Goddess of the Green Room: (Georgian Series) by Jean Plaidy Read Free Book Online

position at Smock Alley for much longer.
    As she lay in her bed in the room next to her mother’s and Hester’s she examined the possibility of departure. She had acquired some fame, but was it enough? Would they ever have heard of her across the Irish Channel?
    Extreme poverty was something she could not face. Daly had refused to accept small payments for the loan and she knew that he intended to hold it over her. It was no generosity on his part; he liked to have women in his power particularly when they were good actresses as well as physically attractive to him.
    So far she had managed to keep the affair secret from the others but could she hope to continue to do this? From a carefree tomboy she had become a woman of responsibilities. Had she had only herself to fend for everything would have been different. She thought longingly of the old days at Crow Street, and the more she thought the greater her hatred of Daly grew.
    She had always been aware that something would have to be done. The question was what.
    She knew that fate had decided for her when she made the alarming discovery that she was pregnant.
    It could not remain hidden for much longer and Grace, ever watchful, made the discovery. She could not believe it – exceptthat it was something she had always feared for her daughters.
    Never had Dorothy’s hatred of Daly been so intense as it was when she saw the anguish in her mother’s face.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’m going to have a child. It’s Daly’s. He forced me in the first place and after that threatened me with the debtors’ prison.’
    Grace wept bitterly. ‘You did it for us,’ she said. ‘For me and for the family.’
    ‘I could see no other way out and after that first occasion…’
    She shuddered and Grace cried out: ‘Don’t go on. I understand, my dearest child. But this must stop. I can’t have you treated in this way.’
    ‘But what can we do? Where can we go? Don’t forget that now… there will be the child.’
    Grace threw off her invalidism and became the courageous woman who had run away from a parsonage to seek her fortune on the stage. This was her daughter whose very devotion to the family had put her into this terrible position. Grace had always feared it but now that it had come she would face it boldly.
    ‘We must leave here at once,’ she said.
    ‘But where could we go?’
    ‘To Leeds,’ replied Grace promptly. ‘I was reading not long ago of Tate Wilkinson’s company. I once played Desdemona to his Othello. He couldn’t refuse help to an old friend.’
    Dorothy was relieved. At last she was sharing her hideous secret; and her mother knew too much of theatrical life not to understand how it had happened.
    She felt happier than she had for months.

Tate Wilkinson’s company
    THERE WAS ENOUGH money to buy passages to Liverpool for the family and during the next few days they secretly made their preparations to leave. When the time of departure arrived they quietly slipped out of their lodgings and took ship to Liverpool; and from thence made their way to Leeds.
    It was easy to discover the whereabouts of Tate Wilkinson for most people knew the manager of the theatrical company who had not long ago inherited theatres in York, Newcastle and Hull when his partner had died. He lodged at an inn near the theatre and Grace said they must lose no time in seeing him, for they had scarcely any money left and had not been able to bring all their clothes with them for fear of someone’s seeing them and reporting to Daly, who would legally have been able to stop them since Dorothy not only owed him money but was under contract to him.
    When Tate Wilkinson heard that Mrs Grace Bland recently come from Dublin was asking to see him he remembered who she was at once. He would never forget that Othello in Dublin in the days when he had been a young and struggling actor.
    He was kindly and as sentimental as most theatre folk so he received Grace warmly but was unprepared for