Page 43 of Miss Dramatic
She was, but being discreet about it. “Drysdale, what are you doing here? Berkshire isn’t your usual territory, and Crosspatch Corners is hardly a hotbed of enthusiasm for light theater.”
“You’re smart to be curious.” Drysdale popped one of the chocolates into his mouth and took a fourth from the buffet. “I always said you were smart, though too much intelligence in an actor is never a good thing. We’ll talk, you and I, about what I’m doing here. For now, I’ll be providing the entertainment, just as I was hired to do.”
He winked and sauntered off, and Gavin was reminded of Rose’s earlier question:What in blazes is going on?
ChapterTen
The evening was gorgeous, the best of high summer. Slanting beams of the dying sun gilded a towering pillow stack of clouds. Soft breezes sent foxgloves and daisies bobbing gently at the edge of the park. A doe and fawn nibbled the grass a few yards up from the riverbank, despite the guests milling about in the garden across the park.
The peaceable kingdom made fashionable.
Rose was seized with a melancholy that sprang only partly from thoughts of her late husband. Dane had never loved the countryside, never loved his birthplace, as Rose had come to love it. An evening like this, overwhelmingly sweet in its passing beauty, would not have touched his heart as it touched hers.
Gavin might resent his weekly sermons from the steward, but he understood what a difference a well-managed harvest made. He understood that home and hearth, acres and forests, deserved protection.
“Are you pensive?” The inquisitor was a young lady in that ephemeral stage between adolescence and young womanhood, poised to leave the last echoes of childhood behind, but not yet fully surrendered to adulthood. “You’re Mrs. Roberts. Gav introduced us. I’m Diana DeWitt. Shall I sit with you, or would you rather have a good bout of the blue devils in lovely solitude? Caro is always going off by herself, but I daresay the child is a stranger to low moods.”
Diana chatters, and Caroline blushes.Offered with fraternal affection.
“You must sit with me,” Rose said, scooting over on her bench. “I’m told you are quite the musician.”
Diana took the place beside her. “I love music. I can be loud at the pianoforte, and nobody can scold me. Where else can a young lady be thunderous with impunity?”
That observation suggested Diana might chatter, but she was no featherbrain. “You can also be morose, furious, ominous, hilarious… I never realized that music can be put to subversive ends.” As theater could be and regularly was.
“We’ll let that be our secret, shall we? Amaryllis is impressive in all regards, Gavin is brilliant at the theater, and Caroline will be a famous poetess, mark my words. I took up music in defense of my pride in such company. Do you play?”
“A few party pieces, and sometimes when I’m restless and the weather won’t allow me to hack out.”
“Do you suppose that’s why Gavin is so devoted to Roland? Because he’s restless? I shouldn’t like to see Gav hare off again, but he’s unhappy. Even Mama admits he hasn’t really settled in yet. Grandmama says to give it time, but she says that about everything. What was Tavistock thinking, adding the players to his house party? I’m not supposed to ask that, but Trevor is my brother-by-marriage, and I would like to understand him.”
This was not chattering, but rather, the questions that arose in an alert and observant mind in a world controlled entirely by others. Rose had once asked such questions and been told to read a bit more of old Fordyce rather than trouble her pretty head.
“Promise me something,” Rose said.
“Ma’am?”
“Promise me that if anybody ever tells you to go read some musty old sermons just to get rid of you or have the last word, you will instead take up some thunderous Beethoven.”
“La Passionata. I made myself start with the andante, and I’m getting better at the allegro, but the presto is yet beyond me. One cannot rush when learning fast music, and I love to rush. F minor does not suffer fools.”
And neither, someday, would Gavin’s middle sister. “Are you glad your brother is home?”
Up on the terrace, footmen were moving potted camellias and benches and chairs, while beneath the supper tent, guests were making final passes along the buffet. Gavin was in conversation with the local vicar, and a small, dapper fellow of African descent had joined them.
“Am I glad Gav is home?” Diana undid the ribbons of her straw hat and removed her millinery. “Not exactly. Relieved, of course. We had no idea what had become of him, but what’s the benefit of being wealthy if your coin only binds you to the family seat? We don’t even properly have a family seat—Grandmama owns Twidboro Hall—and yet, Gav is supposed to kick his heels and look tame and content when he’s not. He’s the reason I play the piano, you know.”
“I didn’t know.”
Drysdale took it upon himself to direct the footmen on the terrace, and he was apparently being less than gracious about it, based on the looks he was getting.
“Gav is the one who told me that I could be loud on the pianoforte wherever the composer had jotted an f forforte, and very loud with the ff, orfortissimo. You never saw a girl hunt through a stack of simple tunes with more focused intent. I could also go as swiftly as I pleased when I found a presto, orprestissimo, none of this limiting myself to the trot or the canter on the keyboard. I can gallop as fast as Roland does. That’s the Drysdale creature on the terrace, I take it? Gav never says much about him.”
“Maybe that alone tells us something. Does your brother speak much of his time on stage?”
Diana twirled her hat on her finger. “He tells stories. Gavin tells stories like other people wear clothes. To conceal, to impress, to please, to distract. He’s very good at it, and that’s why I think he’s unhappy. The theater is the most magnificent storytelling there is, and instead, he’s supposed to content himself with…” Diana gestured generally toward the park. “Mama says I’m to keep these thoughts to myself, but refusing to state the obvious doesn’t make it any less so.”
“Sometimes silence has the opposite effect.” Such as when Dane would mention he’d be off to London at week’s end. For the intervening days, neither he nor Rose would mention his plans, much less the reason he was again fleeing his home.
