Page 13 of Miss Dramatic
“I was in East Anglia when Tavistock tracked me down,” Gavin said, taking up an orange and tearing off a strip of peel. “Has anybody acquainted you with the particulars?”
Rose shook her head. She’d watched the London newspapers for advertisements featuring Mr. Galahad Twidham among itinerant acting troupes, but actors changed names as easily as costumes, making the exercise doubly futile.
“I left Crosspatch Corners to join a group of traveling players,” Gavin said, making short work of peeling the orange. “You know that much. I believed my family would be well cared for in my absence. Our means are abundant. Our solicitors had been chosen by my late father to handle our funds. The business, to the extent I was permitted to take any hand in those matters, was thriving.”
“All should have been well.”
Gavin tore the orange into sections and set three on her plate. “The solicitors were denying my family all but a pittance and keeping a great deal more than a pittance for themselves. They professed to my mother and sisters to know nothing of my whereabouts, all the while assuring me they had forwarded my every letter home most conscientiously. When I received no replies, I concluded my womenfolk were having a collective tantrum, but then, becoming an actor was something of a tantrum on my part, so I didn’t feel I could take the ladies to task.”
“And you were busy learning your lines.” And disporting with widows, merry and otherwise.
“Tavistock owned Twidboro Hall, and he came nosing about to have a look at the property we’ve been renting for years. I thank God for Tavistock’s conscientious stewardship, or who knows what might have happened to my family while I was having a great laugh over Aphra Behn’s comedies?”
Rose reached across the table to half pat, half smack his hand. “Don’t punish yourself for what’s over and done with. Self-flagellation can keep us connected to what we’ve lost.” Though what, precisely, had Gavin DeWitt lost? Given his antecedents, had he truly convinced himself he could have a career on the stage?
She hadn’t known of those antecedents when they’d met before. She’d assumed he was the proverbial penniless actor, though she’d learned otherwise at Nunnsuch. He was about as penniless as Dane had been humble.
“You are correct,” he said. “Ruminating serves little purpose now. I am home to stay and trying to put matters right with my family. Amaryllis has made a splendid match, Twidboro Hall has been deeded to my grandmother, and the DeWitts are prospering.”
“All’s well that ends well?” He sounded like a widow who’d looked very much forward to life improving when she could set aside her weeds, only to find no improvement at all.
“All is well,” he said as Lady Iris walked by in rapt discussion with Miss Peasegood. “Or near enough to well as makes no difference. Tell me, what inspired you to accept my sister’s invitation?”
Rose stuffed an orange section into her mouth. She’d accepted the invitation because… because she was an idiot. Because Timmens deserved to be proved wrong at least occasionally. Because two weeks of avoiding Gavin DeWitt had lodged his memory only more deeply in her mind. Because he’d treated her ill, and she deserved an explanation, or a chance to convey to him how hurtful he’d been.
Because she wanted an apology, damn him, and not merely three orange sections and more of his soulful self-reflection.
He excelled at soulful reflection—and kissing. “I like Lord and Lady Phillip,” Rose said, “and sitting about waiting for harvest to begin grows tedious. Lady Phillip is known to be an astute manager of funds. She mentioned that we women might find time to discuss our investments while we’re socializing.”
All true, but nowhere near the whole truth.
I’ve missed you.That declaration of treason to her dignity sprang full-fledged into Rose’s mind. She took another bite of orange, then followed up with a sip of punch. The punch tried to go down the wrong way, and then she was coughing while Gavin patted her back and offered his own libation.
“I’m fine,” Rose said, resisting the urge to shove him away. “Please, no fuss, or we’ll have half the guests here recommending tisanes and chiding me for not being more careful.I am fine.”
He subsided into his seat and retrieved his glass of punch. Eighteen months ago, he might have launched into a story about somebody else’s unfortunate moment with a glass of punch, or offered a quote or quip appropriate to the moment.
Instead, he sat across from her, his gaze unreadable, his expression anything but genial. Rose’s earlier thought—I’ve missed you—still echoed in her mind, and another notion resonated with it: I’ve missed you, but who have you become since I thought myself in love with you, and did I ever truly know you at all?
ChapterFour
On the towpath, Gavin had approached Rose, assuring himself that a private encounter was better suited to establishing civil relations. Rose had been amenable to that proposal—can we not start afresh, Mr. DeWitt?—and yet, he wasn’t as relieved as he should have been at her willingness to dissemble.
As she buttered her bread and arranged her cheese, she radiated a reserve she hadn’t had up in Derbyshire. She’d grown into her widowhood, which wasn’t fair.
She should have been missing him with the same confounded lack of self-control he’d been missing her. Thinking of her, hoping she was happy, puzzling over her treatment of him.
“I should be taking another look at my investments,” he said as Rose nibbled her sandwich. “Papa clearly did not choose wisely when he selected our solicitors, and now I’m trying to acquaint myself with the particulars of our situation without being too much of a bother.”
Not a topic he should have raised with a lady he’d ostensibly met two weeks ago, but much on his mind, and Rose had no patience with chitchat.
“Be a bother,” she said. “Be the most imperious, stern, high-handed… I vow until the Earl of Nunn accompanied me on a call to my late husband’s solicitors, they treated me as if I were slow-witted. They recited Dane’s wishes—as they interpreted those wishes—and expected me to sniffle and nod and dab at my eyes in meek surrender.”
“You went to war instead?”
“I certainly took matters in hand. Nunn was a great help, though all he had to do was sit beside me looking unimpressed and late for an appointment with his tailor. My husband was vintage gentry and quite set in his ways.”
That observation approached criticism of Saint Dane. How odd. “I am not vintage gentry. I am the first to qualify for the honor in my family, and yet, I haven’t a manor of my own.”
