When You're Desired by Tamara Lejeune Page A

“Remember, you have lines to study for tomorrow.”
    Mr. Dickson gasped in delight. “Do you play tomorrow, Miss St. Lys?” he asked eagerly. “I had no idea! There was nothing about it in the Theatrical Inquisitor , was there, Queenie? I read the theatrical pages to her every morning.”
    â€œI’ll leave a billet d’entrée for you at the door, Mr. Dickson,” Celia promised as Fitzclarence pushed her up the steps. “But now I really must go. Good night! Good night, Queenie!”
    â€œIf I were your lover, I’d find a way to make that man disappear,” Fitzclarence muttered. “What a bloody pest!”
    â€œHe’s a very nice man,” she said. Her next breath was a gasp of dismay. “Oh no! He’s looking in the hack! You’d better be quick, Clare—before he sees that wretched girl!”
    Hastily, she closed the door in his face. Leaving Tonecho to lock up and bar the door, she made her way past the tall porcelain Chinaman on the hall table. A mandarin, no less, he seemed to nod sagely to her as she paused to light her bedroom taper.
    Five minutes later, she was curled up in bed with a well-worn copy of Romeo and Juliet . Resolutely, she opened it to the first page. Notes she had written at the margins three years before were undecipherable now. With a sigh, she reached for the tiny gold spectacles on her bedside table. She really ought not to have had that last glass of champagne.
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    Dorian, Duke of Berkshire, could not sleep. The events of the evening had upset him greatly. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw Miss Tinsley, her face contorted with jealous rage, striking the beautiful Miss St. Lys across the face. Finally, he stopped closing his eyes.
    Slipping on his dressing gown and slippers, he made his way to the stairs. Berkshire House was dark and quiet. As if across a great distance, he heard the quarter chime of the clock in his mother’s boudoir. Downstairs, in the library, he found his mother seated at the massive mahogany desk that had been his father’s. Dressed for bed, a cap over her gray hair, she was writing busily and did not hear him come in.
    â€œMama?” he called to her softly, holding up the bedroom taper he had brought with him.
    â€œDorian!” she exclaimed, glancing up. “You should be in bed.”
    â€œSo should you be,” he said.
    â€œI couldn’t sleep.”
    â€œNeither could I.”
    The duchess set down her pen. “Do you want to talk about it?” she asked.
    Dorian walked over to the fire and added a log from the box. “I keep turning it over and over in my mind,” he said bleakly. “Poor Miss St. Lys! I ought to have done something. I ought to have stopped it.”
    â€œWhat could you have done, my darling? It is not your fault. I am sure Miss St. Lys does not blame us for Miss Tinsley’s shocking behavior.”
    â€œIt never should have happened. We should never have gone to the Green Room at all.”
    â€œYou’re quite right, of course,” she said. “It was very wrong of Miss Tinsley to insist upon going backstage after the play. I was quite shocked. But then, blood will tell.”
    Dorian looked at her incredulously. “If you knew she was wrong, madam, why did you indulge her? It is clear, I trust, that I shall not be making Miss Tinsley an offer of marriage.”
    â€œNo indeed,” she agreed very readily. “I have already struck her from the list.”
    â€œYou have a list?” he asked, momentarily distracted.
    â€œOf course I have a list,” she replied. “Miss Tinsley is no longer on it. You need never see her again. I have been writing to the other patronesses,” she went on. “Miss Tinsley’s vouchers to Almack’s are to be revoked at once. As of tonight, she is no longer welcome in the first circle of society. She will find her level, I daresay. With a dowry of three