Tales Of Temptation: Rivals / Pride / Ambition

Maud Screwe. Could her character have been given a more disastrous name? As if it wasn’t bad enough being cast in Emily Windermere’s shadow yet again, the soul-destroying pattern that had first been sown in the girls’ childhood then tended through adolescence and college, eventually flourishing in the wake of their exit from drama school. Why? Because Emily was pretty and precious and made stupid exclamations like ‘Goodness!’ and ‘Fiddlesticks!’, which made Julia want to scream ‘FUCK!’ in her face for as many moments as it took before her throat shrivelled up.

Maud Screwe. Oh, she’d seen Emily’s expression when they’d arrived on location for the first time; the familiar gratification, the raised eyebrow, the ‘Julia, is that you? Fancy us working together again! If I didn’t know better I’d think you were stalking me—’ a tinkling laugh ‘—now, Maud Screwe, what a funny name…’

Emily had landed the part of Lucinda Liddell, naturally, the role Julia had originally auditioned for. It was a simple distinction: Julia wasn’t one of life’s Lucindas—her face didn’t belong in an Edwardian dolls’ house or in one of those ballerina music boxes that played dinky tunes on the harpsichord, it belonged to the trusty friend, the plain Jane, the slightly overweight sidekick. Never mind that she was the better actress—since when had that counted for anything?

Maud Screwe. The Maud was as dour and uninspiring as any of the parts she was offered—maudlin, that pretty much summed it up. And as for Screwe, well, someone was having a laugh. Julia couldn’t remember the last time, and, as always seemed to be the case, her own drought in the bedroom coincided perfectly with Emily’s dalliance with one of the hottest British actors in existence.

Christopher Fenwick. The mere sight of him brought her out in shivers.

‘Everything OK?’

Julia turned, for a stupid moment believing it was Christopher himself before the voice got attributed to Isaac, one of the footmen. Isaac’s character Ned was as downtrodden as poor old Maud and through shared scenes they had identified a kindred soul in the other—Julia decided if anything good were to come from this production it would be her friendship with him.

She realised she’d wandered further from Heriscombe House than she’d thought. The lake was spread before her, glittering silvery light.

‘Hey.’ She sank on to its banks, not much caring if she got mud on her cotton dress—it was already brown—and balling the mobcap in her hands. How she wanted to fling it into the water and never see it again! Why did she always have to be the sodding maid? Was it too much to ask for a scrap of glamour in her life? How was she ever going to attract anyone even remotely of the calibre of Christopher Fenwick while she was bound up in an apron and the only lines she uttered were variations on ‘Yes, my lord’ and ‘As it pleases you, m’lady’?

Isaac flopped down next to her. ‘It can’t be that bad…?’ he prompted.

She looked up at him. ‘I bet you’re obsessing over Emily Windermere like the rest of them.’

He smiled a little. ‘Why would you say that?’

‘It’s pathetic. Men are so shallow. All you care about is looks.’

Isaac scratched the back of his head. ‘That’s a sweeping statement.’

‘It’s true, isn’t it? And why shouldn’t you?’ She picked at the grass, discarding tufts of it till a bald patch started to appear. ‘End of the day, that’s what counts.’

‘Clearly it does to you.’

Her head snapped up. ‘Excuse me?’

‘You can’t accuse us of valuing appearances when you’re one girl slagging off another because of what she looks like.’

Julia opened her mouth to reply but the pithy retort didn’t come.

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she puffed, getting to her feet and tramping off.

‘Julia, wait.’

She rounded on him. ‘Fine, if that’s what you think. You know nothing about me, or Emily, or—’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘Are you laughing?’

‘No,’ he said, trying not to grin. ‘It’s just…you in that outfit—’

‘What about me in this outfit? You try wearing it!’

‘If you let me finish, what I was going to say was that you in that outfit and me in this—’ he gestured at his livery ‘—for a minute it felt like we were really these people. You know, in another life, another time, or something.’ He went red. ‘Never mind, it sounds silly now I say it out loud.’

Julia sighed. ‘No, it doesn’t. Sorry, Isaac. I’m the one being silly.’

‘What I meant to say was that you shouldn’t waste your time feeling bad over Emily Windermere.’ He scuffed the ground with his heel. ‘OK, she is pretty, but by all accounts she’s poisonous and anyway she’s never said two words to me, so, for the record, I’m definitely not obsessing over her.’

‘Christopher Fenwick is,’ Julia muttered bitterly.

