by Jane Ashford
Lady Victoria and Mr. Trevellyn occupied a sofa on the other side of the room. They were bent over their copies of the play, talking quietly. At the far end, near one of the blazing fireplaces, Lord Carrick supervised Frances Reynolds and Mr. Wrentham as they read through a scene they shared. He scarcely let them finish a sentence without interruption, Flora noticed. It must be quite irritating.
Sir Liam Malloy walked in. Spotting Flora, he came and sat down beside her. “My fellow conscript in a troop of volunteers, I understand,” he said.
“You were also…persuaded to join in?”
“Persuaded? I was press-ganged by our hosts’ imperious daughter,” he replied with a wry smile. “She gave me to understand that only an unbearable slowtop would refuse her.”
Flora laughed. “It may be amusing after all. The character I’ve been assigned is…unusual. Listen to this.” She read from the page before her. “‘Oh! It gives me the hydrostatics to such a degree. I thought she had persisted from corresponding with him; but, behold, this very day, I have interceded another letter from the fellow; I believe I have it in my pocket.’” She looked up to meet Sir Liam’s acute blue eyes. “What is hydrostatics meant to be, do you think?”
“Still water?” he ventured. “That is what the Latin roots would suggest.”
Flora nodded. “But it makes no sense in context. Nor does ‘had persisted from.’”
“Oh, context.” He shrugged. A shout of laughter from the servant group made him turn to look at them.
“Here’s another,” said Flora. “‘There’s nothing to be hoped for from her! She’s as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of Nile.’” She met his eyes, smiling. “It seems it should be alligator, should it not? Or to be correct, crocodile, for the Nile. Yet allegory calls up such a funny picture.”
“I’m glad you’re pleased,” replied Sir Liam. He tapped the pages he held. “My role is dashed offensive. This Sir Lucius O’Trigger embodies every prejudice and cliché about the Irish. He is, in a word, a buffoon.”
Thinking about what she’d read, Flora had to acknowledge the truth of this.
“If I’d looked at it before I agreed to participate…but no, Lady Victoria was not to be denied.”
“No one could confuse you with such a person.”
“I hope not! But I don’t expect to enjoy strutting about and spouting stupidities.”
“You need not strut,” Flora suggested.
“No, no, no,” declared Lord Carrick. His voice carried throughout the room. “You must speak with far more emotion at this point.”
Sir Liam cocked his head in that direction. “You think not? I believe our guiding lights will insist I do precisely that. And more. I shudder to think how they will dress me.”
“Lord Carrick does seem keen on supervising,” Flora replied.
“Dictating, rather. He’s autocratic as a Russian tsar. Or one of his own illustrious ancestors, I suppose. No doubt they excelled at oppressing their peasants.”
“Perhaps you are exaggerating a bit,” said Flora, amused.
“You think so? He’s already told me that I needn’t think I can do as I like with my role just because I didn’t audition for him.”
“Oh dear.”
“And on top of it all, I must get this drivel by heart,” Sir Liam complained. “As if I was back in school learning lines of poetry. I hate memorizing.”
“Miss Jennings will have no difficulty with that,” said a familiar voice from above.
Flora looked up to find Lord Robert standing next to her chair. Reaction crackled through her. She’d been more aware of him than ever since their last conversation in the library. And less certain of what to say.
“She has a finely trained mind,” added Robert, sitting down with them.
“I’d noticed.”
It was no wonder that Malloy was taken with her, Robert thought. Any discerning man would be. That didn’t mean he enjoyed the sight, however.
“Perhaps she can aid me,” Sir Liam said. “I’ve never found it easy to keep set speeches in my head.”
“There are some techniques that help,” Flora answered.
Robert didn’t care for the picture this conjured—the two of them bent together, collaborating.
“I would be delighted to put myself in your hands,” said Sir Liam.
The amusement in the man’s voice, and the glance he gave him, made Robert lower his eyelids.
