by C. J. Archer
“Thank you,” he said, wryly.
“Oh, James, I’m sorry, that came out wrong. I do want to marry you.”
“Lizzy…” He rubbed his eyes and blew out a breath. “Getting married isn’t a good idea. Not now.”
“Are you worried your wages can’t support all of us?”
“Yes. Yes, of course. That’s it.” He looked relieved. “So you see the need to wait?”
“No, I don’t. I have a solution. You can come and live with us and let this house to boarders. Or if you prefer, we could live here and let out Papa’s house.” It was only next door. Her parents could move easily enough, frail as they were. “The extra income will stretch if we live frugally until your apprenticeship is complete.”
“You really have thought of everything.” He sounded as if his doom was imminent.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered. “Forget I said anything.” She dropped her head into her hands and tried to suppress the sense of hopelessness welling within her.
“Now listen to me.” He knelt in front of her and patted her arm. “Your company’s plays are tame. With Lady Blakewell writing most of them, she’s much too smart to put in even a veiled reference to dried-up old virgin queens who failed to put their country first and get an heir.”
Lizzy glanced around out of habit although there was no one to overhear them. The royal succession was a sensitive issue. Any plays alluding to it never found an audience beyond the Master of Revels.
“It doesn’t matter what our plays allude to, subtly or otherwise. If Gripp wants to hurt Roger, he will.”
“Can’t Style ask the Lord Chamberlain to intervene?”
She snorted softly. “Don’t be a fool.”
He sighed again. “I suppose not.”
The Master of Revels came under the jurisdiction of the Lord Chamberlain’s office, but the Lord Chamberlain was patron of a rival troupe. He had every reason to keep out of the matter.
“What about Lord Hawkesbury himself?” James asked.
“He won’t want to interfere either.” Lord Hawkesbury was rarely drawn into politics, even the politics of the theatre, unless the queen commanded it. If the troupe of players who bore his name ceased to exist, he would simply become patron of another.
Lizzy groaned. It was all so awful, so uncertain and terrifying! She’d grown up with Lord Hawkesbury’s Players. The tiring house was as much her home as the house she lived in with her parents. She knew every costume in the storage room, every wig, every pin. She’d made friends with many actors and stagehands including some who’d become famous. She felt comfortable with them, not tongue-tied and awkward the way she often did around people. The players spoke the same around her as they did around each other. And that was how she liked it.
Yet it could all be destroyed by Gripp.
Her friends would scatter and there would be no wage to support herself and her aged parents. Without it, they would be destitute or have to survive on the charity of her sister’s husband all the way up in Northumberland. So far from London and the people she loved. She would not burden Alice and Leo unless absolutely necessary. They had enough financial difficulty with a growing family and mines still in their infancy and not yet fully profitable.
No, Lizzy had to marry James to secure her future and remain in the city. There was no one else and besides, everybody knew they would one day wed. It was inevitable, so why not go through with it now to solve her problems?
James had sold his father’s tailoring workshop after the old man’s death, but creditors had pounced on the money from the sale, leaving nothing. He had found another master tailor to oversee the last years of his apprenticeship, but apprentices earned little since they usually boarded free of charge with their masters. James had insisted on remaining in his family home, but his wage had not been raised accordingly.
“I think you’re overreacting,” he said. “Gripp is hardly going to abuse his position because of an old feud.”
She blinked at him. “Overreacting? James!” How could he say such a thing to her? “When have you ever known me to overreact?”
His gaze shifted sideways. “Well, there was that one time a chamber pot was accidentally emptied on your head.”
“I was a child!”
He shushed her and glanced past her to the kitchen again. He stood and took both her hands in his. It had been what she’d wanted him to do earlier. So why did it turn her blood cold now? “You have such a temper,” he said with half a smile. “But you only show it to me.”
“That’s because you’re my best friend—the only person with whom I can truly be myself.” Except that wasn’t entirely true. She was herself around most of the troupe, she just found no need to get angry with them. None of them would ever accuse her of overreacting. Their very definition of it was probably vastly different from James’s.
He bent and kissed her forehead. “You’re right and I’m sorry. You rarely overreact.” He sounded very serious all of a sudden. “So Gripp truly presents a problem?”
“If he decides to punish Roger, then the entire company will suffer. Including me.”
He squeezed her hands and massaged the knuckles with his thumb. It was a soothing motion but there was nothing reassuring in his grave expression. He’d gone quite gray in the face. “You’ll find work as a seamstress elsewhere. Your stitching is very fine.”
“I wouldn’t earn a tenth of what I earn now.” The only way a seamstress could make a good income was to open her own shop and Lizzy didn’t have enough money to do that, nor did she want to be a shopkeeper. The thought of conversing regularly with strangers made her gut churn.
No, the only way she could earn enough to support her parents and herself was to stay with one of the good theatre troupes and neither of the other two main London ones needed new tiring house assistants.
“I’ll be without work soon,” she said.
“When you say soon…how long do you think? Would you need an assistant in the meantime?”
“Of course not. Roger Style hasn’t hired an assistant for my father before, why would he now when everything is so uncertain?”
