Miss dramatic, p.4
Miss Dramatic, page 4
“Amaryllis does not care for Town, and nobody who is anybody bides in London over the summer. Mrs. Pevinger, good day.”
Mrs. P, who was related to half the shire, nodded genially from her desk in the spacious foyer. “A pint and a pie for milords?”
Tavistock swept off his hat with a flourish that managed to be both playful and elegant. “Just the thing for a lovely summer afternoon. Have you any mail for us?”
She set a few epistles on the blotter. “Happen I do, from Town and from Oxford.” When she’d watched Tavistock sort through the lot, she passed Phillip two letters. “Good news, I hope?”
Tavistock smiled. “Time will tell, dear lady. Phillip, to the snug.”
Tavistock sailed off, letters in hand.
“Don’t mind him,” Mrs. Pevinger said. “He’s not had a brother for long. Takes some getting used to.”
You don’t say. “Fortunately for the king’s peace, I am a patient man and the best of siblings.” Even when my long-lost brother decides to invade my village, overrun my churchyard with his friendly manners, and take my market-day green by storm.
Or by charm.
“Don’t be too patient with that one, Master Phillip. We’re relying on you to show him how to go on. How is the missus settling in?”
“Splendidly, of course.” Though settling in wasn’t quite the right phrase. Hecate had barely opened her trunks at Lark’s Nest before she and Amaryllis were cooking up this gathering of ladies for their summer idyll.
Not how Phillip had envisioned spending his honey month. Not nearly. Ah, well. He and Hecate were managing a few private celebrations nonetheless.
“Your smile, sir, would make the cat in the cream pot envious.” Mrs. P winked and bustled off, calling for her daughter Tansy to pull pints for a pair of thirsty gents.
That wink marginally restored Phillip’s spirits, if not his patience. He joined Tavistock in the snug and took a sip of cool summer ale.
“Any news from Town?”
“The usual. My Dorning relations are being fruitful at a great rate. Step-mama sends her love. Dear Phillip must bring his new bride to Town when the weather is more agreeable, et cetera and so forth.” Tavistock passed over a letter from his step-mother, which Phillip set aside.
Tavistock’s Dornings were more numerous than the denizens of German royal houses, and Phillip couldn’t keep them straight, rather like the steps of the quadrille, only livelier. That Tavistock might be finding himself a bit off-rhythm at having to share his family with Phillip was further reason for good spirits.
“What of the letter from Oxford? You attended there, I believe?”
“I did, for a brief and unimpressive time.” Tavistock slit the seal on the second epistle and scanned the contents. “This is lovely news.” Tavistock looked delighted—with himself and with his correspondence.
“Somebody is putting in an order for your ale? If anybody is fond of a pint, it’s the college boys.”
“Better than that. You recall that DeWitt was attached to a group of players in East Anglia when I hailed him from the shires?”
Phillip took another sip of ale, though something about Tavistock’s question made him uneasy. “He was Galahad Twidham at the time. Darling of the provincial venues.”
“Before he matriculated to East Anglia, Galahad was a member of Drysdale’s Players, and his old troupe has agreed to grace us with their presence. They will be my guests starting Monday and available to enliven the house party by plying their art and making themselves generally agreeable.”
Phillip mentally reviewed the marquess’s proclamation. Why, yes, Tavistock had just announced that he was hiring the cast of Gavin DeWitt’s youthful folly to come haunt the man in person.
Before a dozen astute female guests, one of whom was Mrs. Roberts. “Tavistock, to quote a very astute man: Are you out of your happily married mind?”
Tavistock folded up the letter. “You’re just jealous because you didn’t think of it. The ladies will want for entertainment. They’re a bookish lot, and some speeches and drama will appeal to them.”
Tansy Pevinger brought two steaming, fragrant meat pies to the table. “Will there be anything else, milords?”
A cudgel to smack some common sense into the marquess’s handsome head might have been useful. “No, thank you, Miss Tansy.”
She peered at Phillip more closely. “Mind you take care in the heat, sir. You’re looking a bit peaky.”
