Anne Barbour (15 page)

Dropping a light kiss on the older woman’s hair, she ran lightly from the room.

She made her way thoughtfully along the corridor and descended the stairs to the hall. Turning toward the service wing, she was stayed in her path by the tumultuous entrance of Gerard and Harry from one of the nearby saloons. Harry’s round, blue eyes were even rounder and bluer than usual and his yellow hair seemed endowed with a life of its own, its ungovernable spikes fairly quivering in excitement. Gerard’s eyes, too, those windows to his emotions, blazed a message that filled Jane with foreboding.

“What is it?” she asked in trepidation, but she barely had the words out before a knock sounded at the front door. It was apparent the two scapegraces had been watching for whoever approached, for without waiting for Fellowes, Gerard tore to the door and flung it open, Harry close behind him.

“Uncle James!” he called to the gentleman who was just stepping down from a fashionable curricle. The word “nondescript” might have been fashioned to describe this gentleman, thought Jane in some bemusement. Somewhere on the far side of forty, he was above medium height and rather stocky, dressed in a conservative ensemble of gray waistcoat and dark coat and breeches. His movements were unhurried and precise as he set his whip in its holster and made his way stolidly from his vehicle to the door. When he removed his shallow-crowned hat, his hair was revealed as thinning and of a brown so light as to be almost without color, matched by his brows and even his eyes, which were the most expressionless Jane had ever seen.

Gerard and Harry clustered about him, pelting him with unintelligible questions, but when they were inside the door, Gerard turned to his sister. “Jane, may I present Sir James Beemish. He is from Gloucestershire and, being on his way to London, has stopped to visit with Harry.”

Sir James said nothing, but nodded and pressed his lips to Jane’s hand in a vague salute.

Jane, quickly digesting the fact that stopping at Selworth on the way to London from Gloucestershire would have involved a considerable detour, also said nothing for a moment, merely returning Sir James’s nod. The next instant, coming to herself, she extended her hand in welcome.

“What a nice surprise, Sir James.” She shot a significant glance at Gerard and was dismayed to find her suspicions confirmed as that young gentleman flushed guiltily. “Do please come into the morning room and I’ll ring for tea.” She noted with some wonderment that Sir James seemed to find her greeting odd, for at the word “surprise,” his brows lifted questioningly.

Once the little group entered the morning room, a forced laugh burst from Gerard’s lips. “Actually, Sir James’s visit is not all that much of a surprise, is it Harry?” He turned to his friend in some desperation.

“No, no indeed,” chimed Harry. “Been in correspondence with m’mother, doncher know, and when she told me Uncle James would be trotting up to London—well, we’ve always been close, so I wrote him, asking him to stop for a visit. I hope that’s all right,” he said, his blue eyes appearing ready to start from his head as he transferred his gaze to Jane.

Sir James smiled. Or at least Jane supposed it was a smile, for it consisted only of a slight thinning of his lips. “I am dreadfully sorry, Miss—?”

“Burch,” answered Gerard promptly. “My sister, Jane Burch. She’s a visitor here, too, as are Harry and I. Well, no,” he amended awkwardly, “not precisely a visitor. She’s been acting as our cousin’s companion, except that she’s not anymore—only she is still...” He trailed off despairingly.

Sir James’s features creased in what might have been an expression of cordiality. “It seems to me, Miss Burch, that these two young scamps have been taking advantage of your good nature. If my being here is an imposition, there is a perfectly adequate inn not two miles down the road.”

Despite his unassuming manner, Jane sensed a certain shrewdness behind the bland smile.

“Nonsense,” she replied with a cordial laugh. “You will find us rather full of company at the moment, but we have plenty of room. I think we can put you up in tolerable comfort.” She rang for a footman, who soon bustled off to notify Mrs. Rudge that yet another visitor had arrived. Mentally, Jane resolved that when she next spoke to the housekeeper, she would promise to recommend to Lord Simon that the household staff be enlarged to accommodate their sudden increase in resident population.

It was not very long before Mrs. Rudge, a matronly female in starched bombazine, appeared to conduct Sir James to his chambers. Waving him on his way with further expressions of welcome, Jane waited until the door had closed behind their guest before rounding on Gerard and Harry.

“All right, you two, what is going on?”