“I daresay you would be a splendid teacher,” said Sir Liam.
The fellow was goading him, Robert concluded with a certain amount of sardonic appreciation. His grandfather would have been able to leap up, declare that he found Malloy’s tone damned offensive, and challenge him to a duel. But dawn meetings were not only illegal now, they were dashed bad ton. A silly idea. “I think Mr. Trevellyn wished to speak to you,” he told Sir Liam instead.
The Irishman raised his dark brows. “Really?” Robert was about to urge him on when he rose with a smile. “It seems The Rivals may be an apt title for our little endeavor,” he said. With a smile and a small bow, he at last went away.
He’d have to keep a sharp eye on Malloy, Robert thought. He was quick.
Flora indulged in a moment’s gratification. She’d never had two gentlemen contending over her before. The young men who flocked around her father were far more interested in academic debate. “I’ve never seen Mr. Trevellyn talk to Sir Liam,” she observed dryly. She watched over Robert’s shoulder as the two met. “He seems rather surprised at Sir Liam’s arrival.”
“The play will give them an opportunity to get to know each other,” Robert answered, equally dryly. “I had to get rid of him so that we could plot.”
“Plot?” Flora’s heightened self-consciousness lessened as they exchanged a smile.
“Ways to shift Victoria’s interest onto a suitable young man,” he explained. “And make her forget her idea of marrying me. All the reasonable candidates are part of this play, I believe.”
“You are matchmaking?”
She was laughing at him, and he was glad. Anything to lighten the shadow he’d seen on her face in the library. “What next, eh? I thought at first that she and Carrick were a good fit.”
“Oh no, they would…eviscerate each other.”
“A grisly image.” They watched Victoria stride over to dispute some point with Carrick. His face blazed with anger. He waved his hands as he contradicted her point by point. “Disputes can be a sign that one cares,” Robert added. “Very much indeed.”
His eyes locked with Flora’s. It seemed to him that the fire he knew, and loved, in hers was dimmed. He longed to take her hand or put an arm around her. It was frustrating to be surrounded by others. He missed the times they’d pored over arcane texts, minds alight, thoughts chiming together. Despite the differences in their upbringing and experience, they were kindred spirits. Their bodies had leaped in tandem. But now this shadow of the past had fallen between them.
“I, uh, I think Mr. Trevellyn is a more likely candidate,” Flora said.
Lost in thought, Robert only half heard her.
“Lord Robert, we need to consult you,” called Victoria across the large room, her tone commanding.
Robert rose. They might as well have been onstage already, with all these observers around them. Conscious of Victoria’s glare, Robert gave Flora a jaunty smile and turned away.
Over the next few days, the play took over the lives of those involved in it. Looking around the ballroom on a sunny afternoon, Flora marveled at the degrees of application she could see. It was more than she’d expected of the fashionable set. As far as she knew, only she and Lord Robert had ever applied their intellects to such masses of words. But these young people were struggling to memorize great rafts of text, and then learn to speak them with natural emotion. Even though the play was rather silly, the
ir dedication wasn’t.
Those who were good at it—Frances Reynolds and, to everyone’s continuing surprise, Edward Trevellyn—enjoyed themselves. Others had a harder time. Flora saw Lady Victoria scowling over her pages. The daughter of the house was finding it impossible to learn her speeches. She still read from the page whenever they rehearsed bits of the play. It was making Lord Carrick frantic and leading to a great deal of shouting.
Frances Reynolds came over and sat down beside Flora. The younger girl looked far more relaxed and happy than she had in the early days of Flora’s visit. She’d found her social “feet” with the play. “Who would have predicted that Mr. Trevellyn would be so helpful?” she said quietly. “I could hardly get him to give me a spoonful of blancmange.”
The gentleman in question had joined Lady Victoria. He’d made it his business to aid her with her role. His face as he bent toward her was both ardent and kind.
