Terri Brisbin (20 page)

“Indeed,” he murmured, marveling that she’d any breath left at all. He wouldn’t have to apologize to her. She’d done it first, and now all he’d have to do was graciously accept her offer, and everything would be set to rights. But as easy as that would be, it also wouldn’t be entirely honest, and honesty was a quality he held very dear, even with an actress.

Once again Ross cleared his throat. “This is, ah, a great coincidence, Miss Lyon, because I was, ah, on my way to apologize to you.”

Her eyes widened. “You were, my lord? To
me?
”

“Yes.” He nodded, observing how the stars reflected in her eyes as she looked up at him. “I made several ill-advised assumptions about your—your past, about which, as my sister reminded me, I know nothing. I was wrong to determine conclusions without facts, Miss Lyon, and so I must apologize to you.”

She shook her head. “But you do not have to do that, my lord. You are an earl.”

“I am foremost a man who prides himself on his reason,” he said solemnly. “Until you prove yourself otherwise, Miss Lyon, I must ignore hearsay, and conclude instead that you are a lady of impeccable virtue and modesty.”

“Ohh.” She smiled, a wobbly, lopsided smile. “Oh, my lord! So you
are
as intelligent as first I thought!”

He paused, mystified. “Because I corrected my preconceptions and apologized for them?”

“Well, yes, you did that, but you did it with such—such eloquence!” She sighed with what seemed like inexplicable happiness. “I
relish
fine words, my lord, with the same delight as a glutton views at a feast. And so do you, my lord, don’t you?”

His mystification remained, though he’d stopped worrying
about it. “There is a great art in choosing the proper word to express one’s feelings.”

“Did not I say you were intelligent?” She sighed again. “I must make a confession to you, my lord. No gentleman has ever, ever said such lovely, fulsome words to me before.”

“Then I suppose no other gentleman has been as foolish as I, to need to say them.”

She tipped her head to one side, appraising. “You are different in the moonlight, my lord.”

So was she, but he suspected she would not find that complimentary. “A moon so new gives off precious little light, Miss Lyon.”

“Then it must be the starlight, my lord.” She swept the shawl in an arc through the air between them. “‘The starlight has cast its magic spell upon you / And changed you for the better.’”

With her smiling up at him like this, he couldn’t help grinning back. “You playwrights always know the proper words to say, don’t you?”

The wobbly smile widened as she spread her hands on either side of her face, her palms open to the sky. “‘True, I talk of dreams / Which are the children of an idle brain / Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.’”

“See, there you are,” he said. “What right do I have to criticize your writing, when you can invent pretty things like that?”

Her laughter rippled around him, as light as the drifting petals. “Alas, alas, my lord, I didn’t. I was reciting from
Romeo and Juliet,
a play by Mr. Shakespeare.”

Even Ross had heard of
Romeo and Juliet,
though he wasn’t overcertain of the plot. “That’s the sort of play you’re writing for Emma, isn’t it?”

Rueful, she shook her head. “Only if the muses lavish an ocean of talent upon me. Though for your sister’s sake, I mean to try.” She smiled again, and swept him one of her
grandest curtsies, the shawl twinkling around her shoulders. “I will not keep you longer, my lord, so I wish you—”

“Don’t go,” he said, and realized at once how lordly and presumptuous that must sound. “That is, Miss Lyon, I, ah—have you ever observed the stars?”

“The stars, my lord? The ones I see each night in the sky?”

“But have you ever
seen
them, Miss Lyon? Come, come, let me show you.” In a rush of enthusiasm, he seized her hand, leading her in and out of the twisted trunks of the apple trees to the open field beside them. He stopped and leaned his head back, still holding her hand.

“Not until I went to sea did I truly understand the stars,” he said. Here he was at home, and knew what to say. “The astronomers at Greenwich can explain this planet and that nebula, but it is the common English sailor who understands the stars with his heart. Now there, that brightest star—that is the North Star, the king of them all.”

“There, my lord?” She curled her fingers more closely into his as she leaned back. “With the others clustered around it?”

Her hair brushed his shoulder, and from instinct he tucked her into the crook of his arm to keep her from tumbling backward. He decided certain instincts were very agreeable, as well as providing a way to preserve the species from harm.

“That is the constellation known as Ursa Minor, or the little bear.” She smelled like roses, sweet and spicy and distracting. “The North Star is centered over the North Pole, and no matter where on earth a sailor may be, once he finds it, he can find himself.”

“Imagine, my lord,” she whispered, the soft curves of her body leaning into him. “So much from one tiny bright star!”

“The North Star isn’t tiny,” he said, his own voice lowering to a gruff whisper to match hers. “It’s far away. Most likely it’s even bigger than our own earth.”

