Chapter 1 #3
And mayhap charm. She could summon that when she had to.
She didn’t feel like it now. Cerys put her hands on her hips and threw Dot a look of challenge.
“Why not you? You’re family. You’ve a stake in the company.”
Dot looked down at her printed cotton day gown and sturdy half-boots.
She was ten years older than Cerys and her strong looks could politely be called handsome, but she would never be extolled for her beauty.
She excelled at breeches roles and made a better Robin Hood than a Maid Marian in their pantomimes.
She could command respect but was not likely to stir a man’s protective instincts, not when she could potentially best him in a fistfight.
“You’ve feathers in your head if you think a man’d let me have my way with him,” Dot said.
“Mame, then,” Cerys said stubbornly. She wasn’t trying to wheedle her way out of anything—she only wanted to show them that she was no better than they.
She wasn’t a prize plate to be brought out for special occasions.
She was more than the sketch in the papers or the profile in the monthly magazine.
She wanted to be more than the flowering branch. She wanted to be trunk and root. “Mame has more years in the company.”
“Far more years in general,” snorted Mame, who likely had two score of years to her tally, were there any record of her baptism to be found in a parish register.
Mame played the parts of the dames and matrons, Juliet’s nurse, Elizabeth the Queen.
“Do I flutter me eyelashes, a gent’s likely to hand me his handkerchief to get the cinder out o’ me eye. ”
“Rhoda.” Cerys turned to her. “She’s blonde and blue-eyed. A true English rose.”
Rhoda’s guffaws drowned out any demurral. Once she quieted, Mame said what they were all thinking. “Rhoda don’t have the manner or the airs you can put on. She’s got the tavern in her bones and blood, she does.”
“Born and raised,” Rhoda agreed. “Likely still be working there if me Jamie hadn’t got hisself blown up at Trafalgar.”
All were silent a moment. The ongoing wars with Napoleon were a blight no one could escape, and one reason the company, against all tradition, had as many women as men.
They made a great deal of blunt when they entertained a garrison of soldiers, though.
“Tryph.” Cerys turned to the other girl. “You’ve a sweet way about you. I wouldn’t say no to anything you ask.”
Tryph’s dark eyes widened, and she tugged a tight curl of hair.
Tryphenie, like the others, wasn’t prone to speak of her past, but her offhand remarks suggested she had known more hardship than any of them.
Tryph could play any role on stage, and she relaxed in the company of those who knew her, but put her among strangers and she went as silent as Meek.
“Don’t make me go out and talk to folk,” Tryphenie said. “Oh, Mame, please don’t.”
“Not for a moment,” Mame soothed. “At any rate, we mun talk with Dorsey first and see if he’ll fall in with our thinking. He’ll want to see if he can borrow a theater afore he’ll be persuaded to build.”
They all nodded at this. No one doubted that Mame, the real brains of the outfit, could persuade Dorsey to agree to anything she suggested. “And it’s all a lot of chat if we don’t have the money, now innit?” Mame said.
That was when Cerys delivered another solid kick to the interwoven timbers hiding the trunk, and the pile at last gave way. She pushed the fallen planks aside, unable to tell floorboard from frame, ceiling strut from foundation. A reek of ash, sulfur, and scorched leather burned her nose.
“Found something,” she called.
The others helped her pull the trunk loose from the well of debris.
It was heavy, and the lock, upon inspection, had melted out of shape.
Cerys looked around for a heavy piece of metal and found the bar sticking up next to Tryphenie.
She yanked it loose, raised, aimed, and brought it down on the lock with a savage swing.
The entire latch broke off with a satisfying chunk.
“That won’t—” Mame began, then fell silent when Cerys kicked at the lid and it popped open. “Aye, I s’pose that’ll help some.”
The trunk held assorted costumes, boots, accessories, and a cluster of fake jewels wrapped in linen. Below that, the strongbox that Dorsey never allowed to stay in the hotel, convinced that thieves rifled his rooms each time he left them.
“And here’s the money.” Cerys wiped a beat of sweat from her face and knew from the blot on her gloves that she’d just smeared ash over her cheek. “Who’s ready to build a house of our own?”
If it were on her to be the means, then she would do it.
She would show the troupe she was committed to them, she was truly one of them, and she wasn’t just larking about until another shiny bauble caught her eye.
Their dream was her dream, and she would prove it by getting them a theater, no matter what it cost.
Before her past could sneak up to claim her and she had to leave them all anyway, just as they believed she would.