“I admit he has surprised me,” replied Flora. “I’d put him down as a dull countryman.” She’d already suggested that Robert could point up the contrast between them.
“Do you think Mr. Wrentham is very handsome?” said Frances.
Flora turned to the younger girl. Her budding assurance and increased animation made her prettier. “You do know that he is only acting your beau,” she replied. “In the play.”
“Of course!”
“Unless there is more happening when you two go off in the corner to review your scenes,” she teased.
Frances blushed. It was very visible on her fair skin.
“Aha!” said Flora.
“No. I’m not sure. I don’t expect… We must see when the performance is over.”
“Ah, there he is now.” Mr. Wrentham had entered the ballroom. It certainly seemed to Flora that he searched at once for Frances Reynolds. Their eyes caught, and the girl hurried over to join him.
Flora’s smile lingered as Robert took the girl’s place next to her. “Matchmaking might be easier if they were the ones in question.”
“I think you’re doing quite well.”
“Victoria is growing increasingly annoyed with me,” he agreed. “You seem to be enjoying your own part.”
“I am rather. Mrs. Malaprop is ridiculous, but the wordplay in her speeches is funny.” Flora struck a pose. “‘There, sir, an attack upon my language! What do you think of that? An aspersion upon my parts of speech!’”
“I would never cast an aspersion on your parts of speech,” Robert put in, smiling.
“‘Was ever such a brute!’” Flora continued. “‘Sure, if I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!’”
Robert burst out laughing. “Derangement of epitaphs?”
“I know.”
“One pictures dancing gravestones.”
“Or wandering, muttering ones. Cemetery bedlam.”
“Oracular tongue, indeed,” he murmured.
“And then there’s this one: ‘But the point we would request of you is, that you will promise to forget this fellow—to illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.’” Flora leaned toward him. “I think one should say ill-it-er-ate, don’t you? Rather than il-lit-er-ut? So that one gets obliterate as well as unable to read.”
“Precisely,” said Robert.
“Sheridan’s wordplay is delicious. Did you ever meet him? I believe he died just a few years ago.”
“I did. He was nearly as witty in person as on the page.”
Lord Carrick swooped in then and snatched Robert, organizing him, Sir Liam, and Mr. Wrentham to repeat one of their scenes together. Flora watched wistfully. She didn’t want to think of dark episodes from the past when she saw him. Was there no escape? They’d had no time to speak of it again.
“Flora?” said Frances.
She started and pulled her mind back to the present. The girl was standing before her. “What?”
“Will you listen to my speeches and correct me if I go wrong?”
“Of course.” She took the pages Frances held out and followed along as the girl recited her lines. Frances was well along at memorizing them all.
It was too bad that Randolph couldn’t be here, Robert thought a bit later, as he finally escaped Carrick’s oversight. His brother would enjoy this play far more than he did. Randolph would fling himself into the drama, only now and then remembering that he was a parson and injecting a touch of solemnity. His eyes would twinkle as he did, though. On the other hand, Randolph’s enthusiasm would most likely collide with Carrick’s lofty pronouncements and Victoria’s demands. Fleetingly, Robert wished for Sebastian. His military brother would mock their prancing and posturing with a curled lip. Sebastian had a curious vendetta against anything to do with words. Robert wouldn’t have minded seeing how Carrick liked that.
The younger man was lecturing one of the gentlemen playing a servant on the proper humble posture. He moved on to scolding Frances Reynolds for reading speeches from the printed page. Carrick could declaim all of his, with considerable verve, from memory. Of course he’d done this whole thing before, Robert thought. People forgot that when they praised Carrick to the skies for his skill. He was better than the rest of them in the way a seasoned cricket player was better than a tyro. He had, one might say, cheated. Robert rather enjoyed addressing him in his character as irate father and calling him feckless and insolent. But the lad was clearly not for Victoria. Flora was right about that.
Flora came up to do a scene next. Her Mrs. Malaprop soon attracted attention and set people laughing.
