Much Ado About Jack

by Christy English

  As Angelique stood with the front door open behind her, beams of sunlight came into the house through the windows, carrying bits of dust. The furniture in the house gleamed, a pair of mahogany chairs flanking the entrance and a tea table and sofa of the highest quality drawn up before the empty fireplace. She recognized a few of the pieces from Mr. Landau in London, from whom she had made purchases before. Smythe had outdone himself in preparing the cottage before her, combining a house from a fairy story with the things she loved most, beautiful furniture and quiet.

  Sara came to stand beside her. The small house was nowhere near as grand as Aeronwynn’s Gate, but her ward did not seem put off by that. Instead, Sara gazed around the front parlor, taking in the two sets of wide windows that looked out on the gardens both at the front and the back of the house. Through the back windows, Angelique could see an apple tree in bloom.

  “It is very pretty,” Sara said. “I think my mam and I would have been happy here.”

  Angelique took the girl’s gloved hand in her own. Sara did not pull back but stayed close, looking on the house in silence as Angelique did.

  “You and I will be happy here. I will buy it for you, if you wish.”

  Sara face lit up. “A house of my own?”

  “Indeed. A woman should always have her own property.”

  “Would I have to live here by myself?”

  Angelique did not laugh, though for a moment she wanted to. “Certainly not. A gently reared young lady does not live alone. I fear you are stuck with me, at least for the moment.”

  Sara turned her head so that she could see Angelique past the stiff edges of her own bonnet, which was trimmed in lace and silk flowers. Sara had decorated the bonnet herself, at Lisette’s instruction, and had done a fine job of it. Angelique had rarely seen as simple and as elegant a creation when riding among the ton in Hyde Park. Sara was unaware of her innate elegance or of her own grace. Her blue eyes were clear of guile as they met Angelique’s.

  “I am glad to be stuck with you, my lady. Even Mrs. Withers was not as kind to me.”

  Angelique did not speak, for an odd lump had risen in her throat. Such emotion seemed to rise more and more often where Sara was concerned. Angelique smiled at the girl before she drew her hand from Sara’s grasp so that she might walk ahead of her through the house to the back door.

  The kitchen was clean and well lit. The cook and housekeeper Smythe had hired, Mrs. Beebe, curtsied to them as they passed but did not stop her work for long. “There will be tea in the parlor in a few minutes, my lady.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Beebe. I think we will take tea in the back garden.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Angelique gave no thought to the dirt of the road that still clung to her traveling cloak. She flung the cape off and laid it over a chair outside, displacing a bit of garden dirt.

  Sara did the same, going so far as to take off her bonnet and turn her face to the sun. Angelique knew that she should direct the girl to protect her white skin, but with a sigh, Angelique did not. Instead, she drew her own bonnet off, listening with half an ear while Lisette fussed in French over the wasted goat’s milk that went into preserving her lady’s pallor.

  “Lisette, sit with us awhile. Take tea. The goat’s milk and our bags will wait.”

  Lisette silenced her muttered tirade in midstream, her eyes wide with shock. She stopped gathering up the traveling cloaks and laid them down on a wooden bench.

  Suddenly, she did not seem to mind the brushing she would have to give those clothes to get the pollen off them. Lisette brought up a chair to the table that sat in the back garden, dusting it first with her handkerchief before she sat down. Mrs. Beebe brought a tablecloth, and a quiet girl, the housemaid named Sally, brought the tea tray. Fresh cream and scones melted on Angelique’s tongue as she surveyed the roses along the far wall and took in the scent of apple blossoms overhead.

  “This is paradise, my lady,” Lisette said.

  “Yes,” Angelique agreed. “It is.”

  ***

  In spite of the unexpected peace she found in the loveliness of her rented cottage, Angelique had not forgotten why she had come to Derbyshire in the first place. After tea, once she had bathed her face and hands, she took her carriage to Pembroke’s house on the hill. Arabella was there, and Angelique could not truly rest until she had seen her.

