himself. ‘No, I do not want you to go away. After all, I have so little in my life to worry about as it is. You will doubtless be the grit in my oyster.’ She glared in response to his sarcasm. To his horror he found himself thinking about kissing her face back into smiles. ‘But I mean it. Tell Lord Pangbourne before this goes any further. I want your word on it.’
‘My word, Mr Hurst?’ Her chin came up as she gathered her skirts in one hand. ‘You have it, sir. Good day to you.’
Maude cupped her chin in her palm and regarded her father thoughtfully. For once they were both at the breakfast table at the same time, he having declared that he was not going to the House that day and she deciding it would be good tactics to forgo her usual early morning ride in Hyde Park in order to speak to him about the Unicorn.
She had spent an uncomfortable night fearing Eden’s scruples had overturned all her plans right at the outset.
‘Papa?’ He seemed to be in a good mood. His perusal of the Morning Post and The Times had provoked only half a dozen exclamations of wrath and he had not yet screwed up any of his morning correspondence and lobbed it at the fireplace.
‘Yes, my dear?’ He folded his paper and laid it beside the plate. ‘When your mother addressed me in that tone, she usually had some fixed purpose in mind.’
‘Well, and so I have. You recall saying I might have the control of my money unless I wanted to do something foolish with it and you would rely on Mr Benson to warn you if I did appear to be doing just that?’
‘I believe I said something of that nature,’ he responded, wary. ‘Rainbow, that will be all. I will ring if I need anything.’
The butler bowed, nodded at his subordinates to follow him and left them alone.
‘Tell me. I am braced for the worst.’ Lord Pangbourne folded his hands over his stomach.
‘You know the Unicorn theatre?’
‘I should do, since you rent a box there and we have visited regularly since it reopened.’
‘You will have noticed that it is one of the best of the non-Patent theatres and that the manager, Mr Hurst, has been improving it.’
‘The gas lighting, yes.’
‘I wish to invest in it.’ She sat back and tried to look calm, as though she had asked if she should buy government bonds, or some rental property in a good area. Her fingers hurt; she found they were knotted into her napkin. Maude frowned at them and made herself relax.
‘In gas lighting? I believe that could well be the coming thing.’ He lifted the newspaper. ‘There are some companies advertising here, in fact—’
‘In the Unicorn, Papa.’ Time for complete frankness. Almost. ‘I wish to invest a sum in the theatre and to take an interest in its overall policy. I find it most interesting.’
‘The theatre? But, Maude, that is not at all a respectable world, not on that side of the curtain. It is inhabited by the demi-monde and frequented by gentlemen who are not there because of their interest in the dramatic arts—I am sure I need not say more. For a woman to be connected with the stage is to court ruin. It is quite out of the question.’
‘I do not want to appear on the stage, Papa,’ Maude said. ‘That would be a scandal indeed—think how bad my acting is! And I most certainly do not want to be behind the scenes when the gentlemen come calling in the evening. I can quite see what a risk that would be.’
He was frowning at her, bless him. He did try so hard to let her be herself. Maude knew she was indulged, far beyond what most single young women of her background were. And she knew too that her position meant that what would be condemned as outrageously fast if done by, say, the daughter of an obscure baronet, could be carried off with dash by the daughter of an earl.
‘What about your charity work?’ Lord Pangbourne asked. ‘Are Lady Belinda’s wounded soldiers no longer absorbing your time?’
‘Of course, I have a committee meeting this afternoon. But it is hardly a full-time occupation, Papa.’
‘And the Season will soon be in full swing,’ he pointed out.
‘Yes. And neither is that all consuming, at least, not during the day. I like to be busy, Papa, and to use my brain.’
‘I would like it if you just stood still long enough for a nice young man to catch you,’ Lord Pangbourne said with a sigh. ‘I suppose you want me to say that Benson should call on this manager chap—Hurst, is it?—and suggest a basis for your investment.’
‘Yes, Mr Hurst. But I have already called upon him and proposed my scheme.’
His lordship choked on his coffee and put his cup down with enough force to rattle the saucer. ‘Called on him? My God, Maude, of all the shocking—’
‘I took my maid, Papa, and called at the theatre in the morning, not at his home, naturally.’ Maude knew she couldn’t act, but she felt fairly confident in her expression of outrage.
‘It is still most unwise. The man is not a gentleman. And the theatre of all places!’
‘Well, his behaviour was most gentleman-like,’ she asserted. ‘I felt quite comfortable. I was served tea and waited upon by a maid.’ That was doubtless stretching the description of the lass who was probably the general dogsbody. ‘And everyone there was behaving most decorously.’ If one disregarded Mr Gates’s indiscretions, of course. ‘Would you meet Mr Hurst and judge for yourself? I thought perhaps we could invite him to our box in the interval on Monday. You do want to see the revival of How to Tease and How to Please, don’t you, Papa?’
It would allow Papa to judge Eden face to face and it would reassure Eden that she had spoken to her father. He would not take kindly to being summoned to the house to be inspected, she was sure of that, but on his home ground he might be less prickly. She would order champagne with the refreshments and think carefully about who to invite to join the party for the evening. No one who would be shocked by a man wearing a diamond ear stud, that was for sure.
The committee for Lady Dereham’s Charity for the Employment of Soldiers Disabled by the Late War—or Bel’s Battalion, as her husband irreverently referred to it—was somewhat diminished in numbers that afternoon. Bel’s cousin Elinor was on the Continent with Theo Ravenhurst, her new husband; Elinor’s mother Lady James Ravenhurst was studying Romanesque churches and the Grand Duchess Eva de Maubourg, a cousin by marriage, was at home in Maubourg and not expected in London until early March.
Jessica had been welcomed into the committee on her marriage. It was a positive coven of Ravenhurst cousins, her husband Gareth Morant, Earl of Standon—himself a cousin—had joked. Maude would have become a Ravenhurst if her father’s intention to marry her to Gareth had come to pass and she had known most of the family since she was a child.
The Reverend Mr Make peace, Treasurer, was already seated in Bel’s dining room, fussily arranging his papers on the long mahogany table while assuring Lady Wallace, a lady of a certain age
