Lisa Noeli

by What He Doesnt Know

  Josephine smiled. She could not imagine what her mother would think of loudmouthed Molly, or the rest of the scantily clad chorus.

  I am happy to know that his expensive education serves him so well. Your brother took prizes in Latin and Greek at Oxford, as you know (maternal pride forces me to mention that once more—we were so proud of him).

  Her mother had squeezed another sentence above her parenthetical comment.

  I am just as proud of you, my dear.

  Jo smiled and read on.

  No doubt he has taught the nymphs and the satyrs a bit of both. The performance will be most educational.

  The nymphs and satyrs did not even speak the King’s English. But her parents need never know. They did not come up to London as a rule.

  Your dear papa might even enjoy it! He has found a friend, another retired vicar, with whom he can discuss tricky theological questions and other such matters. Mr. Shy does enjoy a churchy chin-wag and they talk long into the night. I find the sound of it quite soothing but the sense of it is lost upon me. So I nap.

  Ah, yes. Her father was determined to find out the meaning of it all. Simply enjoying life had apparently never occurred to him. Jo turned to the second page.

  Yet I too have a new friend, a Mrs. Carp, an aged widow who enjoys a quiet game of cards. We do not gamble, of course. Your father would not approve. He has visited Mrs. Carp only once. Her cat sicked up a prodigious hairball upon his best overcoat and it has never been the same. I mean the overcoat—the cat is in good health. A hairball is a terrible thing.

  Indeed, Jo mused. Her mother sounded happy enough.

  And now I return to the subject of Penelope. She has met a young scholar, a lover of antiquities, like herself. They decipher hieroglyphics together far into the night and use up all the oil in the lamp. It seems to me that hieroglyphics would be difficult to read with only moonbeams for illumination, yet Penelope assures me that it can be done. Her young scholar wears thick spectacles for his weak eyes and prefers to work by moonlight, apparently.

  A skilled fortune hunter would, Jo thought. Her plain but very rich cousin was clearly in danger of being swept off her feet, bundled into a carriage, and put on the road to Gretna Green.

  But there was nothing Jo could do about it. She felt the tiniest pang of guilt for giving Penelope those romance novels long ago. A seed had been planted. A sprout had shot up. A topiary of desire had grown tall.

  Jo realized that she was beginning to think like Hugh Newsome, in silly symbols. Indeed, she thought with a smile, perhaps the greatest danger to be encountered in the theater was not to her morals but her mind, which she was likely to lose.

  She folded up her mother’s letter and put it away, taking out fresh paper to write a reply. She uncapped the ink bottle and put it into the hole that McNeel had fashioned to hold it. It fit perfectly and would not spill. Jo thought a moment and then began.

  My dear Mama,

  I was happy indeed to receive your letter and to hear that you are enjoying Bath. Papa’s new friend sounds most interesting and I am glad that you have found one as well. Do not overexert yourself, my dear Mama.

  We continue as before. Terence, of course, is busy at the theater as he explained in his letter to you. He has little time to spend with his sister.

  As the afternoon shadows grew a little longer, Jo filled several pages in a similarly vague way. She looked up, startled, when a very long shadow, a rather broad-shouldered one, fell across the paper.

  “Lord York! Where have you come from?” She set the little desk and her writing things to one side, noting with secret pleasure that he had left off his coat and wore a plain shirt of white lawn, open at the collar. It revealed his neck, and a very nice neck it was, shown to advantage against the whiteness of the shirt.

  His breeches, however, were streaked with dirt and the toes of his boots were uncharacteristically muddy.

  “The coachman brought me. I did spy you here when I arrived but since you were writing, I decided not to bother you—well, not right away—and went walking by the river, where I slipped and fell.”

  “I hope you did not injure yourself.”

  “My pride was hurt but not badly. How pretty you look in this bower of roses.”

  How sweet of him to say so. Jo looked about for Ginny. There she was, in a nearby lane. They would have to behave. “Thank you, my lord. You look … like you used to. Muddy.”

