Excerpt of Heiress Without A Cause by Sara Ramsey

After the second intermission, there should have been many empty seats as theatre goers went off to other amusements. But according to Madame Legrand, the lead actress was such a success that she kept everyone until the end. The best they could do was stools near the stage.

"Madame Guerrier already rivals the best actresses of our time," she said as she accepted their money. "You are just in time, too. She is about to kill Claudius."

"She is playing Hamlet himself? Not Ophelia?" Ferguson asked.

Madame Legrand nodded, leading them inside. "Strange, I know. But when you see her, you will wonder how the role could ever be played by another. Even the great Mrs. Siddons's performances as Hamlet are cast into the shade by her."

That was high praise indeed — Mrs. Siddons was the greatest actress of her generation. His companions snickered. None of them believed that the next star of the stage would be found in Seven Dials.

Madame Legrand ushered them to a door near the foot of the stage. The orchestra, which was not blessed with good instruments or the talent to play them, was mercifully falling silent. As with many other small venues, they played music under most of the play to skirt around the legal monopoly held by the few theatres allowed to stage serious drama. After a whispered order from Madame Legrand, a footman picked up four small stools from a darkened corner and carried them a few feet away from the door, setting them in front of a merchant and his irritated wife.

As they settled into their seats, Ferguson realized he had never heard a theatre so silent. Even Marsham and his cronies stopped their jokes, shamed into it by a sharp rebuke from the harpy behind them. Most theatres were merely an excuse for people to congregate, with the audience ignoring the actors on stage—but here, every head in the house turned in the direction of the "man" who entered from the wings.

The actress wore clothing more suited to the previous century, with a well­powdered wig, an elaborate coat, breeches, and high­heeled shoes. Her face was partially obscured by the wig—the disheveled hair of Hamlet in his maddest hour—and the frothy cravat high up under her chin, but there was a definite feminine tilt to her nose. He guessed that they were in for a tedious hour. Her figure was trim and neat, but she lacked the stature to be convincing as a man.

But then the actress opened her mouth and he understood why the audience was enthralled. The last act was familiar to him; Hamlet's lines about the skull of "poor Yorick" would turn to melodrama in the hands of a lesser actor. Yet even though she was small, her voice was rich, warm, and imbued with precisely the right amount of tragedy for the moment.

Her French accent was also more convincing than Madame Legrand's. It was a voice made for whispering naughty desires in the dark, and yet somehow suited to Hamlet's unraveling sanity.

He stared at her as her voice washed over him — then stared more intently as he realized that he was seeing a woman far more clearly than even the fastest society ladies, in their low­cut bodices and dampened chemises, could ever be viewed.

She wore padded shoulders to pass for a man, but the flare of her hips and the soft curve of her buttocks in the scandalously tight breeches betrayed her. He looked down, to the slender calves outlined in ivory hose, then to the perfectly trim ankles giving way to diminutive feet within the bejeweled heels. Her damned cravat unfortunately concealed her bosom, but the hint of its swell was there. Even in Hamlet's madness—especially in his madness— she was a vision.