His Runaway Marchioness Returns by Marguerite Kaye

Author:Marguerite Kaye
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2023-01-04T12:04:50+00:00

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Though the newly renamed Canterbury Theatre of Varieties was located in Lambeth, it was one of London’s more respectable variety theatres, unlike the more popular Oxford Theatre in Westminster which had lately gained a reputation in the press for being frequented by ‘loose women’.

The Canterbury was also one of the largest music halls in the city, recently refurbished and enlarged to accommodate an audience of up to two thousand people. It was luxuriously fitted out, with chandeliers to supplement the gaslights and a glass roof that could be opened up to let out the constant fug of cigar smoke. Customers sat at small tables, paying sixpence for the downstairs seats and ninepence for the more expensive seats in the balcony, where the bar was also located.

Lily and Oliver were shown up the grand staircase to their table with an excellent view of the stage, which was a simple platform with a painted backdrop set on the lower floor with a grand piano and a harmonium, neither currently in use. Her ‘milieu’, Oliver had called this earlier, and he was right. As soon as they stepped through the doors and into the foyer, her heart beat with excitement.

As they sat down, they were assaulted by noise from all sides: people calling out to each other from one side of the balcony to the other, across the hall downstairs. Two tables of young men, clerks of some sort, were singing in a round. There was a constant stream of new arrivals greeting their friends before moving to their own table and in front of the stage more groups of men talking, eyeing the room and gazing up at the balcony.

The doormen had been thorough in their vetting. Everyone that Lily could see was respectably clad, the men in plain black or grey suits, a few in their working clothes and boots. The women, too, were in grey and black and brown dresses and jackets, hats and gloves. Lily motioned to Oliver to keep his own hat on as they sat down at their table.

The night was too young for the air to be polluted by cigar smoke, but it was rich with the scent of cheap perfume, spilt beer, spirits, wet wool and flannel from the damp London fog and under it all the acrid smell of unwashed bodies. Lily breathed it in deeply. How she had missed this!

The Canterbury had its own unique ambiance—every theatre did. The drinks, the food and no doubt the acts to come would be very different from Paris. But the badinage, the bonhomie, the sense of anticipation, the high spirits of people desperate to escape the drudgery of their everyday world to spend a few magical hours in this palace of dreams, where someone else cooked, someone else cleaned up and all that was to be done was enjoy oneself with gusto! That was the same atmosphere in every theatre of her acquaintance.

A serving maid appeared, demanding their pleasure. Having no notion of what

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