  “I think that is a compliment but I am not sure. Yet I see approval in your eyes.”

  “Yes,” she said. “You and Terence often got muddier than that when you hunted frogs. I used to watch you with utmost admiration.” She had to admit it. She had not forgotten how it felt to be so much younger, waiting upon the bank at her nursemaid’s side, delighted by the daring of the big boys.

  “Do you remember that?” He seemed quite pleased.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “And do you remember the great frog we never could catch, the one we called Gus?”

  “I never knew why he had that name.” Such things loomed large in the memories of men. Lord York had mentioned the frog to Terence during their first meeting at the theater, when she had listened at the closed door. But she saw no need to tell him that she done that.

  “His full name was the Great Uncatchable Sir Slippery. As in G.U.S.S. or simply Gus.”

  “Ah, of course!” She laughed.

  “Do you suppose old Gus still lives under the bridge?”

  “I do not know, Lord York. I have never looked, certainly. Proper young ladies do not roll up their drawers and pick up their dresses and go wading in rivers.”

  “You would, given half a chance.”

  She only smiled in reply.

  He sat down beside her on the bench. “Can you not call me Daniel? No one is near.”

  She could guess what he had in mind. The great moment of her second kiss—no, her third—was at hand … but they were far from alone. “Ginny is close by,” she said with prim regret.

  He half-turned to see the wardrobe mistress on the next path and sighed.

  “She seems to be enjoying herself. This is a pleasant place. I cannot tell you how glad I am to be here. I have had quite enough of the theater for today. Molly and Lizzie got into a fight. The screaming was dreadful.”

  “What do they have to fight about? They are not even in the same scenes.”

  “No, but they like the same man.”

  Jo’s eyes opened wide. “Molly did not set her cap at Harry Longwood, did she?”

  Lord York nodded. “She did, but Lizzie was the victor on the battlefield of love. And Harry knows which side his bread is buttered on. He will not stray. Besides, our trembling virgin slapped Molly hard enough to knock a wig off. Fortunately, she was not wearing one.”

  “Then what?”

  “Molly slunk off through the wings, muttering imprecations.”

  “Oh, dear. I suppose I should not have left.”

  He slid an arm along the back of the bench. Jo did not move away.

  “My dear Jo, you needed to get out. You have helped Lizzie rehearse her songs for The Shepherdess for hours each day. She knows every word and every note by now and so do you. And it is not as if you are going to sing them.”

  “Of course not.” But Jo could not help wondering what he would do or say if some mischance kept Lizzie from going on. Of course, it would never happen. Lizzie would go on with two broken legs and a black eye, if it came to that.

  But Jo knew, as did everyone else at the theater, that she was Lizzie’s understudy, for the star of their show would have no other, whether Lord York liked it or not. But there were far greater sins than singing and playacting, surely.

  Perhaps Lord York thought differently. He kept his distance from the performers, though he treated them with a measure of courtesy. Their outsized personalities and their talent for artifice seemed to make him uneasy.

  It was a good thing he had not seen her that first day when he and Teren
ce had come to visit Lizzie in her dressing room, forcing painted and powdered Jo to hide in the closet.

  It had been a narrow escape, and once was enough. She had enjoyed looking so very different for a little while, but the stuff had proved dreadfully itchy and she had been afraid of breaking out in a rash. Fortunately she had not, but she also had not experimented with stage makeup since.

  Daniel seemed to like her exactly as she was. Even late at night in the theater, after long hours of rehearsal had made her look weary, wrinkled her dress, and caused her hair to straggle, he still looked at her with tenderness—the way he was looking at her now. She blushed a bit and smoothed her skirts.

  “I … I am glad to be here as well. It is a lovely place to write. And thank you for the use of the carriage. Ginny said she felt quite grand.”

  “Good. I think the world of Mrs. Goodchurch.”

  That was true. The motherly wardrobe mistress was the only person at the theater with whom Lord York seemed to feel comfortable, besides Jo and her brother.

  “She is a very kind woman.”

