Amanda McCabe (3 page)

Chapter Three

A good plot, good friends, and full of expectation; an excellent plot, very good friends.

—
Henry IV, Part One

Julia kept running until she reached the edge of Rosemount’s manicured gardens, and stopped only when she nearly tripped on an untied lace on her half boot.

With a low, muttered curse, she plumped herself down on a marble bench just at the edge of the garden, and bent to retie her lace. Then she just sat there, trying to catch her breath and gather her scattered thoughts.

So, he was returned at last, come to claim what was his, now that his father and the “vulgar actress” were gone. Julia had always known, in the back of her mind, that this day would come. Really, she was quite fortunate it had not come much sooner.

But, in her most secret heart, she had hoped that perhaps it would never come to pass, that something would happen to Marcus which would make him overlook her presence here. Not that she wished him a violent end, or anything like that. Only that somehow he would never return. That she could go on as she had done, safe at Rosemount.

Her home, as she had thought it to be.

Julia turned to look at the house in the distance, glistening in the rosy glow of the late sun. Rosemount had been the first secure, permanent home she had ever known, and she had found only love and peace in its walls. Her stepfather had often teased about her affection for the house, saying that once she was married and ensconced in a far grander place, she would think Rosemount a mere forester’s hut. Julia had always protested; she knew that there could be no finer house in all England.

Now she would surely have to leave it, because the new earl would not want some actress’s daughter hanging about. He would soon bring a wife here, a new mistress for Rosemount. Julia would have to face that uncertain future she had tried to hide from.

Perhaps she
would
join Abelard and the others on their tour, after all. . . .

Abelard and the others!

Julia covered her mouth with her hand in utter dismay. How could she possibly have forgotten them, even for a moment? She was not the only one who would be set adrift by the earl. They had no place to go until their tour began. They definitely did not have enough money to lodge and feed themselves. Julia’s own inheritance of her dowry, money Gerald had set aside for her, which she was so counting on, had not yet come to her.

Her friends were in even greater danger than she was herself. The earl would surely be wary of unflattering gossip that might ensue if he tossed his father’s stepdaughter out so quickly. He would have no such compunction about a group of actors.

If only she could keep them with her, for just a short while longer. Surely she could buy them a month. Then she could leave with them on their tour, or buy a little cottage with her money, and all would be well. If only there were a way . . .

Her gaze fell on the book she had dropped into her basket. She picked it up, turning the smooth leather of the cover over in her hand.

Of course. Yes. When life became difficult for Shakespeare’s Rosalind and Celia, they had not fallen down and surrendered. They had forged ahead and made a new life for themselves. In disguise.

***

Before Julia could even go to her friends and try to form a plan with them, Thompson, the rabbity, disapproving butler, stopped her in the corridor.

“Miss Barclay,” he said in his high-pitched tone, “I must give you my resignation, and that of my wife.”

Julia stared at him. She knew that she should feel dismay that the butler and housekeeper were leaving, but really all she felt was profound relief. Her mother had kept the Thompsons on for so long, despite their disapproving attitudes, because she had been too tenderhearted to let them go. And they had obviously never left because the Rosemount positions were so comfortable.

Julia shared her mother’s tender heart; she also was too busy to look for replacement staff.

But now, the thought of not having to face Thompson’s disapproving, twitching face anymore brightened her day considerably, even in the face of Lord Ellston’s approach.

Lord Ellston’s approach! She was going to have to get rid of Thompson quickly, unless she wanted a scene when the earl arrived.

She arranged her face into suitably serious lines. “I am very sorry to hear that, Thompson,” she said.

“We simply cannot tolerate the circumstances any longer!” Thompson answered, still twitching. “A household should have order, a schedule. Houseguests should never stay for months! Champagne should not be drunk in the afternoon!”

His voice rose steadily, and he showed every sign of going on like this for hours.

Julia cut him off, saying, “Quite right. You would not want to compromise your ideas of order. If you or your wife will come to my book room, I will pay you the wages owed you, and you can be on your way quickly, as I am sure you wish.”

Thompson nodded jerkily, turned on his heel, and stalked away.