Despite the guilt writ large on their faces, making them resemble schoolboys with their fingers caught in the jam pot, both young men insisted that Sir James’s visit was the result of the most casual invitation issued by a loving nephew.

“No need to make such a pother about it, Janie,” said Gerard, rumpling her hair. “You said yourself, the house is big enough to accommodate another twenty people without feeling the strain.”

“That’s very true, you young whelp,” said Jane, jerking away from him to smooth her curls. “But what I want to know is what is he doing here? You were obviously expecting him with bated breath, and I want to know what foul plan you two lackwits are hatching.”

“Janie!” said Gerard accusingly.

“Really, M-Miss Burch,” said Harry. “It was all the merest happenstance.”

The pair steadfastly refused to deviate from their obviously carefully rehearsed story, and Jane was at last forced to give up.

“All right,” she said, as she moved toward the door. “But, if he’s in any way involved in one of your disasters while he’s here, I’ll know where to lay the blame.” With a minatory scowl, she swept from the chamber to inform Lord Simon that his responsibilities as host had just increased by one.

When family and guests gathered for luncheon in the Gold Saloon, Sir James was introduced all around. He greeted one and all with stolid courtesy, and to Jane’s surprise, when he was presented to Winifred, his response, instead of the usual look of dazed wonder, consisted of a bow and a vague expression of pleasure at meeting her. It would be an overstatement to say that Winifred was taken aback, but the speculation in her glance was plain, as the gentleman, admittedly almost old enough to be her father, bent over her hand.

Simon welcomed the newcomer with cordiality, and Marcus acknowledged his presence with a smile and a nod.

“But where is Lissa?” asked Marcus, as footmen began bringing in trays.

“And Charles?” asked Simon.

Jane, glancing around, realized that she had seen neither of them all morning, and she was gripped by a sense of unease. Apparently, Marcus was seized by the same intimation, for he strode grimly toward the door.

He was forestalled as the door opened to admit Charles and Lissa, mud stained and disheveled and laughing uproariously.

“Lissa!” roared Marc.

“Lissa!” echoed her brother. “Where the devil have you been?”

To Jane’s dismay, and the obvious consternation of Lissa’s nearest and dearest, the young girl paused to press a light kiss on Charles’s cheek before turning to face the group.

“It’s been such a lark!” she cried blithely. “Charles and I have spent the last three hours together in a deep, dark hole!”

“Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born? When at your hands did I deserve this scorn?”
—A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
III, i.

“ ‘Lord, what fools these mortals be!’ ”

Jane, as Puck, spoke the words in her clear treble to Marcus, who was acting as Oberon. On cue, Marc delivered his lines with all the spirit of a man on the way to his own hanging.

Lord, what fools indeed, Simon thought morosely. The group was gathered on Selworth’s south lawn, for Winifred had brought the rehearsals outside. Several potted trees and shrubs augmented Nature’s efforts, so that the stage, an area raised on boards and covered with rugs, indeed resembled a forest bower.

A little way off, Lissa disported with Charles as they waited for their own entrances. Nearly a week had passed since the unnerving contretemps brought about by Lissa’s disingenuous announcement. The whole episode, it turned out, had been completely innocent. In the company of a maid and a footman, Charles and Lissa had gone to inspect the Roman remains on their own. They had rambled over the ancient villa and had fallen into a pit lying within an unexcavated section of the structure.

Neither was harmed. The pit was, in reality, neither deep nor dark, but was sunk enough to make it necessary for the footman to return to the house for a shovel and another pair of hands, while the maid remained in situ, twittering anxiously at them from the rim of the pit. The two had apparently amused themselves by searching for artifacts and had, in fact, returned with a few coins and pottery shards.

It was obvious, however, that an alarming degree of intimacy had sprung up between them over the incident, though Lissa certainly did not appear to have lost her heart to the weedy peer, for she flirted outrageously with Gerard and Harry, as well as middle-aged Sir James, who took it all in good part.

Marcus retaliated by devoting every waking hour to Winifred. If he had appeared to be glued to the beauty’s dainty fingertips before, he now seemed surgically stitched to every portion of her anatomy that he could touch without getting into trouble. Lissa, of course, conducted herself as though she was completely oblivious to the apparent defection of the man she had once declared the center of her universe.

