by Linda Barlow
He took his eyes off the road to stare at her, and then had to swerve to avoid a bus. He cursed. "What is it tonight—another charitable party? Gull a few superstitious idiots while collecting their money for a worthy cause?"
She shook her head. It was time to tell him. This had gone on long enough. "No, it's far more sinister than that. Tonight I'm going to be dressed in black, leaning over a cauldron, prophesying and murmuring incantations of doom." She wagged her fingers at him like a spook. '"Double double, toil and trouble, fire burn and cauldron bubble—'" she intoned, then stopped abruptly. It was unlucky to quote from The Scottish Play, as just about all Shakespearean actors called it. Productions of Macbeth had a reputation in the theater for being fraught with disaster. Citing a line from the play was every bit as hazardous as mentioning it by name.
"Very funny," said Daniel.
She tossed her hair back over her shoulder and grinned. "I'm serious. An important personage is coming to consult me and my colleagues. We're going to predict great glories for him. We're going to tempt him by appealing to his overweening ambition."
She expected him to understand the reference, but Daniel glared at her. "You're actually sitting there plotting what to say to some poor sucker?"
A ripple of pure merriment went through her, and she had to look away to contain her laughter. "I swear to you that every prediction I make for this man will come true. Even the manner of his death."
"You're going to predict somebody's death?!"
"Take it easy," she said as he careened around a corner.
"That's despicable. I can't believe you'd do such a thing." He shook his head, looking grim. "Dammit. Every time I begin to think maybe I can deal with this, you toss me another curveball."
"Come watch me," she challenged.
"What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I said." Her eyes were twinkling. Let him see for himself what kind of witch she was. "Come watch me perform, act, practice my witchcraft, do my job. You said you wanted to get to know me better. Something about relating to me on a deeper, less superficial level?"
"I've seen you perform," he growled. "Once was enough. I don't like it. I don't even want to think about it."
"If you can't accept my professional life, I really don't see how you can expect to have any sort of relationship with me. Suppose we got serious. Before long you'd be insisting I quit work."
"Damn right. You can't go around predicting people's deaths. Some folks are susceptible to the power of suggestion. You could be condemning some poor sod to die from sheer terror."
"Don't worry, Haggarty. This particular client deserves it. He's terrorized quite a few people himself, and besides, he's a ruthless, power-seeking murderer."
Daniel pulled the car to a jolting stop in front of her house. "Where are you performing tonight, in the state prison?"
When she just grinned at him, he relaxed and leaned back in his seat. "Okay, witch. You're having a little joke, aren't you?"
"Sort of," she confessed.
"Sort of?"
She swung open the Porsche's door. "Come tonight and find out. One thirty-seven Liberty Square," she added, giving him the address of the theater. "It'll be early—6 p.m. Tell the guy at the door you're a friend of Kate Kingsley."
His eyes lit up. "Kate Kingsley?"
"And don't Google me first. You've waited this long. I want you to be surprised."
"I don't like surprises," he groused.
"You'll like this one," she predicted. "See you later." She laughed and jumped out of the car.
Chapter 7
"Is he out there?" an uncharacteristically nervous Kate demanded of her fellow actor, Graham.
"If he is, he's sitting in the back. I couldn't see the guy," Graham answered. He was adjusting his doublet and hose for his role of Malcolm, the dispossessed heir to the throne of Scotland who prevails in the end of the play, after the death of the tyrant Macbeth. "These blasted tights are baggy," he complained. "How am I supposed to look dashing and heroic in this getup?"
"I think it's rather sexy."
"Yeah?" Looking pleased, he preened in front of the greenroom mirror, and then glanced over at Kate. "You look pretty hot yourself. I thought the three Weird Sisters were ugly old hags. How come you look young and beautiful and delicious enough to eat?"
"Paul agreed with me that the ugly old crone interpretation is a cliché. A witch should be lovely and feminine and powerful in her sexuality. That's what makes you men afraid of us, after all."