“Yes. I see. I thought I’d ask anyway,” he muttered, bowing his head again.
“Why? Do you need work?”
“A little extra would be nice.”
No wonder he hadn’t agreed to her marriage proposal. His lack of money must be playing on his mind. Perhaps he was poorer than he let on. She’d noticed that his fire was rarely lit of late, despite the cooler weather, and that the house seemed barer, yet she hadn’t put the pieces together. Now that she looked, she could see his jerkin had more patches than original fabric, although it was difficult to pick them out, so good was the work. Lizzy felt terrible. She should have seen the signs earlier. Oh, James. Why hadn’t he said something?
“You believe Gripp will force the company’s closure?” he asked.
“Walter Gripp is a vindictive man and he has the power to do it. There is nothing and no one standing in his way.”
“Want me to kill him for you?” The voice came from behind her. It was deep and low, quiet yet commanding. The sort of voice that belonged to men in control, respected men who didn’t need to shout to get attention.
She recognized it although she hadn’t heard it in many years. She felt cold through to her bones even as a warm flush crept up her neck.
“He’s jesting,” James said.
Lizzy didn’t turn around but she could feel Rafe’s presence the way an anvil feels a hammer’s blow.
“Lizzy, you remember my brother,” James went on. “Rafe. Rafe Fletcher,” he added, perhaps to remind her that the brothers had different fathers. He’d left London suddenly on that terrible day when their mother died. Lizzy had no idea where he’d gone or what he’d been doing, because she’d never asked James and he’d never offered the information. Indeed, he rarely mentioned his brother at all and never discussed the incident that had led to his departure. But Lizzy hadn’t forgotte
n him. Rafe Fletcher was not the sort of man a girl, or indeed anyone, could forget.
And now he was back.
She forced herself to turn, but she couldn’t bring herself to look up at Rafe’s face. She stared at his boots instead. They were good boots. Sturdy with scuff marks on the toes and…was that a bloodstain?
She suppressed a gasp but not a shiver.
“Light the fire,” Rafe said. “She’s cold.”
James hesitated, then did his brother’s bidding. Lizzy clasped her hands in front of her and kept her gaze down. Her insides roiled and surely her face must be the color of burning coals. It felt hot enough. She tightened her grip on her fingers.
“I doubt you remember me,” Rafe said above her. Far, far above her. “You were still a child when I left.”
Seven years ago, she’d been fourteen, hardly a child. She wished she could tell him that, but she just nodded instead. She’d tried so hard to leave the shy, speechless girl behind, yet here she was again with her flushed cheeks and twisted tongue. So much for all the practice she’d put in over the years. While the actors worked on remembering their lines, she’d studied them: the way they spoke to one another, what they said, when they laughed or teased or offered a sympathetic frown. She’d forced herself to imitate them when she’d rather have sat in the corner and hidden behind her sewing. Eventually she’d felt confident enough to put her observations into practice. Tentatively at first, then more often and with more people. It had worked. Old acquaintances commented on how she’d emerged from her shell, and new ones were none the wiser. None suspected the amount of effort and time she’d put into remaking herself.
But Rafe Fletcher had stripped all that hard work away as if it were merely a layer of the thinnest silk. And she hadn’t even looked at him yet.
“So do you?” he asked. “Want me to kill this Gripp for you?”
“Rafe,” James warned. “Stop teasing her.”
“Who said I was teasing?”
Out of the corner of her eye, Lizzy saw a lit taper flutter into the fireplace and James’s booted feet turn at the same time.
“Pay him no mind,” James said. “He’s not going to kill anyone.”
“It’s early yet.”
From his light tone, she doubted Rafe was being serious, yet the thought of him killing someone wasn’t a stretch. He’d also nearly killed his own stepfather. And Lizzy had seen the whole thing from the first spray of blood to the moment Rafe walked away.
“Lizzy, sit down,” James said, taking her elbow and steering her back to the chair. It was much warmer with the fire blazing but not cozy with Rafe in the same room. Not in the least. “There’s something I need to tell you now that my brother is here.”
She hazarded a quick glance from one to the other. James seemed distracted, his brow lined with concern, and he kept giving his brother what she could only describe as warning glares. Rafe, however, didn’t seem to notice. He met her gaze with a mixture of concern and curiosity.
She blushed harder and stared down at her lap. Rafe Fletcher was as handsome as ever. He never had been boyish like James. There were no dimples, no big brown eyes, or errant locks. Rafe was all hard lines, dark shadows, and severely cropped black hair. If it wasn’t for the friendly eyes, she would have frozen in fear.
That at least was different. The last time she’d seen him he’d been wound up like a tightly coiled rope, full of tension and threatening to snap. But he hadn’t snapped back then, not entirely. He’d gone into his house and come out a few moments later with a pack slung over his shoulder. He’d sported a black eye, a bloody nose, and a distant, detached expression. His stepfather, James’s father, had lain half-dead in the street.
That memory was going to be hard to shake loose, no matter how friendly he seemed now. Yet she could pretend, for James’s sake.
She leaned forward slightly so that she looked interested and eager to speak to him. “Where have you been, Mr. Fletcher?” she asked in a strong voice.
