A Night of Scandal

CHAPTER ONE

THEY were waiting for him to fail.

Nathaniel Wolfe, bad boy of Hollywood and focus of millions of women’s erotic fantasies, stood alone in the wings of the famous London theatre, listening to the excited hum of conversation from the waiting audience.

He knew they could roughly be divided into two camps. Women who had come to see if his face and body lived up to the promise of the big screen and men who had come to see whether he could really act.

The knives had been out for him since it had been announced that he would play the title role in a modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s Richard II.

They thought he couldn’t do it. They thought that the awards, the plaudits, the box office successes were all a result of clever camera work and a handsome face. They thought he had no talent.

A cynical smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

He was going to blast their prejudices into the stratosphere. By tomorrow morning no one would be questioning his talent. The headlines wouldn’t be Can the Big Bad Wolfe Really Act? but Big Bad Wolfe Silences Critics with Outstanding Performance. He was going to show them an emotional range that had never before been seen in the theatre.

The director was hovering in the wings and they shared a single brief glance. It had been a stormy collaboration with Nathaniel insisting on playing the part the way he wanted to do it and the director fighting back. Between them they’d produced magic that both knew would go down in theatre history.

As the moment approached, Nathaniel closed his eyes and blocked out the outside world. It was the ritual he always used. Within moments, Nathaniel Wolfe ceased to exist.

He was Richard, King of England.

This was what he did. He turned a role into reality. He didn’t just act that character, he became that character. At the age of nine he’d discovered it was possible to slip into someone else’s skin and hide there. It had been a way of escaping from the dark that had licked around the edges of his life. He could be whoever he wanted to be. A knight, a ninja, a dragon slayer, a vampire, a superhero. Desperate, he’d given himself the strength and power to fight back. To protect those he loved. Acting had begun as an escape and quickly become a disguise. And that was how he lived his life. Alone and in disguise, depending on no one.

He had no trouble being someone else.

It was being Nathaniel Wolfe that gave him problems.

‘The dress does not make you look fat.’ Katie tightened the corset over rolls of flesh. ‘The colour is really flattering, I think you look great. And anyway, you’re the Duchess of Gloucester. You’re supposed to look—’ She broke off as the actress glowered at her. ‘Statesman-like,’ she finished. ‘You’re supposed to have gravitas.’

‘So you’re basically saying I look fat and old?’

‘No! I picked the costume really carefully.’ Realising how that could be interpreted, Katie braced herself for more abuse. ‘You’re playing the part of a grieving widow so you’re not supposed to look bright and cheerful.’

‘Are you trying to tell me how to act?’

‘No. I’m telling you that you look perfect for the part. Please try and relax.’

‘How can I relax when I’m cast alongside Nathaniel Wolfe? He is sarcastic, cutting, moody … Yesterday when I made that one simple mistake—’

‘He just looked at you,’ Katie said soothingly. ‘He didn’t actually say anything.’

‘You don’t know how much can be conveyed by the eyes, especially when those eyes belong to Nathaniel Wolfe. When he looks at you it’s like being zapped by a laser.’ Increasingly agitated, the older woman waved her hand towards the door. ‘Go. I need to be around people who understand my temperament.‘

Crabby and irritable? ‘I still have to zip up your dress.’ Katie discovered that her hands were shaking. ‘Look, we’re all stressed—’

‘What do you have to be stressed about?’

‘Well …’ For a moment Katie almost told her about the meeting she had with a top British costume designer and how much was riding on it. She almost blurted out that her debts were so scarily huge she spent her nights creating mental spreadsheets, trying to find a way of paying everything she owed. But if all went well tomorrow, then that would change. This was her big break.

Misinterpreting her silence, the actress made an impatient sound in her throat. ‘You have no idea what it’s like acting opposite a Hollywood star. You have no idea how it feels to know that every single person in that audience has come to see him.’ She turned the full force of her wrath onto Katie. ‘My dress could split and everyone would still be looking at him! I could be naked and no one would notice!’

Horrified by that thought, Katie took several deep breaths. ‘Please calm down. It’s just opening-night nerves. Everyone feels the same.’

‘Everyone except Nathaniel Wolfe,’ the actress snapped. ‘He’s as remote as Antarctica and every bit as icy. No one dares get too close in case they injure themselves on all that ice.’

