It did not occur to Colin to wonder why he had suddenly begun to see little Evan as anything but another piece of Miss Filby’s baggage.
CHAPTER 9
When the caravan stopped in the early afternoon, there were no orders shouted or commands given. Everyone simply set about their business in a purposeful yet unhurried manner. In no time, the carts were emptied and the wagons put into place. The women swept Miss Filby along in their endeavors and Colin soon realized that the area behind the semicircle of wagons was going to be a sort of camp for the troupe.
Outside the circle, the area before the largest, most centrally placed wagon was left clear until Young Cam came along with a pile of tall wooden stakes laid across his forearms.
“Oy, Mr. Lambert! If yer takin’ on me jugglin’, then ye get to take on me hammerin’, as well!”
Laughter rang out at that and Colin realized that all the men had gathered about them. He was being closely observed, it seemed. Hard work had never frightened him, so he stepped up to Cam and took the pile of stakes easily into his own arms. “Where would you like them?”
Cam grinned. “Oh, just watch a moment. I think ye’ll figure it out right enough.”
Colin nodded, his expression wry. “You’re not going to give me an inch, are you?”
“Right enough, Mr. Lambert.” Cam lifted his chin. “Our Miss Prudence wouldn’t be wantin’ us to, now would she?”
Colin bit back a sigh. He was determined to carry his weight. In addition to easing his own gentlemanly sense of debt, it might convince the lot of them that he’d earned his keep and no longer needed to sing for his supper.
So he followed directions without a murmur and pounded stake after stake into the hard lime soil. When he noticed the other men stripping off their shirts in the spring sunshine, he glanced about him in surprise. Not a woman in sight? Excellent. His own weskit and shirt joined the others on the shrubbery and he grinned at the welcome feeling of the sun and the breeze on his sweating skin.
The other men laughed at his eagerness. “Oy, if ye don’t like them posh rags, I’ll take ’em off yer hands for ye!”
Colin smiled easily. “You might want to wash them first. You wouldn’t want to smell of toff.”
That brought on a bit of ribald commentary but Colin could tell that he wasn’t being treated quite as standoffishly as he had been. When he tossed back a few choice rejoinders, his jests met with just as much laughter as the ones he was the butt of.
On the other side of the wagons, Pru had quickly accomplished the tasks set out for her and was now going over the crates of costumes. They’d been set up at a suitable distance behind the main wagon, convenient for quick changes. With relief, she soon saw that most of what was needed was simple mending, something that even she could accomplish—at least well enough not to be noticed from the distance of the audience. Though she loathed sewing, it was ever so much nicer to do it in the sunshine of a fine spring day than in the dank cellar of the Brighton Theater.
At one point, a spate of girlish giggling disturbed her concentration. She looked up to see three of the younger ladies peering around the main wagon, their backs to her. Curious, she set down her sewing with relief and joined them.
“What are we looking at?” she whispered with a smile.
The three women, hardly more than girls really, turned to Pru with a smile. “We’re just admirin’ the fresh view, Miss Prudence.” It was the one Pomme called Fiona, a dark beauty with bold eyes.
“Oh?” Curious, Pru moved to the front and peered around the edge of the wagon. “What view is th—”
Oh, heavens. Naked, gleaming muscles. Broad shoulders. Hard, muscled arms swinging the sledgehammer in large, easy arcs. Wide, muscular chest. Tight, rippling abdomen. Slim hips and a firm, hard rear that the breeches clung to so damply that they may as well not have been there. Long, muscle-ridged legs rising from his boots and ending in a region that Pru’s eyes could not avoid, not with the way the sweat-dampened arrow of hair on his bare belly directed her gaze to it again and again.
I touched him there. I know what happens to him.
Mr. Lambert, undressed and gleaming in the sun, was an absolute god.
“Would ye like to borrow me handkin, miss?” The giggles rose in volume.
Pru shut her mouth with a snap. And hoped that her chin was not, in fact, dripping with drool. She would not check. She refused.
She stepped back and inhaled, hoping her mind would clear once the scene before her was gone. “Just because Mr. Lambert has removed his coat—”
“And his weskit!”
“And his shirt!”
