Terri Brisbin (18 page)

The earl snorted. “I rather thought truth was more important.”

“Indeed, my lord.” She smiled with extra sweetness. “But then what else is interpretation but truth in moderation?”

“Indeed, Miss Lyon.” He frowned as he sorted this out, and Cordelia turned back to Emma before he did. She hadn’t planned to play her trump card unless she needed it, but the earl was forcing her hand. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and no booking for the company, either, and no way to pay their bills for another four weeks.

Now she leaned toward the girl, the teacup still balanced in her fingers. “But as much as His Lordship may wish to deepen the mystery, my lady, I cannot keep the secret from you any longer. Your brother is a most generous gentleman, my lady, and he has arranged with my father for the Lyon Company to give a special command performance in honor of you and your upcoming wedding, with every line we speak tailored to celebrate the special love and respect between you and your bridegroom.”

There, she’d done it now. Either the company would be beginning rehearsals tomorrow here at Howland Hall, or she’d be feeling that footman’s hand on her back as he shoved her down the steps.

She didn’t dare look at the earl.

Not that Lady Emma noticed. “For me, Ross?” The girl’s voice rose to a squeak of delight as she clasped her hands together. “Oh, Ross, you would make such a wonderful gift to me? A play with me as the heroine and dear, darling Weldon as my hero, here at home for all our friends to watch?”

The earl held up his hands. “Now, now, Emma,” he cautioned. “Don’t become overwrought by something as foolish as this.”

“But a play about
me!
” She hopped from her chair and bounded around the table to her brother, throwing her arms around his neck in a death-lock hug. “Oh, Ross, this is too, too perfect! How wicked of me never to credit you for conceiving such a gift!”

The earl tried to shift free of her embrace, his unruly hair now even more rumpled. “It’s not settled, Emma. It’s most likely not even feasible, given there’s so little time before the wedding.”

“We’ve two weeks, my lord,” Cordelia said. “With hard work and rehearsing, that’s more than enough to concoct an entertainment to delight Her Ladyship.”

“Oh, Ross, did you hear that?” Emma was already reeling with delight, without a single word of rehearsal. “Miss Lyon and her people will concoct for me!”

“And such a delicious concoction it will be, my lady!” Cordelia rose to sweep her hands before her, as if shaping the concoction from the very air. “We will delight you, my lady, I promise. We will amaze you! The only trick will be finding lodging for the company on such short notice, and with—”

“But that is no problem at all,” Emma said. “This house will be filled with wedding guests, to be sure, but there is no one at present living in the gatehouse, and Cook is clever enough to feed a few extra mouths at meals.”

“You are too, too kind, my lady.” Cordelia curtsied, trying to sound grateful instead of gleeful. She’d seen the gatehouse from her walk up the driveway, and she couldn’t remember the last time the company had had such fine lodgings—so fine, in fact, that she’d let the question of their fee slide for now. “Our company is known for its talent, not its size. The gatehouse will do most admirably.”

Emma nodded, all eagerness. “I fear the ballroom must pass for your theater, Miss Lyon. Will that do for rehearsing, too?”

“Now hold, Emma, hold right there!” At last the earl twisted free of his sister’s fervent embrace. “I’ve been home not even a day, and here you are, turning our home into a playhouse full of rascally gypsy actors!”

Cordelia gasped with indignation, folding her arms over her chest. “Forgive me, my lord, but we are a company of professional thespians,” she declared, her head high and the
plume on her hat quivering. “We are not rascally gypsies, not at all, and if that is how you judge us, why, then I—”

“You cannot change your mind and leave, Miss Lyon,” Emma cried, frantic with disappointment. “You
cannot!
Ross, this was going to be the most perfect present you’ve ever given to me, and now you’re taking it away by insulting poor Miss Lyon!”

The earl sighed, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair with the irritation of a man who knows he is losing.

“I am not insulting her, Emma,” he said with wounded patience, “nor am I taking away anything I’ve given to you. I want you to be happy, Emma, that is all, and I want to do what is right and best for you.”

But instead of looking at her brother, Emma frowned down at a greasy butter spot on the cuff of her sleeve, rubbing at it with her thumb.

“Then you will let me have my wedding play, Ross?” she said, wheedling. “You will make me happy with this best possible present from you?”

The earl grumbled without answering, his fingers still drumming away on the carved mahogany.

“We’ll keep quite from your path, my lord,” Cordelia said, lowering her voice. She was certain he’d agree now—Lady Emma had taken care of that—and she could afford to be conciliatory, even soothing. “And I swear by Shakespeare’s own grave that not so much as a single teaspoon will go missing while we’re with you.”