  As she passed through the village, she saw that Titania’s theatre company was hard at work on the green. The production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream would come on Midsummer’s Eve, in two days’ time, and to Angelique it seemed that the show would not be ready. The actors were clad in bits of costume, some still with their scripts in hand, gesticulating in the throes of their art as she drove past. The set painters still worked with their brushes while Titania’s stagehands set up the lamps that would burn at the foot of the makeshift stage.

  They would be lucky if the entire monstrosity did not go up in a blaze of flaming glory. But she had seen enough of Titania’s productions by now to know that the woman never did anything by half measures. Even in the country, Titania and her troupe would find a way to triumph. Just two days before the performance, Angelique could not see how, but then she did not have to. Like all good producers, she offered her money quietly and left the rest to the professionals.

  Though this week’s performance would be given for free as a gift of the Earl of Pembroke to his villagers and tenants, as producer, Angelique stood to make a great deal of money from the rest of the tour that Titania had planned that summer across the north of England. Leeds, Manchester, and York rarely saw London theatre, but like all Northerners and Scots, they loved a good story and would pay in gold to see one. Especially Shakespeare, whom they claimed as one of their own, Stratford-on-Avon be damned.

  Many in the ton had been bored enough to leave London to see Pembroke play the role of Oberon. Well-sprung carriages and lacquered barouches arrived by the dozen at the houses along the main road of the village. Angelique wondered if people had left their own homes to rent to those aristocrats who would not take rooms in the inn. She thought of the overly fastidious ladies and lords trying to find suitable lodgings in such a small village and laughed out loud.

  She would have to spend a bit of time in the village teahouse and catch up on the gossip produced by this latest adventure of the ton, gossip that had nothing to do with Arabella and everything to do with the entitled airs of her so-called friends. Her own false life in London had begun to pale in the light of Sara’s genuine sweetness and in the aftermath of James Montgomery’s passion. Angelique wondered if she might spend less time among London’s elite and more months at home in Shropshire.

  When she arrived at Pembroke House, Pembroke did not greet her, but his butler did. She followed a housemaid, not into a sitting room abovestairs as she expected, but down into the kitchen. Arabella, she was told, was making a pie.

  Angelique stepped into the kitchen at Pembroke House, heedless of the oddity of it. The cook’s staff stared at her as if she were an apparition, but she smiled serenely as if it were a common occurrence for a countess to enter their domain. She greeted Arabella with an embrace, ignoring the floury apron her friend still wore, surprised to find a bloom of happiness in Arabella’s cheeks. Hawthorne might be threatening her and ruining her reputation among the peers of England and Scotland, but Arabella did not seem to care one fig.

  Though Angelique was happy to be reunited with her friend, and even happier to find her safe and well, it seemed that Anthony and his young wife and baby son were guests at Pembroke House as well. Angelique would have given her left arm to be away from there as soon as she discovered that, but Arabella looked so downhearted when she tried to escape that Angelique simply smiled and gritted her teeth.

  Even after a long dinner in Anthony’s company, Angelique found herself relieved and more peaceful than she had thought possibl
e as she rode in her carriage back to Pembroke village. Her mind turned from Anthony and Caroline, from Pembroke and Arabella, from Anthony’s son, baby Freddie, to her own ward, Sara. She hoped Sara had not yet gone to bed. She and the girl had begun to read together in the evenings, and it was a pleasure she did not wish to forgo.

  As her carriage drew through the cottage’s front gate, Angelique found herself thinking once more of James Montgomery. She knew he would have been impressed with her calm dealings with her ex-lover and his wife. Angelique did not know why James Montgomery’s approval would even occur to her. But she felt an added glow of satisfaction that she had behaved well, and that, if he knew of it, James Montgomery would be proud of her.

