Chapter Eight #3
“Yes, then what are we to do? I’d thought,” Kyle said pensively, “we might substitute Her Fatal Lover or perhaps. The Bridge at Midnight. They’re dramatic, and always leave audiences sniveling.
And have no tiresome English accents for Miss Lottie to get right, and no more than the usual references to drunken folly.
The only problem I can foresee, is that the girl in them both is a bit older than our dear Polly—a sort of a junior ingenue, as it were.
I hesitate to ask this,” he said with every evidence of embarrassment, which was remarkable really, Hannah thought, for a man who’d probably never felt that emotion, “but do you think, my dear Mrs. Jenkins, that our Polly could, ah—pad for the part?
“Pray—wait before you upbraid me,” he cried, holding up one slender hand, before Mrs. Jenkins could so much as blink, “for though the girl ought to look nubile, I promise she’d never be subjected to catcalls or whistles as Miss Lottie is, because she’d play a pure young thing merely trembling on the brink of womanhood—not wallowing in it—rather like a sprite, like the girl in the ‘Fairy’ soap advertisements.
Do you see? Do you think she could—stretch for the part? ”
Before Mrs. Jenkins could answer, he added confidentially, “Because one day, I shall need a new ingenue. I hope that will be many years hence, of course. But spring does turn to summer in its course, and when it does, how nice to have a new star that we’ve trained ourselves ready to step in.”
Hannah’s face was as radiant as Polly’s, while Mrs. Jenkins, a woman who knew acting, too, seemed to think, and then nodded.
“My Polly,” she said imperially, “can do anything. She is an actress. Are you not, my child?”
“Oh yes, Mama,” Polly breathed joyfully.
“And though it’s not quite the thing to say, I might add that the women in our family bloom early, and beautifully,” Mrs. Jenkins said in a lowered voice, as she pinched Polly to get her to stand straight and stop hunching her shoulders, as she’d told her to do just an hour before.
When they’d done making arrangements for getting to work on the new roles, Mrs. Jenkins and Polly left, the pair of them almost skipping to the door.
Hannah stared at Kyle when they’d gone. “You wouldn’t happen to have the room next to ours, would you?” she asked on a tremulous smile, as though she’d realized that just now, and not last night.
“I don’t need to listen at keyholes,” Kyle said with every evidence of hurt pride, since he’d actually listened with his ear to the wall.
“I’ve eyes, you know. And if I’d already spied what Polly so gallantly tried to conceal, it wouldn’t be long before the gents in our audience did, since they’ve been without female companionships far longer than I have.
” Then he paused, realizing that might not be true, which led him to the real reason he’d wanted Hannah present when he spoke to Mrs. Jenkins.
Before he could get to it, Hannah spoke.
“Whatever the reason, thank you,” she said earnestly, her dark eyes warm with affection. “It was a kind and good thing to do for Polly.”
And if things work out, even better for me, Kyle thought, as he disclaimed modestly, “Nonsense. I consider myself in the role of father to all of you. Which is why I wished to speak with you—and you, too, Peggy,” he added, raising his voice as he gazed to where she fidgeted in her corner.
“So come here, and stop fishing about in that basket before you get a pin in those busy fingers.
“Children,” he said in low, loving, caressing tones, which alarmed Hannah as much as it solaced her, for she knew he was at his most dangerous when he was at his sweetest, “I’ve heard, through my many sources—” he paused, as Hannah realized that must have been their adjoining wall, “that you’ve been walking out with those local fellows, and plan to see them yet again.
Folly, folly,” he said in his deep voice, like the tolling of a bell, “sheer folly.
“Graham Dylan,” he intoned sadly, as if he were a man reading a name in an obituary, “and Royal Atkins, his foreman. The first a practiced Don Juan, for all his western airs. The man’s a chameleon: on Broadway, he’s the epitome of a swell and a sport, believe me.
I’ve seen him there. Out here—he plays the lonesome cowboy.
And as for the other, what sort of innocent, honest, and hardworking ranch worker, which I’m sure he claims to be…
takes his orders from a fellow like Dylan?
