“At least, coming from you, it’s not meaningless sympathy. You know what it’s like to be seen as not good enough for the man you love.”
Lola decided they needed a different topic of conversation. “You didn’t go back to dancing?”
“Heavens, no. I’m twenty-nine, a bit long in the tooth for the cancan. I tried my hand at acting once—I joined a repertory company, but I couldn’t stick it. I got through one week before I quit. Unlike you, I’m not brave enough for real acting.”
“Brave?” Lola couldn’t help a laugh. “Crazy is more like it. Last time I tried this, I was a colossal failure.”
“Which is why I say you’re brave. In your place, I’d have stayed in New York, used my inheritance as a dowry, found myself some nice, respectable chap to marry, and given up the stage for good. I’d certainly never have come back here and tried again. But perhaps...” Her friend paused and took a sip of champagne, giving Lola a wide-eyed stare over the rim of her glass. “Perhaps acting wasn’t your only reason for returning to London?”
Lola stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Oh, Lola, really!” Her friend laughed, not the least bit put off by her attempt at hauteur. “This is Kitty you’re talking to. We shared a dressing room in our Paris days, remember? Do you think I’ve forgotten how often Somerton called on you there with champagne and chocolates?”
“That was a long time ago, as we’ve just been discussing. And,” she added, wrinkling up her nose in rueful fashion, “Denys liked me much more in those days than he does now.”
“It seemed a mutual feeling to me, luvvy. Oh, how you used to sigh and swoon over him.”
Pride compelled her to object to that description. “I have never swooned over a man in my life. Not even Denys.”
“Tell it to the marines! I remember how he used to wait outside our dressing room while you dithered over which dress to wear or whether a gentleman like him would think you too forward if you dabbed perfume behind your ears. And when he asked you to move to London to be with him, you were over the moon!”
“I have never swooned,” Lola reiterated. “And I don’t sigh, and I don’t dither. And even if I was as silly as all that once upon a time, I’m certainly not that way now.”
“No? I saw you looking at him while you said your lines yesterday.” She paused to set aside her champagne, then she lifted her hand to press the back of it against her forehead. “‘Commend me to my kind lord,’” she quoted with melodramatic fervor as she fell back, draping herself artistically over the arm of the sofa, her glass held high. “‘A guiltless death I die.’”
Kitty sat up, laughing, but Lola felt no inclination to laugh with her. “I have not come back to London to rekindle a romance with Denys!”
“Haven’t you?” Her friend studied her face for a moment, then sighed, looking let down. “You mean it really is about acting?”
“Partly. Denys and I are also business partners.”
Kitty cocked an eyebrow. “I beg your pardon?”
She proceeded to explain, and though the other woman listened with rapt attention, Lola’s explanations didn’t seem to impress her.
“Business partners, hmm?” She gave a wink. “Well, that’s a start, I suppose.”
“Really, Kitty, you’re impossible!” She made a sound of impatience, sitting upright on the sofa. “Have you really forgotten what Madame used to say? ‘The lords, they love to chase the dancing girls,n’est-ce pas? But—’ ”
“ ‘They don’t ever marry them,’ ” her friend finished with mock solemnity.
The idiom wasn’t quite true in her case, but Lola wasn’t above using it to veer Kitty off this topic. “Well, there you are, then.”
“It’s time one of our lot beat the odds, I say. Why shouldn’t it be you? You know better than most that a girl has to have big dreams if she’s to accomplish anything.”
“I have no objection to big dreams,” Lola assured her. “Just impossible ones.”
“Is it so impossible? He loved you once. Why shouldn’t he fall in love with you again?”
Lola stared at her in dismay. “It’s not like that. We arebusinesspartners. That’s going to be hard enough to manage without bringing any crazy ideas of romance into it.”
“I don’t see how you can thinknotto bring romance into it. You two have a history.”
“There’s no reason why we can’t just be indifferent acquaintances.”
Kitty stared at her askance. “You and Somerton?”
“Yes,” she said, even as she mentally crossed her fingers. “Platonic, indifferent acquaintances.”
