Love's Labyrinth (2 page)

The younger man did not look up as Warren peered over his shoulder, swiftly taking in what the young man wrote. He narrowed his eyes at the scribbled scrawl. Poetry. He shook his head as a wave of relief washed over him. He jostled the young man’s shoulder when another patron bumped into him, and he seized the opportunity to get an even closer look. The young man glanced up, and their eyes locked and held. Warren had the immediate impression of a lively and searching intelligence and an impersonal curiosity that seemed to peer into the very depths of his mind. Instinctively he lowered his eyes, muttering a pardon. The young man shrugged good-naturedly and went back to scribbling verse.

Warren hurried back to his own table where Sir John nursed his tankard filled with foaming ale. The little episode had unnerved Warren more than he cared to admit, and he wanted nothing more than to conclude this piece of business and be off. “Now,” he said, leaning in close, as the knight looked up, “this is what must be done.”

“I’M TELLING YOU, Liv, that portrait was
you,”
Alison O’Neill declared as she folded her tall frame into the cramped seat of the tour bus beside her friend. “I’ve never seen anything like it—it could’ve been a photograph.”

Olivia Lindsley looked up from the accordion file full of dog-eared notes and faded manila folders on her lap and smiled. The painting hanging near the ladies’ loo inside the English pub did bear a certain resemblance, she’d had to admit when Alison had pointed it out. But she knew enough about sixteenth-century art to know that any likeness was more an accident of technique than any real semblance she bore to the long-dead subject.

“Oh, I’m not so sure about that, Allie. A lot of portraits end up looking a lot alike because that’s the way the painter knew how to paint people. And the mirrors back then weren’t exactly the same quality we have today, so unless the artist was a complete incompetent, it didn’t really matter.”

“That portrait doesn’t look like another portrait. It looks like
you.
It’s got the same dark hair and eyes, the same arch to your brows, even that little half-smile you get when you’re thinking.”

Olivia laughed softly at her friend’s insistence. “Did you have a chance to ask the landlord who she was?”

“Oh, him.” Alison dismissed the landlord with an airy wave. “Said he didn’t know, but that the portrait had been there since Cromwell’s time. What do
you
think?”

“Well,” said Olivia softly, slipping the tattered manila folder that held her father’s final notes on the subject of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady into the file folder, “I’d say that the clothing definitely belonged more to the late sixteenth century, or possibly early seventeenth, than Cromwell’s period. She wasn’t dressed like a Puritan, that’s for sure. I’d say it probably came from one of the noble houses around here, maybe to keep it safe from marauding Puritans, and was just left there and forgotten. There was so much upheaval during that period. Whole families were wiped out. There’s probably no way to ever be certain who she was.”

“That’s a shame, then,” Alison said, settling her long limbs into a more comfortable position. “Because maybe she was one of your ancestors.”

Olivia laughed again. “That’s even more unlikely, I’m afraid. The Lindsleys are Scots, and you know that my mother’s family came from Italy. Besides, Dad and I spent a whole summer here just researching the family tree the year you and I were sophomores in high school. Remember? Our people never set foot in Kent.”

“Humph.” Alison waved another dismissive hand. The bus was beginning to fill with tourists, together chattering as loudly as a flock of excited birds. “I still say it could’ve been you.”

“Well, no matter who
she
was, let’s hope that the Talcott chronicles can shed some light on the identity of the Dark Lady,” Olivia said, patting the folders on her lap. The folders were covered with notes in her father’s cramped writing. “If I can find something that proves that Olivia, Lady Talcott, was the wife of one of the Talcotts of Talcott Forest, my father’s work will be just about finished.”

“And then what about you, Liv?” asked Alison, her dark blue eyes gentle. “What are you going to do?”

Olivia shrugged and glanced out the window. The parking lot was crowded with buses and tourists speaking at least a dozen languages, and the August air was humid. The bus was stuffy, and suddenly she wanted to be on the way to the last stop on her self-imposed itinerary. “I haven’t decided.”

“But you did check into those schools you mentioned? The drama school at Yale? The ones in Manhattan?”

“Not yet. But I will. As soon as we get back. It’s too late to enroll for fall now, anyway. And I really want to get this book finished and out of the way before I—” Olivia broke off.

