There was a set pattern of things that Rivers always did whenever he stopped at the Red Hart Inn on his way to the Lodge. He would solemnly taste and judge the latest batch of ale that Mr. Hollins brought him, and offer an opinion that he suspected was repeated over and over throughout the county. Then Mrs. Hollins would appear with the first plate of her excellent ham with leeks, which he would praise as it deserved. Next a younger Hollins child would be brought and pushed toward him to sing a warbly song in his manner, which Rivers would also praise, and which it usually did not deserve. Only then would he be left alone with his dinner and his book in the little private parlor.
But today when he was left alone, he abruptly realized that he shouldn’t be, and called again for Hollins to join him.
“There was a young woman accompanying me today,” he said, feeling both mystified that Lucia was missing and a little careless that he’d only now noticed her absence. “She was to dine with me.”
“Yes, my lord,” Hollins said. “The small dark lass with the straw hat?”
“That’s the one,” Rivers said, relieved. “If she’s out there in the hall, pray show her in here.”
Hollins screwed up his mouth, clearly unhappy to be unable to oblige. “She’s not in the hall, my lord. She’s dining with your other servants, in the long room off the kitchen.”
“She is?” Rivers paused, his fork in the air with surprise. He thought he’d made it clear that he wished her to dine with him, both here and during her stay at the Lodge. “With the servants?”
“Yes, my lord,” Hollins said. “Shall I fetch her here?”
Rivers considered, his fork still poised in the air with the ham steaming faintly before him. Although Lucia had said she’d memorized the passage as he’d asked, he’d seen her sleep so long that he suspected her claim wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. No doubt she’d chosen to eat with his footmen to avoid having to confess the truth about the passage.
He was sorry she’d made that choice, and sorry that she’d felt it necessary to avoid him, but in a way he didn’t blame her. She’d clearly been exhausted when she’d joined him, and then he’d expected too much of her so soon. Besides, if the other Di Rossis he knew were any indication, swearing to untruths to save their skins was as natural as breathing. Of course he must deal with that, but not now.
“No, Hollins, that will not be necessary,” he said. “Let her dine where she pleases.”
At last he brought the forkful of stew to his mouth, striving to show that Lucia’s choice was inconsequential to him. With great deliberation, he once again opened the French philosopher’s book that he’d brought with him from the carriage. He smoothed the pages open with the heel of his hand and rested a clean pewter spoon across the top to hold them open while he ate. As a bachelor, this was often how he dined at home, alone with a book, and perfectly happy that way, too.
But this evening he wasn’t happy, and the book that should have provided ideal company failed again to hold his interest. Instead his thoughts kept wandering to the Red Hart’s long room off the kitchen, a place where he’d never been, nor had ever considered.
He imagined long tables with benches, with the diners sitting close-packed together. There would be much laughter and jesting and shouting over one another, the way it always was among servants, and not a word about any French philosophers. He pictured Lucia sitting squeezed between his two tallest footmen, Walker and Johnston, with her looking almost dainty between them in their elegant livery coats. Or maybe they’d shed their coats to preserve them while they ate, so she’d look even smaller, a tiny figure in dark blue against the white linen of their shirtsleeves. He wondered if they’d made her laugh, and then she’d laugh, too, her cheeks rosy and her eyes bright and—
“Mrs. Hollins has just taken an apple pie from the oven, my lord,” Hollins said, his round face appearing at the door. “With a wedge of fine cheddar, there’s few things more tasty.”
“Thank you, no, Hollins, I believe I am done.” Rivers rose abruptly and stuffed the book into the pocket of his greatcoat. “Pray send word to my driver that I wish to depart.”
The word was swiftly sent, and by the time he’d returned to the yard, his carriage was waiting with his footmen at the ready. Walker opened the carriage door, revealing that it was empty, with no sign of Lucia except for that wretched box of hers. Rivers frowned, glancing about the yard for her. She couldn’t dare be late again, could she?
Then he looked up, and there she was, sitting on the bench between his driver and Rooke.
“Please, Lucia,” he said. He told himself he wasn’t begging; he was simply being patiently agreeable. “Come down at once. I wish you to ride inside with me.”
Her eyes widened. “Very well, my lord,” she said, and as she gathered her skirts in one hand to climb down both his footmen rushed to help her. Rivers whistled for Spot, who had wandered off during the delay, and at last they were all in the carriage again and on their way.
At last: that, he thought, seemed to be the best way to describe this entire day.
She was sitting squarely in the middle of the seat across from him, her back straight, her hands clasped, and her expression a little wary. That was wise. She should be wary after what she’d just done to him at the Red Hart.
He took a deep breath to compose himself.
“Lucia,” he said. “It would appear that we have certain matters to discuss between us.”
“We do indeed, my lord,” she said with startling indignation. “Yes, we do have our agreement and the wager and all, but there’s many other things that need saying now, else I will be going back to London and that wager of yours is over and done.”