“‘Since you desire it, we will not anticipate the past!’” she declaimed. Like Carrick, she had no need to consult the written page. “‘So mind, young people—our retrospection will be all to the future.’”
Victoria had made a mistake in shoving Flora into that part, Robert thought, smiling. Victoria could glower all she liked. She could lumber Flora with a stringy wig and dowdy dress. But the audience was going to love her. And Victoria was not going to make a good showing unless her memorization skills showed miraculous improvement.
“Well done,” said Carrick when Flora finished. “You have Mrs. Malaprop to the life, Miss Jennings.”
Others clustered around her, adding their compliments. Robert watched, filled with admiration and…love. Yes, it was past time to admit it. He loved her with all his heart. He believed she cared as much for him. He’d felt it in her kiss, seen it in her eyes, heard it in their shared laughter. The rest ought to be easy. An offer, a wedding, and the rest of his life spent in a sweet, invigorating dance with this amazing woman. He—they—had to find a way through or over or around the thing that kept them apart.
An elbow in his ribs brought him back to the ballroom. “You are not listening to me,” Victoria said.
Robert looked down. “Miss Jennings might be able to give you pointers on how to keep speeches in your head,” he replied.
Victoria shot him a look laden with gratifying fury.
Miss Frances Reynolds and Mr. Wrentham came forward. Somehow it had come about that they must all demonstrate their progress to Carrick today. These two were playing the secondary set of lovers in the play.
“‘I never can be happy in your absence,’” declared Miss Reynolds with a remarkable degree of fervor. “‘If I wear a countenance of content, it is to show that my mind holds no doubt of my Faulkland’s truth. If I seemed sad, it were to make malice triumph; and say, that I had fixed my heart on one, who left me to lament his roving, and my own credulity. Believe me, Faulkland, I mean not to upbraid you, when I say, that I have often dressed sorrow in smiles, lest my friends should guess whose unkindness had caused my tears.’”
She rolled out the playwright’s words as if they were her own. The girl really was doing a fine job, Robert thought, both in learning them and saying them.
Wrentha
m sneaked a look at the written page. “‘You were ever all goodness to me. Oh, I am a brute, when I but admit a doubt of your true constancy!’”
Miss Reynolds gave him a melting look before going on. It was returned full measure. Well, Wrentham was not for Victoria either, Robert thought. Either these two were deep into their roles, or…they were deep into something else.
* * *
Two weeks could pass frighteningly quickly when you had to stand before an audience at the end and risk making a fool of yourself, Flora thought. With the performance just two days away, the group around her in the ballroom thought of little else. Indeed, they scarcely saw their fellow guests except at dinner. She’d spoken no more than a few words to Harriet in days.
“You are aware that you cannot read from a manuscript on stage,” Carrick said at the other end of the large chamber. His tone was cold and cutting.
“We don’t have a stage,” snapped Lady Victoria. She’d been stumbling through one of her long speeches, with frequent references to the copy of the play she held. She looked near tears—angry tears, but tears nonetheless.
“The point is, you will ruin all unless you learn your part,” Carrick said.
Robert had made a rare misjudgment there, Flora thought. These two both wanted to be in charge—of everything, all the time. It was fortunate they’d had a chance to become better acquainted. Lord Carrick had come to the house party as one of Lady Victoria’s suitors; he would be leaving as…well, not an enemy, perhaps. But less than a friend.
Edward Trevellyn stepped between them. “It is impossible for Lady Victoria to ruin anything,” he said. “And have I not heard that actual theaters have a person, er, designated to stand at the side and supply the words, should an actor forget a few.”
Here it was again, Flora thought—Mr. Trevellyn revealing unexpected facets of character right before their eyes. Perhaps he’d known of the existence of prompters, but she suspected that he’d made a point of inquiring. When she first met him, she wouldn’t have thought him capable of the idea or the efforts he’d made lately.