Her father gave a nod and tapped a knowing finger to his temple. ‘There’s more than one way to win at this. We’re not going solely for the young, rich eligible parti. That would be far too foolish. We will also be pursuing a patron. This party will gather the right sort of men I need access to in order to sell my play. If an Italian prince can convince them he’s found an Englishman to rival Shakespeare, they’ll listen.’
‘But you don’t have a play,’ Elidh put in bluntly. This was getting crazier by the moment.
‘Yes, I do. Nothing new, mind you, but I’ve given an old play a new title. It’s been years since it was out and it was only performed on the Continent. I’ve been thinking I simply haven’t had the chance to meet the right patron. After all, what sort of men buy plays in Bermondsey Street? My plan’s not so risky now, is it? There’s money to be made in the short term if nothing else, perhaps at cards if no one buys a play. I can wager some of our “jewels” for a stake.’
Dear heavens. Elidh wanted to reel and she was sitting down. Impersonating royalty, crashing an elite party, trying to court a wealthy man, trying to snare a patron, all the while fleecing people with the lure of false jewels on the side. Worst, her father was entirely convinced of his plan’s merits. She could see it in his eyes. Elidh tried a new strategy. If she couldn’t persuade him it was impossible to crash the party, perhaps she could persuade him about the dubious merits of actually succeeding. Success was not without consequences.
‘It’s mad genius to be sure, Father,’ she said sweetly. ‘Have you thought what happens, though, if we succeed? I would be trapping a man into marriage.’ Her father was a romantic at heart. He’d loved her mother deeply—surely such sentiment would work against him here?
‘Trapping him? It would hardly be that,’ he scoffed. ‘Being alone with a man in a garden with the sole intention of being caught kissing him is a trap. But when a man invites women to his home for the express and overt purpose of taking a wife, that is not a trap any more than the entire Season in London is a trap. Society doesn’t call it the Marriage Trap, they call it the Marriage Mart. This is no different.’ He wagged a finger at her. ‘And we are no different, miss, than anyone else attending the party.’ He talked as if going was a foregone conclusion.
‘We’d be impersonating royalty,’ Elidh reminded him once again. It was so easy to overlook that one detail amid all the madness surrounding it.
‘If you think anyone going to the party is really being themselves, you’re more naive than I thought.’ Her father frowned. ‘Those guests might bring their own names, but they’ll be impersonating their better selves and leaving their real selves at home. Those sorts always do.’
‘Then I pity this poor Sutton Keynes,’ Elidh said defiantly. ‘He has to choose from a room full of frauds and that’s no choice at all. If he chose me, I’d be no different than them, a false front for someone he doesn’t really know.’
‘You see!’ her father crowed. ‘No different. That’s what I’ve been saying. We’re just levelling the playing pitch. We’d be no different than anyone else there.’
‘If you’re right, he’ll fall in love with a princess.’
‘If I’m right, he’ll fall in love with you.’
Elidh studied the newspaper. ‘If you’re right, I’ll cost him his fortune. He would hate me for it. Saving his fortune is the whole motive behind his party.’ All the more reason her father’s idea was the height of madness. This Sutton Keynes couldn’t afford her.
Her father’s features softened and he looked at her gently. ‘A man who chooses money over my daughter isn’t the right man for her. It’s the classic quandary, isn’t it? Love or money? It’s the stuff playwrights dream of.’ Her father sighed happily, already imagining a hundred plots he would never write.
Long shadows filled the room. Elidh moved to light their candle stubs. She stopped to open the window and put out a dusting of breadcrumbs for the birds who gathered on the little sill. If she didn’t go with him, she feared he’d go alone and goodness knew the trouble he’d get into without her.
‘What’s the worst that can happen if we try?’ he cajoled as she worked about the room.
Elidh paused and looked up from the candles. ‘We end up in Newgate? Fraud is a crime.’ They’d be committing it on so many levels.
Her father looked thoughtful, hands folded across his stomach. She thought she might have reached him at last. ‘We might end up there or somewhere like it anyway if we do nothing. If we stay the course, we are certainly doomed, Daughter, for the workhouse, for the streets.’ He shook his head. ‘We have nothing to lose as it is. We have to try. It’s all we have left. Your mother would expect it of us. She wouldn’t want us to give up.’
Her mother wouldn’t want them defrauding an innocent man either. Elidh was sure of that. Well, fairly sure of that.
He met her gaze sombrely. ‘I haven’t anything left to give you but this one chance. I couldn’t save your mother, I couldn’t save the troupe, but maybe I can save you. Win this man’s heart and you will have your freedom from penury. You will have a life of luxury I could never give you.’ He paused, his eyes watering suspiciously. ‘I’m not getting any younger. Last winter showed us both that. I want to know you’re taken care of.’ It was a lovely little monologue. Was he the actor in these moments or her father? It was so hard to tell. When she was little, she’d loved watching her parents on stage, playing out a scene from her father’s latest work: her mother so beautiful and blonde, her father darkly handsome and intense. Even now, he could still deliver a speech with enough pathos to bring an audience to tears, even if it was only an audience of one.
‘Don’t talk like that, Father.’ She couldn’t bear the reality of his words. Elidh busied herself putting away her mother’s costumes. Her father had nearly died last winter with a terrible cough that had lingered for months in his chest. What would happen if he took sick again this winter? What would happen if she lost him? He was all she had left. The thought was untenable.
It was a classic quandary indeed. What would she do for love? Would she risk it all on her father’s mad plan? Not out of love for an unseen man with a fortune, but out of love for her father. She would risk for him what she would not risk for herself. But how best to do it? If her mother were here, she’d say to find the middle ground, that there were always more than two options to any dilemma.
Elidh put the last dress away, carefully tucking it into its tissues, her mind searching for that middle ground. She didn’t have to win the bachelor’s hand. She simply had to help her father secure a patron; if they could do that, perhaps it would prevent him from passing off fake jewellery as stakes at the tables. It seemed the best option. A patron’s support would be enough to get them through the winter. She would worry about spring when it came. What harm could there be in the masquerade? It only had to last two weeks. Then the Principessa Chiara Balare di Fossano could disappear for good and no one would be the wiser. She turned to face her father. ‘When do we leave?’
‘In four days.’
Elidh nodded. ‘You’d better call on Rosie, then. We have a lot of sewing to do.’ It was a plan with flaws and consequences even if they succeeded, but she’d worry about that later, when and if they appeared. Now, she knew what she’d do for love and how far she’d go. All the way to Newmarket, apparently.
