A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Rhona Grewer was not happy about playing understudy to anyone, not even the famous Vanessa Devereaux. Anna had hoped that having the chance to rehearse opposite tall, dark, and gorgeous Julian Ashford would diminish Rhona’s anger. Judging by the stiletto heel thumping furiously against Rhona’s chair leg and the hissing whispers she was exchanging with her daughters and Erica MacLaren, the announcement had failed to have that effect. Around them, the inn’s green dining room was filled with people, every table occupied. Anna had to raise her voice to be heard over the clink of beer glasses, the rustle of fabric, and the low murmur of conversation. Nevertheless, Rhona managed to make her disgruntled comments audible above the noise.
Standing by herself at the front of the room to read the announcements, Anna had claimed responsibility for the casting decisions. It made sense for her to take the fall for the hard decisions about the festival. Apart from her, everyone else would have to stay and continue to live together after the event was over. She’d known taking the blame would not be easy. Even so, standing up here, she felt like she was facing the mean girls’ table in a high school cafeteria. That didn’t bode well for the next generation in the glen, either, considering that Sorcha, Fenella, and Erica—along with Moira’s nanny—were the only women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five.
She read off the last of the announcements and wasn’t at all surprised when Rhona, Sorcha, and Erica all jumped up from their chairs.
“This isn’t fair,” Sorcha protested. “I auditioned to play Helena, not Hermia. I don’t want to be Hermia.”
“And I don’t want to play Lysander,” Erica said. “Why should I have to play a man?”
“We’re having Lysander be a girl, remember,” Anna said patiently. “Gender flipping.”
Rhona ignored Anna completely. She turned to Connal, pouting. “You can’t honestly mean to let her push us all out of the very best roles? Who said she should be the one to do the casting? Do something, Connal. This is supposed to be a community play! I’ve been rehearsing Titania the entire week. Now she’s telling me I don’t even have a part.”
Connal shifted away from the wall where he’d been leaning. His expression managed to be equal parts forbidding and polite. “Despite how Anna has generously tried to take the blame, the casting choices are more mine than anyone else’s,” he said. “I’m the director, and I made the final decisions after going over the audition notes and input from her and Brando. I factored in what the professional actors are going to do and chose the cast that would give the play the best chance of success. If the three of you are upset about that, I’m sorry, but the decisions are final. Erica, you’ll be great as Lysander. Fenella is best-suited to play Helena, and Sorcha, you will shine as Hermia.”
Sorcha squinted at her twin and sniffed. “Helena is the better part.”
“I wouldn’t mind if Sorcha wants to play Helena. It’s all right with me,” Fenella said, her shoulders hunched beneath the weight of her sister’s stronger personality.
“It’s not all right with me, though,” Connal said more kindly. “No casting decisions are ever going to give everyone what they want. We’ll all have to do the best we can and use the fact that we have more female actors than men to make the play a bit more modern.”
“What about me?” Rhona demanded. “It was my idea to do the play in the first place. You and Anna never even came back to see my audition. I should at least get another chance before you tell me I’m only to be an understudy.”
“You’re making our point for us, Rhona love. Don’t you see?” Brando smiled at her, charm at full throttle. “The play was your idea, so you’ve already done a service to the village. Your name will go in the program as . . . creative inspiration.” He glanced at Anna and Connal, who both shrugged approval. “Not to mention that it was your idea for Connal to direct. Now that he’s persuaded Vanessa Devereaux to donate her time and talent, which will do wonders to bring people in for the festival, we owe you an even bigger debt.”
“Then let me play one of the parts. Vanessa doesn’t have to be both Titania and Hippolyta.”
“I’ve already explained that,” Connal said patiently. “We’re using the original Shakespearean idea of doubling the Athenian characters and the fairy court, so Vanessa will play two roles the same way that Julian will be both Theseus and Oberon and Pierce will be Philostrate and Puck. Not to mention that Vanessa has a lot of fans—that’s the point of getting well-known actors in for the lead parts. We want to bring in as many people as possible to see the play. Don’t we?”