But she wasn’t looking at the stars any longer. She was
looking at
him.
“‘How silver-sweet sound lovers’ tongues by night / Like softest music in attending ears!’”

He drew her closer. “Your words, or Mr. Shakespeare’s again?”

“Romeo and Juliet.”
Her eyes were half-closed, her lashes throwing feathery shadows across her cheeks, and the half smile on her lips had to be the most tempting invitation he’d ever seen. “‘Was there ever such a pair of star-crossed lovers?’”

And before his orderly, rational brain could tell him otherwise, he pulled her close and kissed her. She was soft and warm and willing, curling her arm around the back of his neck to steady herself. The sparkling scarf drifted from her shoulders to the grass, and neither cared. When he slanted his mouth to deepen the kiss, she parted her lips for him with a fluttering little sigh and an eagerness that matched his own. He’d never kissed another woman like this, but then he’d never met a woman as desirable as Cordelia Lyon, either.

“Oh, my lord,” she whispered, breathless when at last he broke the kiss. “When you said you’d show me stars, I’d no notion
that
was what you meant.”

He laughed. “I’ve never found stargazing so agreeable, either, nor have I—”

“No, my lord,” she said, slipping free. “There can—there
must!—
be no more between us.”

“Of course there can, lass.” He reached for her, but she skipped backward away from him, as light as any fairy sprite across the grass.

“No, my lord,” she said, the sadness in her voice a match for the unhappiness in her eyes. “No more stars, not for us.”

And before he could catch her, she was gone.

“B
egin again from the start, Gwen,” called Cordelia, standing on a bench so everyone could see her. “And this time try to do it from memory.”

Gwen scowled, twisting the little scroll with her lines in her hands. “I am doing the best I can, Cordelia. But this is only the first day of rehearsal, and you’ve given me a precious lot of lines to learn.”

Cordelia shrugged, unimpressed. She herself was a quick study with memorizing lines, and she’d little tolerance with those who weren’t. “Goddesses always have the longest speeches, Gwen, and if you want to play those roles, you must learn the parts. Now begin again, before I give the part to someone else.”

Heaving a huge breath, Gwen flung her arms toward the ballroom ceiling and plunged into the opening speech in her high-pitched, singsong voice. Ordinarily Gwen played the comic parts, saucy maids or knowing countesses, but surely the goddess of love deserved better than this.

Cordelia grimaced, rubbing her forehead. She’d have more patience with them all if she’d slept better last night, and
more still if her conscience weren’t haunted by that awful, magical kiss from Ross.

“I don’t fancy a goddess speaking so many words, Cordelia,” Gwen said halfway through her speech, giving her script a dismissive flick of the wrist. “’Tis dreadful tedious.”

“Only if you keep forgetting those words.” Cordelia lowered her chin, her expression hard as flint. True, this was only the first day of rehearsals, but they had less than two weeks before the wedding, and the way things were going this morning, they were going to need every minute. “Now speak the role as written, Gwen. Proceed.”

As Gwen labored onward, Cordelia sighed and glanced out the window. Father was waving his arms and barking orders like a white-bearded general, hovering about the two footmen laying scraps of weary scenery out upon the lawn to air. The scenery would need refurbishing before it would play before an audience of lords and ladies, and as for the exhausted costumes in the company’s trunks—oh, she’d worry about the costumes tomorrow.

“You say that’s the gentleman who’s to play my Weldon?” Lady Emma whispered beside Cordelia—where she’d been since the ten members of the company had dragged their groggy selves into the ballroom earlier that morning. “The tall one with the ginger hair?”

“That is Mr. Ralph Carter, an actor of the first order, my lady,” Cordelia said. “As for his hair, why, a wig will make the proper transformation.”

Unaware, Mr. Carter chose that moment to yawn as wide as a donkey, giving a languid scratch to the front of his breeches.

“Mr. Carter excels at portraying the most noble heroes, my lady,” Cordelia said quickly, trying to turn Emma away. “Though he is not yet quite awake, I believe you will be pleased by his final interpretation.”

But still Emma looked over her shoulder at the actor, purs
ing her lips with doubt and dismay. “Do you think him tall enough for a proper hero? He isn’t close to being as large as Weldon.”

“Recall that
The Triumph of Love
is meant to honor the spirit of your affections, Lady Emma, and not provide a literal depiction of them.” Cordelia glanced back at Gwen, who had forgotten her lines once again and was running a desperate finger along the script to try to find her place. “Consider how little we resemble one another, my lady, and yet I’m to play the heroine.”

“But both of you
are
beautiful,” the earl said, suddenly behind them, “and that is likeness enough.”

“Of course we are beautiful, Ross.” Emma grinned at her brother, cocking her head for him to kiss her cheek. “That is why you’ve come to speak to us first, before anyone else.”