As Julia watched him go, a new, wonderful, and, if she said so herself, brilliant idea began to take shape in her mind.

***

“You want me to do
what
?” Abelard boomed. “Are you daft, lass?”

Julia planted her fists on her hips and surveyed the company before her. Fortunately, they had still been gathered for tea when she finished dealing with Thompson, and she would not have to explain her plan more than once.

“I am not daft, Uncle Abby,” she said stoutly. “I think it is a fine idea, especially since I came up with it on such short notice. I am sure it will work.”

Actually, she was not sure of any such thing. All she knew was that they had to give it a try.

“You want me to be a butler,” Abelard protested. “A servant.”

Mary, whose mischievously pretty face lit up as Julia outlined her plan, said, “Nonsense, Abby! Julia is not asking you to be a servant. She is asking you to play the role of a servant.”

“Exactly!” Julia cried. “Mary is right. It is merely a role. Did you not play Malvolio in
Twelfth Night
? And was he not a servant?”

Abelard rubbed at his ginger-colored whiskers doubtfully as he looked from Julia to Mary. Mary nodded encouragingly. Then he said, “You want me to play Malvolio?”

“Well, not
exactly
Malvolio,” Julia answered carefully. She had the sudden sense that it was very important she nip any of her friend’s more flamboyant tendencies in the bud. Before things got terribly out of control. “You need not wear yellow stockings! It is more like . . . Imagine this is a new play. With a modern setting. And you are playing the butler to an earl, and you can save the day in the last act.”

Abelard brightened a bit. “And reunite the lovers?”

Yes, it was definitely time to nip things in the bud. “If there
were
lovers, I suppose you could do that.” Oh, he just
had
to agree to play the butler. All the others would follow his example. It was a grand plan, and with the departure of the Thompsons, it seemed fated.

But it all depended on Abelard.

“It sounds like great fun,” said Mary. “What is my role to be?”

“We think it jolly fun, too!” John and Ned, who had been mock–sword fighting in the corner, chorused. The two handsome young actors were Mary’s devoted swains in all things.

“What are we to do?” asked Ned, looking to Mary for approval.

Mary tossed her golden curls and ignored him.

Julia brought out the hasty list she had made after Thompson gave his resignation. “Mary, you and Daphne will be housemaids.”

Daphne, a redheaded ingenue, giggled. “Can I be a French maid? I’ve been practicing, you see.
Oh la la, comme ca va la chien du vert, monsieur
.”

Julia sighed impatiently. “Daphne, dear, you can be whatever you like. But you may want to study the French language a bit more before you attempt it; what you just said makes no sense. Now, Ned and John, you will be footmen. I am afraid we have no spare livery, but perhaps some of your costumes will work.”

Charlie, the clown, leaped up and down. “What about me, what about me?”

“You, Charlie, can be the cook’s assistant,” said Julia.

Abelard, who had begun to be infected by his troupe’s obvious enthusiasm for the masquerade, still looked doubtful. “How will we learn to play our roles properly, Jule?”

“The servants will help you,” Julia replied. She had already spoken to the cook, very briefly, and Mrs. Gilbert had promised to talk to the others. All of them, with the exception of the sour Thompsons, had adored Julia’s mother. They would do anything to help the friends of their “Countess Anna,” as they had called her.

Even at the risk of losing their positions.

So now Julia had not only herself and the actors to worry about; she also had the servants. But she could not think of that now. There was simply too much to do in too short a time. The earl may have gone back to Little Dipping to clean up, but that would not take him all night.

She clapped her hands to recapture everyone’s attention. “Now, we must hurry! I am sure Lord Ellston will be here at any moment. All of you go to the kitchen, and the servants will help you. I must go upstairs myself, and wash and change.”

Julia watched them all crowding out of the drawing room, talking and laughing excitedly. Obviously, they all saw it as a great lark, a challenge to their acting talents. “Jolly fun,” as Ned had said.

But Julia’s heart was frozen in fear. Oh, what was she doing? The new earl would see through this ruse immediately. The man she had met in the lane was no fool. His sky blue eyes had been clear and sharp, despite their wondrous beauty.

