The Midnight Rose (6 page)

“I have to be careful, yes,” Rebecca answered, embarrassed by the woman’s well-meaning scrutiny.

“As you wish, but you’d be doing a lot better with a proper square meal inside of you. Shall I bring supper up to your room?”

“That would be very kind, thank you.”

As the housekeeper left, Rebecca grimaced at Mrs. Trevathan’s instinctive knowledge of her eating habits. There was no denying that she watched everything she ate, but what could she do? Her career depended on her slim figure.

She left the drawing room and walked into the grand hall to mount the wide staircase up to her room. Pausing, she looked up at the magnificent dome above her, the small panes of glass set into the edges of it sending shards of light onto the marble floor beneath her feet.

“Good evening.”

Rebecca jumped at the sound of a deep male voice and turned around. She stared at the man standing by the front door, dressed in an ancient tweed jacket and threadbare cords tucked into a pair of wellingtons. His wiry, unkempt hair was graying and needed a decent cut.

“Hello,” she replied uncertainly.

“I’m Anthony, and you are . . . ?”

“Rebecca, Rebecca Bradley.”

“Oh.” His eyes registered a flicker of recognition. “The American film star. They tell me you’re very famous, but I’m afraid I’ve never heard of you. Films really aren’t my thing. Sorry.” He shrugged.

“Please don’t apologize, there’s no reason why you should have heard of me.”

“No. Anyway, I must be off now.” The man shifted from foot to foot, obviously uncomfortable. “I’ve got work to do outside before the light fades.” He nodded at her briefly before disappearing out of the front door.

Rebecca crossed the hall and made her way up the stairs, admiring the oil paintings of the generations of Astburys which covered the wall. Mrs. Trevathan appeared on the top landing with a tray and followed Rebecca into her room.

“There we are, dear; I’ve found you some soup and some fresh crusty bread and butter. Oh, and I gave you a slice of my Bakewell tart too, with custard,” she added, removing the bowl shielding the pudding with a flourish.

“Thank you.”

“Now, anything else you need?”

“No. Thank you. This really is the most beautiful house, isn’t it?”

“It is, dear, it is. And you don’t know the sacrifices that have been made to keep it either.” Mrs. Trevathan sighed softly.

“I can only imagine. By the way, I met the gardener downstairs,” Rebecca added.

“Gardener?” Mrs. Trevathan raised an eyebrow. “Downstairs,
inside
the house?”

“Yes.”

“Well, we have a chap who comes in once a week to mow the lawns. Maybe he was looking for his lordship. Right, I’ll let you eat your supper in peace. What time would you like your breakfast tomorrow morning?”

“I don’t really eat breakfast, but fruit juice and yogurt would be great.”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do.” Mrs. Trevathan sniffed with obvious disapproval of Rebecca’s eating habits as she walked toward the door, but turned to smile comfortingly at the younger woman as she made her exit. “Good night, my dear. Sleep well.”

“Good night.”

Rebecca ate the flavorsome leek-and-potato soup and all of the crusty bread smothered thickly with butter. Despite herself, she was still hungry, so she tried a small spoonful of the strange dessert Mrs. Trevathan had left for her. Finding it delicious, she finished that as
well, then threw herself guiltily on the bed, knowing she mustn’t make a habit of devouring stodgy English food, however tasty.

When her stomach had settled, she rolled off the bed and reached for her handbag. Tentatively pulling out her cell phone, she switched it on. She pressed the button to retrieve her messages and put the phone to her ear. It could not connect, and when she checked the screen, she saw there was no signal. Taking out her iPad, she saw that there were no available networks on that either.

A glimmer of a smile appeared on her lips. This morning she had wished to be someplace where no one could find her or make contact with her, and it seemed that for tonight, at least, this was the case. She lay back and looked out of the window at the approaching dusk, the sun slowly disappearing below the horizon on the moors beyond the garden. And realized then that all she could hear was silence.