“I came to you first, Emma, because I wanted to make certain you weren’t causing mischief.” He turned to Cordelia, not quite able to keep his face solemn. “Is she, Miss Lyon?”

“Yes, my lord.” Cordelia curtsied to hide her confusion. She had never before been at a loss for words, either her own or another playwright’s, but with Ross, she could think of absolutely nothing to say, and everything about what she was seeing: how twin dimples bracketed his smile, how his unruly hair was falling over his forehead, how he was watching her now as if there were a great secret that only they shared, which after last night in the orchard, they did.

Maybe that was what he meant by the mischief: not Emma’s, but hers, letting a nobleman she scarce knew kiss her until she’d been breathless with pleasure, breathless with longing that a woman in her position had no right to feel for a man born so much further above her….

“You can stand now, Cordelia,” Emma said, giggling. “My brother’s not the king, you know.”

“Oh, she knows,” he said, and to Cordelia’s surprise, he took her hand and raised her back up to her feet. His fingers
felt warm around hers, his right forefinger stained with purple-blue ink much like her own. “You don’t mistake me for His Majesty, do you, Miss Lyon?”

“Hardly, my lord,” she said, pulling her hand free. She took a deep breath, ordering herself to stop dithering and think straight. It was only one man, one kiss, not all of England sinking into the North Sea, and besides, she could hardly blame the moonlight now. “You are the Earl of Mayne, no more, no less.”

“Oh, but Ross
is
more, Cordelia!” Emma rested a proud hand on her brother’s shoulder. “He is very famous as a scholar and a renowned gentleman of science, and he’s written books and given papers to the Royal Navy
and
the Royal Society.”

“Do your books ever include the study of apples, my lord?” If he wanted to remind her of last night, well, then, she’d remind him right back, to prove how little effect it had had on her. “Or orchards?”

His reaction was quick, his smile almost a dare. “It would be a bold scholar who’d risk following Eve into the garden orchard, Miss Lyon, even one thirsting for knowledge.”

She narrowed her eyes, daring him back. “I suppose, my lord, it depends on how wickedly thirsty that scholar might be. Why, Eve might have other affairs pressing for her attention, and not be waiting in the orchard for him at all.”

“A fair and just assumption, Miss Lyon,” he said, the challenge in his smile making him seem less like an earl, less like a renowned scholar, and more dangerously like an ordinary man. “Though assumptions can be dangerous for scholars to make. For all we know, Eve might even have become more interested in stars than apples.”

“But apples are grounded in the earth, my lord,” she said, tapping her rolled script against her palm. “As such, apples are by nature more substantial and lasting than even the brightest stars in the sky.”

“Yet consider, Miss Lyon, how an apple led to Eve’s ruin,” he said. “Wouldn’t she do better for herself to turn toward the stars and the heavens?”

“Apples, Ross?” Emma frowned, suspicious, and looked from Ross to Cordelia and back again. “Orchards? Stars? How is it that Cordelia knows more than I? I thought you were studying waves.”

“I am.” He sighed like a schoolboy being caught out of class, and shook his tousled hair back from his forehead with a charming nonchalance—not, of course, that Cordelia was meant to notice. “In fact I should be writing now, and not dawdling here. On board the
Perseverance,
our lives were ruled by the watches, and not a moment was wasted. It’s a habit I am trying to maintain here, too.”

“I don’t mind your dawdling,” Cordelia said quickly—perhaps too quickly. “That is, now that you have agreed not to interfere in the play, you are welcome to remain and watch us rehearse. It is your right as our esteemed patron and benefactor.”

She swept her arm through the air, encompassing the rest of the company, which, she now noticed, had all stopped rehearsing to eavesdrop on her and the earl, and without any shame whatsoever. Even her father stood in the garden doorway, his ears practically flapping with interest as he watched to see what happened next.

And the earl, a pox on him, did not disappoint.

“I wish that I could stay, Miss Lyon, but I only came here now to return this to you.” He reached into the front of his coat and, with a conjurer’s flourish, pulled out the sparkling scarf she’d worn last night. “It must have slipped from your shoulders while we were, ah, conversing. I found it on the grass after you left me last night.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Her cheeks flaming, Cordelia grabbed the scarf and crumpled it into a tight ball, as if hiding it in her
hand could hide her embarrassment before the others, too. “Now if you can excuse us, my lord, we have much work to do here.”

“I’m sure you do, Miss Lyon, as do I in my library.” He was grinning at her as if he’d no intention of leaving, just as he had in the orchard before he’d taken her into his arms and whispered that folderol about the stars and the moonlight.

But the worst part for Cordelia was realizing that she didn’t really want him to go at all.