There was no time for what-ifs now, though, or to moon over handsome eyes. This was not much of a plan, to be sure, yet it was all she could devise on such short notice. She
had
to do this, to protect them all.

Julia smoothed back her hair, squared her shoulders, and went upstairs to make herself presentable to greet the new earl.

Chapter Four

All the world’s a stage.

—
As You Like It

Marcus drew up his horse at the crest of a hill to look down on Rosemount.

It looked exactly the same as it had when he had left. Solid, substantial, but still indescribably beautiful. Especially with its pale gray stone surrounded by the gold and amber of autumn leaves, the rosy glow of the setting sun. It was all a burst of color, as if gaily bedecked to welcome him home.

Marcus laughed aloud at his fanciful thoughts. The meeting with the Shakespearean fairy girl in the lane had obviously had an effect on him. He was so very seldom fanciful.

As he turned his horse onto the long, curving drive, he wondered again who the girl was. While bathing and changing his clothes at the Queen’s Head, he had begun to think that she must be the daughter of a gentleman farmer rather than a shopkeeper, someone prosperous. Her fair skin and soft hands had not spoken of someone who had to work. But he could not think of anyone in the neighborhood who would have a daughter of the right age.

Then again, he had been gone for a long time. People had surely moved in and out of the neighborhood, and there would be some who were strangers to him. Perhaps he would soon encounter her again; perhaps he would not.

He certainly hoped that he would.

He shook his head to try to free it of his obsessive thoughts of the mystery girl. There were too many responsibilities he had to consider just then. He could not afford to be preoccupied with an angel when his homecoming was imminent.

Later, perhaps.

As he neared the house, he noticed the neat garden beds, the last of the flowers just beginning to fade. The two fountains were running, sending streams of sparkling water into the air and spilling it down their marble sides, filling the air with the tinkling aquamarine music. The two statues alongside the front steps, of Athena and Demeter, still gleamed white in the dying light. It was all as he remembered it, every detail. Nothing had changed.

That is, until the butler threw open the front door at his approach.

The butler whom Marcus remembered, a man named Timothy, or perhaps Thompkins, who had only been at Rosemount for a brief while before he left, had been a small, rabbitlike man with a perpetual air of disapproval. This man, on the other hand, was large, a veritable giant, with a wild mane of red hair and a tangle of ginger whiskers. His wide shoulders strained at his black coat, and he wore a most unbutlerlike waistcoat of purple-and-gold satin stripes.

“Lord Ellston, I presume?” he boomed, his loud voice resonating in the cool evening air.

“Er . . . yes,” Marcus answered slowly. He handed his horse’s reins to the waiting groom and went up the shallow marble front steps to where the butler waited. “And you are? . . .”

“Douglas, my lord.”

“Oh. A Scot?”

The butler gave a very elaborate bow. “You have an acute ear, my lord.”

It was difficult to miss the burr when the man was shouting it right in Marcus’s ear. He nodded and looked past Douglas’s massive shoulder to see two housemaids, a tall redhead and a little, curly-haired blonde, standing by the grand staircase. They were respectably attired in black dresses and crisp white aprons and caps, but they were eyeing him rather boldly and whispering behind their hands.

Marcus frowned. He had not expected that everything would remain just the same in his absence. Yet he had not thought that his father’s wife might fill the house with eccentric servants.

He glanced around the foyer, half suspecting that it might now be painted purple or have naughty frescoes on the walls. But it was the same. The same old family portraits looking down on him from cream silk-papered walls. The same carved, round Jacobean table and gold velvet-upholstered chairs lined the walls outside the closed library and drawing room doors. The same soaring ceiling. The only change was that the cold marble floor was now covered by a rug in glowing shades of crimson and blue.

Marcus looked up into the shadows at the top of the staircase, wondering what else was the same in his home, and what had changed.

“Would you care to come into the drawing room, my lord?” Douglas boomed, startling Marcus out of his reverie. “Refreshments have been ordered, and Miss Barclay will be with you very shortly.”

“Miss Barclay?” Marcus said, puzzled. “Is it not rather late for her?”