Picking up her script from the side table, Rebecca began to read through it. She was playing Lady Elizabeth Sayers, the beautiful young daughter of the house. The year was 1922 and the Jazz Age was in full swing. Her father was determined to marry her off to a neighboring landowner, but Elizabeth had very different ideas. The film focused on the British aristocracy in a changing world, as women took tentative steps toward emancipation and the working classes no longer accepted their subordination to the aristocracy. Elizabeth fell in love with an unsuitable poet, Lawrence, whom she had met through a fast bohemian set in London. The choice she faced between disgracing her parents and following her heart was an old story. Yet, with Hugo Manners’s witty but moving script, it was a gem of a part.

As always, the filming schedule did not start at the beginning of the story and Rebecca was to shoot her first scene in a day’s time with James Waugh, who was playing her improper poet. It was to be filmed out in the garden and included a passionate kiss. Rebecca sighed. No matter how professional she was as an actress, or how many times she had been seduced on camera, she always dreaded filming love scenes with costars she hardly knew.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of movement in the garden below her. Moving over to the window, she saw the gardener sitting down on a bench. Even from here, she felt there was something lonely about him, something sad. Rebecca watched as he sat, still like a statue, staring ahead into the descending dusk.

After having a bath, Rebecca climbed beneath the scratchy starched
white sheets. As she lay there, going over her lines and practicing the clipped British accent of the 1920s, she realized how tonight it felt as if she were actually living in the world of the film script. So little seemed to have changed in this house since those times, it was almost unsettling.

Seeing it was past ten o’clock now, but convinced she wouldn’t fall asleep due to the jet lag, Rebecca reached to switch off the light. To her surprise, she slept soundly through the night, only waking when Mrs. Trevathan appeared at eight the next morning with a breakfast tray.

At ten o’clock, she went downstairs and found her way to Wardrobe for her costume fitting. Jean, the Scottish costume designer, eyed her and said, “Darling, you were made for this period. You even have an old-fashioned face. And . . . I have a surprise for you.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I was speaking to the housekeeper here yesterday, and she told me that there’s a large collection of vintage 1920s gowns upstairs in one of the bedrooms. Apparently, they were worn by a long-dead relative of the current Lord Astbury and have remained untouched over the years. I asked if I could take a look, obviously out of pure personal interest, and, of course”—she winked at Rebecca—“to see if there was anything suitable that would fit you. It would be wonderful to use them in the film.”

“It would,” Rebecca agreed.

“And”—with a flourish, Jean pulled a silk drape from a clothes rail—“just take a look at these.”

Rebecca gasped as a row of exquisite gowns was revealed. “Wow,” she breathed. “They’re amazing.”

“And perfectly preserved. You’d never know they were ninety years old,” Jean added. “A lot of them are by the top French designers of the day, like Lanvin, and Vionnet. What a treasure trove,” Jean said as they both went through the rails, picking out and admiring the fabulous dresses. “At auction they’d go for a fortune. I just can’t wait to try them on you and see if they fit. From your measurements, they definitely should. It seems the original owner of all these was almost identical in shape and size to you.”

“But will I be allowed to wear them, even if they do fit?” asked Rebecca.

“Who knows? The housekeeper sounded very doubtful and said she’d have to ask Lord Astbury. But the first thing to do is to try them
on you and take it from there. Now”—Jean pulled a dress off the rail—“how about this one for your first scene with James Waugh tomorrow?”

Ten minutes later, Rebecca was staring at herself in the mirror. Not since her Juilliard days had she worn period costume; her parts in Hollywood had always been those of young modern women, more often in jeans and T-shirts than not. The Lanvin dress she was standing in was made from silk, overlaid with chiffon and embroidered with delicate hand-sewn beading. The handkerchief hemline floated gently around her ankles as she moved.

“Right, even if I have to go down on my knees and beg, I’m going to persuade Lord Astbury to let me hire some of these from him,” said Jean firmly. “Let’s try the next one on.”

After Rebecca had paraded in a fabulous array of gowns, each one fitting her perfectly, Jean grinned at her. “Okay, I think you’re done. I’ll speak to the housekeeper as soon as I can. Darling, you’re going to look like a dream,” she commented as she helped Rebecca remove the last gown. “And once Hair and Makeup have sorted you out, you’ll be a real 1920s beauty!” She gave Rebecca a conspiratorial wink. “They’re just down the corridor on the right.”