“Call me Rafe like you used to.”
She’d never called him anything. Indeed, this was the first time she’d ever spoken to him. “Rafe,” she repeated dully. Then she attempted a smile. Smiles were a good way to make the other person feel comfortable. Not that Rafe looked uncomfortable. He looked remarkably at ease lounging against the mantelpiece, arms crossed over his chest, feet crossed at the ankles. Like he was the master and he was home.
“I’ve been abroad,” he said, curt.
“How interesting. Abroad where?”
He lifted one big shoulder. “Here and there.”
“How interesting.” She winced. You’ve already said that, fool. “I mean, what did you do abroad?”
“This and that.”
Right. So he didn’t want to tell her. Indeed, why would he want to chat with her? He probably just wanted her to hurry up and leave so he could talk to his brother or get on with whatever business he’d returned to London to do.
“I think I should go,” she said to James.
“Not yet.” He put out a hand to stay her. “I still have something important to say. I have to go away for a while.”
She frowned. “Where to?”
“Out of London.”
He must have taken avoidance lessons from his brother. “Why?”
He looked down at his knee, jigging up and down. He pressed his hand to it and breathed in. “I have business to conduct.”
“Where?”
“A small village. In Dorset. You won’t know it.”
“I might.”
“Doebridge,” Rafe said.
James glanced at him and then at Lizzy before staring down at his jigging knee once more. “Yes, Doebridge.”
“Is that far?” she asked.
“Far enough.”
“Is Cuxcomb sending you?” And why was he sending his apprentice all the way to Dorset? Lizzy had once traveled through that county with her family to visit Alice and Leo. It had taken two days in good weather by wagon. With the recent rain, the roads that weren’t too muddy would be full of potholes. James could be gone awhile.
“How will you get there?” she continued. “Is he making you walk?”
“It really doesn’t matter,” James said. His leg stopped jigging and he finally fixed his gaze on her. She chewed her lip, unnerved. James was worried. Not quite afraid, but certainly apprehensive. “The important thing is, I won’t be back for some time.”
“How long?”
James stood and strode to the fireplace to stand beside his brother. He was slender next to Rafe’s broad-shouldered frame although they were of a height. Perhaps that explained why he looked the more approachable of the two, like someone you would stop to have a conversation with. Rafe looked liked someone you crossed the street to avoid.
“A week,” James muttered. “Maybe more.”
“That’s not too long. When you get back we can discuss the future.” She watched Rafe furtively as she said it but he showed no curiosity over her words which meant he must have heard her earlier. Wonderful. She’d had her marriage proposal rejected by her best friend as well as overheard by his brother.
“I’ve asked Rafe to take care of you and your parents while I’m away,” James said.
He wanted his brother to take care of them? A man who’d almost murdered his own kin? Lizzy made a sound of protest except it came out a whimper.
Amusement shone in Rafe’s pitch-black eyes. “So it seems you’ll need to speak to me after all.”
CHAPTER 2
Rafe had never seen anyone blush so much. It didn’t matter what he said or how he said it, Lizzy Croft’s face lit up like a bonfire. It didn’t alter her prettiness, only enhanced it and made her large doe-like eyes stand out more.
Doe. Doebridge. So that’s why he’d come up with such a ridiculous name for the village. He’d been looking at the skittish woman with eyes so big they took up half her face and couldn’t get the creature out of his head. The four-legged variety, not
the two-legged. When James had hesitated in answering her, Rafe had said the first thing that came to mind and slapped “bridge” on the end. That part was thanks to Cambridge, the last place he’d been.
Where everything changed.
But he had the rest of his life to forget about Cambridge and what he’d done there. Perhaps he would forget, in time.
“I don’t understand.” Lizzy’s voice was soft, but got James’s attention. Whatever his brother’s intentions were with the girl, he was attentive to her at least. He obviously cared for her and her family. Why else would he ask Rafe to look after them? “Why is Cuxcomb sending you to Dorset?” she persisted.
Rafe turned a raised brow on James. Answer that, little brother. James had come up with the lie in haste and although it was a good one, if he didn’t follow through with equally good answers, it could all unravel.
James waved his hand dismissively. “It’s a business matter. Something to do with one of his suppliers. You wouldn’t understand.”
Rafe turned both raised brows on Lizzy. Her face was red again but he suspected it was due to anger, not embarrassment or shyness. He’d be angry too if someone spoke to him like that. He might have only spent a few minutes in her company, but Rafe could see Lizzy was a clever woman and she most likely would understand, if only James stopped feeding her lies. So far she had pushed James with her questions, stood up to him. She wasn’t afraid of him.
Not like she was afraid of Rafe.
He uncrossed his arms and sat on a chair nearby so they were the same, unthreatening height. Her eyes widened and she pressed herself flat against her chair’s back. So the doe wouldn’t be won over by that trick.
He silently willed her to challenge James and ask more questions, but she didn’t. She seemed too flustered. As if she had lost her place in the conversation.
Rafe sighed. If Lizzy shied away from him every time they were near each other, it was going to make James’s absence seem interminable.
“So you agree to come to my brother if you need anything while I’m gone?” James asked.
