With This Curse: A Novel of Victorian Romantic Suspense Read Online Free

walking. Was he looking for Clement?” Clement Griffiths was her leading man, a far distant second in importance in the troupe hierarchy.
    “No, Miss Ingram.” The idea of anyone considering Atlas Blackwood “delicious” fairly stunned me. But then, she was not acquainted with the reality.
    “Who, then?” It seemed her curiosity would not be satisfied without my going into explanations. I stifled a sigh as I hung up her wrap and helped her out of her dress, giving it a quick inspection as I did so. My employer was indifferent to such details as a drooping bit of lace or a loose button, so I had learned to stay vigilant for such small problems before they became large ones. But the smart chartreuse taffeta gown with its facings and edgings of lilac shot silk looked as pristine as it had when it first left my hands; the cartridge ruffles at the square neck and three-quarter sleeves were crisp, and the hem showed very little soiling. A few minutes with the clothes brush would prevent it from staining.
    As I attended to this task, Miss Ingram slipped on a bright silk dressing gown and sank down onto the seat before the dressing table, unpinned the tiny saucer of a bonnet, and set about making up her face for the evening’s performance. With its coating of face powder, its litter of bottles and jars, and the blonde wig on its stand, the dressing table was the only part of the room that was less than exquisite. “You haven’t told me who the caller was,” she reminded me. “Such a handsome fellow—one might run quite mad for eyes like those.”
    “It was Baron Telford’s son, of Gravesend Hall.”
    “How interesting! If he didn’t come to see me or Clement, what was his business?”
    “He was here to see me,” I admitted. “A small matter—a mistake, in fact. Nothing of importance.”
    “Indeed?” The actress looked more intrigued than ever as she picked up a rabbit’s foot to daub rouge onto her cheeks. “I didn’t know you had acquaintances of such standing, Graves.” There was reproach in the words. My employer liked to believe that she was the most highly placed person in the troupe’s world, the only one who had sufficient celebrity to be a household word among gentlefolk, and for the most part this was the case. The assemblage of actors, stagehands, attendants, and hangers-on that formed the theater troupe were all Sybil Ingram’s vassals.
    I most definitely counted myself among them. Ten years before, I had been working a sewing machine in a factory, a place of deafening noise and stifling heat, taking home finishing work to carry out by insufficient light in the rented room I shared with two other girls from the factory. One evening as the three of us were walking home, a glamorous figure had detained us. As one we gawked at the actress’s shining golden hair, fine silk gown, and dainty features.
    “What a charming frock,” she said to me, reaching out boldly to grasp my collar. “Who made it for you?”
    “I made it myself, ma’am.” The piped scalloped trim that she was fingering had been a trial attempt before I cut into the more expensive goods of the dress I was trimming for a lady of fashion. “I’d be happy to make you one like it,” I added daringly, for I was always seeking more opportunities to relieve the monotony of factory work with more interesting tasks—and to supplement my meager income.
    “Hm.” She did not answer at once. “And the color? Was that your choice as well?”
    The bold greenish-blue woolen goods had cost me many a missed meal, but it was a color that lifted my spirits. “I wouldn’t advise such a color for you, ma’am,” I said, more daring every moment, for it was obvious from the woman’s dress that she had plenty of money to spend on her own adornment. “With your complexion, I think a robin’s-egg blue, trimmed in primrose and salmon. Or perhaps lavender with sea-green.”
    She laughed, not displeased. “You certainly do have a great many