He didn’t smile, and neither did she. “How reassuring, Miss Lyon.”

How arrogant, my lord,
Cordelia thought. “It is meant to be reassuring, my lord. You’ll scarce know we’re here. Until, that is, on the night of the grand, glorious performance, when you may claim all the credit for your inspired gift.”

“Then you
are
giving me my own wedding play, Ross,” Emma said, bending down to kiss him on the forehead. “My
own dear, dear brother! Can you ever know how happy this will make me?”

“I only hope you’ll feel the same when the last curtain falls.” He sighed as she kissed him again, and for a long, surprising moment his doleful gaze met Cordelia’s over Emma’s golden blond curls. She looked away quickly, but not before she felt her cheeks flush.

He really was quite handsome. What a pity he’d turned out to be such a pompous, self-righteous prig in the bargain.

“I know it will be perfect, Ross,” Emma said fervently. “And I vow I’ll never forget this.”

His attention swung back to find Cordelia, the challenge in his eyes unmistakable.

“So help me,” he said, “neither shall I.”

W
ith a wordless growl, Ross tore the page from his journal, crumpled the paper into a tight ball and hurled it across the room at the grate. It wasn’t the first page to suffer this fate today. The parquet floor of his library was littered with his rejected efforts, a snowy bank of misguided thoughts and clumsy reasoning.

He shoved his chair back from his desk and stalked to the open door that led to the gardens, standing there with his hands clasped in frustration behind his back. The week after Emma’s wedding, he must return to London to present the first paper of his findings on the relationships of wind and tide in the Southern Pacific trade currents. The Lords of the Admiralty were fierce, practical men, and they were expecting hard facts, irrefutable answers to justify Ross’s place on board the
Perseverance.
Soon after that, he’d have to share his work with the Royal Society, and his friends among the scientific men who met at Slaughter’s Coffee House in St. Martin’s Lane were eager to hear his conclusions, too.

So here Ross sat now, surrounded by his books and journals and bushels of notes from the voyage, supported with letters from friends and academic admirers, in the comfortable study he’d designed for himself to be conducive to the deep
est concentration and the brightest daylight. He’d even had a special long, lead-lined tub constructed to hold water, with a large bellows at one end to mimic the effect of the wind over waves. It was an absolute embarrassment of scientific inspiration, and yet he was as unable to write anything worthy as the sorriest dunce in a dame school.

He groaned and swore out loud, not caring who heard. Where was his much-vaunted concentration? He’d just spent three years at sea living and working in a cabin so small that he could touch each bulkhead with his hands outstretched. He had been surrounded by the unending din of shouting sailors and stomping marines, the roar of the waves and the creaking of the timbers of the ship. Yet as the seamen said, he had been happy as a clam.

How in blazes could he have been so productive then, and now produce nothing?

His frown darkened as he looked across the gardens to the north wing, which housed the hall’s ballroom. There was his distraction, the reason why he could not think. How had he possibly allowed a pack of ne’er-do-well actors to invade his home? He hadn’t seen them yet—he’d made sure to keep from their path, leaving their arrangement to his servants—but he still
sensed
their presence. How could he make meaningful calculations and conclusions based on purest facts when he must share his roof with people whose entire lives were crafted from deception and fiction?

He heard a woman’s laugh ripple across to him through the open windows. Laughter that frivolous must belong to Cordelia Lyon, the most impetuous, conniving creature he’d ever met. No wonder she’d bewitched his sheltered little sister. Emma should never have crossed paths with a woman like that, and Ross thought again of how different they had looked standing side by side: his small, rosy, round-faced sister with her gold-blond hair—innocence itself!—contrasted to Cordelia Lyon, the sort of brazen Amazon accustomed to having every male eye on her.

Even he’d had difficulty looking away. Her skin was ivory pale, her hair deep mahogany, her eyes the same deep midnight as her father’s, and full of flash and fire and trickery, too. The moment she’d swept into his breakfast room yesterday morning, he’d known she couldn’t possibly be a lady, and it hadn’t been just that tawdry silver-laced habit. Some sort of wild fairy queen, perhaps, but never, ever an English lady.

A lighter, more girlish laugh: Emma’s. What was she doing there, anyway, in the middle of those people? It was bad enough that they were rehearsing in his ballroom, but his sister didn’t need to be there, too, learning all manner of wickedness from them.

