by Mary Nichols
‘Then I must be mistaken. From what I have been told, I deduced you had acted in India.’
‘Only in an amateur capacity, sir.’
‘Of course. I was not suggesting you were a professional.’
She shot him a withering look which was not lost on Lavinia. There was something havey-cavey going on and James knew about it; she could tell by his studied unconcern. She would have it out of him at the first opportunity.
As far as the rest of the company was concerned the evening was an unqualified success. The food was good, the wine flowed freely and everyone joined in the conversation, making for a noisy and rather jovial party. Lavinia, steeped in misery, laughed and joked with everyone, prattling on about anything that came into her head, teasing James unmercifully and being extra pleasant to Lord Wincote. It was the only way she could cope.
She made no move to speak to James privately. What did it matter now? It was no longer important that he should know she had rejected Lord Wincote. He would find out along with everyone else. Nor did it matter that Edmund was looking inordinately pleased with himself. It was gone two in the morning when the party broke up and everyone made their way home, promising not to be late for the next meeting, which was to be a dress rehearsal.
Lavinia, glad to be busy, spent the intervening time drawing up an advertisement for the society publications, writing to everyone whom she thought might attend, finishing the scenery, scouring the attics for furniture to use in the indoor scenes and arranging for them to be taken down to the ballroom. She had just brought down a pile of curtains which she meant to ask Emily Hastings to help her alter, when Constance arrived accompanied by two footmen carrying a large trunk.
‘I’ve brought the costumes,’ she said, as the footmen set the trunk down. ‘There might be one or two alterations still to be done.’
‘Thank you, Constance, you are an angel.’ She dropped her bundle on the floor and set up a cloud of dust. ‘We could never have managed without you.’
‘I was delighted to do the costumes, though I am glad Lady Rattenshaw is coming back, I did not like playing her part.’
Lavinia smiled. ‘Not even with Lord Haverley’s encouragement?’
Constance blushed scarlet. ‘He has been kindness itself.’
‘Kind? Is that all?’
‘No, but you are not to tell a soul. Nothing has been decided.’
‘But he has offered?’
‘Yes, but I have deferred answering him until this play is over and done with. We have had so little time for other social occasions when we might have had the opportunity to learn whether we should suit…’
So she had been right; there was more riding on the performance than making money for the orphans and her own future. ‘But you think you might say yes?’
‘I think so. The girls and I deal very well together; the rehearsals have helped there. He is so attentive and he does not mind a bit that I will have no dowry.’
Lavinia hugged her, pushing away the thought that his lordship was perhaps more interested in a mother for his girls than a dowry. ‘Then I am very happy for you.’
‘And am I to be happy for you?’
Lavinia hesitated and then smiled. ‘You will be the first to know. Apart from the gentleman in question, that is.’
She was not thinking of Edmund, but of James. The object of her thoughts arrived at that moment. She turned away to give herself time to compose herself and picked up the dusty curtains again. He came forward to take them from here. ‘Here, let me.’
She refused to part with them, as if they gave her a kind of protection, though from what she did not know: his intent gaze, or perhaps her own unconquerable longing. There was a slight tussle which ended in them both coughing with the dust they set flying and being forced to drop them. He was the first to recover.
‘Vinny, you cannot possibly use those.’ He reached out and brushed a cobweb from her hair which set her limbs trembling. Being near him was torment enough, but to be touched by him, was both exquisite pleasure and unbearable pain. ‘You will choke everyone to death.’
‘They will be good as new after a good shaking.’
He looked at Constance, who was busy delving into the trunk and laying out the costumes on a long table, unconcerned with what they were doing or saying. ‘And will you be good as new after a good shaking?’
She looked at him wide-eyed. ‘Whatever do you mean?’
‘I mean I should like to shake some sense into you.’ He took her hand and led her forcefully away from the pile of curtains to a corner of the room. ‘Do you really know what you are doing?’
