Midnight at Mallyncourt Read Online Free

thing—” he said.
    I turned, staring at him with cool disdain.
    â€œI’ll be here, at this same spot, tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock. Sharp. I’ll be waiting. I fully expect you to give my offer more consideration, Miss Randall. I shouldn’t be surprised if you decided to accept it after all.”
    I didn’t reply. I moved briskly down the street, away from the pavilion, away from the man with the dark blond hair and magnetic blue eyes. I didn’t look back, but I could tell that he was watching me. I had never been so humiliated, never so insulted! My cheeks burned at the thought of his insolence, his unmitigated gall. How dare he suggest I be part of such a wretched intrigue! My anger grew, steadily mounting, but there was another emotion as well.
    It was even more disturbing.

Chapter Two
    I T WAS twenty minutes before time for the curtain to go up, and backstage was in chaos as I stepped through the door that opened from the dingy alley I had just traversed. The stage manager was yelling at the crew who were raising the brilliantly painted backdrop depicting the interior of the Vatican. Girls clad in wrappers, their hair in paper curlers, raced up and down the flimsy metal staircase leading to their attic dressing rooms, and our chief character actor, Donald Hampton, was throwing a tantrum because the robe he wore as Pope Alexander VI had a great tear down one side. Gerry, cheeks flushed, brown eyes venomous, was fiercely admonishing one of the stage hands who had misplaced a prop needed for Act One.
    I stepped over ropes, moved past stacks of painted flats that leaned precariously against the damp brick walls. Despite the din, I could hear the orchestra playing beyond the dusty blue velvet curtains and a low buzzing noise that I knew was the audience beginning to arrive. Sally, who was to play Guilia Farnese, was still in the pink satin gown she had worn to dinner, her blond hair in becoming ringlets, and she stood at the foot of the metal staircase, chatting vivaciously with a tall, slender middle-aged man in gleaming formal tuxedo and a black opera cape lined with white satin that swept the floor. He was the man who had given her the diamond bracelet last night, I knew, and with such an affluent protector on the scene, she wasn’t at all perturbed when Gerry left the poor stage hand in a state near nervous collapse and strode angrily over to the staircase, bellowing that it was high time she got into costume. Sally made a face at him, gave her gentleman a peck on the cheek and moved indolently up the steps.
    It was always like this, always noisy, always frantic, the very air charged with a frenzied excitement. I had loved it once. Once I had found it vastly stimulating, and I had been enchanted to be a part of this larger than life world of high color and glittering magic, but the magic had long since vanished. I saw the dust, the dirt, the soiled costumes, and flaking paint, and what I had in the beginning considered artistic temperament I saw now for what it really was: nasty temper, petty jealousy, senseless outbursts over trifling matters. Perhaps it wasn’t like this in the real theater, where professional pride and professional ethics took first place, but here in our tatterdemalion company the glamor survived only for those who were snugly ensconced on the other side of the footlights.
    â€œSo there you are!” Gerry thundered, storming over to me. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t get here!”
    â€œI’ve never missed a performance yet,” I said calmly.
    â€œDon’t get cheeky! I’ve taken all the cheek I can take for one night! That bloody stage hand—” He curled his right hand into a fist, slamming it into his left palm. Gerry was always melodramatic. He never stopped acting, onstage or off.
    â€œCurtain’s about to go up,” he cried, “and you’re just getting here! Acting as insolent as that