The Greatest Lover in All England

by Christina Dodd

  With her own unique interpretation, Lady Honora said, “You see, I am right. They wish you to sit with me.”

  She tugged at him again, and he gave up. After all, what did it matter where he sat or stood or thought? The play would unfold, but its plot could never compete with the plot that filled his mind.

  With many polite murmurings, he worked his way through the crowd, following in Honora’s wake. In some distant part of his mind, he appreciated the laughter the two players dragged from the spectators. He was glad the actors kept his company entertained with their passionate moaning for a heartless lady, Earlene.

  As if his thoughts had conjured her, she appeared—the woman he’d kissed, the woman he’d lusted after, the woman he would perhaps court. She walked onto the stage, and her appearance was greeted by a roar of appreciation from the audience.

  Did they know her? He glanced around eagerly. Was she some noblewoman who strode the boards as a jest?

  But no, the audience’s appreciation was coarse and impersonal, caught up in the play and waiting eagerly for the next line. What did it mean?

  He looked at her again, and saw her with new eyes. He’d assumed her to be a poverty-stricken, lacking-in-taste noblewoman. But now…his gut tightened. Leaning toward Lady Honora, he murmured, “Who is she?”

  “Who is who?” Lady Honora asked, her tone precise and austere.

  “Who is”—he nodded at the stage—“she?”

  Puzzled, Lady Honora followed his gaze. “She’s the wife who cuckolded her husband.”

  “No!” He scrubbed the back of his hand across his lips and tried again. “I mean who is she, really?”

  “Really?” Lady Honora turned to face him. “Really? She’s an…he’s an actor, one of Sir Danny’s troupe. Why are you—”

  The rest of her words were lost to him as he staggered to his feet. He never heard the cries to sit down or felt the jabs from the people behind him. He knew only one thing.

  He’d kissed a boy. He’d kissed a man.

  5

  It is not so; thou hast misspoke, misheard.

  —KING JOHN, III, i. 4

  But had he really?

  Lord Bothey kicked Tony’s knee from behind, and he collapsed back onto the bench.

  Had he really kissed a man?

  The mere thought made him want to spit, to leap up on the stage and knock that Tom-farthing buttercup into next week. But something stopped him. Something niggled at him. Some evidence, some disregarded clue…

  He looked at the declaiming actor in woman’s clothes, and unable to bear the sight, he stared down at the ground. His elbows rested on his thighs, his hands hung between his legs and his hands were cupped. Cupped in the shape of a woman’s breast. Cupped in the shape of…he looked back at the stage.

  Cupped in the shape of her breasts.

  Her breasts. That was no man posturing and proclaiming.

  That was a woman.

  A woman.

  Lady Honora whispered, “Why are you holding your chest and sighing?”

  Tony had fought in Her Majesty’s army, then commanded Her Majesty’s guard for many a year, and if there was one thing his worldly experience had taught him, it was that men had hairy chests and women had bumpy chests, and a damned pleasant difference it was.

  Lady Honora poked him with her fan. “Why are you smirking like that?”

  Yet what was a woman doing playing a man playing a woman? His eyes narrowed as he watched the actor muddle her lines.

  Lady Honora poked him again. “Why are you frowning now?”

  The girl couldn’t have succeeded in this masquerade on her own. Someone had to know her secret, but who? That young buck? Or that posturing old scoundrel? Was she the troupe’s meretrix, or the hidden mistress of one happy man?

  Lady Honora pinched his arm until he winced. “Why are you mumbling? It’s not natural.”

  She didn’t have a wealthy father. She didn’t have a dowry, she wasn’t as young as he’d imagined, and she certainly couldn’t be a virgin.

  Even if she proved to be one of those women who set a man on fire, who kept him enthralled with her body, he couldn’t have her to wife. He couldn’t have children by her. He couldn’t sleep with her, eat with her, talk with her, for if he wed an actress, he’d be a laughingstock. All his care to build his name and reputation would be for naught. The queen would discard him like a used handkerchief. The nobility would look down their noses, and say, “Blood will tell.” The old tale of his illegitimacy and those years of misery would once more surface, and he’d be pitied.

  God, how the pity made him cringe.

  “You look quite ill.” Lady Honora placed her hand on the back of his head and pushed. “Put your head between your knees lest you swoon.”

