Free Shadows of the Silver Screen by Christopher Edge Page A

Penny could ask another question, he turned away to face Monty. “You have no objections, I trust, Mr Flinch?”
    “None at all,” Monty replied blithely. “I’ll leave the business of filmmaking to you, Mr Gold, and concentrate my energies instead on bringing the character of Lord Eversholt to life.”
    “Excellent!” Gold exclaimed, clapping Monty on the shoulder as Penelope silently seethed. “And tomorrow you will have the chance to meet the rest of the splendid cast I have assembled, including the actress I have chosen to play the part of Amelia Eversholt.”
    Standing by the door, Miss Mottram’s face paled as she heard these words, her lips suddenly blanching with apprehension. Penny’s thoughts slipped back to the gloom of the Flicker Alley screening room. She remembered the secretary’s face gazing out from the silver screen.
    “I thought that you had already cast that role,” Penny began, watching Miss Mottram’s fingers whiten as they gripped the door handle. The secretary’s trembling hand betrayed the emotions that her tight-lipped expression tried to hide. “In the scene that you showed us—”
    Gold cut her off with a peremptory wave of his hand.
    “Oh, that was merely a screen test, Miss Tredwell,” he replied dismissively. “A showreel to demonstrate the storytelling power of the Véritéscope. For the actual film of
The Daughter of Darkness,
I needed a new star – an actress who could capture the grace and poise of Amelia Eversholt.”
    With a stifled whimper, Miss Mottram fled from the room, the drawing-room door banging shut behind her. At this sound, Gold glanced over his shoulder, a flicker of irritation momentarily crossing his features. Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he turned back to face Penelope, delivering the final words of his reply in a laudatory tone.
    “I will have the pleasure of introducing Miss Vivienne Devey to you tomorrow, when we film the opening scene at the mine.”

X

     
    A pale face stared out from the carriage window, soft curls of raven hair framing her delicate features. The girl squinted nervously into the sunlight, lifting her hand to shade her gaze as she took in the scene before her.
    The carriage had come to a halt close to the shadow of the pithead, the horses whinnying impatiently as the nearby waterwheel creaked in the wind. A huddle of men and children were clustered around the carriage, their faces filthy and with ragged clothes hanging off their stooped frames. Some of the youngest children looked no more than seven or eight years old, the shackles around their wrists and ankles clanking as they dragged themselves forward.
    The tall figure of a man stepped down from the carriage, the collar of his shirt upstanding beneath his black frock coat, a dark red neck tie knotted in a cavalier fashion around his throat. Grabbing the riding crop from his driver’s hand, he snapped it with a whip crack to clear a path through the gathering throng.
    “What is the meaning of this insolence?” Monty barked, his dark-eyed gaze thunderous beneath bristling eyebrows. “Get back to work at once!”
    At the sight of the flashing whip, the workers closest to Monty’s path shrank back in fear, but one of the oldest children was pushed by the others to the front of the throng until he was standing directly before him. Monty stared down his nose at the boy’s upturned face. Beneath a mop of black hair its grimy countenance somehow had a healthier glow than the sallow, frightened faces around him.
    “Didn’t you hear me?” the actor snapped, flexing the riding crop in his grasp. “Why has the mine fallen silent? I want to see you all back down that pit, bringing up my copper.” He curled his lip into a snarl at the boy’s silent defiance. “Maybe I should make an example of you, boy, to show the others what happens to any workers that slacken.”
    “But please, Lord Eversholt,” the boy began, his quavering voice sounding strangely refined despite