"Rot. I think you're just trying to knock the socks off D. B. Haggarty, luv. And you will, too, if he sees you dressed like that."
She smoothed the front of her black Renaissance gown. It had a square, low-cut neckline, and scarlet laces held the bodice together. The silken skirt of the gown was slashed down the front to reveal a scarlet underskirt, the flowing sleeves similarly slashed to reveal a scarlet lining. Her dark brown hair was loose about her shoulders and threaded with narrow black and scarlet ribbons. The overall effect was dramatic and sensual.
"He probably didn't come. He said he wouldn't. Anyway, there’s that hurricane threatening, so the roads are probably a mess."
"Don’t worry; the hurricane’s supposed to miss us, and I doubt if a little gale would faze that crusader. He probably doesn't give credence to weather reports. Don't you know that all weather prognosticators are frauds?"
She smiled a little, and then chuckled. "I can't wait to see his face when he realizes I'm an actress and that it's the Scot’s death I'm predicting. You should have heard him this morning, Graham. He was appalled."
"I hope for your sake he can take a joke. Otherwise he's not going to be too pleased when he finds out you've been scamming him."
"Serves him right," she laughed. "I told him at the start that I was an actress, but he paid no attention. He might be annoyed at first, but I can handle that." She reflected a moment, remembering both the sense of danger in Daniel and his underlying tenderness. "I hope."
Graham made a show of buckling his sword belt. "You've got it bad for this guy, don't you?"
Kate tightened the laces of her bodice. "I'm trying not to get involved with him."
"Yeah? Tell me another."
"I mean it." She had been stressing about the matter all day. Ever since Daniel had kissed her in the garage, dissolving them both into a state of intense sexual urgency, she'd been able to think of little else. "I'm a quiet-living widow. He's way out of my league. I'd be crazy to let anything happen between us."
"I'm glad you realize that. I was afraid you might be getting in too deep. He's not your type."
Kate flashed him an annoyed look. It was all right for her to tell herself that, but she didn't appreciate hearing it from Graham.
"I heard from a friend of a friend that Haggarty is quite the player." Graham went on. "He's apparently left several brokenhearted women in his wake."
"Are you jealous?"
Graham moved a step closer to her, his eyes running over her figure in the provocative manner he usually reserved for other women. "Maybe," he admitted. "You know how I feel about you, luv."
"I know you're my friend." She was unwilling to think of him in any other way. He occasionally teased her with sexual innuendos, but he had never made any concerted attempt to alter the status of their friendship. Which was good, because she had never been physically attracted to Graham.
Like her college buddies, Graham had been good to her in the aftermath of Arthur's death, coaxing and cajoling her into taking an interest in life again. She would always be grateful to him for that, and she enjoyed their camaraderie at work, but that was as far as it went. "Stop rolling your eyes at me and let me finish getting ready," she said lightly. "We've got more important things to do than worry about my love life or lack of one. I have to open this play, you know."
As if on cue, a man's voice bellowed, "Kingsley! Where the hell are you, dammit?"
"Oh, jeez," she muttered as Paul Tiele, their director
, stormed into the dressing room, smoking a forbidden cigarette and looking more than usually agitated.
"What is this, Antony and Cleopatra?" he mocked when he found Kate and Graham together. "We got a play to do, remember? The hundreds of dollars' worth of cloth you're draped in is supposed to be exhibited onstage, not back here for our resident Lothario to admire. Admirable though you may be."
"Thanks a lot."
Tiele, a thin, prematurely gray man in his early forties whose nervous energy and peremptory manner annoyed his actors just a little less than his brilliance and originality dazzled them, considered her for a moment in silence, then stalked over to her, blew smoke in her face, took the bodice of her dress in his two strong hands, and jerked it up an inch. "You're too sexy. You're supposed to be seducing Mac—" he stopped just short of speaking the name "—the Scot with visions of power, but one look at you and he'll send his dreams of kingship straight to hell."
"I thought that was the way you wanted me to play it, Paul."
