"Perhaps," Loretta said with a stark lack of interest in her voice. "It seems a disagreeable state, and I don't want to think about it. Do you think there's any chance that Bluett will allow me to try for the understudy role for Queen Mab?"

"Of course he won't," Jenny said. "He never allows a junior member to try for an understudy role, Loretta, you know that."

"Bluett will beg me to try for an understudy after I play Mrs. Loveit. It's the Duke of Holbrook's theater, Jenny, not Arphead." There was nothing overly ambitious in her tone: it was calm and matter-of-fact. "But you're right. Bluett will give the role to Bess, and she'll mangle all the lines if she ever takes the house."

"Everyone is saying that she did him a favor." Jenny giggled. The stage manager, Bluett, was not a man for whom a woman would do favors unless there was a certain reward attached.

Loretta wrinkled her nose. "How disagreeable." Loretta did not like to dwell on disagreeable subjects. As she saw it, to think about unpleasant issues was to waste valuable time that could be spent in consideration of important issues, the most important of which was her future as a brilliant actress, dominating every stage in London.

She could hardly ignore the occasional events that threatened this rosy future. Being struck down by a carriage last year was one of those. The theater manager at Covent Garden had been most unsympathetic when she appeared, late for the performance, and limping. When Mr. Spenser's consoling sympathy had led to a most enjoyable evening—if a most unpleasant outcome—the manager had terminated her employment with little more than a grunt and a wave of his head. The very memory made Loretta narrow her eyes. He would be sorry later, when she was the star at Drury Lane. Of course, she would be gracious.

Loretta believed in being gracious unless absolutely necessary. She had cut her teeth in the Covent Garden Theater traveling company, and there had been one or two episodes in which another actress needed to be shown her place, and Loretta had done so. But, for the most part, she maintained a sunny ability to turn her back on unpleasant people as quickly as unpleasant events.

If she hadn't learned that skill, she wouldn't have survived her childhood, given her father's proclivities. But childhood was one of the things that she never, ever thought about. Some years ago, she had constructed in her mind a loving father, who had been so indulgent that he left his estate to his only daughter. There was nothing whatsoever to be gained by letting it be known that she was Jack Hawes's daughter.

There were only two good things that anyone could say about Hawes: the first was that he took his hanging with remarkable cheer, wearing a new suit of pea green and his hat bound with silver strings. Of course, the suit was stolen, but by the time the former owner heard of its fate, his garments had been buried a week. The second was that he left all his profits from thief-taking to his daughter.

Perhaps he didn't directly leave them to her, but since she was the only person who knew of her father's false-bottomed wig box, she entered the house the morning after his arrest and removed the box.

One could suppose it was payment for enduring her childhood. Even thinking of that made Loretta feel queer and hot, so she never did think of it. She had first came to her father's attention at age eight, and she perfected the art of not-thinking by the time she finally escaped the house at age fourteen.

By then she knew where the hatbox was. In fact, the hatbox served as a good example of what Loretta might have called her philosophy: when awful things happened—like that little episode with the baby last year—good things often resulted.

If she hadn't been knocked down by the hackney, Mr. Spenser wouldn't have escorted her home. And if he hadn't escorted her home, she wouldn't have decided that she would like to be comforted in an intimate fashion. Loretta did not begrudge herself entertainment now and then, although she did resent her own lapse of judgment when it came to preventing conception. But even that disaster had turned to good, because now she was going to play a role in the biggest amateur theatrical production of the year.

Bluett, who ran the Regency Theater, had raised an eyebrow when she said she needed time off from her current part for rehearsal at Holbrook Court. He not only let her off, but the news spread like wildfire, and soon all the girls were asking enviously how she got the place.

Since she could hardly say that it had to do with that unpleasant five-month respite she'd taken in the country, and the screaming little bundle she had thankfully handed over to Mr. Spenser, she made up a lovely tale about the Duke of Holbrook. Probably no one believed it, but Loretta had never seen the point of worrying about what people believed and what they didn't.

"I just don't see why you don't wish to be a duchess," Jenny said dreamily, taking down her rosemary and sniffing at it. "I would adore having a maid, and people calling me Your Grace. I would wear huge diamonds around my neck, morning and night. I would sleep in them."

Loretta laughed. "There's only one thing I would adore, and that's to have three thousand people shouting my name, the whole stage littered with flowers, and Mr. Edmund Kean eager to share the stage with me."

"Oh, you'll have that," Jenny said, with absolute faith. "You're the best actress of all of us by far, Loretta, and you're the only one who's memorized parts that aren't even your own. Do you suppose you could just step into the role of Queen Mab tomorrow?"

"I could do any role in the play," Loretta said without hesitation.

"You didn't memorize the whole script!"

"It's not hard to memorize, and how can you really know a play if you didn't? How could you know its bones, and its roots and—"

"You're daft," Jenny said. "Daft. We're opera dancers. We come out in the interval and sing a tune and kick up our heels. The only applause I ever hear is when my dress goes a little farther up than it was supposed to."

"I'll be on the stage proper someday," Loretta said. "You never know when it might happen."

Jenny couldn't help smiling. Loretta looked like a fragrant, yellow-haired miss, and underneath she was the most driven, determined woman whom Jenny had ever known. Had ever heard of. "I've no doubt but that people will be piling roses around your feet, and I'll be likely still waiting for Will to get off his father's land and find an acre of his own."

"I'll fund you," Loretta said with determination.

Bluett stuck his stubbly head in their doorway, heedless of whether they were dressed or stark naked. "Time!" he barked.

Loretta checked her lip color; Jenny tucked her little sprig of rosemary back behind the glass, and they both ran off as the first rollicking sound of "I went to an alehouse and what did I see?" came from the pit. The interval had begun.

Queen Mab lurched off the stage cursing and demanding her flagon of beer. She was sweaty and half-drunk, but a ghost of royalty still clung to her garments as she swept by with a flutter of gold lace. Loretta flattened herself against the wall to let her pass. The Queen was followed by her fairy consort, John Swinnerton, who stopped and winked at Loretta.

He was London's leading man at the moment. His black hair and white skin gave him such a romantic air that ladies fainted at the very sight of him. Not that he was in the least romantic off the stage. "Heard about the performance at Holbrook Court," he said. "Know the duke, do you?