Page 16 of No Mistress Of Mine

“That’s not true. I’m acting every moment I’m on stage.”

“It’s not the same thing, and you know it. So, what is expected of me, then? Because you’re my partner, I am now required to put you in my plays?”

“Our plays,” she corrected. “And hiring the season’s acting company is not your decision, or mine. It’s the manager’s. And choosing who in the company is cast in each play is up to each play’s director. You relinquished control of all that when you took over for your father.”

“As I said earlier, you are well-informed. And since Jacob Roth is my theater manager, as well as the director of our first play of the season, you are here to butter him up.”

“I wasn’t buttering him up! All right,” she amended, as he gave her a skeptical look, “maybe I was, but so what?”

“You think a few smiles over lunch will gain you a place in the company? Or did you offer him something more?”

Lola bristled. “I am not even going to dignify that with an answer.”

“You needn’t pretend it’s an alien concept to you,” he shot back, his voice tight. “But Jacob won’t play that game. He’d never put a woman who can’t act in one of his plays just because he wants to sleep with her.”

“I didn’t become your lover because of your contacts in theater, and I never used our relationship as leverage for my ambition to act. Never.A Doll’s Housemight have been a failure, and my poor performance might have been the reason why, but I never asked you to finance that play for me.”

“That’s true,” he admitted, but the bitterness in his voice told her there was no victory for her in the admission. “Putting you in that play was my folly and mine alone. It was also one of the most painful performances I’ve ever witnessed.”

Lola sucked in a sharp breath, surprised by how much it hurt to hear him say that even though she knew it was true. “That was a long time ago.”

“Not so long that I’ve forgotten what happened. Do I need to remind you how all the critics shredded you into spills? How we had to close the play after only a one-week run? How your fellow actors blamed you for bringing the entire play down?”

“All right, you’ve made your point,” she muttered, hating that years of hard work and proved success could not seem to erase her biggest, most spectacular failure. “But it was the first dramatic role I’d ever done, and I’d had no training. Since then—”

“The Imperial is a Shakespearean theater,” he cut in. “Have you any experience in Shakespeare? Any at all?”

She thought of all the time she’d spent studying, all the mornings when, still bone-tired from the previous night’s show, she’d gotten out of bed to attend acting classes, to study with tutors, practicing roles such as Juliet, Lady Macbeth, and Desdemona, reciting passages fromHamletorThe Tempest, until now, she knew the lines of Shakespeare’s greatest heroines by heart. “I have training in Shakespeare, includingOthello. I know the role of Desdemona backward and forward—”

“In other words,” he cut in incisively, folding his arms, “you’re a dedicated amateur.”

“I am not an amateur! I have vast experience on stage and a proved record of successful performing. And I’ve spent all my spare time training for dramatic acting. Henry hired tutors, I went to classes. He even worked with me himself. He taught me so much—”

“Yes,” Denys cut in, his voice icy. “I daresay he did.”

Frustration welled up within her, for though Denys was the only man who’d ever backed her in something that didn’t involve using her body in a provocative way, she knew damn well he hadn’t done it because he thought she had talent.

“Considering our prior relationship,” she said coolly, “I don’t think you have room to take the high ground on what Henry did for me, do you?”

He stiffened, demonstrating she’d made her point. “Either way,A Doll’s Housewas a huge mistake, and I never make the same mistake twice.”

She took a deep breath, reminding herself they were supposed to be on the same side. “Denys, I realize you lost a lot of money—”

“Sod the money. My involvement with you cost me something far more important than money. It cost me the respect of my family, something it’s taken me years to earn back.”

“Having spent over a decade strutting around a stage, displaying my body for men to look at, I think I know a little something about lost respect, too,” she shot back.

He pressed his lips together and looked away, shaking his head, and she didn’t know if he was trying to deny her point, or if he was just so exasperated with her that he didn’t know what to reply. “Denys, your relationship with your family isn’t at risk. They can hardly blame you for any of this. Besides, it’s Roth, not you, who makes the final decision about which actors are hired for the season, and your family knows that.”

“And you think that lets me off the hook and makes everything all right?” His gaze swerved to her again. “The moment London society finds out about this partnership, they’ll think we’ve rekindled our affair, Roth be damned.”

“I realize you’ve always cared what people think far more than I ever have, but being that you’re a man, this situation won’t hurt your reputation.”

“You think not? If you’re in one of my plays, I’ll be the laughingstock of London for being twice a fool over you.”

“You’re only twice a fool if I fail. If I do well, you’re clever. Nothing succeeds like success.”

“Forgive me if I’m not willing to take that risk a second time,” he said dryly.

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