"It is. But I usually see you in jeans and a T-shirt. You look different in that dress." He glanced at Graham. "What are you smirking at, Hamilton?" He gave Graham's costume a critical examination, too. "Nice legs. But your hose is baggy."
Kate coughed from the cigarette smoke and laughed at Graham as he cursed and once again attacked his costume.
Five minutes later, they were ready to begin the rehearsal. Then Kate remembered. "Paul, wait. I almost forgot. I inadvertently quoted a couple of lines from the play today. I'd better do the exorcism first," she said, referring to a ritual known by Shakespearean actors the world over.
Tiele choked on his own smoke and groaned. "Shit, Kingsley. You never quote from The Scottish Play, particularly on dress rehearsal night. Are you deliberately courting disaster? Just because you're one of the Weird Sisters doesn't mean you can take liberties of that kind. If anything goes wrong, I'll hold you personally responsible."
"Take it easy, Paul. Nothing's going to go wrong."
Tiele was known for being the most superstitious member of the company, and Kate was well aware that he was none too comfortable about doing the play at all. It was considered the unluckiest play in the entire theatrical canon.
Like all the actors in her theater company, Kate knew the details of every disaster that had ever occurred during a production of Macbeth. There were a lot of them. Supposedly, Shakespeare himself had had to take the role of Lady Macbeth in the first performance of the play when the young man playing the role had suddenly taken ill and died. In 1849, a riot had broken out during a performance in New York that had killed 31 people. Sir Lawrence Olivier had almost been killed by a freak accident in 1937 when he played Macbeth at the Old Vic, and in one of Sir John Gielgud's productions, three of the actors had died during the run. Charlton Heston had been severely burned onstage during one of his productions of the play. The stories went on and on–accidents, murders, and other mysterious deaths plagued both the actors and the people connected in other ways with the play. Kate had heard these tales told over and over. Tiele had never directed Macbeth before, and, quite simply, he was petrified.
The time-honored method of dealing with the fatal slip of either naming the play or quoting lines from it was to perform a simple, though somewhat odd, ceremony. Kate knew the routine. She went out of the room, knocked, reentered, turned around from left to right three times in a circle, then burst into the most vigorously obscene swear words she knew. Graham, who was watching, raised his eyebrows. "Is that the raunchiest you can get? Quiet-living widow, indeed!"
Kate was glad Daniel wasn't backstage to witness the ritual. It was exactly this sort of superstition that he loathed.
Shortly thereafter, the rehearsal began. As First Witch, Kate had the opening line of the play. Everything was set up onstage as it would be for an actual performance, and after some initial problems with the technical crew, she got her cue and began. "'When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?'"
She was too absorbed in her role to notice whether Daniel was in the theater or not. As always when she acted, she was lost to thoughts of anything else. During her performance, she felt as though she actually was one of the witches tempting Macbeth with the possibility of kingship.
Wrung out after her two brief scenes in Act I, she walked blindly offstage, fingering the bodice of her gown, which was a little tight. She gave a cry of surprise when she collided with a tall man whose arms went around her, trapping her hands against the soft material of a blue and green plaid flannel shirt.
"Double, double, you're in trouble, witch," he whispered crushing her so hard against him that her breasts were flattened by his pectoral muscles.
"Daniel!"
"You're an actress."
"Yes. I am." Her voice was muffled by the warm line of his throat. Held close to him, she felt the same sensual vertigo she'd experienced that morning in the garage. "I told you that the night we met."
"This is what you meant this morning by prophecies of doom? This is what you meant when you told me to come and watch you 'perform'?"
"Well, of course. What else?" she said innocently.
"And this is where you come when you go to work? All the evenings I've called you and you haven't taken the call, this is where you've been?"
"Rehearsing a play is time-consuming. Particularly so close to opening night. Besides, I'm an alternate in the play that's running now. I perform Tuesday evenings and Wednesday afternoons, and I'm on call in case the main actress for my role can't play the part on any other night."
"In A Doll's House? What part do you play in that?"
