Miss Billings Treads The Boards

by Carla Kelly

  Kate snatched up the nightshirt and stuffed it in her trunk, along with the razor and shaving soap. “I will take my chances with the bats!”

  “What, does he snore?” Maria teased. “Or sleepwalk?” Both girls giggled behind their hands.

  “Well no, but …” Kate closed her trunk with a firm click. “Maria, you are entirely too jolly for my own good!”

  They started down the stairs. “I think it is perfectly romantic,” Phoebe said.

  “Oh, you would,” Maria quizzed. “And I suppose Monsieur Broussard will write a play about this and cast you as the beautiful governess forced to compromise herself by two nights in a bedroom with an unmarried man. Gerald will be the French bachelor, of course.”

  Kate stopped on the stairs. “Please don’t tease about this,” she pleaded suddenly, alive to the implication.

  Maria took her arm more gently this time. “I am sorry, Kate,” she said, her voice contrite. “I am sure by autumn that you will look back on all this and laugh, too.”

  “I hope you are right,” Kate replied quietly.

  While it couldn’t be said that dust was actually rising into the air over the Banner Street Theatre, the old building already had a less abandoned look to it, seen in the cheerful light of midmorning. Davy waved to them from the seat of the prop wagon as his little brother and sisters carried in the last of the wigs, swords, and Yorick’s skull.

  “I’m off for the finale,” he told his sisters. He flicked the reins across the backs of the two horses. “And then it’s goodbye to Troilus and Cressida here. Papa sold them to the innkeep.”

  Maria stopped and ran her hand along Cressida’s flank. She looked up at her brother. “Davy, we certainly will have crossed the Rubicon then, won’t we?”

  He nodded and motioned her back from the horse. “The Bladesworths are here to stay,” he declared. “I hope Leeds is ready for us.”

  So do I, thought Kate as she entered the theatre.

  Many lamps were glowing in the building now, and Malcolm Bladesworth was lighting the last candle on the first tier of the chandelier. He waved a cheery greeting to Kate and his daughters and motioned for Gerald, rope in hand on the edge of the stage, to raise the chandelier. It rose on squeaky pulleys and took away some of the shadows.

  “Very good, very good,” Malcolm boomed. “Tie it off, Gerald. Mustn’t waste any more tallow.” He gestured grandly across the broad stage that was strewn with props, boxes, and bat leavings. ‘There isn’t anything we can’t perform on this stage, with enough actors.” He chucked Kate under the chin. “We might even make some money, my dear.”

  Kate took his arm. “Malcolm, I know I have bought this theatre, but I know nothing about the business. I want you to organize it the way you want. Tell me what to do, and I will do it. I have three hundred pounds left from the purchase price. We’ll have to stretch that until it screams.”

  “I’ve sold my horses, and your good husband paid our shot at the inn.”

  “My good … oh, yes.”

  Malcolm patted her arm and leaned closer. “And as long as the runner thinks he needs to know Hal’s business, you’d better be the devoted wife, my ‘super-dainty Kate.’ ”

  Kate sighed. “Why won’t that dratted runner leave?”

  But Malcolm was gone, calling to his little ones to carry the props offstage, and then shouting for Ivy to “soothe his fever’d brow with a gentle kiss, a fairy’s gossamer touch.”

  Kate smiled in spite of her discomfort. How do these eccentric, unregimented dears get from day to day? she asked herself.

  “Madam, I feel extremely ill-used.”

  The voice was Hal’s. Its cheerful tone belied the marquess’s stringent words and carried well on the stage. But where was he? Kate looked up, raising her hand against the candlelight’s glow, and laughed.

  “Lord … Lord knows how you have grown so gray, my love,” she stammered, recovering herself. The runner stood beside Hal on the catwalk that ran the length of the stage. “And you, Mr. Muggeridge.”

  Hal leaned down, resting his arms on the railing. “His name is Will, my dearest love. He had promised me that he will never lay another hand on you, and I have promised him that you will never plant him a facer again, even if you are sorely provoked.” He turned to the runner, his expression virtuous. “Since our nuptials, she had taught me many wicked things, sir, but I draw the line at fisticuffs.”