“It’s not only rehearsing our lines, my lord,” she said in a rush, trying to convince herself as much as him. “I must still refine the play as a whole. Then we must see to the costumes, and the sets, and—”

“And I would not dream of stopping you, Miss Lyon, not for even a second. As you reminded me yesterday, a patron must know when to keep his own counsel and leave the artists to their creations. Good day, and much speed with your work.” He bowed, solemn again. “Emma, I will join you later at tea.”

“Yes, yes, back to our work.” Briskly Cordelia turned away, refusing to let him think she’d be mooning after him when he left. She threw the incriminating scarf into her workbasket and once again unrolled her master script. “I cannot believe we’ve accomplished so little this morning!”

“You like my brother, don’t you?” Emma asked, her arms folded across her chest and her head tilted at a thoughtful angle. “And he likes you in return. I did not think so at first, but now, after I see how you look at one another—”

“We look at one another with our eyes, Lady Emma,” Cordelia said as evenly as she could. “Which is how it is usually done.”

“Not with my brother, it isn’t,” Emma said. “The most beautiful woman in creation could walk through the door before him, and he would be too caught up in his own thoughts to notice her. I have seen it happen, and it is dreadful to watch.”

“I can only imagine, my lady,” Cordelia said. “Now if you please, we—”

“No, no, you must hear me.” Emma gave an imperious little twist of her hand. “You see, my brother’s not like that with you, Cordelia. You are different to him. He sees you, and he judges what he sees to be most agreeable.”

Again Cordelia felt her cheeks growing warm—she who never blushed! “Forgive me, my lady, but perhaps you are seeing things, as well, things that do not exist.”

She turned back to the other players, clapping her hands for their attention as she hurried to the front of the ballroom. “Now come, Gwen, Robert! Take your places, if you will!”

But Gwen was already in her place at center stage, her mouth twisted into the knowing half smile that audiences loved.

“Oh, aye, you know how to say ‘I will,’ don’t you, Cordelia?” she said with a broad wink. “I will, I do, I did, and all with that handsome lord what’s our patron.”

Cordelia raised her chin. “The proper lines, Gwen, if you please.”

Gwen swung her hips suggestively, and one of the other actresses tittered with amusement. “The lines sound proper enough for the goddess o’ love to me, sweets, and if you want—”

“That’s enough, Gwen,” Alfred said, his voice deceptively mild. “Quite, quite enough.”

“’Twas only sport, Alfred,” protested Gwen. “You saw her with the lord, licking up cream like a kitten, and if she—”

“I told you that was enough, Gwen,” he repeated. “If you devoted half the time to learning your part as you do to gossip, then the entire company would benefit. A word with you alone, Cordelia, if you please.”

She suspected what he’d say, and she didn’t want to hear it. “Can’t we speak later, Father, when—”

“Now, daughter,” he said, pointing to the garden door. “No more dallying.”

She had no choice but to join him, scurrying out the door to the stone garden steps. “We don’t have nearly enough time for staging an original production like this, Father, and now you—”

“Oh, hush, Cordelia,” Alfred said, his white eyebrows coming together into a fierce thatch. “Cease being so preposterous. This production is no more original than a donkey’s backside. You’ve cobbled together the entire Trojan War for an alderman’s dinner in less time than you’ll have for one silly wedding play.”

“The Trojan War was easy,” she said, squinting up into the sun. How like her father to choose this place to stand, with the sun around his head like a halo! “This play is fashioned on real people, which makes it much more difficult, and—”

“It’s not the real people that concern me,” Alfred said, interrupting again. “It’s one real gentleman in particular. What exactly transpired last evening between you and the scholarly earl, eh?”

“An apology.” She wished she didn’t sound so defensive. “I apologized to save the play for the company, just as you told me to do.”

He didn’t answer at first. Instead he held the silence for an excruciatingly long moment, his hands folded across his chest and the birds singing in the garden.

Finally he sighed. “Upon my word, Cordelia. I’ve always judged you to be an actress of the first water, but that—that was appalling.”

“It was the truth!”

“A ragtag scrap of truth, perhaps, but nothing more. The rest was there in His Lordship’s face for us all to see, writ clear as morning. And as for your own—ah, daughter, if our Gwenny could read it, then so could a blind man.”

She flushed but kept her head high and tried to forget the star-crossed lovers. “It—it was the moonlight. Nothing of any significance happened, I swear.”

Alfred grunted, unconvinced. “It is my own fault, I suppose, for teasing you about the man. You never could resist a challenge, Cordelia, could you?”

“But I tell you, Father, His Lordship means nothing to me!”

“You know he won’t marry you.” This rare bluntness cut, sharp and keen. “Don’t you dare delude yourself that he will. You will be an amusement, nothing more. That is the way it is with fine noblemen and theater folk like us, and why we do better to keep with our own kind.”