Douglas’s bushy red brows knit together. “Late, my lord? It is not even seven o’clock. Perhaps that is late where you came from?” He looked as if Marcus had only lately arrived from the moon and could have no idea about the proper way of doing things.

“No, it is not.” But surely it was late for a child? Marcus had little experience with children. Perhaps the little beasts stayed up until dawn. “Well, then, I suppose her nursemaid could bring her down for a while.”

Douglas’s brows shot up. “Her nursemaid, my lord?”

Was the child too old for a nursemaid? Maybe she had a governess now. He couldn’t puzzle it out just then; he was aching for a brandy and something to eat. It had been such a decidedly odd day. “Just have her come down when she is ready, then, Douglas,” he said, and went into the drawing room.

Douglas smiled hugely. “Oh,
yes
, my lord.”

***

After Julia had changed her dress and tidied her hair as best she could, she went into the guest chamber next door to her own. Agnes, the leading lady of Abelard’s Ambling Players, had been laid up there ever since she had broken her foot falling off the stage.

“Do I look presentable?” Julia asked, smoothing the skirt of her lavender gown. “Or shall I be a disgrace?”

Agnes looked up from the costume she was mending. “You look very pretty, Julia! What is the occasion? A party?”

Julia gave a little snort. “Not a party! I still tell everyone I am in mourning. And now that Mother and Gerald are gone, that Lady Angela Fleming will surely have her way at last, and I will be outcast, with no invitations at all.” She fell into a mock-despairing swoon across a chaise. “Alas, alas! Never to attend a musicale at the Hallsbys’ again! Never to have Freddie Barnstaple trod on my toes at a ball again! Whatever shall I do?”

Agnes laughed. “A cruel fate, indeed. But I would not get my hopes up if I were you. No one will listen to that spoiled Lady Angela, and you will have to go out in company very soon.”

Julia shook her head. “Lady Angela Fleming is the reigning Beauty of the neighborhood, and she has hated me ever since I tripped and spilled punch on her at my first ball. But I have greater worries than that tonight.”

“Really? What has happened?”

“The new earl is arrived.”

“No!” Agnes gasped. “Have you met him? What is he like?”

“I did meet him this afternoon, but he did not know it was me.” Julia then proceeded to outline the whole ridiculous scene in the muddy lane.

Agnes fell back against her pillows in helpless laughter. “Oh, Julia! I would so dearly love to see his face when he realizes who you are.”

Julia grimaced. “Perhaps you could go down instead of me? You are so pretty; you would make a much better me than I do.”

“Oh, no. You are the leading lady of this farce. But you must tell me all about it after. I am planning on writing my own play, you know; I always need fresh material.”

Julia sighed. “Yes, I’ll tell you all.”

Agnes glanced ruefully around her comfortable room, with its cozy fire in the grate and its clutter of scripts and costumes. “I suppose our days in this warm little nest are numbered.”

“What?”

“Well, now that his lordship is here, I am sure he will not want a ragtag group of players cluttering up his corridors. We will have to leave.”

“The doctor said you are not to be moved until your foot heals!”

“Nevertheless . . .”

Julia shook her head. “You needn’t worry about that, Agnes, at least for a while. I have a scheme.”

Agnes’s dark eyes glowed. “Oh, I do adore a
scheme
! Tell me what it is.”

“It all began when Thompson gave his notice.”

“That rabbity butler?”

“Yes. So we need a butler, and you all need a place to stay. Abelard will be the butler, and everyone else will be various members of the staff.”

Agnes clapped her hands in delight. “Our greatest theatrical challenge yet! Superb. What is my role to be?”

“You can be my cousin, unfortunately taken ill.”

“Oh, excellent! Then I can see that you are properly chaperoned.” Agnes pursed her lips sternly.

Julia laughed at her unconvincing prim-and-proper air. “I must go meet his lordship now. I cannot delay the inevitable forever. I only wanted to tell you what the scheme is.”

“I am very glad you did. I vow I have not been so diverted in weeks!”