  Kate gasped. The runner laughed, and she looked at him in surprise. I must be the only sane person in all of Yorkshire, she thought, as she glared at the two men. But what was it Malcolm, and then Phoebe this morning, had said about being adventurous? What have I to lose, she thought. My dignity? My reputation? That drooped down to my ankles the first night I spent alone with Lord Grayson.

  “I shall tell you what I think,” she declared. “Where is the ladder, Hal?”

  He pointed off the stage. “It is but a very narrow stair, my dear. Do have a care.”

  She nodded at him, pleased somehow that he did not warn her off the stairs, or remonstrate with her. He stayed where he was, arms draped over the railing, his hair powdered gray with bat soil, perfectly at ease. I could almost like you, she thought, if that were even a consideration, which it is not.

  She found the stairs easily, and with one hand on her skirts, she climbed up to the catwalk. Heights had no terrors for her. She had climbed to the top of the Parthenon with Papa once in the moonlight to look over Athens, asleep far below. She smiled, even as the pungent bat soil tickled her nostrils and made her sneeze. I am as eccentric as all the rest.

  The catwalk swayed a little, and she sucked in her breath. Hal held out his hand to her, and she took it gratefully.

  “If it can hold a fubsy fellow like me, it can hold a sprite like you, Kate,” he said. “Wouldn’t you agree, sir?”

  The runner had moved off a few paces. He nodded, his eyes wary again, watching them. Kate ignored him. She let Hal put his arm around her waist.

  “Now, tell me, sir, why you are so ill-used?” Her voice was soft, loverlike, and he leaned closer to hear her.

  “Because I had planned to spend this summer acting for Malcolm Bladesworth and making love to you, not dodging bats in dusty halls,” he reminded her. He winked and pinched her waist. “Some could accuse you of being eccentric in buying this bat-filled barn, Mrs. Hampton.”

  Kate turned slightly so the runner could get a good view. She wiped off a spot on Hal’s cheek and kissed him. “Only an eccentric would marry you, my lord.” She dared the runner to say anything.

  He looked back at her, his stare equally level. “Do you always call him ‘my lord,’ Mrs. Hampton?”

  “Sometimes I even call him ‘Your Grace,’ or ‘Your Excellency,’ she replied, and kissed Hal again, wishing he would not inch his hand up so. “You must excuse us, Will, if we act a little loverlike.”

  Will bowed and the catwalk swayed. “You may act all you choose, Mrs. Hampton, but I do not believe a word you say.” He nodded to Hal and stepped around them. “But I will play along with your little game as long as it suits you.”

  The runner walked across the catwalk and down the narrow stairs. Hal did not release his hold on her.

  “Do mind your fingers,” Kate whispered to him, a smile on her face for the benefit of the runner, who watched now from the stage. “You are trying me sorely.”

  Hal grinned at her. “Tell me who climbed up to the catwalk, then, my dear.” Before she could say anything else, he kissed her.

  It was a gentle kiss, a mild one completely in tune with mid-morning, and the two littlest Bladesworth girls applauding below and Maria giggling. He kissed her again, and this time there was something more. Kate couldn’t have explained it to a jury, but she wanted suddenly to kiss him back.

  Before she followed through on her urge, he stepped back and took her face in both hands. “Perhaps I am not so ill-used, after all,” he murmured.

  The applause continued from below. Hal bowed and wav
ed regally to their audience. Laughing, he clasped her hand and led her off the catwalk. In the half light of the wings, still high above the stage, she turned to him. “You are such a rascal,” she whispered.

  “Hush, my dear,” he said, his composure irritating beyond belief. “Mustn’t let the runner hear you.” He edged her toward the steep stairway. “You go first. If I should chance to slip, then you can break my fall.”

  She glared at him and then laughed in spite of herself. “You are also absurd,” she muttered as she descended to the stage below. She paused halfway down and looked up at the marquess. “I still do not understand why you cannot tell the runner who you are!”

  “What, and have all my worried relatives descend on me like a downpour, cut up my peace, and ruin my summer?” he whispered back. “And, dear wife, we still do not know if this runner was sent by Algernon or Abner Sheffield. Suggest to me how I can ask him without arousing suspicion, and I will do it.”