“I think I need a GPS in this house,” Rebecca said, smiling, as she headed to the door. “I keep getting lost.”

She left Wardrobe and walked down the corridor until she found Hair and Makeup. Sitting down in a chair in front of the mirror, one of the hairstylists took a shiny tendril of Rebecca’s thick, dark locks in her hands.

“How are you feeling about having it cut and dyed tomorrow?” she asked.

This had been a bone of contention with her agent, Victor, when the contract had come through; the stipulation was that Rebecca’s long hair needed to be cut into a 1920s bob and dyed blond to match the color of the actress playing her mother.

“Okay, I suppose.” Rebecca shrugged. “It’ll grow back, won’t it?”

“Of course it will. And when the shoot is over, we can easily dye it back to your original color. It’s good to see you’re not being precious about it,” the hairstylist said approvingly. “So many actresses are. Besides, you might find you like the style; you have the perfect elfin features to go with a bob.”

“And maybe nobody will recognize me anymore as a blonde either,” mused Rebecca.

“Sadly, I don’t think that’s going to help you,” interjected the makeup artist, coming over to take a seat opposite Rebecca. “That face of yours will always give you away. So, what is Jack Heyward like in person? He’s such a god on the screen. Does he look like that first thing in the morning?” she teased.

Rebecca thought about it. “He does look kind of cute in the morning.”

“I bet he does.” The girl grinned. “I’m sure you can’t believe you’re actually going to marry him.”

“You know what? You’re right, I
can’t
believe it. I’ll see you guys bright and early tomorrow for the chop!” Smiling to cover the irony of her words, Rebecca stood up and gave them both a wave before she left the room. She checked her watch and saw that it was only three o’clock, which meant that she had two hours before her appointment with the voice coach.

One of the dressers had told her earlier that it was apparently possible to get a cell phone signal if you walked in the direction of the moors, so she ran upstairs to get her phone. Shooting had already started in the drawing room, and as she slipped out through the French doors in the dining room that led to the terrace further along, her stomach turned over at the thought that it would be
her
in front of the cameras tomorrow.

Walking down the crumbling stone steps and into the garden, Rebecca marched at a brisk pace across it. Sitting down on the bench where she’d spied the gardener yesterday, she tried her cell phone, which was oscillating between one bar and none.

“Damn!” she said as yet again her voice mail refused to connect.

“Everything all right?”

Rebecca started at the voice and looked toward the rose beds where she saw the gardener she’d met last night holding a pair of pruning shears.

“Yes, I’m okay, thanks. I just can’t get a signal on my cell.”

“Sorry. Dreadful coverage we have here.”

“Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to be cut off. Actually, I’m rather enjoying it,” she confided. “Do you like working here?” she asked him politely.

He gave her an odd look, then nodded. “I’ve never thought about it like that, but I suppose I do. I can’t imagine being anywhere else, anyway.”

“It must be a gardener’s dream here. Those roses are magnificent,
such beautiful colors, especially the one you’re pruning. It’s such a deep velvety purple, it’s almost black.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “it’s named the Midnight Rose and it’s rather a mysterious plant. It’s been here as long as I have and should have died many years ago. Yet, every year without fail, it blooms as though it’s just been planted.”

“All I have in my apartment are some indoor potted plants.”

“You like gardening, do you?”

“When I was growing up, I used to have my own small patch in my parents’ garden. I used to feel it was a comforting place.”

“There’s certainly something about exerting control over the land that helps pick away frustrations,” the gardener said, nodding in agreement. “How are you finding it here after the States?”

“It’s completely different from anywhere I’ve ever been before, but I just had the best night’s sleep I’ve had in years. It’s so peaceful here. But they’re moving me to a hotel later today. I don’t think Lord Astbury wants houseguests. To be honest,” Rebecca confessed, “I wish I could stay. I feel safe here.”

“Well, you never know, Lord Astbury might change his mind. By the way”—he indicated her cell phone—“if you ask Mrs. Trevathan, you may be able to use the landline in his study.”

“Okay, thanks, I will,” said Rebecca, standing up. “See you around.”

“Here”—the gardener clipped off a single stem of a perfect Midnight Rose—“something pretty to look at in your room. The smell is quite beautiful.”