Miss Billings Treads The Boards

by Carla Kelly

  Kate peered around cautiously and put down the dress. “Oh, surely I don’t need that!” she exclaimed.

  “You must,” Maria insisted. “It will push up your bosoms wondrously!”

  Kate sucked in her breath. “I will not!” she declared. “They are already high enough!”

  “But you must be a lusty widow,” Maria insisted. “And besides, didn’t I hear you tell Papa that it would be only for tonight?”

  Kate grumbled and allowed Maria to lace her into the corset. She raised her chin and kept her eyes resolutely forward, refusing to look down at her own creamy expanse of bosom that seemed to grow greater with every lace Maria tightened.

  “Perfect!” Maria exclaimed at last.

  Kate looked down and gasped. “Is all that mine?” she managed as Maria neatly dropped the dress over her head and buttoned her into it.

  “Yes. I told you it was a wondrous corset.” Maria looked down at her own slim frame. “I begged and begged Mama to let me use it, but what does she do but declare that you cannot get Great Danes out of Pekinese.”

  Kate laughed in spite of her embarrassment. “Well, I never thought of nature’s bounty as a Great Dane before. Surely I can wear a shawl with this?”

  “What? And cover up such a magnificent asset?” boomed a now-familiar voice behind her. “My dear Miss Billings, on she whom nature smiles, let no man frown! Turn around now, and let me see if you pass muster.”

  Her face on fire, Kate turned around. Malcolm Bladesworth nodded and rubbed his chin, a gesture she was already becoming familiar with. “Magnificent. You will be our lustiest widow yet. And when you sing your song between the acts, be sure to bow deeply. The rustics will love it.”

  “Mr. Bladesworth! My father was a clergyman!” Kate burst out.

  Malcolm threw back his head and laughed. “So was mine, m’dear, but I still seem to recall him glancing at the occasional bosom!” He gave her one last admiring stare. “Now if only you can act, too, perhaps you might consider a life on the wicked stage.”

  “Never,” Kate declared firmly, rendering her word less emphatic by adding, “I would die of pneumonia in such a state of undress, or at the very least suffer a putrid sore throat.”

  Bladesworth laughed. “ ‘Come, come, you wasp; i’faith, you are too angry.’ Act two, scene one, my dear Miss Billings.” He took her by the hands and pulled her from the cow stall. “And now it is time to tread the boards. Chin up, and remember your lines.”

  “But …” Kate began as Malcolm swirled his shabby cape around him and headed for the stage area. He turned around and bowed to her.

  “My dear, one piece of advice: don’t stand too near to Petruchio. He does love to pinch.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Miss Billings, as though Petruchio had already done his duty.

  She found herself a quiet corner out of the way of the actors, who stood at the edge of the much-darned curtain. Someone had thrust a well-worn copy of Taming of the Shrew into her hands, and she read again the part of Hortensio’s widow. She leaned back against the wall of the barn and closed her eyes. Only this morning I was a respectable young woman on her way to a job in Wakefield. But you don’t want to be in Wakefield, she reminded herself, thinking again of Squire Leavitt and the milkmaid’s warning. Kate sighed and looked around. Do you wish to be here? She had no answer for herself.

  Before she could worry the thoughts around in her head anymore, Gerald, dressed now as Lucentio, and another young actor in servant’s clothes who must be Tranio, pulled back the shabby curtain that hung on a rope stretching from one edge of the loft to the other. The stage was bare. As she watched, interested in spite of her worries, Gerald and the other actors bowed to the audience, took their places on the plank stage, and became wealthy young student and servant, intent upon Padua and its famed university. She smiled at the familiar lines, read to her first by her father, and settled back.

  She did not know what she expected. Perhaps because she had become so worn down with worry, the sharp-tongued comedy grabbed her and shook the misery right out of her. Here soon was Maria, playing the gentle Bianca, and here was Hortensio, her whiskers now in place and walking, stooped, with a cane. The Bladesworths’ other daughter—was her name Phoebe?—must be Katharina, the shrew.

