Leading Lady (22 page)

Obediently Noah had pointed to the impression made by the first finger. “Danby-dale.”

“Very good,” she’d said. “Only, the land isn’t as smooth as these imprints.”

Already Noah knew this, from riding about on the front of his father’s saddle and surveying neat fields divided by drystone walls, the copses of gnarled and ancient trees. High on either side of those dales towered the brown moorland banks, carpeted with purple heather in late summer.

Carey Hall, four storeys of gritstone weathered into a gray-and-mossy coloring, high gables, slate-tiled roofs, and
mullioned windows, was built by the fifth Earl of Danby, Noah’s great-great-great-great-grandfather. The first Earl of Danby, Andrew Carey, was given his title by King Charles II in 1668, as reward for impoverishing himself in his support of the ill-fated Charles I in the war against the Roundheads. In the following year the Earl of Danby was granted the goods, chattels, and debts of all felons in the manor and forests of Danby.

Later Careys were not so colorful but made good livings from wool and the rents of tenant farmers. Noah did not take that living for granted, for it afforded him the opportunity to act upon the York stage. Uncle Bertram, his mother’s younger brother as well as his father’s bailiff of sixteen years, ran the estate with his usual competence, and Mother did the bookkeeping. Noah’s absence was hardly a ripple in the goings-on, though he helped out whenever in residence.

Inside, Mrs. Moss eyed his fresh haircut with faint disapproval in her expression and informed him that his friend was in the conservatory with m’Lady. Noah found them sharing a marble bench.

“I saw tears in your father’s eyes that time you were in the hospital for pleurisy,” his mother was saying, hand resting upon Jude’s shoulder. Emily Carey was perfectly cast in her maternal role, plump and graying, with small hands and soft green eyes. “He does love you.”

Jude’s face wore crimson splotches. “He has a fine way of showing it.”

“Jude . . . forgive me. . . .” Noah said, advancing and lowering himself upon one knee before them. “I should have gotten here earlier.”

His friend made a feeble attempt at a smile. “It’s done me good to speak with Lady Danby.”

“And your father . . . ?”

“He says if I leave for London, I’m not to come back.”

To fit in with his schoolmates during his fresher year at college, Noah had picked up the habit of swearing. That is,
until a curse word slipped through his lips in the presence of his father, whose look of quiet disappointment caused him to cease immediately. He had not been tempted to take up the habit again until just that moment, when he had to swallow the oath that rose in his throat.

“I’m sorry,” he said instead, trading looks with his mother. “What will you do?”

“I’m leaving for London. Tomorrow.”

“Well, this is your home now,” Noah said.

Jude turned his face away to blink watery eyes.

Noah’s mother’s eyes teared as well. “I’m sure this wouldn’t have happened if your mother had lived, Jude,” she said. “Mothers often bring out a softer side to fathers.”

But Jude wouldn’t know, for his mother had died shortly after bringing him into the world. Another reason, Noah and his own mother privately speculated, that the man was so hard on his youngest child.

“I would have liked to have seen a softer side of him.” Jude wiped his eyes. “Just once. But I thank you. Both of you. You’ve always been the family I’ve always wished I had.”

“We’re the family you
have,
” Noah’s mother said.

****

“Did she say lunch?” Jude said, hefting the basket appreciably the following morning at York Station. “There must be enough here for a week. You’ll thank Olivia again for me, won’t you? And the Ryces’ cook?”

“I will.” Noah pretended not to notice the searching glances Jude sent toward different ends of the platform now and again. He dipped into his coat pocket and brought out the five crisp twenty-pound notes he had just withdrawn from his account. “To help you get started.”

“I can’t,” Jude said, taking a step back.

“Please don’t disappoint me.” Noah pressed it into his hand.

Jude looked down at it. “A loan, then.”

“Very well. You may pay me back when you’re a roaring success.”

Precisely at one minute before nine, a shrill whistle that seemed to issue from the bowels of the earth pierced the air from the south, and in an instant the engine appeared, smoking and snorting like Beowulf’s dragon. Another twinge of envy shot through Noah. He admonished himself for it. He was a grown man with commitments. Too old to behave as a child in a sweetshop, unable to appreciate the one treat his halfpenny would purchase for longing for the whole display.

