She used every trick she knew—and by now they were several —to heighten his desire for her. But each time he imagined himself about to succeed she pushed him off and insisted again that she was a woman of virtue. Fortunately for her, he did not suggest that such behaviour seemed quite the opposite of virtuous. Sometimes he bellowed that she was a jilting baggage and stormed off, swearing that he would never see her again. Other times he staved and pleaded, doggedly, with real desperation, and then finally went away defeated. But each time he came back.
And then one evening, his face haggard and his cravat askew, he slumped down into a chair, demanding, “What the devil do you want, then? I can’t go on like this. I’m fretting my bowels to fiddle-strings over you!”
She had a sense of quick poignant relief. At last! And though a moment before she had been feeling tired and discouraged and all too inclined to be virtuous no longer, now she laughed, got up, and went to the mirror to smooth her hair.
“That isn’t what Beck says. She was telling me today how last night you came to see her, so hot you wouldn’t be put off for an instant.”
He scowled, like an embarrassed boy. “Beck prattles too much. Answer me! What are you holding me off for? What do you want? Marriage?” She knew that he had been dreading to ask that, that he was no more eager to get married than were any of the other young men, and that even though he believed or pretended to believe her story about her aristocratic family, he would not marry an actress.
“Marriage!” she repeated in mock astonishment, staring at him in the mirror. “That’s enough to give one the vapours! What woman in her right senses wants to get married?”
“Any woman, it seems.”
“Well, they wouldn’t if they’d ever
“Ye gods! Are you married?”
“No, of course not! But I’m not blind. I’ve seen a thing or two. What’s a wife, pray? The men use ’em worse than a dog nowadays. They think they’re good for nothing but to breed up their brats—and serve as a foil to a mistress. A wife gets a full belly every year, but a mistress gets all the money and attention. Be a wife? Pooh! Not me! Not for a thousand pound!”
“Well!” he said, obviously much relieved. “You talk like a woman of rare good sense. But you don’t seem very anxious to be a mistress, either. Surely you don’t expect to be that worthless object, a virgin, all your life? Not a woman like you.”
“Have I said I did? If a man I liked made me a fair offer, I assure you I’d do him the kindness to think it over.”
He smiled. “Well, now—we’re getting somewhere at last. And what’s your notion of a fair offer, pray?”
She leaned her elbow back on the mantelpiece and stood with her weight on one foot, the other bare knee sliding out of her satin dressing-gown; she began to count on her fingers. “I’d want a settlement of two hundred pound a year. I’d want lodgings of my own choosing, and a maid, and a neat little coach-and-four—and of course a coachman and footman—and leave to keep on acting.” She had no intention of quitting the stage, for she had met him there and hoped someday to meet another and more important man. As she saw what was possible for a young and beautiful and obliging woman, her ambitions soared.
“You set a damned high price on yourself.”
“Do I?” She smiled a little and gave a faint shrug. “Well—a high price, you know, serves to keep off ill company.”
“If I take you at that figure I’ll expect it to keep off
It took Amber several days to find the lodgings that suited her and she rattled all over town in a hackney, searching, whenever she could be free from the theatre. But at last she found a three-room suite on the third floor of the Blue Balcony, down at the fashionable Strand end of Drury Lane. The rent was high, forty pounds a year, but Captain Morgan paid it in advance.
Everything here was in the latest fashion, reflecting the light gay colourful taste of the new age. The parlour was hung in emerald-green damask. There were French tables and chairs of walnut, some of them gilt, and all very different from the heavy old oaken pieces she was accustomed to seeing in inns. A long walnut couch had thick green cushions, fringed with gold, and there were several green-and-gold lacquered mirrors. She decided immediately that she would have her portrait painted and sink it flush with the wall above the fireplace, like one she had seen in the apartments of another actress, who was in the keeping of a lord.
The walls of the dining-room were covered with hand-painted Chinese paper, flaunting peonies and chrysanthemums, all aswarm with brilliant-hued birds and butterflies. The chairs and stools had thick bright-green cushions tied to them. In the bedroom the hangings were also of damask, patterned in green and gold; there was a five-leaved screen, two leaves red and three green, and green-and-red-striped chair cushions.