“Newlywed pallor,” Tavistock said, saluting with his tankard. “A common malady among happy husbands.”
Oh, for pity’s rubbishing sake. Tansy had sense enough to swan off without dignifying that bit of flummery with a reply.
“Did you discuss this brilliant notion with your marchioness before you hired these players?” Phillip asked.
“Of course not. It’s a surprise. I realize she’s getting her feet wet as a hostess, beginning in the shallows before she attempts deeper waters, but a husband needs to put his imprimatur on the hospitality offered under his roof.”
Phillip wanted to put the imprimatur of his boot on the marquess’s lordly arse. “What of DeWitt? Did you clear this with him?” Say yes. Please say yes.
“These are his old chums. Why wouldn’t he be glad to see them?”
Tavistock meant well. He meant to perform some lordly legerdemain, produce a lovely surprise, and earn the goodwill of all. He was an outsider to some extent in polite society because he’d absented himself on the Continent right out of university, and he was an outsider in Crosspatch by virtue of his rank and origins.
Phillip marshaled his patience and attempted an explanation. “DeWitt didn’t intend to leave his family without means for two straight years when he decamped to indulge his theatrical interests. He didn’t mean to risk scandal. He didn’t mean to come dangerously close to losing all the standing his family has worked for two generations to establish.”
“And he hasn’t lost it,” Tavistock said, setting down his drink. “High spirits, youthful folly, an extended lark. We no longer send young men on a grand tour, and DeWitt was just having a bit of a tame adventure.”
Phillip had known Gavin DeWitt his whole life, and yet, he could not say what precisely had motivated DeWitt’s histrionic episode. He was certain, though, that had Tavistock not made inquiries, DeWitt would still be strutting about in Elizabethan finery and stealing the show as Benedick.
“Perhaps DeWitt would rather put the whole business behind him, forget it happened.” Phillip spoke quietly, though the common was deserted. “I have the sense our Gavin is ashamed of whatever transpired during those two years, ashamed of abandoning his family, ashamed of something. Now you will throw it all back in his face, and he might not be best pleased.”
Tavistock picked up his fork. “He won’t run off again. He promised us he wouldn’t.”
“Do I have your permission to at least warn him?”
Tavistock took a bite of pie, and drat the man for being able to chew elegantly. “I’ll do it. He’s my wife’s brother, and he and I are family, and that means we must be able to have honest discussions.”
Phillip was fairly certain that the boot went on the other foot. All the blood ties and legal connections in the world did not make two people family if honesty and respect weren’t there to begin with. He sipped his ale and kept his opinions to himself, while Tavistock demolished food and waxed eloquent about the many fine qualities of Crown of Crosspatch summer ale.
Rose sipped her punch and listened with half an ear to Lady Iris Wolverhampton waxing eloquent on the topic of restorative tisanes. Lady Iris was passionate about her subject, while Rose wanted passionately to return to the towpath and make a far better job of her discussion with Gavin DeWitt.
Can we not start afresh, Mr. DeWitt? So polite, so uncertain. A supplicant when she should never have asked him for anything ever again.
Have you another suggestion? What had he made of that inquiry? Had he heard an invitation where none had been intended? Rose had spent months wishing she’d handled herself differently where Mr. DeWitt was concerned, and the two weeks at Nunnsuch had been wasted on the same exercise.
“And peppermint,” Lady Iris said. “You never met a more agreeable herb for refreshing the mind or soothing the bowels. Sore muscles can benefit from peppermint unguent, and I firmly believe memory is improved by inhaling the scent.”
Lady Iris had no business being so earnest when she was so pretty, but this gathering was rife with women who’d managed to eclipse beauty with a less agreeable quality—bookishness, a gift for rhetoric, a talent for ciphering.
Miss Zinnia Peasegood, for example, was brunette perfection with gorgeous azure eyes, and yet, she had the recollection of an elephant and trotted out her word-for-word memories of previous conversations with all the grace of an inebriated pachyderm.