Simon could cheerfully have strangled them both.

Almost immediately after Sir James’s arrival, Winifred had appropriated him for the role of Egeus, Hermia’s father. While denying in himself any talent whatsoever, Sir James, whom Jane had euphemized in her mind as “the mysterious uncle,” placidly agreed to take part in the play and, surprisingly, so impressed was Winifred by his performance, that she assigned to him the role of the clown Snout, as well.

Most of the actors had memorized their lines by now, and Simon was forced to admit that the production was coming together. Winifred, however, declared herself in despair. Marcus and Lissa spoke Shakespeare’s rollicking dialogue in accents gloomy enough for a production of King Lear. Charles, though displaying an unsuspected flair for comedy, complained continually over the indignity of having to wear an ass’s head, and Gerard and Harry experienced such difficulty in memorizing their lines that Winifred declared in some dudgeon that they would make pretty fools of themselves, blundering about the stage with their playbooks hanging about their necks.

The vicar and his wife, with the best will in the world, spoke their pieces in a colorless monotone, with an uncomfortable stiffness totally at odds with the personalities of the Duke of Athens and the Queen of the Amazons.

Winifred scarcely spoke two lines in sequence without stopping to give someone a direction, and it seemed to Simon that the only one caught up in the magic of the play was Jane, who breathed an airy lightness and fire and wit into the part of Puck.

“We shall just have to work harder,” said Winifred firmly after dinner a few evenings later. Everyone had gathered on the west terrace to enjoy a particularly magnificent sunset. “Nothing was ever won without effort, after all.”

Her words were greeted with some surprise, since she had never been seen attempting anything more strenuous than lifting a sugared strawberry to her lips.

“That is very true,” said Aunt Amabelle with a wise nod of her head, her fingers busy with yet another costume for the play.

“And I’m sure if everyone puts his knuckles to the grindstone, we’ll come through splendidly. If everyone”—she cast an austere glance at Marcus—”simply concentrates on what he is supposed to be doing, the play will be a success. Or, no,” she said abruptly, “that’s ‘nose to the grindstone,’ isn’t it?” She rubbed her own with some vigor.

Jane laughed aloud, and Simon watched her with a stab of tenderness. “My cousin Jane,” the frumpy spinster, had vanished completely. Her pointed nose seemed deliciously shaped now that it was not nearly so pink, and her eyebrows had grown out again, as had her lashes, which formed a dark fringe about the silver pools of her eyes.

Simon shook himself from his reverie, assisted by the unwelcome sight of Marc moving to seat himself close to Winifred. Very close to Winifred. “I think,” said the young man in an intimate tone that hinted as assignations in secluded nooks, “that I have a solution to your problem in scene two, act three.”

“Oh,” replied Winifred prosaically. Simon had noted that when the goddess was absorbed in her muse, she had no time for flirtation. “Where Oberon is still on stage when Demetrius enters with Helena. Yes, that is a bit of a knot, isn’t it? You can hardly be expected to stand in two places at once.”

“Well, perhaps I can,” said Marc with a lazy smile. From her perch on a nearby bench with Sir James, Lissa stiffened. “What if, when Oberon tells Puck to stand aside, he retreats behind one of those large trees at the back of the stage? I could nip across behind the shrubbery while Puck is giving her little speech—she’d have to draw it out a little—throwing a toga or something over my costume. Then I could enter from behind yet another tree with Helena as her newfound swain.”

“Mmm,” said Winifred, “that might work. We can try it out tomorrow. We’ll do your scene with Helena first thing.”

“I don’t think that will be possible,” Lissa said with a sniff. She edged closer to Sir James. “I shan’t be able to rehearse Helena’s part tomorrow. I have other plans.”

Winifred’s eyes widened. “Plans? But this is the play! What could you have to do that is more important than that?”

Lissa rose from the bench, her skirts fairly vibrating, and Jane was put into mind of a small, furious cat, its tail a-twitch.

“A great number of things,” she said, with only the slightest tremor in her voice. “Sir James is taking me up in his curricle tomorrow to go into the village.” She sent a provocative glance toward Harry’s uncle, who ran a deprecating hand over his mouse-colored hair. “Neither of us has seen any of the country hereabouts,” Lissa continued, “and we have decided to go exploring.”