get the crew to work on them today.”

“Wait until you hear what I think they should be doing with their
hands
and cutlasses while they sing.”

The General grinned, too. “I can already picture it.”

“And we’ve a wonderful new song. Involving swords, of course.”

“Good work, Shaughnessy.”

Tom grinned. “And now I’m off to see a man about a building, Gen. They’re in. They’re all in. We’ll have our Gentleman’s Emporium by next spring. I’ll return before rehearsal is over.”