  The man had changed her life, no matter how short a time he had been in it. He brought her pleasure, even now. He loved her, she was sure, and she loved him. The love between them was a closed circle, a loop that would not end. Whatever the risk to her life as she knew it, she wished that she had told him so. Perhaps she would, the next time they met.

  Twenty-nine

  When she arrived at her cottage, Angelique did not have long to ruminate over James Montgomery or anything else. As Mrs. Beebe closed the door behind her, she was greeted not by Sara or Lisette but by Titania, a woman who was a force of nature to rival a gale wind at sea.

  Titania was tall for a woman, her golden gown completely out of place in Angelique’s little rented house. Her deep bronze hair owed nothing to artifice, and while beautiful, the contours of her face were also strong, as were the dark brown of her eyes. Her features were too powerful for real beauty, but lit from within, they glowed with the vigor of her personality, with the glitter of her soul.

  She had been on the stage in London for the last ten years, and rumor had it that she had once been a lover of Prinny’s. The Prince Regent still came to all her plays, though he slept through most of them.

  Titania spoke without preamble, as if they were in the middle of a conversation already. “Your ward has gone to bed. Tired from the drive, country hours, and all that. I spoke to her briefly…she is quite charming. Are you certain she is Geoffrey’s girl?”

  “There is no doubt of it.”

  Mrs. Beebe took her cloak. Angelique opened her mouth to ask that tea be served, but Titania had already seen to that and was pouring her friend a cup.

  “She is a lovely girl and will grow into a lovely woman,” Angelique said. “She is smart and quick to learn. She already loves poetry, and she did not even own a book a week ago.”

  “You sound very proud of her.”

  “I have had very little to do with her good qualities, but yes. I am proud of her. And I am happy to see a piece of Geoffrey live on in her.”

  Titania did not dignify that mention of Angelique’s dead husband with a response save for a dissatisfied rumble in her throat, as if she were clearing away something vile. “You’ve done amazing things with the girl, no mistake. I’m sure she’s grateful.”

  “It is I who am grateful. Sara has brightened my life.”

  They sat together in the house’s tiny parlor, and Angelique sighed with contentment, grateful to be tucked away with her friend. They were often too busy to sit together in London and simply enjoy each other’s company.

  Titania sipped her own tea. “So you always say, every time you pull someone out of a scrape. You said the same of my first production, The Tempest, do you remember? Prinny would never have come to see the play if not for you.”

  “Anthony had a hand in bringing the Prince to the theater as well as I,” Angelique said.

  Titania waved away the mention of the Earl of Ravensbrook with one hand. “It was you who financed the piece, and it was you who made a success of it. I would still be working for that moneylender on the boards at Covent Garden if it were not for you.”

  Angelique drank her tea, embarrassed to have her past good deeds brought up. “How is the current production? Is Pembroke truly standing up as Oberon?”

  “And doing a fine job of it, too. I know you think me biased, and I am, but Claridge, my stage manager, has no such scruples and he says that his lordship is a decent actor as well as a fop.”

  “A decent actor? High praise indeed.”

  Angelique drew her chair close by the fire and Titania did the same. The weather was warm, but there was something cheerful about an apple wood blaze that Angelique could never resist. The small fire that burned in her rented grate gave off a warmth that seemed to transcend the physical and enter the sublime.

  In spite of the fact that she and the Ravensbrook family had made an uneasy peace, her afternoon among Anthony and his family had not been an easy one. She was grateful to be tucked away in this small house, safe from the larger world. She could almost forget her own troubles here, though she knew they were legion.

  Several letters had followed her from London, all from Smythe, filled with talk of financial retrenching in the face of lost business associates. She had read them all but had been unable to focus on the problems they presented. Her mind whirled like a dervish, coming up with no solution.

  Her reverie was broken by Titania. The actress’s voice was grave, in spite of the hint of a smile that still lingered on her lovely face. “Quite a few of the ton have come to the country for the amusement of Lord Pembroke’s play.”

  “Is that what you’re calling the production?”

  “They speak of Arabella and nothing else.”