“Do ye think he’ll remove anythin’ else?”
“La, I hope so!”
Pru cleared her throat. “Now you’re just being silly.”
The women smiled at her knowingly. “It ain’t silly to know a fine cut o’ beef when ye see one,” Fiona said with a cheeky grin.
Pru drew herself up tall. “Mr. Lambert is not a cut of beef!”
“Well, ’e ain’t got chicken legs!”
“Not by ’alf, ’e don’t!”
Pru turned and stalked away from their ribald teasing, knowing that her face was flaming and knowing that she was going to dream about Mr. Lambert’s naked, gleaming chest tonight whether she liked it or not!
After the blood-heating view she’d just walked away from, it was a relief to sit down in the shade of the shrubbery. Melody had begged someone’s brightly colored scarf to wrap Gordy Ann in and was apparently engaged in marrying the doll to a pine cone.
“And you, Lord Pine cone, take Gordy Ann to be your wedded life—”
Pru smiled. “That’s very good. Have you been to a wedding, Melody?”
“Uh-huh.” Melody walked the rag doll and the pine cone back down the aisle with great ceremony. “Gordy Ann got a new dress. You get a new dress when you get merry, just like Maddie.”
Pru didn’t laugh, quite. “And who is Maddie? Is she a friend of yours?”
“Maddie was my mummy. Except she wasn’t my mummy, Uncle Aidan just thought she was my mummy, but Uncle Aidan thought he was my papa, too, only he wasn’t.”
Pru blinked. “I see.” She didn’t see at all. “Melody, who is your mummy?” If Melody’s mother was still alive, she ought to be thrashed for letting Mr. Lambert traipse off with her child this way.
Melody was humming an off-key wedding march and didn’t answer. Pru decided to drop the subject, for it truly wasn’t her business.
Then Melody said, “Nanny Pruitt took me to Brown’s to meet my papa.”
“Oh?” Pru kept her tone casual. Meet her papa? “That sounds nice.”
“Then Nanny Pruitt went away.”
“After you met your papa?”
Melody began to dance the doll and pine cone in a sort of swirling waltz step. “I like Brown’s.”
“Who is Brown?”
“Brown’s isn’t a person. Wibbly-force is a person. Brown’s is the place that Wibbly-force takes care of.”
“What kind of place is Brown’s?”
“Big. And quiet. I can play hide-and-seek all day. Billy-wick always finds me, though. He’s really, really smart.”
Pru was beginning to suspect that the cast of characters in Melody’s imagination was larger than her live circle of friends. “If Billy-wick and Wibbly-force live in Brown’s, then where do you live?”
“In Brown’s.”
Pru smiled and stretched out on her belly in the grass next to Melody with her chin planted on her hands. “Does Brown’s have fairies and elves, too?”
The silence made Pru turn her head to look at Melody. The child was gazing at her with a tiny frown wrinkle between her barely there brows. She looked exactly like Mr. Lambert when she did that. Pru’s smile faded slightly.
“Brown’s isn’t for fairies. Brown’s is for Dis-squished Gentamens.” Melody turned back to her play. “Like Uncle Aidan and Uncle Colin and Grampapa Aldrich and Lord Bartles and Sir James.�
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Pru went very still. Brown’s. Distinguished Gentlemen. Lord Bartles?
“Brown’s Club for Distinguished Gentlemen,” she said slowly. Brighton was full of London travelers. One heard many things. She knew of White’s and Boodle’s . . . and Brown’s. “In London?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Melody, ladies do not say ‘uh-huh,’ ” Pru said absently as her mind whirred. Melody lived at a gentlemen’s club? Preposterous! “Ladies say ‘yes.’ ”
Melody giggled. “You sound funny, Pru. You sound like Maddie.”
Oops. Pru sat up, shaking off her strange thoughts. “Well, you ought to listen to your Maddie, then, Miss Melody. She sounds like a right lady.”
“She is. She’s Lady Blankenship.”
Pru regarded Melody with stunned frustration. Who was this child who claimed to live in a gentlemen’s club, yet knew exalted people like this Lady Blankenship well enough to call her “Maddie”?