Sixteen

With no role to play other than his own, Noah fell back into a routine of sorts. He began memorizing the part of John Worthing, whom he would play in Oscar Wilde’s
The Importance of Being Earnest.
He played cribbage with his mother, started reading Fielding’s
The Journal of a Voyage to Lisbon
as well as the book of Isaiah, and fished for pike and bream in the pond. He also helped out with chores about the estate, such as docking lambs’ tails and repairing a tenant farmer’s chimney. He rather enjoyed manual labor, finding that it relieved as much tension as it had once generated when he was a boy grumbling to himself over how Father refused to allow him to idle away school holidays.

He went into York to see Olivia twice, spending the night in the Hotel Lady Anne Middleton’s. On the fourteenth of May, he also visited his tailor on Stonebow to be fitted for the black suit he would wear at his wedding. Rain early in the following week and the subsequent muddy roads prevented him from seeing Olivia again until Friday the twentieth, when he donned top hat and tailcoat and hired a hansom to deliver him to Nunnery Lane. He was to have dinner with her family before escorting her to see
The Corsican Brothers.

“Yip-yip-yip-yip!” Like a blonde comet, Chaucer streaked from the neighbor’s garden as Noah stepped down to the pavement. “Yip-yip-yip-yip!”

“Get away, you loathsome little cur!” Noah growled, resisting the urge to deliver a stout kick. The dog nipped at his heels all the way along the short path and up the steps.

“Good evenin’, Lord Carey,” said Joan, the parlourmaid, stepping back to allow him inside. She shooed at the animal on the other side of the threshold. “Go home, Chaucer!”

“Do they feed him?” Noah asked after she slammed the
door. He handed her his hat. “Because he’s determined to make a meal of my ankles.”

The maid smiled appreciatively. She was younger than Noah, nineteen or so, with dimpled cheeks and brown hair caught up in a comb behind her lace cap. “I think he’s insane, if you ask me, m’Lord.”

Noah pulled off his gloves. “Can that be possible?” He knew it to be so with sheep, for his father had once had to shoot a ram after it continually charged a stone wall until its head was bloody. But if Joan knew the answer to that question, he was not to hear it, for Olivia entered the hall, lovely in a moss-green brocade gown, her dark hair cascading in ringlets from a modest tiara.

“Noah!” she said, smiling as the servant slipped away with his hat and gloves.

“You take my breath away, Olivia,” Noah said, touching her cheek. He would have leaned down for a kiss, but the parlour door opened and Mrs. Ryce approached cooing greetings. They moved into the parlour, where Olivia, her mother, and four sisters, ranging in age from eleven to sixteen, fluttered about him. He did not mind and rather enjoyed being the center of attention. Presently Doctor Ryce joined them. He was a smallish man, reticent in social situations, content to allow the women of his household to do the talking.

They sat down to a dinner of roast ribs of beef, braised ham and spinach, Yorkshire pudding, peas, potatoes, and stewed rhubarb. The bread pudding, Noah’s favorite dessert, was not up to Mrs. Bromley’s usual standard, but then, the price of sugar was rising dramatically because last month’s onset of the Spanish-American War made future shipments uncertain. Olivia’s smile was all the sweetness Noah desired.

The Ryces’ coachman, Alan Stern, delivered Noah and Olivia to the Royal York Theatre, where they settled into front-row orchestra seats. Just ahead were the railings to the pit. Musicians below were softly tuning instruments.

“You don’t mind my not renting a box, do you?” It was not
that Noah couldn’t afford it. As in most theatres, the boxes in Theatre Royal did not allow full view of the stage, which in Noah’s opinion defeated the whole purpose of attending theatre. The most distractions he and his fellow actors had experienced while onstage had not come from the galley, but from those swells in the boxes discussing where they should dine afterward and gossiping about those in other boxes.

She met his eyes and smiled. “No, of course not.”

He took her gloved hand in his as the curtain began rising to Franck’s Symphony in D Minor. Within seconds he was caught up in Dion Boucicault’s adaptation of telepathic twins separated at birth. He absorbed the play on two levels, enjoying the story while studying every facial expression, the inflection of every line, hoping for ways to improve his own techniques—or things to avoid. He appreciated how the actor playing Mario Franchi curled his fingers about the lapel of his coat when angered, but did not approve of how the actress playing Isabelle Gravini pontificated her lines.