  If Kate Billings was prepared to be mildly entertained, Katharina’s entrance ended all complacency. With stentorian tones as penetrating as her father’s, Phoebe Bladesworth commanded the stage, casting all in the shadow and using it like an instrument. Kate sat up to watch. She had attended plays in Covent Garden and Drury Lane; even seeing the immortal Sarah Siddons before her retirement, but Phoebe Bladesworth glowed with a fire all her own. She ranted, she raved, she teased, she pouted. She was Katharina the shrew.

  “Whatever is she doing here?” Kate whispered out loud. The younger Bladesworth daughter belonged on a London stage, not in a barn, dressed in a costume that should have been relegated to the dustbin years ago, performing for farm folk.

  “Miss Billings! Hurry now!”

  Kate leaped to her feet, dropping the playbook, as Hortensio gestured to her from the edge of the stage and then tugged her on with him as Petruchio, in his jape’s costume, made a bow to the actors and spoke his lines.

  “You’re a lusty widow now, ma’am,” reminded Hortensio as he put his arm around her waist and leered at her. His beard was starting to come off, and he didn’t look a day over fifteen to her, but as Kate leered back and giggled loudly when he patted her rump, the audience laughed and whistled. Summoning her courage, and secure in the knowledge that she didn’t know anyone in or near Wickfield, Kate patted him right back. The audience howled and Petruchio glared at her. Kate only raised her bosom higher and sniffed.

  Hortensio tugged her back beside him, and the action continued onstage. Soon Petruchio hoisted the shrieking shrew over his shoulder and exited, and Malcolm, performing the role of father, led the actors in to the bridal feast as the playgoers stamped their feet and clapped for more.

  The curtain closed, and Malcolm took her hand. “Well done, lusty wench,” he exclaimed, beaming his approval. He gave her a little push toward the closed curtains. “Go out there and sing for us before act four.”

  “Oh, but sir,” she protested, her fear returning.

  “You must know a bawdy song or two,” Malcolm said as he prepared to draw back the dusty curtain.

  Kate stared at him. “I told you, I was a clergyman’s daughter!”

  He only twinkled his eyes at her and shoved her out in front of the curtain. Holding her skirts well away from the candles on the stage’s edge, she looked at the audience. All the stamping had stirred up the dust and dried manure from the barn floor. And there in the loft pigeons fluttered and cooed.

  Kate held up her hands, hoping they would not shake. “Hush, now,” she began. “How can I sing?”

  To her surprise they quieted down and looked at her expectantly, their faces upturned and eager. This was not a time for Italian art songs or Wesley hymns. “I shall sing ‘Robin Is to the Greenwood Gone,’ ” she stated.

  Papa had always declared she had a pleasant voice. Kate clasped her hands in front of her and sang to the farmers of Wickfield. The simple Elizabethan melody was perfectly suited to her voice, which soared until even the pigeons were silent. When she finished, the audience was still. To her surprise and real gratification the applause first began backstage, and then the farmers took it up. Kate smiled in genuine delight and remembered to bow deeply to her audience before retreating behind the curtain.

  “Magnificent!” Malcolm declared as he grabbed her in a bear hug. “I was sure you could not be so beautiful for nothing! My dear, you have a prodigious voice!”

  He hurried her offstage as the curtain drew back on act four and Petruchio’s country home. He led her to the back door, where Maria and Gerald stood, breathing in the clean evening air. “Go through your lines in act five. Magnificent! Magnificent!” he chortled. “I must go find Ivy.”

/>   “That was nice,” Maria said. She handed Kate the playbook she had dropped earlier. “Now, let us trade lines. Gerald?”

  But Gerald was standing in the doorway, looking at the stage, his eyes wistful. Maria sighed and turned back to the book. “I do not know why he bothers,” she grumbled. “Papa has already declared that Phoebe is much too young, and besides, Gerald is poor.” She giggled, her good humor restored. “But so are we all! Come, Miss Billings.”

  “Please call me Kate,” she replied and took up the book. She glanced shyly at Maria. “Did I … did I really sing well?”

  “Oh, Miss B … Kate, you have a lovely voice! I cannot understand why you have never thought of the stage before.”

