Page 21 of Miss Dramatic
“You came south shortly after that?”
“Started a-damned-fresh. I seem to be doing that a fair amount lately.” Gavin could have some compassion for the callow fellow who’d gone north, now that he’d again been relegated to the status of family pillar.
“She heard all my dreams, Phillip. My hopes, even my homesickness. She listened, her attention inebriated me. To beheard. It changed how I acted, to be trulyheard, changed how I comported myself before audiences. I became a better actor because of Rose Roberts.”
“And you listened to her dreams and hopes?”
Gavin thought back to what exactly Rose had told him. “She spoke of her late husband and said after a woman puts off mourning, she’s apparently not to mention her late spouse again, other than in passing fondness. That was hard for her. She regretted not having children, not for herself, but because her husband had so wanted sons.”
Not daughters. Dane Roberts had apparently been set on sons.
“She told you these things, which are tender, intimate sentiments, and then shepaid youfor your sexual favors?”
“Confusing, to say the least.” Utterly, maddeningly bewildering. “But grief is an odd beast, and she was still very much a woman grieving.” Less so now, though Gavin wasn’t sure why he thought that to be true.
“I am no expert on the mind of a woman,” Phillip said as garden torches came into view, “but I cannot divine why Mrs. Roberts paid you. Nunn reports that she’d had her turn swanning about Town and buying out the shops. She’d had her chance to be a merry widow where the Hampshire neighbors would take no notice.”
“Rose—Mrs. Roberts—didn’t care for Town. Said everybody was too much consumed with gossip, shopping, and indolence.”
“You miss my point. If she was bent on a frolic, then you obliged her. A lovely idyll unlooked for by either party. She could have parted from you with a fond wave and a sigh. House parties lend themselves to such liaisons. Mrs. Roberts does not strike me as the sort of woman who’d repose her confidences in a man, then deliberately insult him. She had no need to pay you.”
Gavin stopped short in the darkness. “That is the conundrum that has vexed me the most. She had no need to insult me like that. Such behavior was out of character, pointless. I would have taken my congé like a gentleman, albeit a brokenhearted one, if she’d merely… but she paid me.”
“You promised you wouldn’t hare off again, DeWitt.”
“That was before Tavistock took a hand in the stage direction.”
“A promise is a promise.”
The torches winked in the gathering shadows, while guests moved beneath them in pairs and trios.She had no need to pay you.
“Mrs. Roberts and I are to ride out tomorrow afternoon. I have a book to return to her. After that, I make no guarantees.”
“My dear fellow, life makes us no guarantees. Try to act surprised when Tavistock tells you he’s hired some actors to entertain the company.”
“Surprised and pleased,” Gavin said, feeling instead exasperated and tired. “I am a thespian at heart and probably always will be.”
The mounted nature of Rose’s afternoon outing made dressing for the occasion simple, though Timmens had still managed a few long-suffering sighs and dubious glances as Rose donned her riding habit.
“You know I’m not one to judge, ma’am.” Timmens passed Rose a tall boot. “But that Mr. DeWitt wasn’t what he appeared to be. You don’t owe him a minute of your time.”
Rose shoved her foot into the boot and stood to anchor her heel, then sat to don the second boot. “We are none of us entirely what we appear to be, and it’s a pleasant day for some fresh air. Are you getting on well with the other lady’s maids?”
“They’re a good lot,” Timmens said, passing over the second boot. “They don’t put on airs and don’t gossip.” But of course, Timmens would not be distracted from her sermonizing. “I hope you take this opportunity to tell Mr. DeWitt to mind his place. He was up to no good, pretending to be an actor. Deceptive, that.”
“He was an actor, and a good one.”
Timmens held out a fetching little toque adorned with peacock feathers, one of the guilt offerings Dane had brought back from London.
“I’ll do without a hat,” Rose said.
“But, ma’am, the sun is hard on a lady’s complexion. It’ssummer, and you are no schoolgirl.”
Timmens, who might have been two years Rose’s junior, had a lovely complexion. She was quite pretty in a plump, blond, blue-eyed way and a favorite with the footmen, whom she disdained to notice. Timmens would flirt occasionally with a youngish butler, and to the Colforth steward, she was gracious.
A creature of standards, was Timmens.
“We’ll be riding mostly along shaded paths,” Rose said. “Hats are hot, and that hat in particular is silly.”
