Victoria Fox - Tales Of Temptation - Rivals / Pride / Ambition

‘It’s unbearably bloody hot. Can someone get me a drink before I burst into flames?’

Emily Windermere fanned herself with small, porcelain hands, gazing whimsically upon her beauty in the make-up girl’s mirror. Even when she was roasting beneath layers of net and taffeta, trussed up in a bodice and choked by a necklace of ribbons, her wide-eyed reflection—those pools of hazel bordered by delicate lashes; that thicket of copper framing a flawless, cream-skinned complexion—remained as serenely lovely as an English garden on the first day of spring.

It was the English summer that was the problem.

‘Ugh! Wasps!’ Irritably Emily batted her arms, causing the make-up girl’s brush to stab her in the eye. ‘My God, is it too much to hope I’m not blind by the end of this?’

‘Here you go, Ms Windermere.’ A nervous runner was proffering a glass of cloudy lemonade, one of the onset requisites stipulated by her management.

‘That’ll explain why I’m getting mauled by insects,’ she complained, accepting it all the same. ‘Can’t we take care of this inside my trailer?’

‘I need the light, I’m afraid,’ said the make-up girl through gritted teeth.

It was Friday morning, a fortnight into filming, and, contrary to the studio’s concerns that a London June wouldn’t produce enough light, they now had rather too much of it. The city was enduring a heatwave that showed no signs of abating, golden sun blazing across Hampstead Heath from an unbroken swimming-pool sky. Cast were sweating through Victorian petticoats and frock coats, while crew chased to allay the disgruntled company, struggling under clipboards and sound equipment and taking occasional refuge for a cigarette in the shelter of a crisp white parasol.

‘They’re ready for you,’ prompted the runner, anxiously smiling as Emily rose with majesty from her seat, mustering her lacy skirts and, with a dainty finger, removing the spot of perspiration that had gathered in her philtrum.

She thought of Christopher Fenwick awaiting her in his breeches.

‘And I’m ready for them,’ she breathed.

‘Oh, Lord Ackland, we mustn’t! Your dear wife—’

‘Why relinquish such precious moments to the folly of resistance?’ Lord Ackland growled, attacking his lover’s neck with the ferocity of a vampire. ‘I’ve caught your shy glances, Lucinda; well aware you are of how I admire thee.’

Lord Ackland’s hands, wide and strong as a bear’s, roamed across her corseted body with the territorial claim of that same animal, deftly unpicking the ties that held her together. His tongue shot into her mouth, rich with tobacco.

‘My lord, we act in haste—’

Abruptly Lord Ackland stepped back, releasing his flap-fronted trousers as the camera panned to Lucinda’s fey, lips-parted stare. She could see him bulging through the cotton and struggled to remember what came next. Fortunately it was his line.

‘The heart hastens unchecked, my dear; it knows not the temperance of reason.’

She’d seen it all before, of course, and as Christopher Fenwick grasped Emily Windermere’s bottom, thrusting a hardness towards her that was most definitely not part of the script, she fought the urge to reach for him in the way she had the previous night and have him surrender to her dexterity right here against the grandfather clock.

‘You almost had me back there, you minx,’ Christopher said to her afterwards as they walked up to camp. He couldn’t resist checking over his shoulder to make sure they were out of earshot. ‘We should be more careful.’

‘Conscience, all of a sudden?’ Emily enquired archly, absorbing her co-star’s profile out of the corner of her eye: he had a prominent forehead, appealingly like a caveman who might wrestle beasts for supper, and a slight underbite that completed the impression. His shoulders were broad and muscular, his hair grown longish so it tickled the starch of his collar. There was no doubt about it: Christopher Fenwick was divine. He was also married with two daughters.

What was it they said about life imitating art?

‘A careful tread isn’t the same as a rampant conscience,’ he observed.

‘Now you’re talking like bloody Lord Ackland.’

He steered her into the shade of an oak. ‘My wife is away this weekend,’ he murmured, pulling her into his arms. ‘I’ll have the place to myself.’

‘Good for you.’

He grazed his nose against hers. ‘Why so petulant?’

Emily shrugged. In part she felt peeved at how cocksure Christopher was—at how cocksure she’d made him, because leaping into bed on the second occasion they’d met had scarcely been playing hard to get—but she also knew he liked her in this girlish mode, fifteen years his junior, and reverted to known tricks the instant his wife was dragged into conversation.

She pouted, shaking her ringlets. ‘You’ll have to make a fuss of me.’

‘You know I will.’

‘And get someone to take that smelly dog of yours. I can’t bear it panting at the door with its tongue hanging out.’

‘Consider it done.’

Emily tilted her head, pretending to reach a decision. ‘Fine,’ she said, with a wistful sigh. ‘I suppose.’

Christopher grinned wolfishly. He reached to squeeze her behind, which was no easy feat through a voluminous bustle.

‘One day you’re going to get in trouble for this,’ he teased.

‘Yes,’ she mused, returning his kiss. ‘I suppose I am.’

It was their brazenness that did it, how lazy they were about concealing the affair, especially her , tarting about on set as if she ruled the place (which, in a sense, she did), performing her love scenes with overblown gusto just so everyone could know they were sleeping together. Had she no moral fibre?

Julia Chambers swiped the saggy mobcap off her head and scowled.

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.