  Kate regarded Maria. “My dear, it is not usually the first choice of anyone.” She paused, embarrassed. “That is, most people don’t … well …”

  Maria touched her hand. “I know,” she replied softly. “Actors are low company.”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean …” Kate stammered in confusion.

  Maria shook her head. “We know what you are thinking. And I must say, you are generous to help us out tonight. Shall we go over the lines?”

  Their heads together over the book, they read the lines back and forth to each other until Maria was satisfied. “That will do,” said Maria at last. “And now I must go on,” she said as Gerald hurried to the door again and beckoned to her. She laughed. “Lucentio and Bianca must marry in haste, so he can repent at leisure!”

  She stopped at the door. “You still have some time, Kate. We’ll be packing up as soon as we are done. If you wish, you could take those candlesticks from act three and put them in the prop wagon.” She gestured toward the wagon that was backed up close to the door.

  “Certainly.” Kate picked up the candlesticks, noting with amusement how the heavy sticks could look so rich and golden from the audience, which could not see the paint flaking off. Tawdry illusion, she thought first and then laughed to herself. And how it took me in, too. It was pleasant, at least for a moment, not to think about tomorrow, and the Leavitts, and her fate as a governess if she dared arrive a day late with no satisfactory explanation. She hiked up her skirts and climbed the small folding ladder that led into the prop wagon. I shall merely tell them I had a prior engagement as a lusty widow in Taming of the Shrew. The absurdity of that answer made her shake her head.

  The prop wagon was dark, but she waited until her eyes became accustomed to the gloom. She looked around her, jumping a little in fright at the skeleton sitting with its bony legs crossed. “I suppose you are Hamlet’s father’s ghost,” she said out loud, “or perhaps the rest of ‘poor Yorick,’ ” She looked at the swords, touching the wooden blades carefully and then chuckled. “I don’t think anyone will perish from these weapons, unless they are susceptible to splinters.”

  She straightened the swords and set down the candlesticks. Perhaps if I wrap them in some of this old fabric, they won’t chip so much, she thought. Kate tugged at what looked like a moth-eaten cape on top of a nearby pile. It wouldn’t give; she pulled harder. She gasped as a man materialized from the pile of old costumes. He struggled upright as she stood, her mouth open, too surprised to scream.

  He sat there, as if unsure of his surroundings. He shook his head to clear it and groaned. Kate shrieked and grabbed up one of the candlesticks at her feet. She brandished it over her head. “Don’t you come any closer!” she exclaimed to the man who sat still, his hand to his head.

  “See here, miss,” he began, his voice faint. He reached out his hand toward her. Kate leaped back and stumbled against the skeleton. Without a word she slammed down the candlestick on the man’s neck. He pitched forward among the swords, unconscious.

  Kate dropped the candlestick and threw herself on her knees by the man. She tried to turn him over on his back, but he was too substantial to budge and the space awkward. She gasped and put her ear to his back. After a long moment in which her own heart seemed to stop thudding in her breast, she was rewarded with a slow, steady pounding. She sighed with relief at the comforting sound.

  “Thank God I have not killed you,” she breathed. She touched his neck, and her hand came away wet and sticky. “Oh, no!” Visions of standing before a magistrate to plead guilty to assault crossed her mind’s eye, and she gulped and shook the man.

  He was completely insensible to her urgings. Tears sprang into Kate’s eyes. She pulled the cape over him, tucking a corner of it under his head and wiping her hands on it. With a sob she stumbled from the wagon.

  Malcolm was gesturing to her from the back door. “Hurry, Kate, my dear governess. It is time for scene three!”

  She ran to him, reaching for his hands. Malcolm stared at her and then laughed. “What, did the skeleton startle you?”

  She shook her head and opened her mouth several times before the words tumbled out. “There was a man in the wagon! I … I hit him with a candlestick, but I do not think he is dead!”

  Malcolm tugged at his false beard, stood a moment in indecision, then grasped her hand, pulling her toward the stage. “He’ll have to keep until after the wedding feast. Now take a deep breath, Kate and compose yourself.” He inclined his massive head toward her. “I am sure it is only a drunkard. He will likely be gone by the time we are through.” And then he was pulling her onto the stage as the play went on.