  She was silent a moment, and then continued down the stairs. “I suppose you are right,” she said finally, “but I don’t like it.”

  When she regained the stage again, it was an easy matter to abandon Lord Grayson to his own devices, and, with Phoebe and Maria, tackle the rooms that would become their living quarters.

  “Mama says that we girls can stay in one room, Gerald, my brothers, and Lord Grays … Hal, in another, and she and Papa in the third.” Phoebe put her hands on her hips. “Maria, you are not to suggest to Will Muggeridge that he join us!”

  “I would never,” Maria declared with some heat. “But you must own that he is helpful.”

  They washed down walls and scrubbed floors all morning, pausing at noon for a luncheon of bread, meat, and cheese spread on a blanket on the stage, and washed down with cool water from the well behind the theatre. It was easy for Kate to avoid the marquess and sit with Phoebe and Maria. She ignored the runner’s pointed glances at her when she did not join her husband on his side of the stage.

  When the last crumb had been brushed away, no one felt inclined to rise. With a sigh Hal lay down on the stage. He patted the boards beside him. “Come here, wife,” he said. “Rest your head a moment.”

  Kate gritted her teeth. The man was so flagrant! I will give him such a scold when we are alone tonight, she vowed as she pretended not to hear Maria’s infernal giggling, walked across the stage with all the dignity she could muster, and plumped herself down beside Hal. He spread his arm out obligingly, and she had no choice but to lie down next to him. He cuddled her in closer. “Very good, my dear,” he murmured, and then whispered in her ear. “Relax. I won’t bite.”

  “You are a complete scoundrel,” she whispered back. “I think you are taking vast advantage of this situation with the runner.”

  “Of course I am,” he replied, his composure unruffled. “So would any man with blood flowing through his veins—however sluggishly—and the remotest semblance of a heartbeat. Be quiet, now, and for goodness sake, relax. You feel like a board.”

  “And you smell vilely of bats,” she said. Kate turned pointedly away from him and rested her cheek on his outstretched arm. He was more comfortable than she would ever have admitted, and her eyes began to close.

  They opened at the sound of firm footsteps on the stage. Malcolm Bladesworth, his longish hair wrapped in a turban like his daughters’, sat down next to her.

  “Something has occurred to me, Kate,” he said, his voice booming out portentously. The others looked up expectantly. “We are few in number,” he began, and his family nodded. The runner gazed at them in faint amusement. “In fact, as I have been sweeping out bat leavings, I am struck by something.”

  “You, too, sir?” Hal said, laughed, and slapped Kate on the hip. “Do not stand under bats. It does terrible things to one’s dignity and makes one prematurely gray.”

  Gerald laughed out loud and ruefully dusted at his hair. “We have all been struck by something, monsieur.”

  Malcolm waved his arms about in the grand gestures that Kate was becoming familiar with. “No! No, you simpletons! Do you realize that we do not have enough actors to present a significant play?”

  The Bladesworths were silent a moment, mentally counting their number. “What about Love Withheld?” Phoebe ventured.

  Malcolm shook his head.

  “The Saracen?” Davy asked.

  “Beaux Stratagem?” Maria suggested.

  “No, no, and yet again, no,” Malcolm. “And I can think of nothing by Shakespeare, either.” He looked at Kate. “My dear Kate, this is a dilemma I had not considered until now. Our other actors deserted us like rats from a drowning ship, and we haven’t enough money to spare among our remaining company to tempt the Devil, much less an actor.”

  Kate turned onto her back and stared at the chandelier that winked overhead. Hal’s arm tightened around her, and she scooted in closer. “Dear me, this is a problem,” she said softly. “Malcolm, we could clean and scrub and refurbish to a fare-thee-well and still be unable to open.”

  “I am afraid that is so, Kate,” he said.

  Kate closed her eyes. Somewhere behind her closed lids, tears began to gather. I will not cry, she thought fiercely. Could I plead with Mr. Dawkins to take the theatre back? He would never do it. It had been empty for years, an eyesore on Banner Street, which no one wanted. She reached up for Hal’s hand that grasped her shoulder and twined her fingers in his.

