Chapter Three #3
“Still,” he said thoughtfully, “you do well, and the sooner she gets into her parts, the sooner you’ll be free of her.
Then, you’ve only to wait about and see what we might require her to learn next.
I expect to do very well with this tour, but all my outlay has gone into it.
I’m not a rich man,” he said sadly, brushing at his jacket’s velvet sleeve as though he were trying to keep such an expensive thing in good order.
Then he gazed up at her from large, pain-filled dark eyes and said sorrowfully, “And while I do not begrudge what I pay you, and am aware of how I lured you here with us, and never, I promise you, intend to displace you…ah, my dear Hannah, since you shall have so much free time, I wonder if I could prevail upon you to take up some other few little duties, as well? For the truth is that just now I can’t afford one more member of our little family—even if I could find anyone else so suitable to the task as you. ”
“Oh, but that would be fine,” she cried, and then whispered, so the others couldn’t hear their conversation.
“Please don’t apologize. I understand. In fact.
I’d find idleness embarrassing. I know the theater, and know how many tasks there are to do.
Indeed, I did so many of them for my parents.
Do you need another dresser? Or someone to help with makeup?
Or props? Or costumes? Or making script notations?
I’m very good at all those things, I promise you,” she said, for all of it was true, though she didn’t usually brag about it and hadn’t intended to volunteer to do half of it.
But he looked so abject. And he’d done the one thing she could never resist: he’d needed her.
He smiled and put his hand over hers. It was, she noted, forgetting the glass he’d just held, cold.
He must have been very nervous, she thought, smiling back at him.
She had, he thought again, wonderful lips, smiling only made them more tempting.
He almost leaned forward to taste them to seal their bargain, until he remembered where he was, and what he hadn’t established as yet.
He always had a helper when he ran a show.
And always a female one. Not only because they were the only ones happy to work for nothing more than his approval.
He might even have paid them, if he had to, because unlike many men, he liked females very much, and for more than their most obvious talents.
Which was never to say that he denied himself them.
No, his assistant was always also his lover, it made things simpler.
It saved time to give instructions from bed, and was pleasant to have someone to share his troubles with night and day.
And a show always meant trouble. But his last assistant had expected to stay on with him past the run of his last show, then on into the next, and just as he’d reminded her when he left her: permanency was never anything he required, desired, or had promised.
Now the position was open again. He always waited a week or so into the new show to make his pick. Hannah was his first choice. She was bright and desirable. And experienced in everything he needed. He considered himself very fortunate.
“Yes, yes,” he said, matching her excitement, “I need someone to help with all of those things, and even more. Someone to take notes for me, and make note of things that I might miss. Much more than an assistant, I need a helpmeet, a friend, someone to work intimately with me. Someone lovely, clever, and true. You’re of the theater, you know precisely what I mean.
And you’re a widow, so you know only too well what loneliness is,” he added, lowering his voice to velvet.
“I can’t give more than my entire appreciation and devotion in return—for the run of the tour,” he said urgently.
“But life itself doesn’t offer more guarantee—at least I promise I’ll be grateful until our ways part again. Say you will, Hannah, do!”
“Oh, of course,” she said fervently, caught up in his drama.
“Oh good!” he said happily, taking her hand.
“We’ll move your things into my compartment tonight.
Well,” he said, seeing her arrested expression, “from the look of things, Nelson will be taking your place in Lottie’s compartment presently—at least her bed—and three is a crowd.
We’ll be a much more comfortable twosome, I promise you. ”
“What?” she asked, withdrawing her hand from his.
“Ah, we’ll do very well together,” he began, nonplussed by the look on her face, and as astonished by that as he was by his own uneasiness.
“I-will-not-stay-with-you,” she said, spacing each word distinctly, her fine dark eyes glowing, her lips thinning to merely delicious, he thought, watching, fascinated by her fury. “And if this train were not moving now, I would step off it.”
“Oh. You’re not attracted to me,” he said, so genuinely puzzled that he didn’t have to think of how to show his complete lack of comprehension at her distress.
She relented. “That isn’t it,” she said fairly.
“You’re a very attractive man. It’s only that I haven’t thought of you that way before this.
I never do. Or would. I don’t do that sort of thing.
” She saw his confusion and sighed. He deserved honesty, because, she saw, he hadn’t meant to insult her.
If they’d been people from the vast outer world, she knew he’d have to be a cad or a bounder to make such a disgraceful offer to her, much less presume she’d go along with it.
If she were of that world, she knew that even to speak of his offer, if only to object to it, would be to be exactly what he’d thought her to be, and so to be beyond the pale of polite society.
But the theater was not polite society. And so if he were of that world and she an actress, his offer would be merely practical, and insulting only to someone such as herself.
But this situation was nothing like any of those. He was of her world as she was of his, and so she knew he meant nothing insulting by his offer, and thought it might be possible to make him understand yet.
“My marriage,” she said, as she always said to those men she respected when they offered her any kind of liaison, “was dreadful. Dreadful. I never want to start that again. I could not. I therefore avoid such…doings with men. However kind or handsome they may be. Do you see?”
“Oh,” he said, and sat back to study her.
She was either telling the truth, which would be a great pity, he thought, or telling a lie, which would be an even greater one, because she was so convincing it would mean she’d have to be the greatest actress he’d ever known, and she refused to act onstage.
Or so she’d said. But then, she’d said some very odd things, and it was very early in their acquaintance, wasn’t it?
Change was the only constant he knew. If he couldn’t have her in one way, and that was by no means certain as yet, then he could try for another.
Because no pleasure was as great as finding a new talent he could make into a star, which could make him into a millionaire.
Because nothing was so pleasurable as money.
“Understood,” he finally said. “But will you take up your other duties? If I find you a room with a less demanding roommate?”
She gave him a long, level look. He gazed back with his most transparently opaque look of sincerity.
“And I won’t importune,” he promised.
She thought quickly. She had meant everything she’d said. Not working behind the scenes was harder for her than working. He obviously still needed her for more than his bed. And where else could she go if she alienated him now, after all?
“Very well,” she said.
“Good, you’ll stay with Peggy Callahan. She’s with wardrobe,” he said, neglecting to mention that Peggy was wardrobe, “and has her own compartment. Had, that is to say. But she won’t mind sharing.
She’s young and shy, and very sweet. You’ll have no trouble rooming with her, although,” he said with great sympathy, “your bed is likely to be oh so cold at night.”
“I will endure,” Hannah said.
“I was afraid of that,” he answered. And they both laughed so merrily, and looked at each other with such affection, that everyone in the company was amazed when they blithely went off to separate compartments that night.
The two gentlemen stood at the rear of the theater and looked around them.
The fair-haired one nodded with satisfaction, as if he’d just bought the place, and not just excellent box seats in it.
The raw-boned, darker-haired fellow next to him was so occupied with shifting his shoulders and turning his neck that he scarcely seemed to take in the splendor of the theater or the audience that was filling it.
“Royal,” the light-haired gentleman said in an amused undertone, “you sure no one back at the bunkhouse put ants in your traveling bags? I’ve never seen so much squirming outside of an overturned rock.”
“They didn’t have to. Things is itchy enough, thanks, Gray.
These are the new duds you told me to get.
You sure I’m not supposed to go on the stage instead of into the audience in them?
” his companion answered in an aggrieved undervoice.
“It’s all right for you,” he said, eyeing Gray, and seeing, despite the scars on his tanned face and his slight limp, that he somehow even moved right in his clothes.
He was every inch a tall, spruce, exquisitely correct-looking gentleman, his light hair and silver waistcoat pointing up the sober perfection of his evening wear.