LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter Four

      Kathryn set aside her lap desk, glanced out the window of her second-story room and wondered again how poor Pip was getting on today. She didn’t think he had been seriously injured, but Chadwick surely would want to know about it.

      She had left word with the landlady at Jonathan’s rooms the moment she arrived in town the day before. Since mid morning she had searched for him. She’d sent Thom to the servants’ entrances of the gentlemen’s clubs with questions, and contacted everyone Chadwick had performed for in the past few weeks. By midafternoon, Kathryn had decided to give it up and come back to Uncle Rupert’s. Either no one had seen Jon or they were helping him avoid her.

      Perhaps she should have mentioned the reason she wanted to find him in the inquiries she made. Even then, everyone would probably believe she was only after a story for the paper. Her “secret” occupation was hardly a true secret.

      Working did nothing to alleviate her worries. The article on Chadwick was a futile effort, anyway. All the way back to London yesterday, she had thought of little else. Aside from his obnoxious public arrogance, she had found nothing derogatory to write about. Of course, she could expose his secret about using Pip’s music. That, coupled with his nose-thumbing superiority, would have everyone believing him as reprehensible as she had at first. Such a story would set London on its collective ear. But it would destroy Jonathan, and probably Pip, as well.

      She laid the pen aside and crumpled the paper in her fist.

      Where the devil had Jon gotten to, anyway? She had turned the city upside down, and he was nowhere to be found. As far as she could discern, he wasn’t performing anywhere in town tonight. Kathryn thought again of poor Pip, wounded and waiting in that sorry excuse for a home, with no one but that crotchety old crone to look after him. She had half a mind to go back there tonight and make certain he didn’t go hungry. If there was no word from Jonathan Chadwick, she’d go first thing in the morning, she promised herself.

      Right now, she had problems enough of her own to face. Uncle Rupert would fly into a rage when she told him she had decided not to make Chadwick her subject for the week.

      If only she could beg off doing the column for two months, she wouldn’t have to write anything about anyone. She would be twenty-five and financially independent. Well, just how independent remained to be seen. But however much she received from her inheritance must suffice. Maybe she should be grateful to Uncle Rupert, but living under his thumb was becoming increasingly intolerable. There were times when she thought him a bit unbalanced, especially when he nagged her so about the articles. Chadwick did not seem to warrant ruining, as the others had.

      In the beginning, she had reveled in the chance to knock some entertainer off his golden perch. If only she hadn’t done the exposé on Thackery Osgood six months ago, she wouldn’t be in this mess. The wretch had ruined three young singers fresh off the farm. Three in a row! Those poor girls hadn’t had a clue what the lecherous old sot was up to when he offered them parts in his musicale. Promises of fame and riches had turned to shame and degradation within days of their respective arrivals. Luckily—or maybe not so luckily, given her present predicament—Kathryn had virtually stumbled on one of the unfortunates, a vicar’s daughter, trying to throw herself into the Thames. Osgood’s admirers had nearly lynched him from the theater marquee after Kathryn’s column revealing what he had done appeared. She couldn’t regret having a hand in that. Hanging was too good for the bastard.

      Then there had been Theodosia Lark. Lark, indeed! Sang more like a goose with a bad throat, Kathryn thought. The woman had abandoned her own children, infant twins, on the steps of a local orphanage just so that she could resume her career unencumbered. Lark’s return to the stage had lasted only until the next edition of About Town. The pathos Kathryn injected into the piece about the babies had inspired their subsequent adoption by a wealthy merchant’s family. Now the singing doxy had neither career nor motherhood to worry about. Public outrage had forced her retirement.

      Other scandals had followed, dutifully penned by her alter ego, K. M. Wainwright. Kathryn knew that targeting entertainers had everything to do with her own mother’s profession. Maria Soliana’s operatic career flourished even today, but Italy’s darling had better not dare a return to London. Father had never quite recovered from his wife’s abandonment. Kathryn had adjusted to being motherless, but it had left her bitter. How could any mother put her career before her own child? No, Kathryn didn’t regret dashing Theodosia Lark’s career. Not for a moment.

      Kathryn knew there were good and talented people in the business, but most of them were self-centered and uncaring. What began as a small crusade against the worst evils of the stage had simply gotten out of hand. She thought perhaps she had run out of truly ignominious individuals. Uncle Rupert would have to find himself another writer with a grudge. Hers had spent itself, at least for the present.

      He could threaten all he liked, but Kathryn didn’t really believe her own uncle would set her out on the street without a farthing. And if he still intended to thrust her into a marriage with that pompous Randall Nelson, he could jolly well think again.

      With her shoulders squared and her mouth firmly set, Kathryn went down the stairs to confront him with her resignation.

      When she stopped on the first floor landing to brush out the wrinkles in her skirt and bolster her flagging courage, Randall’s voice drifted up from the open door of Uncle Rupert’s study. His words were indistinct, but his tone sounded angry. The fact that he was here wasn’t out of the ordinary. He owned a part interest in the paper and he and Uncle Rupert had been friends for years, despite the difference in their ages. This was no ordinary conversation between chums, however. Kathryn had been a reporter just long enough to heed her instincts. Quietly she descended just far enough downstairs to overhear without being seen.

      “You ought to keep a tighter rein on her, Rupert,” Randall said. “I don’t like the idea of her haring off about town unescorted. Her reputation’s already in shreds since you let it be known she’s the one doing those columns in the paper.”

      Rupert laughed; it was a nasty sound. “Hey, you can’t blame me for taking full advantage of her talents, now can you? She’s good at what she does—subscriptions have doubled! And you won’t mind all that talk when you get your hands on her inheritance, will you? Not every day a man comes into a fortune like that Eighty thousand pounds can sugarcoat the foulest little pill, can’t it?”

      “Eighty thousand? But that’s only half! You said a sixty-forty split in my favor, Rupert.”

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