Page 15 of Beyond the Grave
"Of course." Miss Redding tilted her chin and her eyes brightened with an unkind gleam. I wondered if she'd been waiting to impart gossip about Lady Harcourt for some time. "I'm not one to spread rumors, you understand," she began.
"I understand completely. A woman in your position must be the soul of discretion."
"Indeed. I detest gossips, and Lord knows this place is filled with loose lips. But I must make an exception in this case if, as you say, the gentleman's family wishes to know."
"They do. Most sincerely. You can be assured that your name will not be associated with any information I pass on. Anything you tell me will only be kept within the family too."
"Oh." She seemed quite put out by that. Was she hoping the gossip would reach the newspapers? If so, she could have skipped this interview and gone directly to the editors of the more low-brow weeklies. They would have fallen over themselves to print something scandalous about the late Baron of Harcourt's second wife. "You're right, Miss Holloway," she said, rallying. "That good family doesn't deserve to be duped any longer, do they?"
"Duped, Miss Redding?"
She stepped closer and dipped her head. Being quite a lot taller than me, she had to dip it further to whisper in my ear. "Lady Harcourt has a…apast." She said it as if the very word tasted foul.
To London's elite, a lady harboring any scandal in her background was indeed shameful and would ordinarily be scorned, ridiculed and ultimately drummed out of the best circles. She could not hope to marry well and would never be asked to so much as drink tea alongside a respectable lady. A lady with a past had no hope of dragging her good name out of the mud—ever. A past clung to her forever, like a stain on her very soul.
It was why I could never be more than a housemaid. As a vicar's daughter, Imighthave married above my station and been admitted to polite society. But as a waif who'd lived on the street for five years, marriage to a pig farmer was more than I could aspire to. It was fortunate, then, that I had no intentions of marrying anyone, since Lincoln had declared himself unavailable.
"Did she work here?" I asked the stage manager's assistant. "Do you remember her when she was known as Julia Templeton?"
"I do. We were dancers together on that very stage."
"You were a dancer? How marvelous. I could see from your bearing and grace that you were a cut above the average." My shameless flattery earned me a smile from Miss Redding, albeit a wary one. I'd best not lay it on too thick, or she might detect my insincerity. "Thank you for confirming my suspicion about Lady Harcourt. How did she come to dance here? Her father was a schoolmaster, wasn't he? Weren't her family appalled at her decision to dance at The Alhambra?"
"How should I know? Anyway, beggars can't be choosers, so I always say. She's not the first girl from a respectable family who had to put her dainty little toes on those boards out there, and she won't be the last."
"She needed the money?"
"So we all assumed. Her father died and her mother was ill, so she said, and she squirreled away every penny, half starving herself to hoard her wages."
My sympathies for Lady Harcourt rose, and I felt awful for thinking ill of her. Of course she must have been poor to accept work as a dancer. No respectable girl would dream of doing so unless she were desperate. "Why not work as a governess?" I said, more to myself.
Miss Redding sniffed. "She made sure to tell us that her dancing career would be a temporary one, and that she would be leaving as soon as she could secure an appropriate position in a respectable household. Indeed, she reminded us of this frequently."
"Did she catch the eye of Lord Harcourt from the stage?"
"Blimey, no. She wasn't a very good dancer, but she had the sort of figure men notice."
Unlike Miss Redding and myself. She was tall and slender while I was short and still rather skinny. Neither of us could claim a bosom to rival Lady Harcourt's.
"He noticed her in the promenade at interval," she went on. "When she found out who he was, she latched onto him pretty quick." The more she spoke, the more her accent changed from the crisp tones of an efficient assistant, to the flat vowels of a working class girl. "He weren't the first gentleman to notice her, mind, but he were the richest and had a title and all. He was also in need of a wife. When Miss D.D. learned that, she wouldn't let the other girls near him."
"Was Miss D.D her stage name?"
Miss Redding nodded. "We all had stage names what we gave out to the gentlemen at interval. Mr. Golightly didn't want us using our real ones. He said it kept us safe."
"Mr. Golightly is probably correct. So Miss D.D. captured Lord Harcourt's attention and the rest, as they say, is history."
"That's right. But…" She leaned down close again. "He weren't her first…admirer. Not by a long shot."
"A woman like that would have many admirers, I'm sure. She's quite beautiful."
Miss Redding lifted her hand and seemed to be about to touch her scarred face in a self-conscious move, but at the last moment patted her bouncy curls. "She knew it, too. At first she were shy, out there on the promenade, but after one or two bucks showed some interest, she learned mighty quick how to attract 'em. After less than a week here, she was batting her lashes at the gentlemen, and lowering her costume at her chest and hitching it high up her leg. Shameless, she was. Course, the gentleman fell over themselves to buy her drinks or give her gifts."
"Gifts?"
"Fans, combs, baubles. She kept some and sold others."
"This is very interesting, Miss Redding, and thank you for the information. But what I don't understand is, how could she go from that life to her current one and not a whiff of it reach society?"