He threw open the door and marched through the garden, the shortest route to the ballroom. Cordelia Lyon might have caught him by surprise yesterday, quoting some sort of commitment that he’d supposedly given to her father at the Tawny Buck, but enough was enough. He wasn’t fuddled now. His thoughts were clear as a crystal. He’d send them all packing in their gypsy wagon this afternoon, before they caused any more havoc in his household.

Muttering with outrage, he climbed up the steps to the ballroom and flung open the door. To his bewilderment, the enormous room was almost empty, the pier glasses and chandeliers still shrouded in dust cloths and the little white side chairs pushed into one corner.

And instead of the hooting, raucous pack of actors he’d expected, only his sister and Cordelia Lyon were there, sitting at the far end of the room in side-by-side armchairs. Each young woman was curled comfortably in her chair, her stocking feet tucked under her skirts and her slippers dropped on the floor before her.

“Ross!” Emma slid from her chair and scurried toward Ross in her stocking feet. “You will not believe how much progress Cordelia and I have made on my play this morning!”

“I’m glad to hear that at least one of us has accomplished something.” He shifted his frown to her feet. “Why are you not wearing your shoes? We’re not in Tahiti, you know.”

Emma swatted at his arm. “Oh, Ross, don’t be so stuffy. If you had enjoyed Tahiti, the way the sailors did, instead of merely studying it, then you wouldn’t even be noticing my feet.”

“Who has spoken to you of Tahiti, Emma?” He was going to miss his little sister once she wed, but he was also looking forward to handing his responsibility for her over to Sir Weldon. “That’s hardly a fit topic for a young lady. What could you know of sailors’ ways?”

“Oh, I have heard this and that.” She shrugged, admitting nothing. “Everyone has. Young ladies are not by definition deaf, you know. But once you hear what Cordelia and I have been—”

“‘Cordelia’?” He glanced back at the other woman, writing away like a governess in a book propped in her lap. “Don’t become too familiar, Emma.”

Emma rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. “I can call her the Queen of Sheba if I please, Ross, and no lasting harm will come from it. Now come, listen to what she has written so far.”

“Why is she writing it?” He once again looked back at Cordelia Lyon. It was an observation, nothing more, a scientific study, as if she were a rare lizard or palm tree.

He noted that Miss Lyon wore a white muslin gown similar to Emma’s, except that the hem of hers was bordered with a deep band of red, black and gold Grecian-style embroidery. Her dark chestnut hair was pulled loosely back from her face with a narrow red ribbon and drawn into a careless knot at her nape, with loose tendrils curling over her brow and around her cheeks. Today she struck him as less like a gypsy queen than some ancient Sybil or female scribe, and he envied her her concentration—even if what she was scribbling was most likely the worst kind of drivel.

He cleared his throat, hoping he hadn’t been staring at Cordelia—that is,
observing
her—so long that Emma noticed. “I thought her father was the playwright.”

“He is,” Emma said, “and a most esteemed one, too.”

“Then why isn’t he here? That was our, ah, agreement.” Neither Lyon had mentioned a fee as yet. God only knows how much this would finally cost him, but he should at least get the best value for his money. “Why is
she
doing the writing?”

“Because it is a wedding play,” Emma explained with the kind of simplification usually reserved for the elderly. “
My
wedding play. Cordelia wants to incorporate as much of my courtship with Weldon into the play as she can. She thought I’d feel more at ease telling things about Weldon to her rather than to her father, which of course I would. Sharing our female sympathy, she calls it.”

Ross could think of a few other, better words for it. Most likely the old man was still too inebriated this morning to write so much as his name, and his daughter was covering for him.

“Come with me, Ross, and listen to what she’s written so far.” Emma slipped her hand into the crook of his arm, looking up at him with the same wide-eyed beseeching that she’d used with him since she’d been little. “Please. You have gone around the world and back. You can go this little bit farther for me.”

“For you.” He grumbled. Here he’d been ready to take action against the players, and now they’d confounded him by not being where they were supposed to be, disobliging him so he couldn’t have them tossed out and leaving him with this vague, uncharacteristic discontent swirling around inside his head. It was completely illogical, and illogic went cross to every fiber of his being. “Why else have I stumbled into this mare’s nest than for your sake, Emma?”

“It is not a mare’s nest, and you are far too surefooted to stumble into anything.” Emma led him forward, refusing to let him drag his feet any longer. “And I hope you will man
age to be agreeable to Cordelia, Ross. I know Miss Lyon is not half so fascinating as your musty old specimens, but it will not injure you to smile at a young woman. At least not fatally.”

“Good day, my lord.” Cordelia rose and swept Ross a curtsy grand enough for His Majesty himself. Everything she did seemed to be overdone like that, and gave Ross the uneasy suspicion she might be mocking him.

