Page 21 of Claws and Contrivances
“Good, good. You’ll find your seat waiting just beside Mr Aubrey, who will read the part of Captain Jones.” Swiftly lowering her gaze back to her own manuscript, Aunt Parry waved Rose away. “Go on, dear!”
Was Aunt Parry blushing again? Surely not; it must have been the warmth of the cheerfully crowded room that had brought that sudden colour to her cheeks. It was a decidedly crowded space, with so many chairs gathered together; Rose had to turn and hold her breath before she could squeeze between Serena’s and Beth’s close-set chairs to take the empty seat on Mr Aubrey’s left.
On Rose’s left, Miss Conway smiled over her knitting needles with a glint in her sharp grey eyes that showed she had taken note of Rose’s initial reluctance to join them ... but her brisk nod approved Rose’s final decision. Rose gave the older woman a rueful smile and a submissive nod of her own in acknowledgement. On her right, Mr Aubrey stealthily turned a page in the book that was half-hidden beneath his script.
“You’re fortunate that Captain Jones is away at sea for most of this story,” Rose whispered to him behind the cover of her own script. “Otherwise, you would be in dreadful peril.”
“Wha—who?” Blinking, Mr Aubrey jerked upright in his seat with no discretion whatsoever. Then he startled again as his gaze landed on Rose, seated beside him. “Wait, when did you arrive?”
“Oh, hours ago,” she told him airily – then took pity as his eyes widened. “Just now,” she whispered, leaning closer. “But we have a good deal to talk about later. I’ve discovered—”
“Doom has come upon us!” Aunt Parry boomed from the front of the room.
Rose hastily shuffled through pages to find her place in time for a horrified Gwinthlean to hear the full and tragic tale of her ancient family’s downfall.
Fortunately, they hadn’t been given the complete novel-thus-far to perform, as much as Rose might have enjoyed doing just that in other circumstances. Instead, Aunt Parry had chosen a variety of scenes to test in company, and all of her neighbours entered into the challenge with a surprising amount of gusto and, in most cases, the apparent comfort of long experience. Rose had never witnessed any such readings in Gogodd Abbey before, but she soon gathered that they had been far more common in past years.
As she witnessed the glow of creative delight in her aunt’s face, she couldn’t help harbouring the guilty suspicion that Aunt Parry might have refrained from hosting such happily noisy gatherings for the first several months of Rose’s stay purely to protect her. How exactly had Georgie referred to the family’s first image of Rose? A sweet, silent waif?
Ugh! Squaring her shoulders and tossing aside all other considerations, Rose threw herself wholeheartedly into her role. No one in this room would have any cause to think her too delicate to even manage public gatherings!
Fortunately, as she was seated beside Mr Aubrey, it was a simple matter to alert him to the exact page and line expected each time the heroic ‘Captain Jones’ was required to hastily set aside his illicit book of dragonology and participate in a scene of human romance. Alas, for all his academic brilliance, it could not be said that Mr Aubrey was a born performer; his light tenor voice nearly choked itself into mortified silence when asked to recite noble emotions before an audience.
It was almost too adorable to watch him stumbling through it, tugging at his cravat in evident agonies of discomfort, and yet still earnestly doing his best for the sake of pleasing his hostess. He certainly deserved assistance throughout such an ordeal, so Rose responded to his every stiffly delivered line with breathlessly adoring delight as the wide-eyed Gwinthlean ... and reaped the satisfaction of seeing his narrow lips unmistakably twitch in response to her most outrageously exaggerated performance.
Naturally, her swooning practise also came in handy, and not only in response to the manifold horrors of Lord Fortescue’s brooding castle and appalling past – as explained with cackling malevolence by Serena as her wicked aunt. When faced with the final choice between marriage to the wicked and depraved Lord Fortescue or death from a thousand nibbling rats in his skull-encrusted dungeons, there was, of course, nothing that any true Gothic heroine could do but swoon in abject horror. Rose had been rather proud of how well she’d managed her last swoon, three scenes ago, despite the tight confines of the seating arrangements.
Perhaps it was that overconfidence that doomed her. Perhaps it was her fatal moment of distraction when she saw that the scholarly Mr Aubrey had miraculously lowered his book of his own volition to watch her perform, with the light of reluctant amusement and appreciation in his green gaze.
Either way, she should have remembered to keep her wits about her ... but when she rose to her feet, flung one hand to her brow, and twirled dramatically in preparation to collapse back into her chair, she was caught entirely off guard by the sudden poke of a wooden knitting needle into her lefthand side.
The elderly Miss Conway was notorious for her inclination to meddle, and Rose, thrown hopelessly off balance, found herself falling directly into Mr Aubrey’s lap.
“Ahhh!” Papers scattered everywhere, and his book fell to the floor with a thud. Cheeks blazing, Rose fought to somehow, impossibly, push herself upright without laying her hands on any of the highly inappropriate surfaces which currently filled her vision. Mr Aubrey’s long, warm fingers wrapped around her upper arms, steadying and disconcerting her in equal measure.
“Allow me.”
Rose bit her lip, unable to meet his gaze as he helped her back to her feet ... but she couldn’t help breathing in the much too appealing scent of lemon and sandalwood from their intimate position.
“I do beg your pardon.” She was hideously conscious of the enthralled gazes and muffled whispers all round them as she spoke, gaze firmly fixed on the rumpled folds of his cravat. “I’m not usually so clumsy, but—”
“Oh, dear.” Miss Conway’s airy voice was entirely free of shame. “Did I somehow bump into you when I was adjusting my knitting?”
“Oh, Matilda!” Aunt Parry said reproachfully. “Really ...”
“She’s a menace with those needles!” Mr Evans, the shopkeeper, gave a comfortable laugh. “Stories up and down the county, I can tell you. I ought to stop ordering them in for her, really.”
“Not if you want any more warm scarves knitted for your children this winter, Dai Evans!” Miss Conway retorted.
The Reverend Davies and his wife both entered into the debate with the easy rhythm and banter of long friendship, but Rose couldn’t take in any of their words as she realised that Mr Aubrey was showing absolutely no inclination to release her. Slowly, painfully, she raised her gaze to meet his, her breath constricting with an irrational agitation that prickled more and more intensely behind her chest as the warmth of his fingers pressed against her bare skin ...
And finally found him staring not at her, after all, but at the seat she’d abandoned, which should have been empty and uninteresting.
“Esgob Dafydd!” Behind her, the farmer’s son, Ellis Jones, let out a low cry of surprise. “Is that a dragon?”
Chapter 12
“Where in the world did that come from?” Miss Conway demanded, with far more distress than she’d exhibited upon toppling Rose earlier.
