Page 28 of Miss Dramatic
“I’ll do that, ma’am.” The footman assayed a slight bow, even holding his tray, and glided off.
Rose was considering joining the circle around Lord Phillip, whom she liked insofar as she knew him, when Gavin DeWitt appeared at her elbow.
“What a wonderful color on you,” he said, “and you have dressed to match the punch. Good evening.”
“Mr. DeWitt.” He made a fine picture himself in his evening attire. Rose kept that thought to herself. “No punch for you?”
“I know to go slowly with Hecate’s brew. In warm weather, it’s easy to overdo the libation.” He offered his arm. “Shall we admire the privet, or whatever one does while waiting to be seated al fresco?”
The privet hedges had all been trimmed to waist height or below, which showed off blooming beds of salvia, geraniums, hollyhocks, and daisies.
“Let’s tarry among the lavender borders,” Rose said. “The scent is marvelous, and soon enough those borders will be trimmed back.”
“Harvested, you mean,” Gavin said, escorting Rose down the terrace steps. “Tempus fugit. I gave Caroline permission to put up her hair today. That she needed my approval makes me feel antediluvian.”
“That you gave it without teasing her, pretending to dither, or mocking her made her feel special,” Rose said. “You took her situation seriously.”
“She’s taking it seriously. Caroline was biding in one of the maples by the towpath, and I rode right past her without seeing her.”
They’d been able to do this in Derbyshire. Talk about anything and everything, no preliminaries, no bantering for the sake of establishing positions. Why hadn’t Gavin mentioned that Drysdale’s troupe was soon to arrive at Miller’s Lament?
Did he not know? Not care?
He bent to snap off a sprig of lavender and held the buds to his nose. “I have learned of a development hatched up by my brother-by-marriage to enliven this house party. Tavistock intends that his surprise provide entertainment for the guests and impress his lady with his husbandly devotion.” He passed over the lavender sprig. “I thought you deserved a warning.”
Rose gave the lavender a sniff—what a magical, complex, bracing aroma—and recalled many similar informalities frombefore.
Timmens was doubtless watching from the window, and Rose resisted the urge to turn around and stick her tongue out in the general direction of the second-floor balconies.
“You refer to the impending arrival of Drysdale’s Players,” Rose said, more than a little relieved that Gavin had brought up the topic. “My maid mentioned this as I was dressing for supper.”
“The estimable Timmens?”
“The same. The servants have been alerted, doubtless because beds must be readied and so forth. I don’t particularly care to cross paths with Mr. Drysdale and his underlings again. What of you?”
“I’m to regard my time onstage as a misguided frolic, to gaze upon my youthful errors with a fond dismay. I was the best Shakespearean lead Drysdale had ever seen, as he himself admitted, but that was all so much folly.”
Gavin was the best Shakespearean lead Rose had seen too. “Will you resent having Drysdale and his confreres paraded before you now?” Or did Gavin dislike rubbing shoulders with those who’d known him when he’d been dabbling in the role of male strumpet? Why was there no word for amale strumpet, because they apparently existed in life?
“I left Drysdale’s group under something of a cloud,” Gavin said as they crunched along the crushed-shell path. “I wanted more serious fare, and Drysdale wasn’t about to demand that from his players, when they’d spent so much time and effort perfecting their farces and comedies. We remained civil, but there was a strain. Mrs. Drysdale in particular will likely have little use for me.”
No mention whatsoever of having sought coin for intimate favors, but then, what had Rose expected? A full confession? An apology between the herbaceous borders? That Gavin had slunk off to the south in a fit of self-disgust?
Apparently, a fresh start meant afreshstart, complete with convenient lapses of memory.
Very well.“So you miss the stage, but not these players. I miss marriage, but not my husband as he was before he died.”
Gavin came to a halt. “You adored your husband. His death devastated you.”
If Gavin had been playing a role up north, so had Rose. In part because of her experiences in Derbyshire, she could—in some circumstances, at some times—put the role aside. She’d come to that realization only recently and was still pondering its significance.
“The manner of Dane’s death was lamentable,” she said. “An overturned curricle while galloping down his own driveway, two days without regaining consciousness, and no heir of the body left behind. He was nonetheless in that curricle and three sheets to the wind, again, because what gave him joy lay in London and not in Hampshire with me.”
Gavin snapped off another sprig of lavender and twirled it between his fingers. “He was drunk at the ribbons?”
Rose abruptly felt ancient and exhausted. “By then, he was always drunk. He was bitterly disappointed, and spirits offered him oblivion, or so my mother claimed. He and I had quarreled—he was in no fit state to manage a vehicle, and I begged him not to make the attempt.”
Mama had also said that Rose should take the shame of her marital failings to her grave, to confide in no one, and tend to Colforth Hall as conscientiously as possible in Dane’s memory.