  He looked at Lady Honora, his sister’s crony, the woman who could buy him his dynasty, and he shuddered.

  He looked up at the woman on the stage.

  He didn’t even know her name.

  Lady Honora removed her hand and inched away. “You’re burning with fever. Are you ill?”

  He’d lusted cautiously his whole life, never allowing physical circumstances to overpower his good sense. He’d laughed at men who languished for a woman. No more and no matter. He would take that actress away from whoever kept her and keep her himself.

  And if he had children with her—the muscles of his throat tightened, and he could scarcely breathe—if he had children with her, he’d be condemning them to the same hell that had blistered and hardened his young hide.

  He couldn’t have her. No matter what, he couldn’t have her, and his piercing sense of loss stunned and bewildered him.

  “Sir Anthony.” Lady Honora rose and shook out her skirts. “If you can master yourself enough to rise, you should do your hostly duty, for the play is over.”

  He was staring at the stage, he realized, staring at the woman who now bowed, one hand held by the old fart, the other clasped by the suave, smiling, slimy man who looked as if he knew his way around a knife and garrote.

  Embarrassed and mortified, Rosie tried to recover her hand from Ludovic’s sweaty palm, but he clutched her tightly. She tried to recover her hand from Sir Danny’s cool fingers, but he clasped her firmly. She tried to turn away from Tony’s cutting gaze, but he wouldn’t release her.

  Tony looked furious. Furious! His blond brows met over his nose, his pinched nostrils turned white, and his full lips had thinned into a single line. When she stepped from the stage, he would be on her like mold on week-old bread. She had to warn Sir Danny. She had to tell him.

  Again she tried to free her hand from Ludovic, but he hung on, twisting her fingers until it turned painful, and she glanced at him.

  He smiled, but not at her. He watched Tony as closely as Tony had watched her. Tony rose from the bench in a fluid motion, flexed his shoulders, placed his hand on the knife at his belt. Ludovic grinned and copied the gesture. Laughter rippled from the aristocrats who observed the exchange, and Rosie used the distraction to jerk her hand free at last.

  Ludovic turned to her with a hiss, but Sir Danny led her away and assisted her off the stage. He had to. Her knees were shaking so badly she feared a fall. As always, the troupe had gathered at the back of the scaffolding, but Sir Danny didn’t pause for their accolades, and the funereal atmosphere confirmed Rosie’s worst fears—she had been dreadful. Worse than dreadful. Worse than customary.

  She hurried after Sir Danny as he strode toward the manor.

  A muscle twitched in Sir Danny’s cheek. He tried twice to speak, and finally snapped, “What happened?”

  “I just”—Tony’s accusatory gaze swam through her consciousness—“I panicked, I suppose.”

  Sir Danny walked faster, threshing the grass with each kick of his feet. “But why?”

  “I don’t know.” She did know, at least a little, but she didn’t want to explain. Sir Danny complained that she feared emotion, and she did. She feared that if she let it loose, even on the st
age, it would prove stronger than her resolve, and it would possess her. And Sir Danny had been watching her since the moment their wagons crossed the boundary of the rolling estate, watching as if he expected just such an outburst.

  What knowledge told him of the emotions that simmered within her and threatened to burst forth? Even the trauma of her first kiss paled beside her reaction to this property, this manor, this place. Not wanting to give too much away, she confessed, “Odyssey Manor makes me shudder.”

  “Odyssey Manor?” Sir Danny stopped and gazed around him. “But it’s beautiful.”

  Reluctantly, she, too, looked about her. The lawn had been scythed at the end of summer, and it extended around the manor in a swirl of dry gold and pale green. Oaks, both large and small, were scattered randomly to provide shade in the summer, and off to the side of the manor rose the hedge which fenced the formal garden.

  A spring day, a meal spread on a cloth, a laughing deep-voiced man. Garlic sausage, crushed grass, lilac blossoms. Bark scraped her hands, a hand steadied her as she climbed.

  Catch me, Dada. Catch me when I jump.

  “Where are you, Rosie?” Sir Danny asked.

  His voice jerked her back to the moment. “Here. I’m here.” Her heart hurt, and she tried to ease the ache with the massage of her palm on her chest. “This place bothers me because of our plan to blackmail Sir Anthony Rycliffe, I suppose. Or maybe I’m having a premonition.”