“ ‘Things’?” he repeated, taken aback. “I would say there are things. You didn’t follow my wishes at the Red Hart, but went off with my servants. Then you virtually scolded me before the entire inn yard, pretending that I’d somehow wronged you.”
“Which you did, my lord,” she said vehemently. “You woke me to call me a liar, and then swept me away so I wouldn’t keep you from your dinner. What was I supposed to make of that?”
He frowned. He was not accustomed to being addressed with such…such directness.
“I woke you because we had stopped,” he said. “I expected you to join me when I dined, as I had specifically requested earlier. Nor did I accuse you of lying. You maintained that you had learned the passage, whilst I had observed you sleeping instead. I chose not to believe you. That is not the same thing.”
“It amounts to the same thing by my lights, my lord!” she exclaimed. “Why would I have claimed to have learned your lesson if I hadn’t? What would I have gained by lying?”
“Perhaps you were uneasy about having to make such an admission,” he said, growing a bit uneasy himself. “Perhaps it was easier to, ah, exaggerate.”
“Bah!” she said with determination. “I’ll show you how I exaggerate, my lord.”
She leaned back against the squabs with her palms pressed down flat on the cushions, one either side of her, and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath, and in a loud, singsong voice, she recited the twelve lines he’d given her.
O, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown!
The Courtier’s, soldier’s, scholar’s, eye, tongue, sword,
Th’ expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
Th’ observ’d of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck’d the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason
Like sweet bells jangled out of tune and harsh,
That unmatch’d form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy. O, woe is me
T’have seen what I have seen, see what I see.
Cautiously she opened her eyes, unsure of what his reaction would be.
Speechless, Rivers stared at her, stunne
d by what he’d just heard. She’d learned every word of the passage, exactly as she’d said she had, and without a single error, too. True, there was much about her recitation that would require work. It was perhaps the strangest reading of Shakespeare that he’d ever heard, turning the golden words into a kind of droning street vendor’s cry—or worse, into the very twin of the dreadful Madame Adelaide—but he’d take it. He’d take it, but he’d something else to do first.
He needed to apologize.
He swept his hat from his head and held it to one side, and bowed his head.
“Madam, you have my heartfelt apology,” he said solemnly. “I didn’t believe you, even as you professed the truth. You did indeed do as I asked, without error.”
Her cheeks grew red, and she ducked her chin, unable to meet his eye. “You shouldn’t say that, my lord, not to me.”
He settled his hat back on his head. “Why not, when it was true? I was wrong.”
“Because of who you are, my lord, and who I am,” she said, her hands twisting restlessly together in her lap. “It’s not right. I did what you told me to do. It was no great task, either.”
“But it was,” he insisted. “I was in the wrong, and I’m not above admitting it. Most people have the devil of a time memorizing much of anything, let alone Shakespeare. Yet you did it with apparent ease. That’s a necessary gift for an aspiring actress.”
She looked up at him uncertainly, her chin still lowered. “You do believe that is so? That I have a gift?”
“I do,” he said, and he would have said it even if her thick dark lashes weren’t fluttering over her cheeks. They were very beguiling, those lashes, especially in the dusk of early evening, and because of them he let his compliment stand as it was, without the qualifications that would make it more honest. There would be time enough tomorrow for a true critique. “It will without doubt make my—our—task far easier.”
“Oh, I am glad,” she said fervently. “You cannot know how I feared you’d changed your mind, my lord, that you’d wanted no more of me, that I’d somehow made you unhappy and that you’d leave me behind, there at that inn.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” he said, appalled that she’d think so low of him. “What made you think such a thing?”
“What else was I to think, my lord, when you spoke to me all stern as you did?” she asked, spreading her fingers open over her lap. “My life with the company was not so fine, my lord, but it was what I had, and I gave it up for what you offered me. With you I had a chance to better myself, but if you’re going to take that chance back from me, well, then, I wish to know now, so I can make other plans for myself.”
Rivers made a noncommittal grunt. She’d spoken so plainly that it stung Rivers’s conscience, and perhaps his pride as well. He knew he must answer her just as plainly, or both conscience and pride would give him no peace tonight.
“You’re a direct little creature, aren’t you?” he said at last. “What manner of assurance do you wish from me? Must I ask a solicitor to draw up papers for signature? Would that be enough?”
He wasn’t entirely jesting. She, however, wasn’t jesting at all, and she frowned thoughtfully.
“Like some sort of apprenticeship papers, my lord?” she asked. “Binding me to you, but making you promise to look after me?”
He grimaced, deeply regretting having begun this particular line of conversation. “Somehow I doubt any respectable court would agree to that,” he said. “Besides, they’d question why my word as a gentleman wasn’t sufficient assurance for you.”
“Forgive me, my lord,” she said solemnly, “but your word as a gentleman won’t hold much water considering I’m not a lady.”