“My dear children,” Kyle began, and for all that Hannah knew he was of an age with the two men he was deriding, there was so much worldly sorrow in his deep voice, she’d an uncanny impulse to climb into his lap and throw her arms around his neck so he could console her for any loss she’d ever had, “it’s always folly to mix with civilians.
What can they offer you but excitement? And what is excitement but ruin to girls who are on their own, far from home? ”
Since both Hannah and Peggy had entertained that thought often enough in the privacy of their own minds, they grew gravely silent.
Kyle touched long slender fingers to Hannah’s cheek.
“My dear,” he sighed, “beware. You know more of the world than Peggy here, perhaps you feel that as a widowed woman you cannot be led astray,” he said, and paused.
But there was that in the deep black eyes that stared into hers, as well as in his dark and midnight voice that hinted—only that—that it might just be that a widowed woman welcomed such straying, and she lowered her eyes at the shame of that insinuation.
He nodded, secretly pleased but apparently saddened, as he went on, “You are yet so young, you may have forgotten that there are some kinds of ruin that can come even to those who are experienced. But what sort of guidance is that for our poor Peggy?”
But he’d overplayed his hand. He’d forgotten she was subtle enough to have felt enough shame at mere inference; now she felt only rage at his impudence.
He knew it for a misstep the moment after he said it, for he felt the smooth skin beneath his fingertips grow hot.
She jerked her head away and gave him stare for stare.
“Mr. Dylan and Mr. Atkins have taken us for a buggy ride in the clear light of day, and nothing we’ve done could not be shown on a stage in front of an audience of nuns and orphans.
It is not excitement but diversion, and pleasant conversation and…
and…respect,” she said after a struggle to find the exact word, and failing that, a powerful one, “that we sought. And will seek. As often as we wish. Unless, of course, by doing so we jeopardize our livelihoods,” she added, looking so heated and wild in her rage, he felt a thrill of pure lust for her for the first time, and longed to take those incredibly swollen lips under his own to silence them and appease this sudden, unusual, unforeseen hunger of his.
But an actor worth his pay never forgets he is onstage, and knows when the scene is played out, and never takes an encore when the audience is hissing. And too, he remembered a lovely quote to solace him as he immediately stepped away from her and the situation.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much, he thought, and said, contritely, “I beg your pardon, I never sought to give offense. Everything I’ve said was for your benefit,” he said.
“Your place with me was never in jeopardy, I only worried for your heart,” he went on, and saw indecision replacing her fury as he added, “I shall be still, I only ask your forgiveness, and that you understand my position.”
“Well, yes, fine, I see, let’s do forget it,” Hannah said, and turned to Peggy, who muttered much the same.
But by their silence and their faces as they left him, Kyle knew his words, like those of his favorite playwright, would linger long after the sound of them had died away.
And for that, at least, he was content. Rome couldn’t be built in a day.
But at least, he thought with pleasure, he’d ensured that Dylan and his friend couldn’t steal them away in that short a time, either.
The only displeasure he felt as he sat and considered the matter, was that he was no longer so sure it was only his diminishing troupe that he so badly needed to keep.
There were several things on Hannah’s mind as she stepped into the carriage the gentleman had hired for their outing today.
But she didn’t mind that in the least. Because disturbing as they were, they were almost more disturbing than the blue eyes that stared down into hers, and so kept her from being beguiled by them.
And were enough to distract her from the amused voice that spoke when she hastily glanced away from those same eyes.
She hadn’t needed Kyle’s warning to remind her that she knew nothing about Gray Dylan, that he knew nothing about her, and that such attentions as he paid were suspect in a man who was, as he claimed, merely along for the ride to play propriety for his friend Royal.
But at the thought of those exact attentions, she was pulled up short.
Because as Peggy and Royal began chatting in the front seat of the carriage, she realized that things looked very different here and now, in Gray’s company, than they did in her own mind in the dark hours of the night.
It was true that he’d asked her out many times, but he’d never asked for more.
And since their first picnic, he’d been content to wait for his friend to ask Peggy out again.
So whatever it had been to begin with, now it might all be exactly as he said: he was simply engaging in a light flirtation to pass the time while his friend courted hers.
She sat still, stunned that after all her worrying, that might be the entire answer.
A tempest in a teapot, much ado about nothing, she thought, curiously cast down by this revelation. Until he spoke.