Free Perdita's Prince: (Georgian Series) by Jean Plaidy Page A

Richard.’
    ‘Alas for the good! They suffer so much. Unfair of fate is it not? It’s the wicked who should suffer.’
    He looked at her wistfully and she understood; but she smiled brightly. She would not show him that she often wondered where he was when not at home; that she trembled when she saw the accounts which came too frequently to Great Queen Street. She did not reproach him for those gambling debts which sucked up most of the profits from Drury Lane. But she was constantly worried about money.
    ‘Well, my love,’ he said, ‘this should bring in the cash. You know what a help these performances are. Everyone will want to see The Winter’s Tale because the royal family did. And, by God, we need the money.’
    She knew it. She helped with the accounts at Drury Lane; and she knew too that they could have lived in comfort – indeed, luxury – but for her husband’s wild extravagances.
    There could be a way out of their difficulties. She herself could earn money. Her voice could have been her fortune and was on the way to becoming so before her marriage. She had been offered twelve hundred guineas to sing for twelve nights at the Pantheon but her husband’s pride would not allow her to do this.
    It was something Elizabeth could not understand. How much more dishonourable to run up bills which one could not pay than to allow one’s wife to sing for money. But Richard had his pride. Pride indeed. One of the seven deadly sins. Pride insisted that hemust consort with rich men, that he must gamble with them, that he must do all that they did, though they were rich and he must needs earn his living.
    But she could not understand Sheridan; she could only love him.
    She did not remind him that the theatre was doing well, that he himself had a brilliant future before him. She would have been happy to live as they had in those ecstatic days of their honeymoon in the tiny cottage at East Burnham; but that of course was not what Richard wanted. He needed the gay life of London – the theatrical world, the literary world, the wits, the men and women of brilliance to set off the sparks which lighted his talents.
    ‘It will have to be a superb performance,’ he said; and she was astonished at the manner in which he could throw aside all financial anxieties at the thought of the production. ‘We must go into rehearsal right away. Nothing but the best, Elizabeth.’
    ‘And will Mrs Robinson perform?’
    He did not meet her eye. He wondered how much she knew of his relationship with the beautiful actress. He felt angry suddenly. He was a man of genius, wasn’t he? She could not expect to apply ordinary standards to him. She should know that however much he strayed he always came back to her. He would never cease to love her; he knew there was not a woman in the world like her. Wasn’t that enough? Mary Robinson was beautiful … in a different way from Elizabeth. Elizabeth’s beauty was of the heavenly variety – ‘as beautiful as an angel’, they had said of her. But a man of genius must experience the world. He cannot spend his life among angels.
    He spoke irritably. ‘Of course. Of course. Why not? She’s our biggest draw.’
    ‘Of course,’ said Elizabeth calmly. ‘I merely wondered whether she was experienced enough.’
    ‘Experienced? She’s been playing for more than three years. Her Juliet was an immediate success.’
    ‘I see. So she will play Perdita.’
    ‘Perdita it shall be.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I can’t delay. I must tell them of this great honour. We must begin our preparations at once.’ He stood up uneasily. Was she wondering whetherhis affair with the actress was still going on? Did she know it had ever existed?
    That was the trouble with these good women. One could never be sure how much they knew because they met all calamity, all disaster and the deceits of others, with a calm tolerance which, although it smoothed out the difficulties of life, could be damnably