"In London two weeks and already you're looking hagged after only three performances," Tate muttered as she brushed out Blaine's hair. "You've circles under your eyes and your color's pasty."
"Remind me not to ask you how I look." Blaine grimaced at her dresser in the mirror.
"Shouldn't ask questions if you don't want the answer. I'm plumb worrited about you, lambie. You canna keep up the kind of pace you've set for yourself. Chaperoning Fleur in the daytime and then here at the theatre to all hours of the night. You'll come down with the influenza and be took off before the cat can lick her ear."
"Surely an exaggeration," Blaine said, her voice reflecting amusement at the woman's words. "I have to make some push to be seen in public to keep up the fiction of Aunt Haydie. Thank goodness Puff has been taking over for the evening parties. As long as Fleur has someone to chaperone her, she won't ask too many questions."
"It's time you told the girl."
"I can't," Blaine said with decision.
Deceit did not come easy to her but now she was living a veritable life of lies. She hated lying to Fleur. She should have told the girl earlier just what kind of life she was leading. Had she told her at a younger age the girl would have been well used to the idea. At eighteen she had heard enough about the theatrical world to view the life of an actress as anything but moral. It did little good to think of what would have happened had she not tried to supplement their income. Fleur in her youth would not see shades of gray. She would feel shame for Blaine and this she could not bear.
She had quieted her sister's questions by telling her that she would not be home in the evening since she had to return to her post as companion to Cousin Lavinia. Too inexperienced to realize the unusual hours Blaine kept, Fleur had accepted the lie with only a momentary pout until she learned that Puff would chaperone her in the evenings.
"Fleur is so young and has such an innocent view of the world," Blaine said. "She would be horrified to discover that her sister was an actress."
"There's worse things." Tate pursed her lips in a thin line of disapproval. "Where will this all end, miss? That's what I'd like to know. You can't play Aunt Haydie for the rest of your life."
Blaine could find no answer to her dresser's comment and she felt her shoulders sag tiredly. It had been a very long two weeks. The house in Portman Square was more than adequate for their small household. Drew's aunt, Aurelia Breckenridge, was a wealthy woman and the rooms were furnished in lavish but comfortable style. With a staff larger than at Weathers, Blaine, if she could have relaxed, would have felt truly cosseted in the new surroundings.
It was not the move to London that had taxed her; it was the confusion of her own life that was taking its toll. By day she chaperoned Fleur to musicales and teas in the guise of Lady Haydie Yates. Then with Tate and Sarge in tow, she left Portman Square for the rooms she had hired in a less fashionable district of London. She had lived on Corridon Place for several years prior to her fateful trip to Wiltshire. There she changed her clothes and her makeup and raced to the Green Mews Theatre as Maggie Mason, the celebrated La Solitaire. After her performance, she returned to her old rooms and in the morning began the circle of deception again.
It was hard for Blaine to credit the fact that she had been able to get away with her disguise as Aunt Haydie. She was an accomplished actress but still she could not believe that she was so readily accepted as the rather eccentric Lady Yates. Granted she took great care with her makeup and her movements but it appeared that most people accepted whatever was before their eyes. Blaine felt twice as guilty, knowing that she was succeeding in fooling so many.
"I'll finish my hair, Tate, if you would find Sarge," Blaine said, anxious to have something to do other than worry over the confusion of her affairs. "Then we can go home and seek our beds."
The dresser handed her the brush and hurried out of the room. Blaine closed her eyes, soothed by the restful brush strokes, but before long the face she had seen so often in her dreams formed in her mind and she jerked her eyes open again. Devil take that blasted man! she fumed as she glared at the single white rose on her dressing table.
The flowers had arrived the first night of her return to the theatre. White roses! The card had been signed in a single initial, a flourished D. And that evening Drew Farrington had been seated in his private box, his green gaze never leaving her for a moment. In a rage, Blaine had thrown the flowers in the alley behind the theatre. The next night flowers had arrived again and she went back to her usual habit of giving them to the girls in the chorus.