Lady Iris was a traditional beauty—blond, willowy, blue-eyed, with the complexion of a Renaissance angel. Her voice was musical, her gestures graceful, and yet, Rose harbored the suspicion that Lady Iris had perfected the use of peppermint as a conversational tisane to counteract the impact of her good looks.
“We grow plenty of peppermint at Colforth,” Rose said. “My herb gardens are extensive, and if you are ever in the area, you must take a tour.”
“I would adore that above all things,” Lady Iris said, with her signature guileless intensity. Her focus abruptly shifted, and without turning, Rose knew exactly what—or who—had captured her ladyship’s attention.
Gavin DeWitt had raised making an entrance to a high art. Rose casually turned under the guise of setting down her glass. He stood by the door, not overtly calling attention to himself, but drawing every eye nonetheless. In his stillness, in his bearing, in the way he wore his very clothes, he commanded notice.
Also in the way he didn’t wear clothing.
“Brother to Lady Amaryllis,” Lady Iris said, as if cataloging a specimen. “Mr. DeWitt is certainly striking.”
“Is he? I see some height, brown hair, regular features. A somewhat memorable nose, but nothing to rival Wellington’s proboscis, and yet, here we stand, all but gawking.” At a man who appeared to have no idea whatsoever that he was being gawked at—an actor’s trick, no doubt. Gavin DeWitt’s pockets were full of actor’s tricks.
“You know Mr. DeWitt, Mrs. Roberts?”
The question had no biblical underpinnings, thank heavens. “We met at the Nunnsuch do earlier this summer. Mr. DeWitt, having been born and raised in Crosspatch, is friends with Lord Phillip, who was the ranking guest down in Hampshire.”
“One needs a large fan with many sticks for gatherings such as these.” Lady Iris brandished an article painted all over with flowers. “Some people scrawl dance steps on their fans. I use mine to keep social connections straight. Might you introduce me?”
“I’d be delighted.” Introducing Lady Iris to Gavin would get the small talk over with, a consummation devoutly to be wished.
Rose and her ladyship made a leisurely progress across the terrace, and all the while, Gavin stood by the door as if awaiting his cue.
“Mr. DeWitt,” Rose said, offering the requisite curtsey. “Good evening.”
“Mrs. Roberts, and… Lady Iris, I believe?” His bow was elegance personified. “Might you do the honors, Mrs. Roberts?” He wore his gracious-gentleman smile, though on him the polite expression shaded toward genuine friendly interest. He did that with his eyes and with a slight inclination of his posture, regarding a lady not boldly so much as sincerely, as if he truly was pleased to be in conversation with her.
His sincerity was his most devastating magic trick of all. Rose reminded herself of that as Lady Iris reprised her fascination with native herbs. Gavin nodded, asked questions, and by a gaze that never strayed, by the cadence with which he conducted his conversation, he put forth every facsimile of rapt attention.
The third bell sounded, interrupting Lady Iris’s panegyric to St.-John’s-wort.
“I must find Miss Peasegood,” Lady Iris said, snapping her fan closed. “I promised to dine with her. This has been a delightful conversation, Mrs. Roberts, Mr. DeWitt. Perhaps we can continue it another time. You will excuse me?”
She swanned off, as graceful as a sloop running close to the wind on a sparkling summer morning.
“I now know more about St.-John’s-wort than I ever sought to learn,” Gavin said quietly.
“I was treated to a discourse on peppermint before she asked to make your acquaintance. We should count ourselves lucky she didn’t regale us with her views on the subject of purges.”
Rose regretted that last remark. Lady Iris was devoted to her medicinals, and purges were hardly polite.
Gavin winged his arm and turned that enchanting smile on Rose. “I do count myself lucky. Exceedingly so. Shall we to the buffet?”
She slipped her fingers around his elbow. “You need not flirt, Mr. DeWitt. In fact, I’d ask you not to.”
“Who’s flirting? Lady Iris strikes me as a woman who has memorized an herbal’s worth of soliloquys, but as soon as she spotted me by the door, she had her introduction. At the first opportunity, her inspection complete, she sailed away.”
“She did, didn’t she?” Interesting. “Is there anybody else to whom you’d like an introduction? I know some of these women from my few forays into London, but Lady Tavistock also ensured we were all acquainted over afternoon tea trays.”
