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Miss Billings Treads the Boards
May 29th, 2025 06:41 pm
Playing a Perilous Part
Miss Katherine Billings was cast in a most unlikely role for a vicar's daughter. But beautiful Kate was an impoverished orphan - and her only escape from a lecherous employer's embraces was to go upon the stage. It was dangerous enough that a charming French playwright wanted her as his leading lady, and an ambitious impresario demanded she bare her charms to an eager audience. But when a magnificent marquess, Lord Henry Grayson, proposed that she join him in a masquerade of mating in a mock marriage, Kate found that putting on an act in public could be even more perilous in private...if the act was an act of love...
Original Publisher: Signet
Original Year of Publication: 1993
Page Count: 223
That summary is certainly a mouthful, and is rather misleading. Miss Billings had more than a one way out of her "predicament" of taking a job as a governess to a known lecher, and the head of the traveling troupe of actors she falls in with is hardly a forcible lecher himself, as is implied. But that's getting ahead of things.
The book actually opens with Henry Tewsbury-Hampton, 5th Marquess of Grayson, who is pondering a rather bleak future. He is 35 and single; a former soldier who was held in a Spanish prison for years during the war, he's lived a life of idleness for the last half decade and is now running to fat and thinning hair. He despises his heir, his nephew Algernon who is a mincing dandy who constantly overspends his allowance and begs for advances to cover his bills. He isn't too fond of his valet, either, who treats him like a naughty child. Henry finds himself facing a summer house party at his supposed best friend's estate in Yorkshire. He's dreading it, however, as he knows full well he will be pushed towards his BFF's spinster sister, whose charms he has never favored. He basically takes stock of his life in the first chapter and decides its time for a change.
So he visits his solicitor. He's going there to cut off his mincing dandy nephew, but relents at the last minute. However, his solicitor does have a favor to ask: another one of his clients is a newly orphaned woman who is in possession of a rare Giotto sketch. The solicitor mistakenly told her it wasn't worth anything, and thus wishes to correct his mistake - Miss Billings could sell the sketch and make a tidy sum and thus, wouldn't have to enter service. She is the daughter of a vicar, a man who travelled all through Europe and collected lots of art, most of it forgeries and fakes.
Grayson sees an opportunity for an adventure and agrees to convey the message to Miss Billings. He is given instruction to meet her at Wakefield, where she is travelling towards a post as a governess, and he does just that. He returns home, summarily dismisses his valet, closes up his house, and sets off.
Meanwhile, Katherine Billings is travelling on the mail coach. She enjoys the ride, for the most part, until her fellow passengers warn her that her prospective employer is a handsy lech who bothers all the women on his estate. Katherine has been through a lot in her twenty-six years and figures she can handle him. She needs the money; selling off her father's art collection only just allowed her to escape his debts.
Unfortunately, she gets off the coach in Wickford instead of Wakefield, not realizing her mistake until her expected ride doesn't show up. A gorgeous man does arrive and heads straight for her, having mistaken her for an actress he is to pick up. The two realize their mistakes on the way to the traveling acting troupe, and Katherine decides she'd rather take her chances with them than show up late at the lecher's estate. The gorgeous man is Gerald Broussard, a Frenchman who aspires to be a playwright.
Kate meets the Bladesworths, the family who makes up the majority of the troupe. She agrees to fill in for the missing actress, but only for one night - especially when she realizes they want her to play the "lusty widow" in The Taming of the Shrew. She unexpectedly enjoys herself, though, and becomes fast friends with the Bladesworths. They are a poor, traveling group out to entertain the rustics in their barns, though they have been squirreling away money to buy a ramshackle theatre in Leeds so they have a permanent home.
While Kate is playing her role, Grayson is on the road to Wakefield, and is suddenly confronted with a supposed highwayman. He thinks he recognizes him, especially after said cloaked man shoots him and gives a squeak. Grayson briefly loses consciousness and comes to in Algernon's arms. His nephew explains that he and the valet had cooked up a plan to "rob" Grayson on the road so Algernon could sweep in and save him. Grayson is not injured too badly; the shot grazed the side of his head and he's bleeding profusely, but is otherwise all right. He sends Algernon off for help, but when said nephew doesn't return, Grayson drags himself up and down the road. He finds the Bladesworths' wagons and crawls into one of them, and thus he meets Kate and the troupe.
The group agrees to keep Grayson with them, to take him to their next stop on their way to Leeds and care for him as best they can. When they arrive at an inn, Grayson and Kate enter together, and thus enter into a 'farcical' marriage. Grayson gives his name as Hal Hampton and pretends to be one of the actors who was injured while striking sets. Once word starts to spread about the missing - and possibly murdered - marquess, who left his horse and a bloody coat on the road and then vanished off the face of the earth - Grayson makes a choice: he doesn't want to be found and dragged back to his boring old life. He asks to stay with the Bladesworths and Kate, delivers his message to Kate about her Giotto sketch, and they agree to keep him in their circle, especially once a Bow Street Runner shows up and starts sniffing around.
The group go to Leeds, where the Bladesworths learn that their local partner has lost all their money and they won't be able to buy their theatre after all. Kate sells her sketch and impulsively decides to buy the theatre for the family, considering they have nowhere else to go and their non-family members have abandoned them. So Kate buys the theatre, the whole group sets out to put it to rights, and the runner continues to hang around because he knows Quality when he sees it.
Because the runner is still dogging their every move, Kate and Grayson continue to pretend to stay married. This is much to Grayson's delight and Kate's consternation. Grayson has fallen head over heels for Kate and her lovely soft bosom; she fears that he is merely larking about and will leave them once he tires of his charade. She doesn't understand why Grayson doesn't dump them and return to his rich, idle life posthaste.
Meanwhile, the Bladesworths and Gerald are hatching a plan: Gerald will write an original play for the troupe that's left and they will use that as their opening act at the newly refurbished theatre. Grayson, Kate, and even the runner, Will, are all roped into playing parts. Everyone wants to the theatre - and the play - to succeed, for various reasons, even as they continue to come up against barrier after barrier.
This is a lighthearted story, more of a farce than a comedy of errors, with lots of playacting and 'trading lines' of Shakespeare. We get to see the development not only of Kate and Grayson's feelings for each other, but two side romances for the eldest Bladesworth daughters (with Gerald the Will the runner, respectively) and everything they go through to open the theatre and make a profit from their hard work.
I really enjoyed the Bladesworth family: patriarch Malcolm; matriarch Ivy; daughters Phoebe and Maria; son Davy. They are actors through and through, and use their various skills to great use as they put the theatre back in order and rehearse their play.
I was a little less enthralled with our leads, Grayson and especially Kate, who was stubborn to a fault. The third act mess of matters was pretty much all her fault, especially once she turned her back on Grayson and refused to listen to him or read his letters. Once they actually talk, they realize they have no issues between themselves, and even a common goal. The third act also contains a kidnapping and an elopement to Gretna Greene, so it was all a bit too much action packed into the last third of the book.
This was pretty much the epitome of a "meh" read for me. Ms Kelly is an extremely talented writer, but I'm not sure she can really pull off farce as well as she does with quieter stories. There was too much frame (Gerald's play is a story within a story, so at times it's like there's 3 of the same plot going on all at once) and not enough attention paid to the main romance. I feel this one is for completionists only; newcomers to this author's work are best served starting elsewhere.
⭐⭐ 1/2