“Before you move on,” Alison finished. There was a short silence between the two friends as all around them the seats filled with the tour group, all talking at once, it seemed, about the lunch at the authentic English country tavern. “You know, Liv, I know how important your dad’s work was to him. And I know how much it meant to him that you worked for him all these years. But ever since I’ve known you, you always talked about how much you wanted to be an actress. You’re only twenty-four. It’s not too late.”

Olivia met Alison’s concerned eyes with a smile. “Allie, I know that. You’re right. Believe me, I have every intention of applying the minute I get this book done. It was Dad’s lifework. I just can’t let it die. And if I don’t finish it, who will? In some ways, this is as much my project as it was his.”

“I know, but—”

Olivia reached over and patted Alison’s hand. “You’re a good social worker, Allie. But please don’t worry. Just enjoy the tour while I check out the family records. Okay?”

Alison gave her a long look. “Okay.”

Olivia nodded in the direction of the front of the bus. “We’d better listen up. Mistress Mary is about to make a pronouncement.”

Alison rolled her eyes as she turned her attention to the plump, gray-haired woman who stood in the aisle next to the driver, clutching a clipboard in one hand. Alison was making this trip so much fun, thought Olivia, she was beginning to wonder why she hadn’t let her friend talk her into it sooner. She knew why, she thought, suppressing a sigh. Her father’s death last November had abruptly ended nearly six years of intense research into the identity of Shakespeare’s Dark Lady. Although many scholars accepted the view of noted Shakespearean scholar A. L. Rowse that the Dark Lady of Shakespeare’s sonnets was Emilia Bassano, a woman loosely connected to the Elizabethan court, David Owen Lindsley, Olivia’s father, believed that a cache of letters discovered at Oxford in the early 1990s offered a far more likely, albeit more mysterious, possibility.

During Olivia’s final semesters in college, she’d begun to function as her father’s research assistant, and in the last couple of years since her graduation, she’d worked exclusively for him. Her father had urged her to apply to graduate school and begin work on her own Ph.D., but Olivia had hesitated, held back by a dream of her own she scarcely dared voice. Only Alison, her best friend since they were both fourteen, knew her secret ambition.

Physically, the friends couldn’t be more different, but in temperament, they complemented each other perfectly. Alison was tall and athletic, her strawberry-blond curls cut closely around her lightly freckled face, her eyes a dark gray-blue. Olivia, on the other hand, was petite, with dark hair that fell nearly to her waist, and an olive complexion she’d inherited from her Italian mother. They’d discovered each other in high school, when the extroverted Alison had taken the more reserved and quiet Olivia under her wing.

“Under her wing” was a mild way to describe how Alison and her large Irish family had virtually adopted her, Olivia mused, thinking back to all the holidays and weekends she’d spent with the O’Neills. Her own father had insisted she accompany him on his summer sabbaticals, but he was relieved that Olivia had found a more congenial place to spend her Christmas and Easter breaks than the dusty, warm library of the house they inhabited during the school year. Content to stay in a residence provided for him by the university, he had never felt the need for a more permanent home. And in each other, the two girls had found the sister both had always wanted.

Now, at twenty-four, the two women were still the closest of friends, though their lives were clearly taking opposite directions. Alison had just finished her M.S.W. and had started working in the public school system of New York. She was excited about her work helping young teen mothers and fathers. Olivia, on the other hand, had decided to finish her father’s final project before pursuing her own ambition to act. Her father’s death the previous year had left her with enough money to safely support herself for a few years. A successful career on the stage might be one shot in a million, she knew, but she owed it to herself to try, just as she felt she owed it to her father to finish his final legacy.

Besides, in the years of working with her dad, she too had been intrigued by the mystery. It had been the works of William Shakespeare that had made her want to be an actress. No doubt her father, the renowned David Owen Lindsley, would roll in his grave at the thought of his daughter auditioning at theaters in the dregs of New York City’s off-off-Broadway streets. Professor Lindsley, three times a Ph.D., with eight languages to his credit—all dead ones—and a library filled with his own publications, had never encouraged or understood his daughter’s aspirations to act. Although he’d supported Olivia in her study of sixteenth-century playwrights, he’d never for a moment thought that a serious career could be made on the stage.