  Chapter 5

  When Lord Grayson regained consciousness, he found himself facedown on the wagon bed, staring at a pile of wooden swords next to bony, skeletal toes. He closed his eyes again, declaring to himself, “When I open them, I will be in bed at Half Moon Street.”

  He opened one eye and then the other, but the view was still swords and toes. He lay where he was, unable to summon the energy to roll over and constricted by the narrow space. His head throbbed like a species apart, pounding like a pile driver on the back of his neck. With some effort he worked his hand up to his head, feeling again the furrow caused by Wilding’s bullet. The wound was crusted with dried blood.

  His hand traveled to the back of his neck, where the pile driver was working the hardest, and came away wet with his blood. As he lay there contemplating this new ruin to his head, he remembered a woman with a remarkable bosom. Surely not, he thought. He remembered that she was small and could not possibly have had the strength to deliver the blow that was even now making him queasier by the minute. She must have struck me with something, he concluded. God, what a woman. I hope I do not see her again until I feel better.

  Grunting softly, Henry eased himself up. He sat absolutely still until the nausea went away and then leaned back carefully against the pile of old clothing. He thought at first that he would leave the wagon before anyone returned, but he could not. He ached everywhere, and even the tiniest shifting of position made the hairs rise on his back.

  As he sat considering his situation, he heard a great wave of applause from the barn. What is going on in that place, he asked himself. It couldn’t be a cockfight. People didn’t applaud like that at cockfights, at least, not the ones he had attended. His hand went to the back of his neck again. And rarely did women with blunt objects and magnificent bosoms frequent such low business. He sighed and resigned himself to whatever fate awaited, sorry that he had taken off his riding coat, now that the night was cooler, and grateful that he still had his wallet in his pocket. Surely he could buy his way out of any trouble.

  In a few moments he heard the sound of people leaving the barn. They talked among themselves in low tones, with an occasional burst of laughter. In another moment the light from a candle thrust in his face made him squint and try to cover his eyes.

  “Ods bodkins,” boomed out a hearty voice that made his head throb even harder. “Whatever did you catch here, Kate?”

  “Oh, please talk softer,” he begged. “My head is killing me.

  A great rumble of laughter from the man holding the candle washed over him. “It’s no wonder, m’boy. You’ve been crowned with a candlestick.” The man s
niffed Henry’s shirt-front. “Well, you don’t appear to have been drinking. Let me give you a hand up.”

  Before he could protest, the giant of a man lifted him to his feet. Henry’s knees buckled under him, and he sagged to the floor. Helplessly he waved the man away. “Please just leave me alone and let me die in peace.”

  But the giant wouldn’t leave him alone. The man whistled. “Kate, there’s blood all over his shirt.” The man called to others. “Let this be a warning to anyone who tries to bother Miss Billings.”

  “Billings, did you say?” he managed.

  “Yes, laddie, but don’t trouble yourself. Gerald, Davy, give me a hand with this one.”

  In another moment he was lying on the grass outside the wagon, staring up at a circle of people, all dressed fantastically from another era. As he lay there puzzling it over, his eyelids drooping, the circle parted and the young woman with the remarkable bosom knelt beside him.

  “Promise you will not hit me again,” he said, attempting a feeble joke.

  “I can but apologize, sir,” she replied, her voice penitent, “but whatever were you doing in the wagon?”

  “Yes, laddie, what were you doing in the wagon?” boomed the man.

  He could have told the truth then, told them of Algie and his stupid blunder, and he would have, but he looked again at the young woman, and her eyes were so anxious. She seems genuinely concerned, he thought, even though she doesn’t know my name or my title. Henry turned his head slowly to look again at the tall man, who was now kneeling on his other side.

  “First tell me something.” He made a feeble gesture with his hand that took in the group observing him. “What have I stumbled into?”

  The man rested his hand gently on Henry’s chest. “We are actors, laddie, and I am Malcolm Bladesworth, actor and manager of the Bladesworth Traveling Company.”

  Henry closed his eyes with a long sigh. To his surprise the young woman rested her head on his chest.