‘Putting on A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.’
‘Oh, there is a dream, I grant you, but it is a dream from which you must awake to find your love is not what you thought he would be.’
‘What do you know about my love?’ she snapped. ‘You do not know me. Oh, you think you do, but you don’t. You only know the child I once was—’
‘You are no longer a child,’ he said.
‘So glad you noticed,’ she said tartly. ‘I am old enough to marry.’
‘True, but I do not think you love Edmund Wincote. And I do not think he loves you. Please, Lavinia, think carefully before you accept him.’
‘Oh, you are not back to accusing him of taking Lady Willoughby’s clips, are you?’ she said, angry that he was so blind. ‘Because if you are, I think it is shameful of you.’
He sighed. She had put him on the defensive and that was not where he liked to be. ‘I did not accuse him.’
‘It sounded like it to me.’
‘You misunderstood.’
‘Then what have you against him?’
‘I believe he is not what he seems.’
‘But you have no grounds for saying that. And I truly do not care whether he is after my money or not. I have made up my mind—’
‘Oh, Vinny, no.’
‘If I did not know you better, James Corringham, I would say you were jealous. You do not like the idea of someone having me, but you do not want me yourself.’
‘Vinny, you are wrong, so very, very wrong. I—’ He stopped suddenly as the door was flung open and Miss Hastings came in with Augusta, Jack, Andrew and little Beth. The children were noisy and excited about rehearsing with the adults and almost threw themselves at James. He stooped to hug them all and ruffle their hair before greeting his sister, and the moment he had been waiting for was gone.
Lavinia, choking back tears and looking for a way to retreat, took the bundle of curtains out of the room to ask a servant to hang them on a line and beat them. She stayed away a few minutes in order to compose herself before returning but when she did, she found the whole cast there, including Lancelot Greatorex and five members of his company. With the exception of James, who stood stroking his chin thoughtfully, they were all talking at once. Some were muttering their lines while others were indulging in gossip which did not seem to have died since Parliament went into recess.
She stood in the middle of the room and clapped her hands for order. ‘We are here to rehearse,’ she said. ‘And if we are to be ready on time, we must concentrate on that. Mr Greatorex, will you take charge, please?’
They began apprehensively, as if they had never rehearsed a word of it before, stumbling over their lines and being more wooden than usual. Only James was not over-awed and delivered his lines word perfect and with rather more verve than he had hitherto, which made Lavinia look sharply at him and wonder, not for the first time, what went on inside his head. Was it his newfound love making him so cheerful?
At the end of two hours’ intensive coaching, Lancelot told them it was no use, they were acting like tin soldiers on an imaginary battlefield. ‘Good God, it is a love story,’ he said in exasperation. ‘Have you never been in love, never felt the depths and the heights to which love can take you? Use it, use what you know. And if you do not know, then imagine it.’ He thumped his chest. ‘Play it from here. From the heart.’
He turned to Lavinia, who was endeavouring to control emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. ‘Hermia, your father is forcing you to marry a man you do not love and has threatened you with death if you do not obey. Does that not fill you with dread? Can you not imagine your unhappy life with Demetrius, if you should obey? You are desperate, desperate enough to run away with your lover, desperate enough to venture into the darkest part of the woods where you are lost.’
‘I’ll try again,’ she said meekly, though lost was exactly what she was. It was all the wrong way round. James should have been Lysander and Lord Wincote Demetrius. Then she might have been able to put some sincerity into her performance. Pretending to be in love with Edmund Wincote and to hate James was more difficult that she could ever have imagined.
‘Not now, my lady, you may take a break and watch the others. We will go on to the second act. Puck, Oberon, Titania and the fairies. Then Demetrius and Helena.’
Lavinia sank into a chair to watch the first two scenes, knowing that in the third, she and Lord Wincote were to act the scene when they lie down in the woods to sleep. Determined not to disappoint Mr Greatorex and for her own pride’s sake, she steeled herself to do it justice.
