There was a concerted giggle at that. Amber shot Beck a quick glare and caught a smug look of mischief on her face. She was on the verge of bursting out that she would play her own part or none at all, when caution warned her. “But I know my lines! I know every one of ’em if I never rehearsed again! And the other’s but a small part!”
“Perhaps it is, madame, but those who are too much occupied elsewhere must learn to be content with small parts—or with no part at all.” He glanced around at the sparkling, smiling faces, on which malicious pleasure was but ill concealed. “And I advise all of you to keep that in mind—should another head be turned by attention from high places. Good-day.” He swung about and left the room.
Amber was furious that he should have dared to treat her like that, and consoled herself with the promise that one day she would be even with him. I’ll get his patent and run him out of the theatre, that’s what I’ll do! But for the benefit of the others she gave a shrug and a pout of her mouth.
“Pooh! Much I care! Who wants to be a player anyway?”
As the days began to pass, however, her disgrace was not alleviated by another request from the King. She continued to play small roles—and to wait for another invitation. No one let her forget that she had been sent for once and had expected to go again; the other women, even some of the actors, and the gallants who came back to the tiring-room, all knew about it and taunted her slyly. They seemed to have grown more insolent than ever. And Amber, though she tried to toss off the gibes with a laugh or counter them with some impertinence of her own, was sick at heart, disappointed and miserably unhappy. She felt that after all her bragging she would die of shame if he sent for her no more.
And though she had thought in her first high-flown confidence that she did not care whether or not she ever saw Rex again, she soon began to miss him. It was not quite a week after their quarrel that Beck told her he had given a diamond ring to Mrs. Norris of the rival playhouse and that she was saying he had offered to take her into keeping.
“Well, why tell me about it! It’s nothing to me if he gives diamond rings to every tawdry little whore in Whetstone Park!”
But it was all bravado.
She was learning that Rex Morgan was more important to her happiness than she had ever suspected he could be. Though she had not realized it before, she knew now that he had protected her from much that would otherwise have been unpleasant. The tiring-room fops, for example, would never have dared patronize and bait her as they were doing. Without him she felt that she had been plunged suddenly into a hard and bleak world which hated her and wished her nothing but misfortune. There was no kindness or sympathy in any of them—they enjoyed her failure, battened upon her humiliation, were amused by her not-well-concealed anger and frustration.
She began to wish again that she had never seen Lord Carlton and never come to London.
Nan, however, continued optimistic even when ten days had gone by. She could think of more reasons why the King had been too busy to see her than he could possibly have found himself. “Don’t be downcast, mam,” she would say. “Lord, it takes up one’s time—being a king.”
But Amber refused to be comforted. Slumped in a chair before the fireplace, she muttered petulantly: “Oh, nonsense, Nan! You know as well as I do if I’d pleased ’im he’d have sent long ago!”
Nan sat beside her on a stool, working on a piece of embroidered satin, pale green with a whole English gardenful of flowers on it, which she intended as a petticoat for Amber. Now she gave a little sigh and made no answer, for she was finally beginning to grow discouraged herself. But when, just a few minutes later, there was a knock at the door she leaped up and rushed across the room.
“There!” she cried triumphantly. “That must be him now!”
Amber, however, merely looked around over the back of her chair toward the door, expecting to see one of the gallants or perhaps Hart or Kynaston come to visit her. But as Nan threw open the door she saw that a young boy stood there, dressed in some unfamiliar livery, and she heard him ask:
“Madame St. Clare?”
“I’m Madame St. Clare!” She jumped up and ran across the room. “What is it?”
“I come from Mr. Progers, madame. My master presents his service to you and asks if you will wait upon him at his lodgings tonight at half-after-eleven?”
It was the royal summons!
“Yes!” cried Amber. “Yes, of course I will!”
She picked up a coin off the table and gave it to him, and when he was gone she turned to throw her arms about Nan. “Oh, Nan! He did like me! He did remember! Only think! Tonight I’m going to the Palace!”