Rhona opened her mouth then closed it again without speaking. She shot Anna a look that could have shattered glass and sank back into her seat with a slow sibilance of air like a tire deflating.
Connal clapped once, loudly, and hurried on. “All right. Good. Now that’s settled, everyone, come up here and collect your scripts, rehearsal schedules, and the individual notes I’ve made for you. Read them over in case you have questions. Starting tomorrow, we’ll be moving our meetings to my house promptly at seven for the first rehearsal.”
Anna stepped out of the way as the actors all surged forward. Rhona sent her a last poisonous glare and stalked past followed by Erica and the twins.
Brando sidled closer to whisper in Anna’s ear. “I’d keep an eye on what you eat and drink as from now if I were you. And don’t go near Rhona if she happens to have a knife.”
“I’d worry more about Vanessa’s health than mine,” Anna said, only half-joking. “One bad piece of fish or a poisonous mushroom, and Rhona would get her chance to play Titania after all.”
Brando laughed and patted her on the shoulder. “You are naive to the ways of the glen, aren’t you, lass? It’s not the play alone that’s got Rhona glaring daggers. Connal’s friendly enough, but he’s kept mostly to himself all these years. This was going to be Rhona’s big opportunity to impress him. At least that’s how she’ll have seen it. I’d bet you a dinner that he’s the whole reason she suggested doing a play in the first place.”
“You’re joking?”
Tracing a cross over his heart, Brando shook his head. “I’ve no doubt Rhona’s been dreaming of the two of them rehearsing lines together in front of a cozy fire, himself telling her how he’d never properly appreciated her beauty all these years, how he’s sorry for all the time they’ve wasted. Instead, she’s having to watch the two of you making calves’ eyes at each other all night. You do know the temperature fair heats up in the room every time you exchange a look?”
“It does not,” Anna said with her cheeks burning.
“Aye right, it doesn’t,” Brando answered, laughing at her.
The thought of watching—speculating about her relationship with Connal, whatever that relationship was or wasn’t going to be—made Anna want to sink through the floor. The village was like her law firm or her parents’ country club: every bit of gossip treated like currency that bought someone else a few moments of attention at her expense.
“In that case,” she said, smiling at Brando, “I’ll leave and let the temperature get back to normal. Meanwhile, you can finish helping Connal get things organized.”
Brando straightened, looking pained. “We need you to referee.”
“Actually, you don’t.” Anna patted him on the arm. “Try acting like grown-ups for a change. I should see how Elspeth’s doing with the rest of the committees anyway.”
Meeting Connal’s gaze above the crowd circled around him, she pointed to herself then the door. He smiled, holding the look between them long enough to make her breath hitch, to make her remember what Brando had said. Connal’s smile was like a physical touch, as though he’d reached out to her from across the room.
Rhona leaned in to whisper to Sorcha again. Both of them glared at Anna.
Anna hoped Connal knew what he was doing with those two, that was all she had to say. It was unlike Elspeth to be as harsh about anyone as she’d been about bot
h Rhona and Sorcha that morning in the kitchen.
“Until a few years ago,” Elspeth had confided to Anna earlier, “I’d have told anyone who asked that they’d be hard-pressed to find a person in the glen more self-absorbed than Rhona Grewer, but Sorcha has her bested. You watch yourself with both of them. And how we’re supposed to choose between Sorcha and Fenella for May Queen, I haven’t a clue, but it’s between the two of them, Erica MacLaren, and JoAnne, who isn’t properly from the glen at all. Anyway, JoAnne is still too furious about the festival to think of doing it. Erica has already done it twice, but she’s not much better than Sorcha when it comes down to it. And if we pick Fenella, Sorcha will make her life a misery. The way Sorcha treats her sister, you’d think poor Fenella was as ugly as a toad, when the two of them are as alike as two sisters could ever look. ”
“That’s probably half of Sorcha’s problem right there,” Anna had answered, thinking of her own sisters—especially Katharine. “When you have to fight to make yourself stand out, you have to channel extra energy into believing in yourself. Some people start seeing themselves the way they want to be instead of the way they are. They justify a lot of things that shouldn’t be excused.”