  “You’ve never had one before.” The chill in Sir Danny’s voice matched the chill of the wind.

  “This place seems familiar.”

  Sir Danny visibly thawed. “Familiar?”

  “Like I’ve been here before.” She tried to laugh, but instead she looked at the manor, her gaze drawn to the harmony of stone and glass. “We haven’t been here before, have we?”

  “The troupe has never been here before.” He stooped until he came into her line of vision. “Of course not. How could our plan work if we’d been here before?”

  She shook off the eerie sense of intimacy created by the garden, the house, and her own imagination. “Our plan is not such a good idea. Tony…Sir Anthony is not a man to be trifled with.”

  Sir Danny withdrew from her a few steps and considered her as a master would consider a painting. “Sir Anthony?”

  A gruff voice interrupted his scrutiny. “Our Rosencrantz holds Sir Anthony in awe, don’t you think, Sir Danny?”

  Rosie whirled around, and found herself facing Ludovic, who said, “Why don’t you ask our Rosencrantz why this Sir Anthony merits such respect?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “He kissed you.” It was an accusation.

  “He kissed you?” Sir Danny’s shaggy eyebrows drew together. “Who…he?”

  “Our handsome host.” Ludovic spit on the ground, then wiped his hand across the back of his mouth. “I saw him. He kissed the fair Rosencrantz.”

  “As a man kisses a woman?” Sir Danny asked.

  Ludovic wiped his palms down the sides of his jerkin. “Most certainly.”

  “Rosencrantz, is that true?” Sir Danny asked.

  She cringed. She hadn’t wanted to tell him. She hadn’t wanted to tell anyone. Something—a fear they would point fingers and laugh, or accuse her of inviting intimacy, or just a sense of maidenly privacy—prohibited her confession. “Sir Rycliffe mistook me for someone else.”

  “Someone he could kiss? I’m quite confused.”

  And Sir Danny did look confused, as confused as ever Rosie had seen him, but delighted, too.

  “Confused?” Ludovic asked. “Why confused? Sir Anthony Rycliffe obviously saw what few have guessed.”

  Sir Danny’s confusion and delight seemed to melt away; he assumed the suave facade he habitually wore. Rosie tried to take her cue from him, but she had to hide her suddenly trembling fingers behind her back.

  “What is that?” Sir Danny stepped up and measured himself against Ludovic and came up ridiculously short. Sir Danny seemed not to notice, and ordered, “Speak, knave. What is it you think Sir Anthony has seen?”

  “Do you think I have no eyes?” Ludovic glared at Sir Danny.

  “Nay, I think you have no brain,” Sir Danny said.

  Rosie said, “For pity’s sake, Sir Danny—”

  Danny’s voice only strengthened. “Sir Anthony saw nothing. Nothing!”

  “He did, too, and I know what it was.” Ludovic stared pointedly at Rosie’s bosom.

  With a flamboyant gesture, Sir Danny gestured toward the road that led away from the estate. “I tell you now to go. Take your lies. Leave us, leave the troupe. We don’t need you, so get you gone.”

  Ludovic stood, his hands dangling at his side, as he gazed first at Sir Danny, then at Rosie. He looked like a man fighting a battle with himself, a battle lost in the flames of a primeval fire. In a lightning swift move, he plucked Sir Danny off his feet by the front of his padded jerkin. Rosie grabbed for Ludovic’s arm, but neither her grip nor Sir Danny’s kicking feet swayed the battered giant.

  “Unhand me, sir!” Sir Danny demanded, and Ludovic shook him like a terrier with a rat.

  His steel muscles flexed beneath Rosie’s fingers as she dug them into the flesh. “Put him down. Now!” Fear made her voice shrill. “Put him down, Ludovic.” She stomped one heeled shoe into his instep, and he cried like a beleaguered wolf and slammed his elbow onto her shoulder. She collapsed onto the ground, arm numb, collarbone pulsating from the impact, and Ludovic dropped Sir Danny.

  “You…you’re…did I break it?” Ludovic knelt beside her and reached out, but she scooted back with a whimper.

