Page 49 of Miss Dramatic
As did Amaryllis, now that she’d met Drysdale, and Tavistock trusted her instincts utterly. “I tried to hire the East Anglia bunch, but they had summer commitments. Drysdale got word I was looking and contacted me.”
“Bold of him,” Phillip said. “But then,audentis fortuna iuvatand all that. Nevertheless, Drysdale is a lesser light as a thespian. Gavin is the genuine article—younger, better looking, wealthy. A dabbler with talent from Drysdale’s perspective. At the very least, Drysdale has grounds for jealousy. Whatever else is true, you’ve enlivened the gathering considerably.”
Phillip had refrained from scolding. Kind of him. “Thank you as always for your unwavering support, dearest brother.”
“You know you have it, but Gavin has been a friend since long before you became the local Marquess of Malt. In his way, he has been as solitary as I was, but without my adorably retiring nature. He resorted to charm, stories, and dramatic recitations to draw us all near. That’s not the same as being close to the man himself.”
Tavistock desperately hoped that Mrs. Roberts was drawing close to the man himself. Amaryllis vowed that Gavin’s worst affliction was not boredom or resignation to unappealing duty, but rather, a lonely heart.
A condition with which Tavistock could sympathize. “If I’m not to spend a night on the dressing closet cot, I’d best find my wife and stay close to her. You’ll keep an eye on Drysdale?”
“And on Gavin. What of Mrs. Roberts? She has a prior acquaintance with Drysdale, too, and I saw him casting speculative glances her way on the pall-mall court.”
Tavistock rose, feeling old in his bones. A change of weather could do that, as Mr. Dabney would no doubt agree.
“I think we can trust to Gavin’s good offices to keep an eye on Mrs. Roberts.”
“And perhaps his hands and occasionally his lips on her as well.” Phillip saluted with his brandy. “’I drink to the joy of the whole table.’”
“Shakespeare?”
“Of course Shakespeare, you heathen. I take it your lady wife has been apprised of your motivations where Gavin and the actors are concerned?”
“Amaryllis put it together without even a hint from me. Took her a night’s sleep, but she rose in the morning with that I-want-a-word-with-you-sir look in her eye. She agrees with me that our marriage has curtailed Gavin’s options.”
“Gavin likely doesn’t see it that way. Guilt curtails his options. Haring off without a backward glance, trusting the wrong brood of vipers, youthful arrogance… But you wouldn’t know anything about that.”
Tavistock cuffed Phillip half-gently on the back of the head, because, as near as he could tell, that was expected between brothers. “Go find your dear Hecate. Maybe she can kiss some manners into you.”
“I live in hope. You’ll leave the terrace door unlocked?”
“I can’t expect Mrs. Roberts to climb in a window, can I?”
Phillip rose and stretched. “She’d manage. Let’s hope she can manage Gavin, because so far, nobody else has done a proper job of it.”
Leaving Gavin to manage himself, all alone, without reinforcements. Tavistock knew how that felt too, and went posthaste to find his darling wife.
To yield to mere desire was in the character of the fool. Gavin realized this as he pulled off his boots and stockings, and Rose arranged pillows on the makeshift bed. Desire, like playing the fool, called for some technique and experience, a good sense of timing, and a bit of dash, but the role could be shed along with the costume once the curtain came down.
He’d surrendered to desire with Rose in Derbyshire and hoped all the complicated emotions would sort themselves out eventually.
Months of taking on more challenging parts, followed by months of galloping all over the shire hadn’t sorted anything out, except that he’d missed Rose more than he missed the stage, and he didn’t understand how he and she could have been at such cross-purposes up north.
“You look so pensive,” Rose said, sitting on the bench-bed and bending to unlace a boot.
“Let me do that.” He knelt before her as he had on many other occasions and dealt with her footwear. Garters and stockings next, and while his mind was still trying to parse the significant questions—what am I doing? how is this different from before?—his body reveled in the feel of Rose’s muscular calves, her sturdy ankles, her hand glossing over his hair.
“You were always so considerate,” she said. “I treasured you for that.”
He brushed her skirts up and kissed her knee. “I tried to be, until you knocked me witless and wanton. I treasure you for your passion.” And for the notion that she’d let herself golike thatonly with him.
Her words—I need you—rang in his imagination as the herald of joy, butdon’t propose to melurked as a warning. He was auditioning for the role of suitor—again—but this time, both he and Rose acknowledged his aim.
That was an important step forward, but by no means an assurance of success.Don’t bungle this. Don’t overplay the moment. Don’t think too much.
“You’re sure, Rose, about this much at least?”
“If you walk out that door now, Gavin DeWitt, I will trip you flat with or without the assistance of enchanted trees, and I will personally drag you ‘full fathom five’ into the cold depths of the Twid and wish you to perdition.”