Elspeth had gone silent, studying her across the table. “You’re right, and I’m glad you see that. I’m not saying you should forgive your sister for what she did, don’t get me wrong, but the longer you carry that emotional baggage around with you, the more you’re letting her hurt you. And you know you can’t keep avoiding your mother forever, either. Ailsa’s ringing my phone off the hook.”
“I’m not ignoring her. I email her at least twice every day,” Anna had said.
Which wasn’t the point, and she knew it, but the longer she went without talking to her mother, the less she wanted to talk to her. Was that so wrong? All right, maybe it was. Maybe it was cowardice on her part. Fine.
Just one more day of peace. That was all she needed. Two days, tops.
In the meantime, she needed to be careful not to equate Sorcha and Katharine. Comparing them wasn’t fair, but Sorcha had that same look-at-me appearance, the same calculated loudness to her voice, the same flamboyant gestures that called attention to herself no matter what was going on elsewhere in a room. Fenella, by contrast, was quiet and conscientious and did her best to efface herself the moment she realized she’d become the focus of attention.
That couldn’t work for long; Anna knew that from personal experience. She’d done the same thing with Katharine. Margaret, older by five years, had always been Katharine’s role model, but with just a year between them, Anna had been competition. Everything between her and Katharine had been a contest. Like Fenella, at times, she’d tried making herself smaller, less of a target. It only made things worse.
Connal’s casting had just set Fenella firmly in her sister’s crosshairs. Stirring up the rivalry between them when they had to play two of the bigger roles in the play might not have been his most brilliant notion.
He might know women, but Anna had a lifetime of experience with her sisters. Every bit of that experience told her there was a confrontation brewing.
Chewing her lip, she crossed into the dimmer light of the pub room. After peering around briefly, she spotted Elspeth in the far corner where several long tables littered with half-filled beer glasses had been pushed together.
Elspeth looked up from addressing the men and two women who had signed up to form the organizing committee for the bagpipe competition as Anna joined them. “Are you all right?” Elspeth asked. “I take it the casting announcements didn’t go over well? You’re looking a bit pink and bothered.”
“It’s a little stuffy in here, that’s all.” Anna nodded around at the volunteers, who had stopped in mid-argument as she came up.
Elspeth introduced the few people Anna hadn’t already met. Angus Greer, a slim man with a shock of unruly red hair, unfolded himself from his seat. He rose an abnormally long time, eventually towering over her at what had to be at least six-feet seven-inches as he shook her hand. His pretty wife Kirsty, in contrast, was all of five-foot-two, her hair dark as midnight and her scowl even darker.
“We need some rules for hours of practice,” Kirsty said as Anna wedged herself in beside Elspeth at the table.
“Aw, sweetheart,” Angus said, “we’ve been over this.”
“You’ve been over it.” Kirsty glowered at him. “I’m not over it. Not by a long shot.” She turned back to Anna. “Elspeth says you’re the one setting the rules, aren’t you?”
Anna leveled her aunt a look. At this rate, she was going to end up being the most-hated person this side of Glasgow. “With advice from the people who know more than I do,” she said, “but yes. Since I’m the official event planner, I have to take responsibility.”
“Then tell these daft men there need to be set times when they can practice, would you?” Kirsty leaned forward on her elbows. “We can’t have them caterwauling at all hours when decent folk are trying to sleep.”
“I don’t know anything about what it takes to prepare for a competition. Are there usually rules about practicing?” Anna asked.
“There should be. We’ll all go do-lally if we have to listen to them wailing about for an entire month.”
“How are we supposed to win if we can’t practice? The trophies’ll all go outside the glen,” Erica MacLaren’s brother Rory said before taking a sullen sip of his beer. Then he glanced up at Anna with the light shining on the top of his prematurely balding head and revealing the red veins that spider-webbed along the surface of his nose and ruddy cheeks. “This isn’t something you’ve all cooked up to give an advantage to the MacGregor pipers, is it?”