“Good day, Miss Lyon.” His bow was as awkward and stiff as her curtsy had been graceful. “My sister tells me you are writing the play.”

“Yes, my lord,” she said. “Lady Emma is offering me every assistance in my composition. No one could inspire me more.”

She smiled, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to smile back. Sun slanted in from the window across her face, and he was surprised to realize she wore no paint, the way all actresses were supposed to. She was also younger than he’d first guessed, likely not much older than Emma, her skin as fresh and clear as if she, too, lived in the country and not in the dank, unhealthy disrepute of the theaters he’d seen in London.

He cleared his throat. “I, ah, I thought your father was writing the play. That is, I thought he was your company’s playwright.”

Her smile seemed to become more determined, less charming. “For a classical drama or high tragedy, yes, my father would write the play. But when a lighter touch is required for a play such as this, then I am the preferred author.”

“Aren’t you too young for such a responsibility?” he asked. “I am aware of only a few—a very few—female authoresses, and they are all ladies of, ah, of more years and experience than you.”

“Talent knows neither age nor sex, my lord,” she said, her words clipped with resolve. “And I am certain you will feel neither robbed nor cheated by the result.”

“I didn’t say that, Miss Lyon,” Ross said, but in so many
words he had, and he knew it. “That is, I only wish the best for my sister.”

“As do I, my lord.” How in blazes did she manage to look serene and challenging at the same time?

“You see, Ross, everything will be fine.” Emma’s little fingers tightened like a vise into the crook of his arm. “Quite fine.”

Cordelia glanced down at her notes. “Because I wish to protect your sister’s sensibilities, the play will be cast as an allegory, with Lady Emma and Sir Weldon given different names. The title describes it to perfection:
The Triumph of Love
.”

“Isn’t that splendid, Ross?” Emma sighed with delight. “My very own
Triumph!
”

“First will come the prelude,” Cordelia continued, “a conversation between Venus and Hymen to introduce the bridal couple. But the scenes from their love will be true to life, as you wished, my lord, so as to be recognized by friends and family.”

Emma nodded eagerly. “The play should really begin when we were little children, but because there aren’t any children in the Lyon Company, things must begin later, when Weldon and I are older.”

“A Twelfth Night party here at Howland Hall,” Cordelia prompted. “The first time Lady Emma was permitted to come down among the gentlemen and ladies for the music, and the first time Sir Weldon could ask her to dance.”

“To begin with Christmas? When it is now spring, almost summer?” Ross shook his head, not understanding. “What is the sense in the play beginning so far from the actual time of the year in which my sister’s wedding is taking place?”

“Because it is an amusement, my lord,” Cordelia said with excruciating patience. “It must no more be set in the present month than Julius Caesar must be set in London instead of Rome.”

“It’s not the same at all. My sister and Julius Caesar? I see no similarity, Miss Lyon.” He waved his hand through the air,
dismissing the likeness and scene with it. “You must invent a different beginning.”

Emma made a little squeak of protest. “Oh, Ross, do not be dense. This isn’t one of your scholarly treatises where everything must be exactly correct. This is a play. For fun.”

He patted her hand. “I am not being dense, Emma. I only want the best for you, and that includes having a play that makes sense.”

“Very well, my lord.” Cordelia slashed her pen across the page with a squeaking spray of ink, deleting the offending Twelfth Night party. “Does May Day make more sense, my lord?”

Ross considered for a moment. “The day does, yes,” he said. “Though I am not at all certain that a pagan holiday celebrating fertility is suitable for a young lady’s wedding.”

“Perhaps it is your scientific inclinations that make you view May Day is such a way, my lord.” The tension in Cordelia’s voice had increased another fraction. “I believe the audience will see only the innocence of Sir Weldon crowning Lady Emma with a ring of flowers that he has picked himself.”

“But she was not Queen of the May, Miss Lyon,” he insisted. “The queen was one of the crofters’ daughters. It’s never a lady.”

Without lifting her chin, Cordelia looked up at him. “I never said Lady Emma was the Queen of the May, my lord.”

“No, no, Miss Lyon, but you did imply it,” Ross insisted. “I do not wish my guests to think I am claiming a false distinction for my sister. For the sake of verity, it should be removed.”

Cordelia’s jaw tightened. She let her pen hover over the page for a moment before she deliberately dragged the quill along the paper, making sure Ross would understand how much was being sacrificed. “Very well, my lord. That scene, too, is gone. What a short entertainment this will be for your guests, my lord!”