‘And then they’d sink like the Titanic.’

‘Are you saying I look like the Titanic?’

‘No!’ Katie decided it was safer not to indulge in conversation. ‘You look gorgeous and the dress fits perfectly.’

‘Not for much longer. When I’m stressed I just want to eat. And acting alongside Nathaniel Wolfe stresses me. You’re young and pretty. Why aren’t you backstage wearing a push-up bra and a plunge top like all the other girls?’

‘I look ridiculous in a push-up bra and I’d die on the spot if Nathaniel Wolfe actually noticed me. Fortunately he doesn’t know I exist. He calls me “wardrobe.” Even when I was fitting him for his costume he didn’t talk to me. He was on the phone the whole time. Breathe in …’ Katie struggled with the zip, praying that it would hold. She didn’t want to be the one to point out that eating a truckload of doughnuts between costume fitting and opening night wasn’t helpful. ‘Nathaniel Wolfe is so famous I find it impossible to act normally around him. When he walks into the room my stomach churns, my mouth falls open and I stare like an idiot, which is not a good look. And anyway, he is the ultimate bad boy and I prefer men who are a little less scary.’ She fastened the hooks at the neckline. ‘There. You’re ready. Good luck.’

‘It’s bad luck to

wish an actress good luck. You’re supposed to say “break a leg” or something similar.’

Katie sighed. Break a zip? ‘I’m in charge of wardrobe, if anyone breaks anything it will be a problem because none of the costumes will fit over a plaster cast. And now I have to go and check on John of Gaunt.’

She escaped to the wardrobe department where her close friend and assistant, Claire, was munching a bar of chocolate and reading a celebrity magazine hidden underneath a costume. She glanced up guiltily as Katie entered the room.

‘Oops. You caught me peeking into other people’s lives—all for the purposes of research, of course.’ Her grin turned to a frown as she looked at Katie’s face. ‘I’m guessing you’ve just come from sorting out the Duchess of Grizzly Ghastly Gloucester. Did she fit into her dress?’

‘Just.’ Katie flopped into a chair. Pain stabbed behind her eyes. ‘Dressing her in deep purple is great for the character she’s playing, but dark colours are very unforgiving against exposed flesh and I have a horrible feeling that her dress is going to split. Do we have any headache pills left?’

‘I just swallowed the last. And talking of headaches …’ Claire passed her the magazine. ‘I don’t know if you’re going to want to see this, but there’s a huge feature on your sister in here. Is Paula Preston the Most Beautiful Woman in the World? Well, duh—no, she’s the most airbrushed woman in the world. How come you’re Field and she’s Preston? Why don’t the two of you have the same surname?’

‘She doesn’t want anyone to make the connection. She likes to pretend her family doesn’t exist.’ Katie stared at the picture of her sister and then thought about how much their mother was struggling. Part of her just wanted to get on the phone and yell. She wanted to remind Paula about family loyalty and priorities. But she knew there was no point. ‘When it all came out about Dad’s gambling problem, she was horrified. I was horrified, too, obviously, but Paula was just so angry with Mum for forgiving him and staying with him all those years. She blames her for the fact we had no money when we were growing up and says that if Mum loses the house now, then it’s her own fault. She doesn’t see why she should pay for what she sees as Mum’s weakness.’

‘Nice.’

‘Sometimes I can’t even believe we’re related.’ Katie chewed the corner of her fingernail and then caught sight of her sister’s perfect nails and let her hand drop into her lap. ‘It was all too grubby for her. She’s created this perfect image for herself and she doesn’t want it tarnished by Dad’s sins.’

Claire snatched the magazine back from her and ripped out the offending article. ‘There.’ She scrunched up the pages and threw them in the bin. ‘She’s where she deserves to be. And now I’m going to watch the wicked Wolfe onstage. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Are you coming?’

‘No. I need to look at my drawings again and go over the script before tomorrow.’

‘You’ll never be able to work in Hollywood if you’re star-struck.’

‘I’m not star-struck.’

‘Yes, you are. When you took his inside leg measurement, your face was like a tomato.’

‘OK, maybe I’m Nathaniel Wolfe-struck.’