When the last bows had been taken and the final curtain closed, Noah and Olivia joined the exodus of patrons moving toward the lobby with rustlings of silks and murmurs of conversation. Alan was waiting with team and coach. The hour was half-past eleven, and a sort of drowsy quietness had settled upon the town once they were clear of the theatre area.

“Did you enjoy the performance?” Noah asked.

“Yes,” she replied. “But the actress playing Isabelle was surely an understudy.”

“I believe that’s so,” Noah agreed. He hoped that one of her fellow actors would pay her a kindness and suggest she speak more naturally onstage, for the sake of her career. That thought led him to imagining what it would be like to be involved in the London theatre world, if only part of a touring company.

“Less than three months,” Olivia purred, resting her head against his shoulder.

He winced, stabbed with guilt.
What an infant you are,
he said to himself. He was perfectly aware that were he in London this very evening, he would be pining away for Olivia and the great future he had before him in Yorkshire.

“Is your gown almost finished?” he asked.

She sighed. “The seamstresses have
finally
gotten to the train.”

“Oh dear. They deserted you, did they?” He couldn’t resist.

Turning her head enough to look askew at him, she said, “Deserted me? Why would they? I just said they’re working on the train.”

That brought to mind another joke, of seamstresses shoveling coal into an engine, but he kept it to himself. Olivia’s sense of humor did not extend to things vastly important to her, such as her wedding gown. “Yes, you did,” he replied.

“Appliquéing lace patterns to ten feet of satin is meticulous work, but Mrs. Burton assures me it’ll be finished in time. By the way, James and Lilith wish to host a garden party in our honor on the sixteenth of July.”

When he gave her a blank look, she said, “My cousin on Father’s side and his wife. You met at the house at Christmas.”

“Ah yes. A pleasant couple.”

He would be years learning the names of all of Olivia’s relations. But he was glad that their children would have a large extended family, what with his own abundance of uncles and aunts and cousins on his mother’s side.

“The invitation includes your mother, of course.” She hesitated. “And I would appreciate it if you didn’t wear that green cravat you’re so fond of.”

“You don’t like it?”

“Frankly, it looks as if you dribbled pea soup down your neck. The blue one you wore to the cast party suits your complexion. And your yellow paisley is attractive.”

“Yes, attractive,” Noah murmured, enjoying the scent of her perfume.

“You’re not even listening, are you?”

“No green cravat.” He shifted in the seat to put an arm
about her shoulders. “I’ll dress to the nines. But we’re almost at your house. . . .”

She smiled and raised her chin. He kissed the tip of her nose, then her eyes, and finally, her soft mouth. Too soon they were stopped outside 8 Nunnery Lane, where light burned from the parlour window. Noah could hear Alan climbing down from the box.

“Oh dear.” Olivia’s hands fanned her face. “Mother will notice my cheeks.” Mrs. Ryce waited up for Olivia when she and Noah had a late theatre night, saying she would not be able to sleep soundly until all her daughters were safely abed.

“Surely she suspects we kiss.”

“Sh-h-h!” She put a silencing finger to his lips as the coach’s door opened.

“I’ll deliver your Lordship to the hotel when you’re ready,” the coachman said as Noah stepped to the pavement behind Olivia.

“Thank you, Alan. I shan’t be long.” Fortunately, the neighbor’s Maltese spent nights inside, so they were able to walk to the front door unhindered. Gently Noah knocked. Because Doctor Ryce kept addictive agents such as morphine and quinine in his cupboard, the doors had to be locked at night. But within seconds, the knob turned with a hollow
click
and the door swung inward.

Mrs. Ryce, clad in dressing gown and holding a book closed with forefinger as her marker, smiled sleepily at them. “And how was the play?”

“Nice,” Olivia replied, kissing her cheek.

“Even without Noah in a role?”

“Well, of course, that would have made it better.”

“Careful now, you’ll make me vain,” Noah said.

Mrs. Ryce chuckled, bade him good evening and excused herself after a pointed “You’ll be up soon, Olivia?”

“Yes, Mother.”

Noah and Olivia stood smiling at each other until Mrs. Ryce’s footsteps on the stairs faded sufficiently. Then they
moved as if drawn together by a string. His arms went about her. They kissed, and her perfume was sweet. Until his nostrils inhaled a faint whiff of something else.