"Nora's friend Christine."
"So you're not a psychic or a medium or a Wicca or a Gypsy fortune-teller?"
She shook her head. "Nope. Graham does astrology part-time, and he sometimes works with a psychic. When she got sick right before that party, he asked me to fill in for her. It's the first time I've ever done such a thing, and, considering the grief you gave me over it, it'll be the last." She leaned back in his arms and grinned up at him.
"You're laughing at me."
"You deserve it, Mr. Daniel Blaze Haggarty."
His dark eyebrows arched wickedly as one of his hands moved threateningly down to the curve of her bottom. His eyes were twinkling. "I'll get you for this. Nobody makes a fool out of me."
"I'm trembling."
"You should be. Why didn't you tell me before?"
"I tried to, several times, but you absolutely refused to listen. Anyway, I didn't want to spoil your fun. You seemed to take such pleasure in trying to intimidate me. 'I'm going to lead you to a very public stake... and then I'm going to burn you!'" she quoted, mimicking his intonation perfectly.
"You're in big trouble, Kate," he repeated with a grin. "For almost two weeks you've played havoc with my peace of mind with this little act of yours. I was tempted to look you up before coming tonight, but I didn't…which means I suffered through several extra hours of suspense. I promise you, I am going to have my revenge."
His roughly sensual voice sent shivers through her, and she had to bite her tongue to stop herself from inviting him to go right ahead and avenge himself.
His eyes sparked as if he’d read the invitation in her expression. He leaned his head down but didn't kiss her. "What's this gook all over your face?"
"Stage makeup, obviously. Don't mess it up; I've got another big scene later."
His gaze wandered to her bodice. "I like your costume," he said warmly. "Are you allowed to wear it home?"
"Of course not. It goes back to the costumers to be cleaned and pressed for opening night."
"It's very provocative. I'd like to have the pleasure of unlacing it for you."
His heated words aroused her to an alarming degree. Once again, things seemed to be escalating out of control. The chemistry between them was incendiary.
"Did you like my acting, Daniel?" she asked in a desperate attempt to change the subject.
"Yo
u're good," he said, sounding serious for once. "You'd certainly tempt me."
"Stop that," she insisted, slapping his hands away from her bodice laces. "Do you have any idea what a costume like this costs?"
"Nope." His hands went instead to span her waist, and he smiled at her with eyes that were both teasing and lecherous. "What have you got on under it? Your waist is slim but your skirts are all puffy."
"If you must know, I'm wearing an old-fashioned petticoat. No matter how much women's underwear you've seen—and I imagine you've seen a lot—I doubt you've ever encountered a whalebone petticoat before."
"No, but I'd like to. Are you wearing one of those old-style corsets, too? I love those. How about garters?"
"Maybe I should drop you off in the costume department?" she laughed, pulling away from him. At this rate, they'd be ripping off each other's clothes before the evening was over. When he held her close, all her doubts and fears went flying out the window.
"You're a very beautiful and desirable witch, Kate Kingsley. And a terrific actress, too." He smiled. "I'm proud of you."
She flushed with his praise. The sexual electricity abated slightly as they met each other's eyes with a different kind of warmth. Yet again he had surprised her, reacting with good humor to the deception she'd foisted upon him for so long. I like him, she thought in a sudden blaze of insight. I like him a lot.
"Thanks." Impulsively she squeezed his hand, and then reached for a smock from a hook in the greenroom, donning it carefully to protect her costume. "Let's go out front and watch the play. I have to listen to what my director thinks of my performance. Unfortunately he's not likely to be so complimentary."
"He'd better be," Daniel growled. "Okay. I'm pretty fond of Macbeth, as a matter of fact."
"Ssh. Don't let the other actors hear you naming the play. It's bad luck. We call it 'The Scottish Play.' We're not permitted to quote from it, either, except on stage when we're saying our lines."
"Why not?"
"This play is haunted, of course. Terrible things happen to actors who perform it unless we're very careful."
