Page 35 of Miss Dramatic
Rose smiled at him. “Right. I’m determined, not stubborn, headstrong, mulish, contrary, difficult, or dramatic. Determined. Just so. Are you still planning to introduce me to your mother and sisters?”
“Of course.”
Amaryllis, Marchioness of Tavistock, née Amaryllis DeWitt, considered herself a patient woman. She’d had to be as the oldest daughter of a family making the difficult transition from shop to gentry and now—thanks to her recent marriage—to the peerage.
She’d learned to never put a foot wrong, never make the wrong comment, never say the right words in the wrong tone of voice or at the wrong moment. Perfection had been tedious and tiring, and marriage had changed life very much for the better.
Mostly.
“You meant to be helpful,” she said again as she walked arm in arm with her marquess along the towpath. The guests had all turned back, while Amaryllis wanted to keep walking, all the way to Windsor. Perhaps to Bristol.
Whose idea was this blasted house party, anyway?
“Entertainments are the soul of a house party,” Trevor replied. “I was sure nobody in Crosspatch had seen much Shakespeare.”
“More than you think, thanks to Gavin, but our guests do not hail from Crosspatch, my lord.”
Trevor took her hand. He was tall—Amaryllis was politely deemed statuesque—so the fit remained comfortable whether they were hand in hand or arm in arm. His height was one of many reasons why Amaryllis had been desperately smitten with him.
Theyfit, and they were temperamentally suited. Trevor valued brains and integrity, most especially in his wife. He wasn’t a snob, though he’d been to snobbery born, and he’d exerted himself to the utmost to be a good brother to Phillip.
“You are my-lording me, madam. I’m truly in your bad books, aren’t I?”
He had been, for about five minutes, and that apparently disconcerted them both. For the sake of the common weal, Amaryllis knew she should not let him off with a wifely demurral.
“You sprang not just one surprise guest on me, but a dozen of them. The players can’t be treated like extra servants and expected to make do in the garrets or on cots in makeshift dormitories. These people have a profession.” One Gavin had shared with them.
“We could put them up at the Arms.”
“Even the Arms hasn’t that many extra beds on short notice, and their custom would suffer if they had to turn away their regular coaching guests.” Amaryllis was tired in body, but her mind was like an overwound clock, ticking madly away. “We can place the distaff with Hecate and Phillip, and I’m hoping Gavin can take in a few of the younger men. The Drysdales will bide with us, of course.” But where to put them?
Miller’s Lament was a work in progress, and while a great deal had been done to restore the old place to its former glory, it barely qualified as a stately home.
“I’d switch those arrangements,” Trevor said. “Put the fellows with Phillip and Hecate, the ladies with your family.”
“Because of Diana and Caro?”
“And because Twidboro Hall is more suited to housing females—you had the running of it, after all—while Lark’s Nest was a bachelor abode for years. The staff, the kitchens, the amenities will all reflect the differing owners.”
Off in the distance, a hound began a desultory barking at odd intervals. Fortinbras belonged to Lawrence Miller, and when Lawrence lingered at the Arms, Fortinbras stood guard on the inn’s front stoop. Regardless of his billet, the old dog cried the watch when the mail coach was a mile from the village.
I love this place, and I love my husband.“That sort of thinking,” Amaryllis said, “is helpful. You are right—Twidboro Hall is better suited to housing ladies—and you make this observation in private, when I have a chance to ponder its particulars. Springing a troupe of actors on me… Trevor, what were you about?”
A piano joined the hound, not Diana’s usual fiery Clementi, but rather, a slow movement. Herr Beethoven. Diana was growing up, and Amaryllis was on hand to see it. She owed that to Trevor. She owed much to Trevor.
“I thought,” Trevor said, “if I informed Gavin that his old friends had been invited, he’d tell you, and that would spoil my surprise. I let a few details slip to Phillip, who insisted we tell your brother, and then Drysdale made devilish good time out from Town—or so he claims—and here I am, with an unhappy wife and a brother-by-marriage who likely wants to toss me into the Twid.”
Trevor stopped walking and faced Amaryllis. “Now that I think on it, the element of surprise might have been suggested by Drysdale. We corresponded at some length on dates and prices and possibilities.”
“Unbeknownst to me.” Amaryllis took the side path that led to Phillip’s gazebo, which was more of a hermit’s-grotto-cum-tree-house. The moon had risen, but she hardly needed illumination to find her way.
Trevor followed, and she heard a muttered French curse when he tripped over a tree root.
Good.
“Yoursurpriseis like that root,” she said. “Unexpected, troublesome. The tree means no harm, sending that root right across the path. Just the opposite—the tree is simply trying to find sustenance and stability. But you nearly went sprawling nonetheless.”
She climbed the steps and settled on the bench facing the river. The gazebo had been Phillip’s retreat, built on the bank of the Twid such that the front looked out over the water. The interior was mostly private, being open only on the Twid side, and provided some shelter from the elements.