  “And able to keep Lizzie in line as well. Perhaps that was why the battle over Harry began—Ginny was here.”

  “At your invitation. The fight was not her fault.”

  “Of course not. But let us talk of more pleasant things, Jo. What were you writing?”

  She looked down at the desk at her side. “A letter to my mother.”

  “Give her my fond regards. Tell her that I remember her toasted cheese sandwiches and ask her for the recipe while you are at it.”

  “Cheese. Bread. Butter.”

  “There must be more to it than that.”

  “I will ask her.” Jo picked up the desk, dipped her pen in the ink and scribbled another line or two. She waved the letter about in the air to dry it.

  “By the way, that is a very nice little desk. Where did you buy it?”

  “Mr. McNeel made it especially for me.”

  “Hmmm.”

  She cast an appraising glance at him. “That was a jealous sort of hmmm.”

  “What? You cannot read so much into one little word. And I am not jealous. It never occurred to me that you would consort with a carpenter.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Ah …” Lord York could not quite see how to extricate himself from this odd turn in the conversation. Perhaps it would be safest to stick to the subject of grammar. “My dear Jo, hmmm is not even a word, as far as I know.”

  “It is an interjection, I believe, and an interjection is a word.”

  He smiled at her and Josephine nearly melted. It was not the heat of the summer sun that did the trick but the warmth in his eyes. Oh, dear. She had spent too many long days in the theater—and memorized too many love songs.

  “How does it open?” he asked, looking at the little desk.

  She was happy to demonstrate and slipped her reply into the compartment inside, along with her writing things.

  “And how does it close?”

  She demonstrated that as well.

  “Good. Now put it away and walk with me.”

  “You are in a commanding mood all of a sudden.”

  “Forgive me. But walk with me.”

  “Yes, Daniel.”

  He beamed and offered her his arm. Jo rose to take it, leaving the desk on the bench. They chose a winding path to nowhere in particular, and waved to Ginny, who straightened up to wave back.

  “I often imagined us like this, Jo, walking down the lanes of Richmond.”

  “Did you?”

  He nodded.

  “Well, why did you imagine us walking about?” Really, he seemed to require considerable prodding to say what she wanted to hear. Which was not the same as him wanting to say it.

  “Because I admired you. From afar.”

  How annoying, she thought. Not the admiration part. The afar part.

  “But family matters took so much of my time then. And I never seemed to see you when I was not on my way to London to attend to our estate business or some such thing. I was forever rushing about. But you were always on my mind, Jo.”

  That is better, she thought.

  “The years seemed to go by so quickly. I saw Terence in London, of course, but not as often as I would have liked. When he explained that he had bought the theater patent and suggested I purchase shares in it, I jumped at the chance.”

  “Like the Great Uncatchable Sir Slippery.”

  He laughed. “Yes. Long live old Gus.”

  “We really should go back to Richmond and see if he is still there, Daniel.”

  Lord York patted her arm. “Whenever you like. Your every wish is my command.”

  Better still, she thought with delight.

  “I was thinking of inviting you and Terence and Ginny—and perhaps even Miss Loudermilk, though I draw the line at Harry—to Derrydale. For a week. Maybe two.”

  “What about the show?”

  “Damn the show. Summer is coming. London will soon become disgustingly hot and smelly.”

  “I suppose Terence can spare me. But I do not know if he can do without his leading lady, and Lizzie can’t do without Ginny.”

  “That is up to them. We shall have musicales and all the fun we want to, just like old times. Would you enjoy that, Jo?”

  Best of all.

  “Jo?”

  “Oh!” she said, startled. “Yes, very much.”

  “Do you remember the house?”

  “Yes, I do. Has it changed at all?”

  “Very little. My brother had the house in Mayfair redecorated according to fashion. But he does not like Derrydale and has not been there since he came into the title. No, he leaves it to me to see to its upkeep.”

  They walked on to the end of the path and turned around again. The shadows were much longer and had taken on a twilight hue. The sun was about to dip below the horizon. Lord York nodded to Ginny as they approached her once more.