Elspeth rounded on him. “How would setting practice times favor the MacGregors, I ask you? Unless you’re implying that they’re naturally better given the same amount of practice.”
“I’m never saying that—”
“Then hold your tongue, man, and don’t be an idiot. I’ve never chosen sides between MacGregors and MacLarens in my life where this village is concerned, and Anna’s certainly got no stake in doing so.”
“She’s seeing himself, isn’t she?”
“And Connal has never taken sides either, when it comes to that.” Elspeth turned to Kirsty. “You want my opinion, lass? Fine. Let the wives tell the men where and when to practice.”
“Aw, now then. The likes of Rory’ll have a leg up seeing as how there’s not a woman born who’d have him,” Kirsty’s husband said.
“Then he’s not likely to get a leg up very often then, is he?” said Iain Camm MacGregor, Angus’s shorter, rounder cousin.
Laughter rippled around the table, and Rory turned the color of the deep red tablecloths in the dining room.
Kirsty banged her fist down hard enough to make the glasses rattle. “Treat it all as a joke if you want to,” she said, turning to her husband, “but if I have to argue with you for an entire month, Angus Greer, you’ll be looking for a new place to live by the end of it—”
“Nine o’clock in the morning to nine o’clock at night,” Anna interjected quickly. “That will be the only practice time allowed, and anyone caught practicing outside of those hours will be disqualified. Good enough?”
“But no sneaking off outside the glen anywhere, mind,” Iain Camm said. “Anyone caught doing that ought to be automatically disqualified.”
“What about the pipers coming in from outside the glen? We’ll be practically giving the trophy away,” Rory said, scowling at him.
“Speaking of trophies,” Anna said brightly, swallowing a groan. “We need a volunteer to order them, and a judge—”
“Judges,” Angus said.
“From outside the glen,” Rory said.
Iain Camm nodded morosely. “Aye, and not from anywhere nearby either, and no MacGregors or MacLarens.”
Anna squeezed the bridge of her nose and shook her head. If the rest of the committees were half as bad as this, it was going to be a long month un
til Beltane. Maybe she’d been too hasty in swearing off Flora’s Highland coffee.
The Hand of Fate
All the world is made of faith,
and trust, and pixie dust.
J. M. Barrie
Peter Pan
Little more than an hour—and seven squabbling committee meetings—later, Connal stopped in front of Breagh House and turned toward the backseat of the Audi where Anna sat. He placed a staying hand on her forearm before she could get out.
“Are you too tired to come back for a nightcap?” he asked.
In the passenger seat beside him, Elspeth said a discreet good night and hurried out of the car. Fingers of ground fog curled around her feet as she walked toward the house, and thanks to the fatigue of the long day and too much time putting strain on her knee, her limp was more pronounced.
“I can’t,” Anna said, watching her. “I should make sure Elspeth gets some rest. If I leave her alone, she’ll stay up going over schedules and trying to get the committees back on track. She’s trying to do too much.”
Connal’s profile was shadowed, the only light cast by the glow of the lamps that trickled in from along the front of the house. “So are you. Don’t let the village make you crazy. You’ll end up twisting yourself into knots trying to please them all, and the truth is, you never will.”
“I want to be fair. Right now, I don’t understand the politics yet, and I’m afraid of upsetting people, but overall, I’m having fun. It’s like a puzzle, and I’m turning the different pieces this way and that and trying to make them fit. I forgot how much I loved planning events.”
“As much as you liked being a lawyer?” Connal turned to search her face, though Anna wasn’t sure how much he could see written there amid the shadowed darkness.
It was another question she hadn’t stopped to ask herself. There’d been too many changes too fast, too many realizations flying at her—and more kept coming every day.
Was she going to miss the law? The money, living in D.C., having something meaningful to do? Her work had become her identity, but what she’d loved about being a lawyer—the aspects that had drawn her to it in the first place—were the very things she loved about putting an event together. Defining a problem. Chasing research. Framing a story into something that persuaded people. Finding creative solutions. Making people happier.
Lake of Destiny Page 11