  He froze, then stared at his hands, and he turned them over and over, like joints of meat on a grill. “Can you still see the blood on them?”

  Ludovic had been a fanatic about keeping his hands clean, and she’d never understood. Now she feared she did, and both pity and fear roiled within her. “Blood? Nay. Your hands are washed.”

  One of his hands hovered close to her cheek, and he almost touched it. “You’ve always been so untouched. I like that.” Rising, he towered over Sir Danny, crumpled in the grass, and tried to become the stoic actor who saved his emotions for the stage. “Whatever it is I haven’t seen, you’d better hope no one else has seen it, either, or there’ll be trouble, and when it comes to trouble, I deal it out with a vengeance.”

  Rosie watched him stride away, watched him enter one of the gypsy wagons, then stared as Sir Danny dusted himself off and said, “Well! I certainly taught him a lesson. He’ll not be so insolent again.”

  But she noticed he didn’t stand, and she wondered if his knees were knocking as much as hers. Flexing her shoulder, massaging it, she worked until tingles of feeling returned to her arm. “He knows.”

  “I fear so.”

  She plucked the brittle lawn beneath her fingers. “It’s a miracle no one else has noticed.”

  “Not a miracle, but good planning. Always I’ve trained new actors, then promoted them to the London stage. We’ve had the best because of our success, but we’ve had none of them with us long enough for suspicions to form. All except Ludovic.” Sir Danny smoothed her throbbing shoulder. “You’ll have a nasty bruise. ’Twill be our excuse to keep you off the stage.”

  “What?” Crushing the handful of grass in her fist, she demanded, “Why?”

  “Isn’t it true what Ludovic said? You looked so guilty, I assumed that Sir Rycliffe had, in fact, kissed you.”

  She covered her mouth as if to hide the evidence, then realized her mistake as the dry bits stuck to her lips.

  Sir Danny chuckled as she sputtered, trying to remove the straw. “Did you like it?”

  “The grass?”

  “The kiss.”

  “He thought I was a noble maiden.”

  “And then he saw you on the stage.” Sir Danny nodded thoughtfully. “No wonder he stood upon your entrance. No wonder he glared so balefully. He thinks he kissed a boy.”

  The mem
ory of a warm hand cupping her breast jolted her, and she muttered, “He may know of our masquerade.” As the implications sank in, she brightened. “He does know our masquerade!” she repeated. “We’ll have to leave at once.”

  “Why?”

  Sir Danny’s question first dumbfounded, then amazed her. “What do you mean, why? Because he knows I’m a woman. Remember? We don’t want anyone to know? We’re breaking the laws and traditions of England? If anyone else finds out, we’ll be imprisoned, dunked, put in stocks, whipped through the streets?”

  He glanced around. “There aren’t any streets here.”

  “There aren’t any…” Words failed her.

  “We’ll have young Alleyn Brewer play the women’s parts.”

  “But I want to do them!”

  He patted her hand. “I’m saving you for a much bigger part. Remember? That part of the missing heir.”

  “The heir was a boy.”

  Sir Danny stroked his flowing mustache and contemplated her.

  “Wasn’t he?”

  “Wasn’t he what?”

  “Wasn’t the heir a boy?” she insisted.

  “You’ll wear men’s clothing from now on.”

  She shouted, “But Tony knows.”

  He didn’t remark on her easy use of Rycliffe’s first name. “What I want from you is your best, your finest acting.”

  “But he felt my teatie!”

  Waving a dismissive hand, Sir Danny said, “’Tis no great thing, this teatie of yours. Now if it were Tiny Mary’s, we’d have our hands full.” He cackled. “Hands full? ’Tis a jest most appropriate.” Observing her concentrated glare, he hastened on. “Everyone must believe you a young man. Parade yourself in front of Sir Anthony. Become his best friend. Spy out his secrets. Swagger, strut, court the women—”

  She pronounced judgment in heavy tones. “Sir Danny, you’ve gone quite mad.”

  He smiled, the sweet smile he reserved only for her. “Have I ever misjudged a situation?”

  Ticking situations off on her fingers, she said, “Insulting Ludovic seems an error, when I look back on it, as does threatening Essex and Southampton. And that was just this winter. Last summer, you got caught by that innkeeper husband and almost found yourself a gelding. Then you—”