***

Marcus sipped at his brandy and studied the portrait displayed over the fireplace in the vast rose-and-gold drawing room. It was of an extraordinarily beautiful woman, with long golden hair falling over the shoulders of her blue velvet, Italian Renaissance–style gown. One slender hand rested on an iron box. Hazel eyes seemed to laugh down at him, dancing with gold and green lights. The brass plate affixed to the frame read,
MRS. ANNA BARCLAY,
AS PORTIA IN
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
.

Shakespeare again.

“Lord Ellston?” a soft voice said behind him.

Marcus turned and found a pair of hazel eyes exactly like the ones in the portrait regarding him steadily. Yet this time they came from the face of his angel of the lane.

She had changed her ugly gray frock for one of dusky lavender muslin with a small standing ruff of silvery lace that framed her face prettily. Her wild curls were now neatly brushed and pulled back into a knot at the nape of her neck. But it was undoubtedly her. What the deuce was she doing
here
, in his very own house?

He could not say a word. Indeed, he could only look at her with what he feared was a rather stupid expression on his face.

Her chin trembled just a bit, but she smiled bravely and stepped closer to him, her hand outstretched. “I fear we had not the chance for proper introductions earlier,” she said quietly. “I am Julia Barclay.”

Marcus was stunned.
She
was Julia Barclay? Anna Barclay’s daughter? How could that be? Julia Barclay was a child, and his angel was . . .

Obviously not a child.

All of his foolish assumptions crumpled into dust, and he knew that now he would be forced to reevaluate his plans. Drastically. A grown woman was an entirely different kettle of fish than a child. Far more complicated.

An attractive grown woman was even worse.

However, he could not solve those difficulties at that very moment. Julia Barclay—the
real
Julia Barclay—was standing before him with her hand held out to him.

He took that hand and bowed over it politely. Her skin was rather chilled, and her hand shook slightly in his grasp, as if she were a bit nervous. But her faint, polite smile was still in place.

“Things
were
rather chaotic at the time of our meeting,” he answered. “It was rather too bad of you not to tell me who you were, though, Miss Barclay.”

Her smiled wavered. She withdrew her hand from his grasp and settled herself on a small chair drawn up beside the fire. “If you will recall, Lord Ellston, things were quite confusing. What with the mud, and your horse, and my thinking you had been killed, and such. And I had no idea who you were. Then.”

Marcus seated himself across from her, still rather bemused by the turn of events. “I had imagined that you were a small child, Miss Barclay.”

She raised her brow delicately. “Did you, indeed? How extraordinary.”

They studied each other warily in the awkward silence that fell between them. It was only interrupted when the giggling housemaids Marcus had seen earlier came in bearing a tray of refreshments.

They arranged the food clumsily on a low table next to Julia, nearly knocking over a pot of tea in the process. One of them, he could have sworn,
winked
at Julia as they curtsied and left the room.

What a very curious household. He would have to have a long discussion with the housekeeper about the staff.

But tomorrow. Not tonight. Tonight, he was rather tired, and it was very pleasant to be in the company of a pretty lady, even if she
was
Julia Barclay.

In the firelight, Anna Barclay’s daughter was very pretty indeed. Her white hands were deft as they poured out two cups of tea and arranged sandwiches and cakes on a plate. He could faintly smell her lavender scent, and she was humming some soft tune beneath her breath.

The two of them seemed an island of warmth and golden light in the vast darkness of the drawing room. In the silence, the old house seemed to slumber around them.

It was all so peaceful, Rosemount, his home. The home he had so foolishly run from, stayed away from. It wrapped itself around him, welcoming him back.

He could have wept. Indeed, he feared he might have if a gentle voice had not broken into his maudlin reverie.

“Would you care for some tea, Lord Ellston?” Julia said.

Marcus looked up to find her hazel eyes watching him over the thin rim of a china teacup. She smiled softly, understandingly, almost as if she had divined his thoughts.

Then he became too acutely aware that she was
not
just a pretty woman to sit peacefully by the fire with. She was the actress’s daughter. It would be wrong for him to be vulnerable before her.

His jaw tightened, and he quickly took the cup from her, so quickly that the delicate china rattled in its saucer. “Thank you, Miss Barclay,” he said stiffly, formally.

Her smile disappeared, and she nodded coolly.