  “She is engaged to Pembroke. The banns have been read. Is the protection of his name not enough for them?”

  “Indeed not. It may not even be protection enough once they are wed. Hawthorne is putting it about that theirs is an affair of long standing, one that went on behind her husband’s back for the whole of her marriage.”

  Angelique had heard that rumor before, but it still had the power to make her fury rise like a flash fire. She took a deep breath in an effort to keep hold of her temper.

  “Pembroke and Anthony have their lawyers dealing with the duke,” she said. “But what can lawyers do to save Arabella’s reputation? Will she even be received when she returns to London?”

  “Perhaps,” Titania said. “If Pembroke really does marry her. He is willing, I think. He looked besotted with her in London. The question is, will she marry him?”

  “She will. She still loves him, after all this time, and he, her. The wedding is set to take place in three days. It is all but accomplished.”

  The pain on Titania’s face was as vivid as a bruise, pain that her friend could not hide in spite of her ability to act onstage and to dissemble in company. Angelique reached out and took her hand.

  It was common knowledge that Titania had been Pembroke’s latest mistress and that he had left her for Arabella. Angelique had thought it purely a business matter between them, for she found Pembroke amusing but a man of little substance. She realized now that Titania saw a great deal more in him than Angelique ever had.

  Titania took a sip of her cold tea and grimaced. She refreshed her cup, drawing her hand from Angelique’s grasp. She took a breath, and a mask of smiling indifference fell into place, hiding all evidence of her distress.

  “Hawthorne is lording it over them all as the highest-ranking man in the county, telling tales of Arabella as he goes from house party to house party,” Titania said. “Mark my words. The man is a devil who will not be banished at the church door. He thinks Arabella is his to do with as he pleases. I do not see the words spoken by a curate putting a stop to that.”

  “Nor do I.”

  Angelique sat with her friend in silence, the only sound the crackling of the fire in the grate. “Perhaps someone will put a bullet through him,” she mused.

  Titania choked on her tea, setting down the cup as she made an effort to catch her breath.

  Angelique went on. “If we manage to save Arabella, who knows what woman will be Hawt
horne’s victim next? Why do good men stand by and do nothing while a decent woman is ruined?”

  “‘Valor is melted into curtsies,’” Titania mused, quoting from the Bard’s Much Ado About Nothing. “Hawthorne does not go long between victims, from all I hear. But there is nothing I can do to help her. As an actress and a member of the demimonde, I am not received myself.”

  “And I am a notorious widow, bent on seducing good men away from their wives, as all the gossips say.” Angelique frowned. “Perhaps I will simply have to shoot him after all.”

  Titania laughed out loud at that. “Well, you have cause. To change the subject from one unsavory topic to another, I understand that you took dinner with a gentleman of our acquaintance and his lovely wife in Pembroke’s house this evening.”

  “Did Lisette mention that or have you heard it from the village gossips?”

  “The ton gossips, my dear. When I came offstage to take a bit of cider before my evening meal, it was a favorite topic in the tavern. The whole village is buzzing with it. The only thing as interesting as Hawthorne’s disrespectful tattle about Arabella is the fact that people have lighted on you and Anthony as an on-dit that is a bit fresher.”

  “There is very little to it. We met face to face, and everyone behaved well. We were all discommoded to say the least, but we managed not to come to blows. We even made a sort of peace. There was a ghastly moment when I first saw that woman again, but she was graciousness itself. And I have to admit that their child is beautiful. He may be the best reason for me to have lost Anthony.”

  “My dear, Anthony lost you. He is simply too big a fool to know it. He never appreciated you when you were together, and he still does not have the sense to appreciate you now. Good riddance, I say.”

  Angelique smiled at her friend’s fierce defense of her. She had watched Anthony and Caroline together over dinner. They truly loved each other. She could not begrudge Anthony that. The way he looked at Caroline reminded her of the way that James Montgomery sometimes looked at her.