  “I wish I had access to Abner Sheffield,” he whispered in her ear. “My present resources are far from sanguine, or I could get us out of this muddle.”

  “No, Hal, it is my problem, not yours,” she said out loud. “I must find a solution.” She sat up and drew up her legs into her favorite thinking position. Resting her chin on her knees, she stared straight ahead.

  Gerald Broussard was in her line of sight. He lounged carelessly on the edge of the stage, his leg dangling off, contemplating her. She gazed back and then began to smile. Startled, Gerald smiled back at her, and then he seemed to understand without words, what she wanted.

  “I will do it, Madame Hampton,” he said. “Do you trust me that much?”

  “It seems that I have to,” she replied and then turned to the others.

  “Gerald will write us a play,” she said. “It will be a play using only such actors as we have.”

  “Gerald?” Malcolm roared, ignoring Ivy’s hand on his arms. “My dear, he only dabbles in words!”

  “Well, then, he will have to dabble in earnest now,” Kate replied. She got to her feet and shook the dust from her dress onto Hal, who coughed and then grabbed her by the ankle.

  She shrieked and then tugged at his hair until he let go. “Madam wife, it is thin enough!” he protested. “Would you snatch me completely bald?”

  “The thought had occurred to me,” she replied, her composure restored. “Monsieur Broussard, I absolve you of all further housekeeping duties. You are to devote yourself to a play.”

  Broussard extended his leg and bowed gracefully. “Madam, we will open in six weeks’ time.”

  Chapter 11

  Dinner was a quiet affair, eaten again on the stage, which by now had been swept clear of bat leavings and scrubbed until the boards squeaked. Using the charm that had probably mollified many a reluctant merchant and creditor, Ivy had convinced the bakery two doors down to allow them cooking facilities. She and the younger Bladesworths produced a hot meal that brought cries of delight from Malcolm.

  He clapped his arm around his wife. “I don’t know how she does it, Hal, but we have never starved.” He kissed her cheek. “An enviable achievement, considering the precarious nature of our profession.”

  “And look at this,” Ivy said with a flourish, as her youngest daughter walked carefully onto the stage, “and all for the promise of tickets to our opening performance.”

  It was a cake of three layers, frosted white and decorated with sugared violets and roses of marchpane. Maria hurried to steady the cake as it threatened to topple of
f the plate. They set it on a wooden crate amid exclamations and applause.

  Malcolm kissed his wife again. “Ivy, dearest, this goes beyond your previous achievements.”

  “It was luck,” she said modestly. “I happened to be in the shop when news came that a groom had cried off and there would be no wedding feast.”

  “One hates to take pleasure in the misfortunes of others, but how well we have benefited,” Phoebe declared. “And who should do the honors?”

  “I suggest our newest married couple,” said Malcolm.

  Kate blushed and protested, but took the knife from Phoebe.

  “Well, do your duty,” Malcolm reminded the marquess, who joined Kate and grasped the knife, too, resting his hand lightly on hers, his other hand around her waist.

  They cut through the cake, Kate with her tongue between her teeth, intent on slicing through roses and violets, and Hal with his eyes on Kate.

  “Do not stare at me so,” she whispered, “or I shall make a mistake.”

  “Some would say you already have, by marrying an actor,” he said, loud enough for the runner to hear as he sat on the edge of the stage, apart from the others.

  The remark called for some reply. “I know my own mind,” she said softly, as tears filled her eyes. Why am I so missish, she asked herself, as the marquess kissed her cheek. Is it because this is so improbable? Or is it because I am such a fool? I couldn’t possibly love him; I don’t even know him.

  The cake was delicious by everyone’s account, so Kate could not imagine why it tasted like sawdust to her. She watched the others: Phoebe and Gerald sitting together, smiling messages meant for only each other; Maria shyly offering cake to the runner; and Ivy and Malcolm leaning against each other, with their little girls close by, concentrating on their rare treat. If this theatre fails, she thought, these dear people will be without resources and at the mercy of the parish workhouse. She set down the rest of her cake.

  “Excuse me, but I am going for a walk,” she mumbled and hurried from the stage.