Authors: Beth Trissel
Julia started to explain that
she hadn’t.
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Wentworth insisted.
“
The
girl’s
English
.
They’re
natural Shakespearian
actors
.
”
Jon sat with his mouth
slightly ajar
.
“I’m gonna need something stronger than lemonade.”
“B
randy
for me
.”
Will lowered his head in his hands.
Waving her handkerchief at them, his grandmother chided,
“
Oh, s
top
moaning over trifles
.
Turn your minds to
scout
ing
out
a
suitable
fellow for the role of
Laertes.
A man
who can fence
, mind you
.
”
Jon jerked
his head at her and
Will lurched
up
right
in his chair
. “We’re doing the sword fight?”
Julia simply stared as the
dogged
woman wore on.
“A
best of
fr
om
Hamlet
is a poor show without
that
final scene
.
Why, it’s
magnificent
.
You fence quite well
, William
.
How difficult can it b
e to locate some other person?
He doesn’t have to excel
.
Laertes
loses
.
”
Will threw his hands up
.
“A blunderer with a sword can do more harm than an expert and you demand real blades.”
“
Certainly
.
None of that
theatrical r
ubbish.
Gentlemen used to handle swords
all the time
and weren’t forever in
j
uring themselves.
”
“That was then.”
She ignored him.
“
I’ll play the Queen, of course.”
“Lady Hamlet
di
es,” Will said dryly
.
“So
dramatically.
It will be my farewell performance.”
“I thought that
was two years ago in
Macbeth
?”
“An encore, then.
My finest hour
, like Julius Caesar’s
.
”
“
He also fell
,
”
Will pointed out.
“With such bravery.
”
She
sipped her lemonade,
the gleam of reminiscence in her watery blue gaze.
Jon stole
from the room with a backward glance at Will
as if to say, ‘what else can we do?’
Julia wanted to edge
slowly
away
but didn’t dare.
Seemingly lost in thought,
Mrs.
Wentworth
made no
remark on
Jon’s
absence
.
“We shall
have period costumes appropriate to the history of this
house
,
e
arly nineteenth century w
hen Cole lived.
The glory days.
Now there was nobility
for you, Will
iam
.
A true gentleman wouldn’t argue
with his poor grandmother over her dying wish.”
In that moment
,
Will
looked
very
like
the
darkly
brooding Hamlet
.
“We’ll do the
play, Ma’am
, and
the ball
, just as you wish
.
But bear in mind that Midsummer’s E
ve 1806 is the
very
night Cole was cut down.”
Dear God
.
So it was
.
Julia
felt as though a fist had been driven into her
stomach
.
“
The night
will be a tribute to Cole
,
too,” Mrs.
Wentworth
proclaimed
,
l
ifting
her nearly empty glass
in a
sort of
toast.
“I wish we could have a horse in the hall. It would add such a fine touch to the play.”
“Why stop with one?”
Will
said
in his sarcastic tone
.
B
ut Julia scarcely heard him.
L
ightheadedness assailed
her
and she gripped the sides of her
chair.
Will shifted
his exasperated focus
from his eccentric
relation to her
.
“Head down between your knee
s!”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
His grandmother glanced around in
marked
surprise as he
leapt
up
from his seat
and ducked behind her
.
Gripping the back of Julia’s
neck, he
gently
but firmly
pushed her head
down
toward her lap.
“Easy now.”
But it did no good.
The heavens were falling and
taking
her with
them. The last words she caught
as she swirled into
black
ness were Mrs.
Wentworth
’s.
“Heat’s gott
en to the
poor
girl, I don’t doubt.
These English ar
en’t used to our Virginia sun.
Bes
t wear a hat in the garden, Miss
.
You
’ll drop
out there
for sure
.”
At first
it seemed
as if
Julia had
tumbled dow
n a rabbit hole,
then she
floated in a timeless fog
as though suspended in space
.
N
ot a
bad place to be, a
nd she sensed she’d been here before.
Long before.
Was she dreaming of that time, or had she ente
red so
me
alternate
reality
?
“Jules...”
The s
oft summons rippled through her
muzzy
min
d like watered silk
.
She wasn’t even certain she’d
heard the intimate utterance, or just wished it a
s she had countless times
before
.
“Jules.”
Her heart swelled with the flooding hope that her most ardent wish wouldn’t float back
to her empty
.
“Cole
.
”
Hi
s name escaped her in a
breath
less sigh
.
“I’m here.”
“Where?”
she pleaded
, lost in misted suspension
.
“Seek me,
”
he prompted
in
his
velvet voice
.
The haze
cleared and
Julia found herself back in the
moonlit garden where she’d las
t seen Cole, the sweetness of lilies
wafting on the mild night
air.
She searched
eagerly
for
him through silvered shadows
like a phantom.
“Above you, my darling.”
She looked
up
to find
Cole gazing down at her from the back of
a splendid
horse,
the thorou
ghbred in the portrait of him.
Tall, majestic, with chocolate-brown eyes and dark mane, the stallion mirrored his master.
“Dearest Jules
.”
Cole bent in the saddle reaching
out white gloved fingers
.
Julia
clasped his hand
, and i
n one swift motion he pulled her up to sit in front of him
, her legs to one side of the horse
.
H
e held the reins in one hand, circling
the other ar
ound her waist.
The
gown she still wore sp
illed
blue muslin
over them both
.
She felt supremely happy, cradled between the stallion’s vibrant strength and Cole’s.
“
Manney
.
His name is
Manney
,
from the mandrake root
,
” she said
slowly
, remembering th
e long lost
title.
“
Fast and deadly, t
he swiftest
horse in the county.”
“In the state
,” Cole said
.
“Let’s ride.”
H
e nudged
Ma
nney
in the side and they bounded
away
as if on wings
. The thoroughbred’s long legs flew in a blur through the garden.
“Hold on,” Cole
said with a chuckle
, and drew her tightly against him.
Reining
Manny
off the pebbled paths, he urged him over
boxwood
hedges
,
soaring into the scented night.
Circular herb
beds fell away beneath his
hooves. J
ulia inhaled
the
pungent tang of dill and sage.
She loosed a squeal
in anticipation
––
laughing as
they
sprang over the gate in t
he sinuous brick wall.
Manney
touched down
on
the springy turf
and
pound
ed
away through the
field of new mown hay.
The quintessential fragrance of summer filled
her
nose w
hile breezes whipped her hair.
She was with Cole, like bef
ore, on a wild midn
ight ride,
w
onderful, exhilarating. Let it go on and on gilded with rapture
...
“Jules,
this is stolen time,”
he
said, as if reading her mind
.
His husky words cut through
her
like
blackness blotting
out
the glittery stars.
“No.
Don’t stop
!”
“I must. We went no further than these fields.
”
She strove to remember
.
He r
eined in
Manney
and was still.
They bre
athed together, man, woman,
and
the rising, falling flanks of the horse.
“We’ve done this before,
haven’t we?
” she whispered.
“Yes.”
Cole’s vo
ice was thick with knowledge.
“
Our time is taken from
what was,
like shards of glass pieced toge
ther to form a part of the whole
.
”
Sinking
heavily against him,
she strained every sense
to understand. “I can’t stay, can I?”