The two scenes passed with no more than a few terse comments and then Lysander led Hermia on to the stage, ‘One turf shall serve as pillow for us both,’ Edmund intoned, drawing her down to the green cloth-covered floor of the stage. He moved closer as he spoke and reached out his hand to touch her face. ‘One heart, one bed, two bosoms and one troth.’
She shuddered and forced herself to reply. ‘Nay, good Lysander; for my sake, my dear, lie further off yet, do not lie so near…’
‘No! No! No!’ Lancelot shouted. ‘You are in love with him. You are only telling him to lie further off because you are afraid to be so close or you will be lost to all propriety. It is your love which is asking him to keep his distance. You are making it sound as if you are repelled by him.’
It was all too much and she scrambled to her feet and fled before anyone could see her tears. She ran into the bookroom which was on the other side of the hall and flung herself into the deep leather armchair beloved of her father. Almost hidden, she allowed herself the luxury of tears.
Everyone left behind in the ballroom stared after her, transfixed. Edmund was the first to move, intending to go after her.
‘Leave her, man,’ James commanded. ‘Can’t you see, she has worn herself out and importuning her will only make things worse. Miss Hastings will go to her.’
‘Sound advice,’ Sir Percy said, as Emily slipped from the room. ‘Best thing we can do is carry on until she recovers.’
‘Oh, there you are!’ Emily Hastings found Lavinia curled up in her father’s chair. She was no longer weeping, but sitting immobile, staring across the room at the portrait of James which hung in the alcove beside the hearth. Her stepmother had painted it several years before and was, in the Duke’s opinion, one of the best things she had ever done. She had captured not only his likeness but his youth, his slightly mocking expression, his grey eyes alight with mischief, his relaxed pose as he sat on a bench under the shade of a tree.
He was, to the casual viewer, a typical young aristocrat of his time, but to those who looked deeper, there was more to be seen. The mischievous look in his eye cloaked thoughtfulness, and the hand lying lightly on the dog at his feet showed a caring attitude; the animal itself was looking up at him in adoration. And his smile was both open and enigmatic, as though he were guarding a secret; eternal youth perhaps, or a joyful love of life.
Lavinia had always liked the picture, but now she was in love with its subject, she felt drawn towards it. It was as if, looking down at her from the canvas, he could listen to her heart, hear the unspoken words which tumbled through her brain, could ease her unrest. In the middle of mentally explaining to paint and canvas how she felt, she hardly heard Emily’s voice.
‘Lavinia, what is wrong? It is not like you to fall into the dismals. Are you unhappy about the play?’
‘The play,’ she repeated vaguely.
‘Yes. You know, Mr Greatorex did not mean to be so hard on you. Indeed, it is a compliment that he thinks you are capable of doing better.’
‘Oh, I know that. I am not afraid of criticism.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Are you afraid Lord Wincote is cooling towards you? I must confess it would hardly be surprising, you have kept him waiting so long for his answer.’
‘It has nothing to do with Lord Wincote, Miss Hastings, nothing at all. I am simply a little tired, that is all.’ She stood up and shook out her skirts. ‘I am quite myself again, so let us return to the others.’ And with that, she marched from the room, shoulders back, head held high.
When they entered the ballroom, the Thespians were going through their comedy routine as the players, with Puck, Bottom and the fairies. Everyone concentrated on what they were doing and pretended not to notice she had returned, but James, waiting in the wings to go on, was aware of her, pale but composed, watching them. He longed to go to her, but he knew she would hate that and the best thing he could do was go on as though she had never been away. They moved onto the stage together.
‘Oh, why rebuke him that loves you so?’ he said, with great feeling.
She managed to answer him, to accuse him of killing Lysander. ‘What’s this to my Lysander? Where is he? Ah, good Demetrius, wilt thou give him me?’
It took no acting on his part to deliver the line, ‘I had rather give his carcass to my hounds.’