  “Mrs. Goodchurch, are you ready to depart?”

  “Yes. It has been a rare treat to come out. I thank ye, sir. Jo, where are your things?”

  “On the bench, Ginny.”

  “I shall fetch them. Walk on, do.”

  If the wardrobe mistress thought anything of Jo and Daniel walking arm in arm, her peaceful countenance did not betray it. But Jo did not see the wink Ginny exchanged with Lord York when she wasn’t looking.

  Chapter Ten

  Meanwhile, back at the theater, things had gone from bad to worse as the day wore on. After the catfight with Lizzie, Molly simply disappeared. She missed the first run-through for The Castaway.

  Tom Higgins thought it was a bit of luck that Mr. Shy had left early for once, and that his sister and Lord York were not in the theater. Hugh Newsome had stood in for Molly at the run-through, imitating a bird swooping about, since no one else would, and looking altogether silly. Certainly she was the only one willing to be hoisted on a wire.

  The castaway, Andy, had sung his songs well enough, with a little prompting in spots from another member of the cast. There was no one else in the scene besides him and Molly, so it had been left to Hugh and Andy to get through it, to scattered applause from the few players who had nothing else to do but watch.

  Suddenly a burly young stagehand came barreling down the corridor, shouting for Tom. “We found her!”

  “Hush, lad, no need to wake the dead. Not until opening night anyway. Where?”

  “In McNeel’s workshop.”

  “But we looked there, lad, twice.”

  The stagehand gasped for breath. “She was hiding.”

  “I tell ye, we looked!”

  “She and Signor Arlecchino ’ave a bed behind the backdrops ’e was painting.”

  It was only a minute before Tom Higgins pushed the canvas aside and scowled at the happy, sleepy couple lying entwined in each other’s arms. The burly stagehand craned his neck to see what he could.

  “And what d’ye think ye’re doing, Molly?”

>   “Having fun, Tom.” She laughed and patted Arlecchino’s unshaven face. “I love an Eyetalian man now and then. Very lusty they are. Isn’t that right, ducks?” She kissed Arlecchino on the nose.

  “Si,” he murmured. “I am ducks. We have the fun.”

  “Get up, both of ye!”

  “He is up. You know what they say … Arly to bed, Arly to rise.” Molly laughed raucously.

  “Shut yer gob, girl!”

  Hugh Newsome appeared at Tom’s side. “I am sure there is some reasonable explanation. Do not yell at her, Tom. She is the only bird we have at the moment and there is no time to train another.”

  Arlecchino yawned. “What to explain? She has much beauty. Her front is like … like the pumpkins.”

  “I understand,” Hugh said, a little irritably, “but Molly must come to rehearsal, Signor Arlecchino.”

  The Italian ignored him. “Not now. My love for her is very large. We sleep again.”

  “Basta!” Hugh said. “Enough!”

  Signor Arlecchino seemed astonished to hear a word in his native tongue, however rudely spoken. “Si, si,” he muttered and was quiet.

  Molly threw the covers over his head. “Poor little Arly. Be nice to him, Hughie. And ye’d better be nice to me, Tom. There is only one bird and I am it. Now, good night.” She burrowed under the blankets.

  A sound of muffled giggling ensued, followed by enthusiastic writhing.

  “Cor,” the stagehand said, a note of admiration in his voice. “She’s right saucy. Loves to be loved. Wish I was next.” He puffed up his chest and thumped it. “She needs an Englishman.”

  “Bugger off!” Tom cuffed him.

  “Ow!”

  “Thanks fer finding her, though.” Tom pulled the canvas backdrop back to where it had been and left the lovers alone.

  Terence got the story the next day from Tom. He listened to every detail, frowning. “Molly has us over a barrel. She can do as she pleases. She is quite right—we cannot replace her at this point.”

  “Naow, sir, we can’t. But we don’t have to put up with that Arlecchino scurrying about and speakin’ his strange lingo. Have ye ever noticed how he is right there when there is trouble?”