“The rest of the introductions can wait. I am famished.”
He managed to imbue even an admission of hunger with the weight of a confidence. Rose resigned herself to a long meal, though perhaps it was best to endure that ordeal and be done with it. She’d avoided him for two weeks in Hampshire, and it had been a very long fortnight indeed.
They filled plates and found a table in the garden by the spent roses. Footmen lit torches, though darkness was better than an hour away, and other guests strolled past in search of their own tables.
“On the grouse moors,” Gavin said, “the ratio of men to ladies is more unbalanced than this, and yet, in this context, I find the lack of parity unsettling. I feel as if I ought to have four arms and practice bowing en croix.”
Rose buttered her bread. She should have known even Gavin’s small talk would be more than idle chatter.
“I suppose it’s a matter of setting. When you played in the Shakespearean casts, men’s roles were more abundant than female characters. Did that strike you as odd?”
“The ratio is better than four to one, nearly eight hundred men’s roles, and about one hundred fifty for women. But then, women were not permitted to act in the Bard’s day.”
“You counted the roles by gender?”
He took a spoonful of cold potato soup. “A great deal of idle time can befall an actor who starts off with the minor parts.”
“Do you miss it?” Rose fashioned herself a butter-and-cheese sandwich. She did not care for cold soup even in summer. “You changed troupes, as I recall.”
He paused between spoonfuls. “I joined a southern ensemble. The Black Country has its charms, but there’s a reprise of feudalism taking hold up there. Here, Henry Wortham can move from the forge to the role of understeward, and that’s a step up. Most families would consider such good luck every third generation to be a wonderful legacy. My own family has done quite well in recent years, from a humble start as chandlers. In the north…”
Rose had traveled enough to know of what he spoke. “The weavers are all out of work, after generations of being able to support their families with their looms. The sawyers are out of work as steam replaces them by the dozens. The wages available in the factories are a slow road to starvation and the working conditions horrific. True, some men have jobs maintaining the factory machines, but not nearly as many as had honorable work with the hand looms.”
Gavin put down his spoon. “While the few families fortunate enough to own a coal mine, or have some blunt to begin with, become wealthier and wealthier. I’m sure the south is subject to the same trends, but we haven’t the coal here they have elsewhere, and somebody still has to grow the crops.”
Perhaps an actor was doomed to pay attention to the wider world. To notice that world because the stage had to represent life realistically, maybe not in particulars of dress or diction, but in themes and personalities.
“I prefer the south,” Rose said, “though I avoid London.” Had avoided Society generally until recently.
“I was in East Anglia when Tavistock tracked me down,” Gavin said, taking up an orange and tearing off a strip of peel. “Has anybody acquainted you with the particulars?”
Rose shook her head. She’d watched the London newspapers for advertisements featuring Mr. Galahad Twidham among itinerant acting troupes, but actors changed names as easily as costumes, making the exercise doubly futile.
“I left Crosspatch Corners to join a group of traveling players,” Gavin said, making short work of peeling the orange. “You know that much. I believed my family would be well cared for in my absence. Our means are abundant. Our solicitors had been chosen by my late father to handle our funds. The business, to the extent I was permitted to take any hand in those matters, was thriving.”
“All should have been well.”
Gavin tore the orange into sections and set three on her plate. “The solicitors were denying my family all but a pittance and keeping a great deal more than a pittance for themselves. They professed to my mother and sisters to know nothing of my whereabouts, all the while assuring me they had forwarded my every letter home most conscientiously. When I received no replies, I concluded my womenfolk were having a collective tantrum, but then, becoming an actor was something of a tantrum on my part, so I didn’t feel I could take the ladies to task.”
“And you were busy learning your lines.” And disporting with widows, merry and otherwise.
“Tavistock owned Twidboro Hall, and he came nosing about to have a look at the property we’ve been renting for years. I thank God for Tavistock’s conscientious stewardship, or who knows what might have happened to my family while I was having a great laugh over Aphra Behn’s comedies?”