‘I think we have all had enough for now,’ Lancelot said, when it became apparent Lavinia was still not herself. ‘We will meet again the day after tomorrow. Perhaps, by then, her ladyship will have recovered.’ He gathered up his cloak and hat and turned to leave. ‘Lady Rattenshaw, I will escort you home. There are points in your performance I can make as we go.’
It was an order, not a request, but instead of rebuffing him, she meekly followed him out of the door, watched by James and Sir Percy.
‘We have put the cat among the pigeons now, me boy,’ Percy murmured after they left. ‘He has recognised her.’
‘He already knew. He joined us at Reid’s the other night and was introduced to her.’
‘And said nothing?’
‘No, he was quick to take in the situation, though once or twice during the evening I thought one or other of them would let the cat out of the bag.’
‘And among the pigeons,’ Sir Percy said wryly.
‘As you say. But she is going to tell him she is playing Lady Rattenshaw for a wager and will reveal her true identity after the play is finished. We must assume he will say nothing and in the meantime, she will work on Wincote.’
‘And Lady Lavinia? It is so unlike her to be so downpin. She has always seemed so strong, so enthusiastic, the one who holds us all together, our inspiration. Without her, we are simply a group of diverse people saying Shakespeare’s words to the empty air.’
‘I know, Percy. I begin to wonder if we did wrong to play such a trick on her.’
‘You think she has found out?’
‘No. Knowing Lavinia, I am sure she could not have kept silent about it. She would have rung such a peal over me you would have heard it in the next county.’
‘Then it must be the play. The weight of responsibility is too much for her.’
‘So I suggested, but she denied it.’
‘Then it has to be Wincote’s offer. I believe young ladies do become very emotional on such occasions—’ He stopped and turned towards his friend. ‘Are you sure she means to accept him?’
‘She has not said so in as many words, but Wincote is jaunty enough for two of them, behaving as if it is fait accompli.’
‘I’ll wager you have not told her the truth, have you?’
‘I have told her that the man is a fortune-hunter and will not make her happy.’
‘Dear me, that is not wh
at I meant at all. I may know nothing of matrimony, but I do know about ladies. And pointing out the faults of one’s rival never did serve.’
‘I know that,’ James said impatiently. ‘But without proof that he is a rakeshame of the worst order, it is the only weapon I have.’
Percy, striding along beside his young friend, smiled. ‘For a grown man of the world, you have no idea about women, have you?’
‘Yes, I have. It is just that I have never been in love before.’
‘Not ever?’
‘No. Oh, there have been little bits of muslin, a mild dalliance here and there, which I had no difficulty in managing, but nothing like this.’
‘You, my friend, are a mutton-head. You have the best weapon of all. Yourself. Show her your true self. Tell her—’
‘That would be easier if we were not doing that damned play. Why, oh, why did she give me the part of Demetrius? She has to spurn me throughout and in the end I turn to Helena. It is indicative of how she feels towards me. We have even come to quarrelling and that is something that never happened before. I wish I could withdraw. I would, if it would not blacken me forever in her eyes.’
‘Then you must bear it.’
‘No. Come what may, I will speak to her, but the moment must be chosen with care or I will frighten her out of her wits and she will need all those about her on the night of the performance.’
‘There is a great deal riding on that play, my friend.’
‘Do you think I do not know that?’
Lavinia knew it too, and by an immense effort of will, pulled herself together to continue rehearsals, as if nothing was wrong. When she was not rehearsing, she made calls with the Duchess and attended other social engagements. If the Duchess was at home, she stayed to entertain their callers, among whom were Lord Wincote and James. Sometimes they were there at the same time when they treated each other with studious politeness, but more often than not, one would be arriving as the other left. Neither mentioned the performance; it was as if they had tacitly agreed that discussion of the play should be left to rehearsals when the whole cast was present and it could be handled impersonally.