Page 40 of Miss Dramatic
They emerged into the terrace, into the gilded splendor of a summer morning. “Of course it matters. We’re still clannish in Scotland, still look to our own of necessity. I thought this house party would be a respite from the usual polite whirl.”
“Isn’t it?”
Lady Ducannon set a course around to the shady side of the house. “With only the one bachelor to speak of, yes, it is. Mr. DeWitt is devilish good-looking, on the threshold of his prime, and quite well-heeled. He also doesn’t have the sort of sniffy pretensions all the heirs, spares, and nabobs adopt, though he’s a candle nabob as sure as whisky is good for the digestion. Ah, my compliments to our hostesses.”
Lady Duncannon set her tray on a wrought-iron table on the narrow terrace that overlooked the pall-mall court. Rose did likewise and took a seat facing the hedge behind which she and Gavin had… reached a new and better understanding.
As if her thoughts had summoned him, a tattoo of distant hoofbeats signaled the progress of a rider galloping along the towpath. Roland thundered into view across the park, a dark streak against the green foliage, his rider bent low over his neck.
“Mr. DeWitt cuts quite a dash in the saddle,” Lady Duncannon said, spearing a bite of ham. “That colt is a fine specimen, though I must say his form is unusual.”
“Roland runs best like that, a loose rein, nose low. Not how I’d like to approach a jump, but Mr. DeWitt knows his mount.”
“And you know Mr. DeWitt.”
Rose busied herself applying jam to her toast. Lady Duncannon had taken her time, but her approach to this topic had been as strategic as Drysdale’s grand entrance the previous evening.
“I do, to some extent. We’ve crossed paths at various house parties. What of you? You seem quite congenial with all the ladies.”
Lady Duncannon waited until Gavin and Roland had disappeared around a bend in the river. “We are half of us cousins, the other half friends and neighbors, of the sort you allude to. Our paths cross at house parties, in London during the social Season, in the spa towns, that sort of thing.”
Lady Duncannon was lying and doing it well—with a liberal garnish of truths and half-truths. Dane had had the same gift, which he’d used to cover his Town expenses, his gambling debts, and his flirtations with the ladies of the neighborhood.
He’d lied for the usual self-serving reasons. What inspired Lady Duncannon’s prevarications?
“You mentioned that Mr. DeWitt is quite well-heeled,” Rose said. “Have you had occasion to consider becoming more closely acquainted with him?”
Lady Duncannon’s smile for the first time acquired a hint of calculation. “I own part of a bank, Mrs. Roberts. The stereotype of the thrifty Scot is based on grim necessity. English ports were closed to us for far too long, and we nigh bankrupted ourselves trying to gain our own foothold in Central America. Then we wasted more coin in Jacobite uprisings—you notice I do not call them rebellions—and supporting our banished relatives on the Continent. I am in the habit of paying attention to who is well fixed and who is pockets to let. Then too, ladies in our situation must be wary of the fortune hunters, aye?”
Was that a reference to Dane? More prevarication? “Mr. DeWitt is not a fortune hunter.”
“I agree, and yet, he remains something of a puzzle. I like puzzles. I also like winning at pall-mall, and my short game is nigh untouchable. My aim is wanting for the longer strokes, though. What of you?”
Rose let the subject of Mr. DeWitt drop and chatted amiably about pall-mall, straw hats, grades of wool, and the Marquess of Tavistock’s budding brewery. Lady Duncannon allowed as how she might be persuaded to invest in such a venture—“You’ll ne’er part an English mon from his ale, Mrs. Roberts”—but Rose wasn’t fooled.
The purpose of this meal tête-à-tête had been to bring up Gavin DeWitt, cast him in a questionable light, and see how Rose reacted. Last night, the interrogation had come from Miss Peasegood, and Rose suspected Lady Iris might have a go at luncheon.
Which was just too blessed bad. Rose expected to share her lunch with Gavin himself and, when the occasion allowed, to share more kisses with him as well.
“Is Drysdale truly so inept at pall-mall?” Rose asked, “or is this, too, one of his performances?”
Gavin considered the question as the great actor pretended to sight down the handle of his mallet.
“Probably some of both,” Gavin replied, just as Lady Iris sent a ball bouncing onto the terrace. “Cissy Drysdale plays a convincing fool, though those roles fell to me initially. Drysdale came down with a cold a few months after I joined the troupe, and as I was his understudy, I stepped into a lead. Things began to change after that.”
Lady Duncannon had demanded that Gavin play for her group, there being one fellow on each of the four teams, and Gavin graciously consented.
“Change how?” Rose asked.
Gavin bided with her and several other competitors in the shade of the tall privet while play rotated through the teams. The day wasn’t oppressively hot, but he liked being near the hedge that had afforded him and Rose such lovely sanctuary the previous evening.
“For one thing, the audiences noticed me,” Gavin said. “The other players noticed me too. I went from being the new boy twitted for form’s sake to one of them who might move on to better things and remember them fondly.” Though Gemma Drysdale in particular had gone sullen and watchful on him.
“Did you?”
“Move on to better things? When I left Drysdale’s Players, I took on roles more suited to my abilities.” He’d also traveled far from memories both sweet and bitter in Derbyshire. “Buffoonery and farce take skill. One must be silly but maintain a bit of distance from even the silliness, the better to laughwiththe audience, to be in on the jokewiththem. I can do that, but I’d rather take up the difficult issues that dramatists can put before us. Then too, there’s the challenge of making the language of Good Queen Bess’s day intelligible. I relished that challenge.”
A fuss ensued over where exactly Lady Iris’s ball should be returned to the court. Much measuring of mallet lengths and considering of angles followed. Lady Duncannon, several yards off, discreetly nipped from a flask, and Tavistock defected from his team long enough to whisper something into his marchioness’s ear.