Moreover, who was Mr. Lambert to tote this infant around the country roads of England in search of a promiscuous actress like Chantal?
And how could Chantal have borne to give up such a man once she’d seen him naked?
Pru stood abruptly. “Time for your nap, Miss Melody.”
Colin let his sledgehammer drop at last and gazed about him at his work. After he had pounded in the stakes set out by the injured Cam, the others had come behind them using the stakes and the surrounding trees to string a complex array of ropes. Colin wasn’t sure of the purpose of the ring of high ropes until someone rolled another cart around and began unloading rolls of canvas.
When they were hung, they made a wall of billowing white around the largest wagon, enclosing a space large enough for the wagon and . . . an audience?
“That’s it, Mr. Lambert,” Cam said when asked. “If we don’t put a curtain up, we don’t get the coin from them that wants a show. As it is, we got to go round and knock peepers out o’ the trees once in a while.” Cam shook his head. “Folks think we’re doin’ this for the joy of it.”
There was joy in it, however. Colin could see that the troupe was like a family, full of personalities and melodrama and conflict, but also full of good fellowship and affection.
Except of course, for him.
“You done a right fine job of it, Mr. Lambert.” Cam grinned at him. “But ye still ’ave to sing.”
Colin’s gut went cold. There was no help for it. He must seek out Miss Filby and make a formal apology for his decision to leave her behind.
He only hoped it would work.
It didn’t.
Miss Filby put down her sewing and stood, planting her fists on her hips. “You made your deal. I know your word ain’t as strong as it should be, but this time there’s folk about who’ll make you stick to it!”
Colin backed up a step, offended. “I was not trying to—” Except that he was. He really, truly was. He deflated, then straightened and gazed into those accusing gray eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I left you and Evan. I’m sorry I tried to get out of my commitment. I’m not at all sure I can do it but . . .” He swallowed. “I shall try.”
Pru watched him walk away, her belly roiling with conflicting emotion. She wasn’t normally vengeful, she truly wasn’t, but this man had deserted her!
There was so much she wanted to say, words she wanted to shout at him, words that would never come out of a common little seamstress’s mouth.
This from a man who has never soiled his hands with a good day’s work! You have no inkling of my life, my past, my days as handmaiden to a tyrant who held the power of life and death, shelter and sustenance, over me! You think yourself too good to risk your dignity onstage. I think you too cowardly to try!
But Mr. Lambert was already walking away.
And no one knew that Prudence the gently raised lady still existed.
CHAPTER 10
In the end, Colin did try to follow through on his promise.
When the farthings had been pressed into the hands of the two boys who acted as ushers and the eager townspeople had filed in to take their places in the ring of billowing white, an expectant hum reached Colin’s ears where he waited behind the stage wagon.
Oh, God.
He tried to focus his gaze upon the ingenious construction of the wagon. One side of it had folded out to make a level wooden stage and the interior had lifted into place, curtains already hung, to form the proscenium arch.
It truly was very clever. He could barely see it through the dizzying terror in his mind. Mr. Pomme moved past where he waited and clapped him on the shoulder in passing.
“It’s only a song, lad.”
I don’t sing.
Ever.
But the words, which had been said already to no avail, would not come. Then Pomme was introducing “The Gentleman Minstrel” and a large palm—probably Cam’s, damn him!—thrust into the center of Colin’s back, propelling him onto the stage.
At a hiss from Cam, Pru turned from where she was fitting a stout boy into a tired velvet lady-in-waiting skirt. Cam waved her over.
“ ’E’s on, miss!”
Pru matched Cam’s evil grin and bent to peer through the slit in the curtain that hid the backstage meadow from the audience. Mr. Lambert stood unmoving in the center of the stage, facing the restless audience.
Sing, man! Sing!
Pru bit her lip as she watched. Melody looked up from where she’d sat at Pru’s feet, digging a hole with a spoon and burying Gordy Ann, who had recently met with some new and gory fate, apparently.
Seeing Pru’s interest, she joined her and pressed her eye to the parting in the curtain. “What’s Uncle Colin doing?”
“He’s going to sing for us.” God, Mr. Lambert, sing! Please?
