Fates and Traitors by Jennifer Chiaverini Page A

cover of the audience’s cheers. He took her through a side door and into the backstage labyrinth, past players in various stages of undress, men gargling lemon water as they awaited their cues, ladies peering into looking glasses and carefully applying rouge with rabbit’s feet brushes.
    Junius pulled her after him into a cramped, windowless dressing room and shut the door behind them. A heartbeat later she was in his arms, his lips warm and hungry upon hers. “I love you,” he breathed in her ear, and when he kissed her again, she sighed and felt herselfmelting into his embrace. “I adore you. I worship you.” Again and again his mouth found hers. “Come away with me.”
    For the briefest of moments she glowed with joy, imagining herself strolling by his side through some distant European capital, attending the theatre on his arm or applauding him from an ideal spot backstage, spending every night in his arms—but somehow she found the will to push him away. “Where would we go? Your life is here, in London, upon the London stage.” And remaining in London was out of the question. Even if she thought she could endure the scorn of everyone she knew, theatergoers were a fickle lot. Charges of adultery could ruin Junius’s career.
    â€œMy life is where I make it, and with whom.” He took her gently by the shoulders, his eyes urgent and pleading. “I’m welcome on any stage in the greatest cities of the world. Early in the New Year, my wife plans to take our boy to Brussels to visit her mother. In the meantime I intend to go on tour on the Continent.” He seized her hands and pressed them to his lips. “Come with me. I cannot bear the thought of being apart from you for so many long, lonely months.”
    â€œAnd what would we do after your tour? Shall I go home to my mother’s house, while you return to your wife’s?”
    â€œI don’t yet know what we’ll do, but a way will be made clear for us. Perhaps we’ll go to America.”
    For a moment Mary Ann felt a thrill of anticipation—but then, with a sudden, sharp pang, she remembered Adelaide and Richard. “Junius, we can’t. You’re too good a man to abandon your wife and child.”
    â€œI would do anything not to hurt them,” he said, “anything but abandon true love, anything but suffer the torment of a lifetime without you. I won’t forsake my responsibilities. I’ll provide for them. They’ll never go hungry. They’ll never know a day of want.”
    â€œThey will,” she countered. “Even if every material need is satisfied, they’ll still suffer the absence of their husband and father.”
    â€œI travel so much already, I’m sure their suffering will be very slight indeed.”
    â€œI can’t believe that’s true.” Fighting back tears, she clung to him, resting her cheek against the lapel of his fine wool coat. “I couldn’t possibly give you my answer now. I need time alone to think. We should both carefully weigh the consequences.”
    â€œI’ve never been more certain,” he declared, but he assured her that she could have all the time to reflect that she needed.
    If she eloped with him, the repercussions would be vast and far-reaching. Not only would she deprive Adelaide and young Richard of a husband and a father—his presence and affection, if not his income—but she would ruin her own good name and break her parents’ hearts. She would be denounced as an adulteress, a whore, and if she bore Junius any children, they would be called bastards. They would be entitled to neither their father’s name nor his property. If Junius were to tire of her, to abandon her as he meant to abandon Adelaide—
    But no. He never would. His every word, his every glance and gesture, convinced her that she had ignited a fire in his soul as intense and eternal as the one he