Sofas and comfortable chairs had been moved into the ballroom, with small tables to hold branches of candles, a welcome light on this damp, dreary day. Flora had taken a seat to finish reading the play, but she was diverted by the buzz of activity, and reminded that the tableaux had turned out to be good fun.
Not far away, a mixed group of eight sat in a loose circle reading out bits of dialogue to each other and laughing. They were to alternate playing the servants, Flora had been informed, and they clearly meant to enjoy doing so.
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, their 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.
Wrentham 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.
“A sort of human crutch?” Robert said. “For the orally feeble?”
Flora choked. If she hadn’t known that Robert was trying to put Lady Victoria off, she’d have been shocked at his unkindness.
The younger girl whirled on him. “You are…horrid, utterly horrid! How could I have thought you charming? Or admirable? I’ve never been so mistaken about a person in my life.”
She launched into a tirade, enumerating his many faults. Though Flora recognized that it was provoked, and that the girl was taking out her fear and frustration about the play on Robert, it was still uncomfortable to witness. Others in the room turned away or laughed nervously or observed with a connoisseur’s enjoyment, according to their different temperaments.
Flora met Robert’s eyes and saw her thought processes mirrored there. They shared one of those moments of perfect understanding that made him so very…riveting.
Lady Victoria strode out of the room in a froth of muslin. Edward Trevellyn started to follow, but Lord Carrick called him back. “We must work out the movements in your last scene,” he insisted. With obvious reluctance, Mr. Trevellyn came back.
Robert strolled across the room and stopped beside Flora. Several people gave him disapproving looks. Frances Reynolds glared at him. “I believe I’m off the hook,” he said.
“I should say so. At the risk of your reputation for being agreeable.”
“Ah.” He looked around the room. “Well, couldn’t be helped. I’ll have to retrieve it through, er, social good works.”
“Social… What would those entail?” When his blue eyes laughed down into hers, it was hard to see anything else. She simply wanted to fall into them.
“Oh, teaching a few young sprigs how to tie a neckcloth. Dancing with one or two neglected young ladies. Ingratiating myself with the dowagers.”
“And you are very good at that.”
“When I want to be.”
He kept looking at her. All impediments had been removed, his expression seemed to suggest. Life now opened up to them, a spacious playground. “Will Lady Victoria forgive you so easily?” Flora asked.
“Not for a while.” He shook his head. “Youngsters can become so attached to a wrongheaded idea. I know I did. Of course I had three older brothers only too ready to administer a salutary dose of reality. But Trevellyn is right there to, ah, catch her.”
“He’s clearly eager to do so,” Flora replied.
“So, a relief all ’round then.”
Not quite all, Flora thought. Her father had taught her to divide a question into its important components, examine each one, and formulate a solution from the results. But she hadn’t been able to apply his method lately. Bits of information kept slipping away from her and then rushing back like a storm surge at the seashore, tipping her into a froth of confusion.
“I’ll offer her my apologies,” Robert said. “Once she’s settled, ah, elsewhere.”
The play had diverted energies that should have been devoted to deciphering her situation, Flora acknowledged. In two days, it would be over. She’d figure it all out then. “I promised Frances I’d look at her costumes with her,” she said, and moved away.
Flora had thought the tableaux caused a buzz of activity, but that was nothing to the frantic action in the last hours before the performance.
A team of local seamstresses had been recruited to alter old clothes for costumes. A stream of housemaids went in and out of their room, fetching people for fittings and trays of tea and cakes to fuel the good ladies in a crescendo of stitching. Estate workmen came to install a curtain across one end of the ballroom. Footmen carried in chairs from around the house and arranged them in rows. Carrick grew ever more wild-eyed and dictatorial, even quarreling with his friend Wrentham.
Two hours before the performance was to begin, the ballroom was a chaos of last-minute alterations, muttering of lines, and shrieks of dismay at some lost bit of adornment. In his gray-wigged guise as father of the hero, Robert began to think they were facing a debacle. But somehow, at the last possible moment, the helpers drew back, the actors in the opening scene took their places, and the footmen pulled the curtains back on The Rivals.
The result was mixed, Robert decided, as the action unfolded before the other guests. Some of them, like Frances Reynolds and Flora as Mrs. Malaprop, did splendidly. The audience clearly enjoyed their appearances. Others made a decent showing, speaking their parts and managing their entrances and exits without obvious mistakes. Robert included himself in this second category. And then there were those who had to resort to the prompter, a young lady who’d volunteered to give up her few scenes as a servant to follow along and feed lines to those who required them.