‘And he’s an arsehole.’

‘How would you know?’

‘Because he’s a forty-year-old guy who’s cheating on his wife with every twenty-something starlet who crosses his path? The guy’s a dick.’

They made their way back up to the trailers in silence. Julia wondered if getting to take a dick to bed each night was every bit as bad as Isaac made out.

It wasn’t the first time Christopher Fenwick had visited her in a dream. On this occasion he was dressed as Lord Ackland, strutting in his breeches to the scullery where Maud was occupied with a basket of ripe polished apples, peeling their skins in bright green coils, fragrant and sweet, rolling floury pastry and dusting brown sugar, and he bent her over the wooden table wordlessly, unstrapping himself and tearing her knickers in a practised wrench that made her blood explode. The fruits went rolling, plopping over the rim and on to the floor, dozens of them, as his thrusting got faster and deeper and he was crying out her name—

Julia woke to silence, searched the dark and heard nothing but her heartbeat.

She checked the time: 2.41 a.m.

Unable to return to sleep, she sat and opened a book. The words swam in front of her eyes, making no sense, with each blink dragging her under. Was Emily doing those things with Christopher right now? Was she writhing in ecstasy in some hidden place, just as she had years ago in the gym changing rooms with Julia’s first and only boyfriend? The only boy who had ever looked twice… Well, he’d changed his mind the instant something better came along. Emily with Christopher was hardly the same, it didn’t come close to that terrible betrayal, but he was still a man she craved and a man whom she was forced to watch capitulate to those manipulative charms. Emily saw what she wanted and she went out and got it—regardless of the cost.

At three Julia padded to the kitchen and flicked the kettle on. She leaned against the counter and hugged herself against the cold. Six hours till she had to be back on set, six hours till she had to see envied, enchanting Emily glowing in evidence of the time she’d spent in his arms—time Julia could only dream of.

But tomorrow things would be different. The cast was to be joined by an American, an actress as beautiful as she was troubled, who’d recently emerged from a super-elite island paradise where she’d sought to battle her demons. She’d been drafted in to play a rival for Lord Ackland’s affections. If rumour were anything to go by, Emily Windermere might find she had a fight on her hands.

It was about time.

Chapter Three

Emily took against Nina Tarot on sight. The woman was grotesquely Californiafied, all candyfloss blonde hair and huge white teeth and a chest that looked like a baby’s bum stuffed into her corset. She also had this really grating accent that you could hear a mile off and sounded like a bird squawking in distress.

But the worst thing of all was that Christopher Fenwick had the hots for her.

It was so obvious! Never did it fail to astound her how predictable men were. She supposed it was the slutty demeanour—Nina was, after all, playing a tawdry madam—but it was also the novelty: Emily wasn’t idiotic enough to believe she and Christopher were indulging in a heartfelt love affair; it was sex, plain and simple.

‘Cut her some slack,’ Christopher mooned as they made their way to the drawing room, already adopting these bizarre Americanisms that made her skin crawl.

‘You sound like you’re having a mid-life crisis,’ she threw back, cracking her face into a smile for the director before turning to Christopher, whereupon it vanished completely. ‘Haven’t you a sufficient sense of self to desist from modifying your behaviour whenever you think it’ll help you get a leg over?’

Christopher regarded her blankly. ‘Nina’s been through a tough time—’

‘Oh, spare me!’ Emily waved a hand, drifting across to a mahogany chaise longue and gracefully reclining across it. ‘We all know she’s been in rehab, why such a song and dance? What was it this time? Drink? Sex? Over-the-counter drugs? So LA.’

Christopher smirked. He came closer. ‘This is a change from the obedient little thing I had in my bed last night,’ he hissed excitedly in her ear. ‘As I remember she seemed perfectly content with a mouthful of cock.’

Emily’s face burned up—she hated how he did that to her right before a take! He did it on purpose.

As sound and lighting were finalised, her flustered gaze landed on Julia Chambers hovering anxiously in the corner, clad in an infinitely morose maid’s outfit that did nothing for her pasty colouring. Julia had a crush; it was achingly clear. Milking the moment, Emily looked longingly after Christopher as though their last exchange had been in affection, and adjusted her position on the chaise to appear more alluring. Like the runt of the litter sniffing at her heels, Julia never failed to serve as a convenient reminder of Emily’s uncontested superiority—what a dreadful curse plainness was! Well, at least that made her good for something.