Melody frowned. “Uncle Colin doesn’t sing.”
Pru was beginning to believe that. “He must sing a little,” she whispered back desperately. “Doesn’t he sing you to sleep at night?”
Melody looked at her as if she’d asked if elephants could fly. “No.”
“No?” Pru’s belly went cold. “Never?”
“Never-ever.”
Onstage, Mr. Lambert opened his mouth. A croak issued forth. He swallowed and cleared his throat and tried again. “Alas, my love . . . you do me . . . wrong . . .”
It was awful. It was worse than awful. Mr. Lambert had the singing voice of . . . of . . .
Next to her, Pomme shuddered. “He sounds like a goose mating with a donkey,” he breathed in horror. “I’ve never heard the like.”
Apparently, neither had the audience. Dismay was etched on every upturned face, butcher and banker alike.
“To cast me off . . . discourteously . . .” Mr. Lambert stalled in his off-key braying and went silent. He seemed completely frozen onstage.
“God in heaven.” Pomme’s tone was laced with pity. “If I had a real pistol instead of this prop, I would put him out of his misery.”
Pru felt ill. What had she done?
And how was she supposed to fix it now?
Before she’d realized it, Melody slipped away from her and strolled easily onto the stage. With one finger in her mouth, the tiny girl looked at all the people curiously, but without any apparent fear. She sidled up to Mr. Lambert and tugged on his coattails. “Uncle Colin, tell me a story.”
Colin couldn’t answer because he hadn’t any air in his lungs at all. In fact, the edges of his vision were beginning to gray just a bit. It occurred to him that if he passed out, he wouldn’t have to sing anymore. He would, however, have to live the rest of his life knowing he was a coward. Hmm. Difficult choice, that.
He was dimly aware of Melody stepping in front of him and facing the dissatisfied crowd. If he was any kind of man at all he’d sweep his tiny daughter away from the maddened mob and take their chances running for their lives. And he would.
As soon as he found his knees. They must be around here somewhere.
Then he realized that Melody was speaking to the
crowd. “Once ’pon a time on the high seas . . .” Melody’s high piping voice rose above the grumble of the audience. They quieted at once. “. . . there sailed a mighty pirate ship.”
She took a giant breath and continued. “ ’Pons the prow were letters retched in the blood of honest mens and they read—” She looked over her shoulder at Colin and waited.
“Dishonor’s Plunder!” he croaked.
“Dishonor’s Plunder,” Melody affirmed. “And the wail-ly captain of this bicious maraubber was none other than the black-hearted outlaw himself—”
“Captain Jack!” Colin could breathe again!
Melody turned back to the crowd, who were beginning to look truly interested. “And Captain Jack and his wail-ly crew sailed the ship . . . and . . . and . . .” She clutched Gordy Ann close and blinked her eyes rapidly.
Oh, no. She’d run out! Swallowing hugely, Colin stepped forward. “Captain Jack and his wily crew sailed the wide Atlantic looking for Spanish treasure ships that abounded there. And while they sailed looking for treasure, Captain Jack also kept his spyglass searching for the ship of his ruthless enemy . . .”
Backstage, Pomme stood next to a breathless Pru and nodded thoughtfully. “That’s not bad.” He turned and gestured to the other players. “Forget the Molière. Pirates up!” he whispered loudly.
With a silent flurry of practiced movements, the players pulled off powdered wigs and beauty patches and replaced them with brightly colored scarves and eye patches. The youngsters came running with swords and scabbards. Young Cam held out his arm while another player fitted him with a stuffed parrot on his shoulder, wired beneath his armpit.
In a flash, they’d changed from perfumed courtiers to merciless raiders. Pomme waved them onstage with Colin and Melody. “Go, go! Improvise, my players! Improvise!”
When the stage abruptly filled with real pirates, Melody clapped her hands with joy but Colin didn’t miss a beat. He continued speaking even as he scooped up Melody and tossed her safely into Pomme’s waiting arms. “Here before you, gentle audience, you see a great battle between the green-clad pirates of the Dishonor’s Plunder and the black-clad pirates of the Black Kraken!”
Rogue in My Arms: The Runaway Brides Page 8