She glanced up to see Alison slump further in her seat and swiftly cover her face with her open guidebook. “What’s wrong?”

“He’s coming this way,” Alison hissed.

Olivia looked up to see a young man in his late twenties coming down the aisle, two cameras hanging around his neck, his pasty complexion matched by his thinning blond hair. “Him?”

“Yes, him,” Alison whispered. “In the pub he acted like I was his new best friend.” She fixed her eyes on the page and determinedly ignored the young man, who tried to make eye contact but was forced, by the press of other tourists, to take a seat farther back.

“People love you, Allie,” Olivia murmured when the man had passed. “That’s why you’re such a great social worker.”

Alison groaned and rolled her eyes as the tour guide, Mary Higgins, gave two short bursts on the whistle she wore around her neck. She had just enough time to mutter, “Let’s hope I can convince all those fourteen-year-old moms to talk to me,” when Mary Higgins held up her hand and began to speak. She had an interminably cheerful voice that seemed as though it would never falter, even when confronted by the most vexing of travel complications.

“Listen carefully, everyone! We’ve got a schedule to keep!” The group began to quiet down, and faces peered ahead from both sides of the aisle. “Now, let’s see,” Mary continued. “We’ll arrive at Talcott Forest in just a few minutes. It’s only”—she gazed back at the driver—“what is it, driver? Fifteen miles? Yes.” She beamed at her charges like a benevolent monarch on progress. “Now. There’s been a slight change in plans. Instead of touring the house first, and then going off to change into our Elizabethan costumes…”

Next to Olivia, Alison squeaked, “What?”

“Shh!” responded Olivia, listening intently.

“…We’ll be changing first and then touring—all in costume! The revel will begin as soon as we get there. So don’t be surprised to see wandering musicians.” She paused and looked around, her wide face ecstatic, “Along with masked dancers, noble lords and ladies, and—” she paused for an even longer moment—”quite possibly Queen Elizabeth herself. It’s well documented that our immortal Gloriana dined more than once at Talcott Forest, and I have it on excellent authority that we’re likely to be graced by the presence of Her Majesty herself.

“Now, and this is most important, so please give me your full attention!” She looked meaningfully at a few people who were carrying on whispered conversations. “The eclipse is scheduled in just two hours and six—no, seven minutes. On each seat, you will find a pair of special sunglasses, like these.” She held up a pair of cardboard sunglasses, which had blue and red ribbons falling from each corner. “As you can see, they’ve been specially designed so that we will all appear as though we’re attending a masked revel! Now, it is very important—extremely important—that during the eclipse you wear these glasses for safe and proper viewing. Also, immediately following the eclipse, we will be touring the maze. Now, the maze at Talcott Forest is one of the premier examples of its type still extant in England today. We are extremely fortunate that the present Lord Talcott has such a keen appreciation for the historical value of his home.”

“Keen appreciation for the tourist dollars, you mean,” muttered the guy Alison was trying to ignore. Olivia glanced backward through the crack between the seats and realized he’d found a seat right behind them.

“So! Are there any questions?” Mary smiled, obviously not having heard the comment, or choosing to ignore it. “Yes?” She nodded in the direction of a woman who was frantically waving her arm.

“What happens if someone gets lost in the maze?”

“Oh.” Mary smiled indulgently. “It’s not that large a maze. I understand you only need turn consistently to the left—or maybe it’s the right—to find your way out. And of course we’ll all be together. I’m sure it’s not likely that anyone will actually get lost. Anything else? No? Good. Now don’t forget to keep your spectacles with you at all times. I believe we’re all loaded up, so let’s be off!” She practically bounded up the aisle, which, thought Olivia, was no mean feat for a woman who had to be nearing sixty.

Beside Olivia, Alison groaned. “Are you sure we have to change?”

“Oh, come on,” said Olivia. “It’ll be fun.” She winked.

“You don’t want to miss our immortal Gloriana, do you?”

“Not for one hot second. And I sure can’t wait to meet her wearing my funny glasses. We’re going to look like
Masterpiece Theater
meets Elton John. But it’s easy for you to say. You’re going to be searching through records while I’m out strolling around.”