Lady Victoria was the chief culprit. She limped through her speeches, with frequent pauses for a reminder. It became more painful as the play went on, because she grew more self-conscious, and thus stumbled more often. Finally, about halfway through, during a scene she shared with Carrick, she seemed to lose her way entirely. Robert—observing from the side as he waited to go on again—couldn’t restrain a wince. Carrick’s ferocious scowl certainly wasn’t helping matters.
“‘So, while I fondly imagined we were’…uh.” Victoria made a fluttering gesture. Then she gave up all pretense, asking, “Oh, what comes next?”
The prompter provided the next word.
“Yes. ‘…deceiving my relations, and flattered myself that I should…should…’”
The murmured aid from the prompter came again. Clearly the audience could hear it, Robert thought, peeking around the edge of the curtain. Lydia Fotheringay had begun to smirk and roll her eyes. The Salbridges looked pained. Harriet Runyon gazed about as if wondering what she could do to save the situation.
Victoria forged on. “‘…outwit and incense them all. Behold my hopes are to be crushed at once, by my aunt’s consent and…and…’”
The young lady behind the curtain provided another boost.
“Yes,” said Lady Victoria. “‘Approbation. And I am myself the only dupe at last! But here, sir, here is the picture—Beverley’s picture!’” She groped in a pocket especially sewn into her gown. “Oh, where is the wretched thing?” she exclaimed impatiently.
Robert turned at a scrabbling sound from the corner behind him. A table had been set up there to hold objects needed for the play. Trevellyn pawed through them, found what he was looking for, and hurried to toss a square of pasteboard onto the stage. It landed at Victoria’s feet. She picked it up. “‘Beverley’s picture,’” she said triumphantly, then stalled again. “Oh lud, what’s next?”
The prompter gave her the words.
“Yes, ‘…which I have worn, night and day, in spite of threats and entreaties! There, sir.’” She threw the pasteboard at Carrick, with quite convincing relish. “‘And be assured I throw…the…the original…’”
Robert could see that she was truly distressed by this time. It was difficult to resist the impulse to help. But there was nothing he could do. The young lady with the pages of the play before her whispered the next line.
“‘…the original from my heart as easily,’” Victoria said. And stopped again. “Um.”
Carrick snapped. “You stupid girl!” he cried. Anger and frustration etched his face. “You’ve completely ruined the play.”
Victoria shrank back. The imperious queen of their revels disappeared, and she looked very young and thoroughly humiliated.
Robert heard the audience draw a collective breath. Whether from sympathy or anticipation, he couldn’t tell. Just as he concluded that he had to intervene somehow, Edward Trevellyn strode from behind him onto the stage, even though his character wasn’t part of the current scene. “You are offensive, sir,” he said to Carrick. “Quite beyond the line.”
Moving to Victoria’s side, Trevellyn took her hand. A surprising dignity cloaked his stocky frame. He gazed down at Victoria, heart in his eyes, then heedless of all those around him, dropped to one knee. “Who the devil cares about the play?” he said. “Or a bunch of silly speeches. You are wonderful in every way. I beg you to make me the happiest man on Earth by becoming my wife.”
Victoria flushed. She swallowed the obvious beginning of tears and drew a shaky breath. The slump in her shoulders gradually disappeared. She clutched Trevellyn’s fingers. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I would like to.”
The man sprang up, grinning, and put an arm around her. The audience broke into applause.
“This is a travesty of a performance,” exclaimed Carrick.
“Oh, who cares?” said Victoria, her imperious manner restored. “We’re not going on.” She smiled up at Trevellyn.
The other actors poured onto the stage, laughing and offering congratulations. Robert joined them as Carrick pulled off his hat and wig, threw them on the floor, and stomped them to pieces.
The audience left its seats and added their felicitations to the happy couple. The earl sent for champagne, and a round of toasts to his daughter’s happiness began. Everyone except Carrick seemed to be having a fine time. Robert sipped from his glass and congratulated himself. He judged that Victoria was well settled with Trevellyn, though he wouldn’t have said so even a week ago. He thought the fellow would be a fine husband for her.
A movement at floor level caught Robert’s eye. Plato sat there, gazing up at him. Robert bent to pat his head. He’d brought the little dog down for the performance because he felt he’d neglected him lately, and he’d had no fears of misbehavior. Indeed, Plato had sat at Mrs. Runyon’s feet while the play was going on, and now, when any other dog would have been running about and barking in the excitement, he remained philosophical.
“So, we’ve done the thing, Plato,” Robert murmured. “You’ve heard the phrase ‘as good as a play’? This was miles better than our mediocre efforts.”
The dog emitted one of his odd curmudgeonly sounds.
“Yes, but it is one obstacle removed,” Robert pointed out.
“I beg your pardon,” said Sir Liam Malloy, standing nearby. “Did you speak?”
“Just wishing them every happiness,” answered Robert, raising his glass.
“Ah.” Sir Liam nodded, and drank.