He grunted again. “Touché,” he said. “Not only is your memory exceptional, but your argument as well.”
Clearly perplexed, she leaned closer toward him, swaying gently with the carriage’s motion. “But that’s the problem, my lord, isn’t it? It’s all about words. I don’t know who or how or even what I am to be with you.”
“That’s easy enough,” he said, for to him it did seem so. “Who you are is Lucia di Rossi, and what you are is rather what you will become, which is to say an actress.”
“That is what I hope to become, yes, my lord,” she agreed earnestly. “But that’s later, and it’s now that confuses me. One moment you treat me as your—your guest, having me ride here in your carriage with you and all, and then the next you order me about as if I’m your servant, except that you don’t want me going about with your other servants. I’m all turned about trying to make sense of it, my lord, and I fear I’ll displease you if I can’t.”
Rivers sighed, and crossed his arms over his chest. He understood what she was saying, and he understood, too, how it had come about. When he planned his course of study for how to create the model dramatic actress, he’d overlooked the fact that Lucia wasn’t a wad of clay for him to mold; she was a living, breathing woman with the sort of feelings and notions that plagued every woman. He’d left her in the dark about her exact position, because it hadn’t mattered to him. But it did matter to her, and now it must matter to him, too. He sighed again, mightily, as he tried to determine a solution.
“See now, my lord, I’ve displeased you again,” she said. Dramatically she pulled off her hat and threw herself back against the squabs with a sigh that rivaled his own. “Nothing I do is right.”
“Not at all,” he murmured, an easy way of buying more time for himself to think. This was entirely his fault, of course, and though he’d admit that to himself, he wasn’t sure it would be wise to admit it to her as well. He’d already apologized to her once this evening, and if he did it again, he’d feel as if he were groveling, and that would be an end to any sort of proper balance between them as teacher and student. It didn’t help, either, having her flung back against the squabs like that, with her hair coming down from beneath her cap, and her breasts pushed up by her stays and—
No. He needed a way to think of her with distance, with propriety. And in a flash the idea came to him, in the manner that great ideas usually took.
He clapped his hands once in triumph, startling her. “I have solved our dilemma, Lucia,” he announced proudly. “What is required is more formality between us.”
She shook her head, not understanding, and perhaps not wanting to. “You make no sense to me, my lord.”
“No, no, it makes perfect sense,” he insisted. “The problem here is that I do not know how to address you, and you do not know how to behave. As you are, Lucia di Rossi, formerly of the Di Rossi Ballet Company, you have no acceptable place in my household.”
“Rifiuti,” she muttered, openly skeptical. “What solution is there in that, my lord?”
“Because we shall put Lucia aside, and instead create a new persona for you,” he said. “You weren’t going to launch yourself onto the stage as a Di Rossi anyway. We’ll simply accelerate the process, so there will no longer be any question of you being a servant.”
“I’ll need a grand new name, my lord,” she said eagerly. “Every actress has another for the stage. Madame Adelaide’s really Moll Dunn.”
“Cassandra,” he declared, the name coming to him in another of those flashes of brilliance. “That’s who’ll you’ll be, because you’ll speak the truth about your character. Although I do hope you’ll have more people heed your words than that poor lady in ancient Troy.”
“Cassandra,” she repeated, testing the sound of it. “I like that, my lord. It’s very grand. Madame Cassandra!”
“I think you shall be Mrs., rather than Madame,” he said. “Audiences don’t always take to foreign actresses, Madame Adelaide notwithstanding. You shall be an English lady who has lived abroad most of her life. That will make you mysterious, but still English. You’ll need a surname.”
She nodded with excitement, glancing out the window as if searching for inspiration in the passing landscape. Apparently she found it.
“Willow,” she said sudd
enly. “That’s who I’ll be, my lord. Mrs. Cassandra Willow. Because I’ll bow when the audience cheers, but I’ll never be broken by the critics.”
“Mrs. Cassandra Willow.” He considered it, imagining how the name would look on playbills and in papers. “It’s simple enough for those in the pit to recall, but sufficiently elegant for those in the boxes, too. I like it, Mrs. Willow. When you step from the carriage, I’ll introduce you by your new name, and so you shall be called by my household and everyone else.”
She laughed, and he laughed, too, and the journey was suddenly much more pleasurable again. They were sitting here together in a carriage that was rapidly growing dark except for the light of the moon, and the bumpy misunderstandings that had sprung up between them this afternoon had been smoothed over and corrected. Their shared adventure was just beginning. Ahead of them lay a little more than a month where they’d attempt something grand and glorious together, something that was far beyond the initial wager with Everett.
Yes, that was the main difference from earlier. By making her Mrs. Willow, he’d also after a fashion made her his partner in this endeavor—a realization that pleased him as much as it seemed to be pleasing her. Together they were going to change her life. Damn, he might even be saving her life, considering how wretched it had been before. How could he not be pleased by that?
A Reckless Desire Page 6