26. Chapter 26
It’s an older theater, with regal red velvet sashes and glass ticket boxes.
My footfall is silenced by carpet as I move through the pillars into the auditorium, heart pounding.
Workers buzz about the place, yelling orders, carrying boards atop their heads.
There’s no production on in this moment, of course. It’s the middle of the week.
Yet… he’s here. Not Papa, but Simon Balfour.
He moves in and out of the shadows on stage, spotlights pointed at him.
No, at his work. His expression is wan, and he holds himself back.
Yet his face gentles as he crouches beside a ragged young boy making hasty swipes across the canvas and takes his hand, guiding his brush in long sweeps.
Another mistake, and the lad throws down his brush. Simon anchors him with one hand on his shoulder, absorbing the chaos rather than reflecting it back. Is this what Papa saved him for? To return to merely existing in the theater?
Lift your eyes.
No. I cannot take my eyes off of Simon.
Lift your eyes.
I exhale slowly and tear my gaze from its focus, expecting that help to come again…
and it does. Of course it does. Strength I do not possess infuses my bones.
My gaze drifts up from its narrow focus and reality crystallizes afresh—I take in the entire theater, robust and colorful.
Children move about the set—some on ladders, a few hanging from the top of the background, bringing the scene to life with brushes and hammers.
Forty or fifty people in patched clothing, ragged hair, rush about the stage as if they’ve stepped from a Dickens novel, carrying and tossing and hammering.
They’re bringing the set to life. No, the set is bringing life to them.
And Simon, directing the design, is at the center of it all.
He didn’t choose to die. Not Papa, so full of life.
He chose to let someone else live.
I stare at the scene, at the man my father selected, and my dry heart cracks to see the sadness etched in his expression.
He suffers still. It’s… guilt. His shoulders strain under the weight of what he had cost Papa. I close my eyes and see Papa’s quick smile flashing across his face. I have not seen him in many years, but I know for certain how he would feel about this. And what he would say.
I grab a stray playbill from under the seats and scribble a hasty message. When a stout, mustached man passes me, I thrust the note into his hands. “Please give this to the actor Silas Snow, would you? I’d be ever so grateful.”
Hesitantly he takes it, along with my sixpence, and moves on.
I wonder if he’ll even deliver it.
I long to deliver it myself, but I cannot.
Going anywhere near Simon Balfour would undo everything my father had died for.
My heart breaks with every step I take away from him, away from the rare bit of warmth and sincerity still remaining in this world.
I’m trembling even harder. Seeing him from a distance, seeing him settled into life, should calm me and quell my longing for him, but now he’s taking up even more space in my head.
He’s consuming my heart.
I force my feet to pivot and carry me toward the exit. I shall never stop thinking of him now. His gentle, haunted nature will trail me all my life, quietly asking why I vanished and did not respond to his letters.
I push out the first doors into the lobby and collide into Jane. I stumble back and look into her knowing smile, her raised eyebrow. “You are here.”
“Only stopping in. I’ll catch up now.”
“Were you truly planning on leaving without speaking to the man?”
“Who?”
Her eyebrow lifts higher.
I glance through the door, where Simon is clearly visible, then back to Jane. “Please tell me you didn’t arrange this little trip for the sole purpose of—”
“Of course not. Don’t be daft.” Her eyes dart to the left. “Although I admit to hoping you’d encounter him on the stopover. And to knowing which theater to walk by. Oh Rosalyn!” She grabs my hands. “This is your love story, dearest, and a grand one it is. Do not take it for granted.”
I step back, looking at my longtime friend. “Why would you want such a match for me? You, who have played matchmaker among the peerage before you were scarcely old enough to be out in society?”
“Not everyone ought to be paired with nobility, Ros dear.” Her hand grazes my cheek, then drops.
“He’s more accustomed to work than society, I’ll give you that.
And your uncle would solidly disapprove, of course.
” She softens. “But just now, you thawed like a girl standing before the fire. You were upset, but you were alive again, just now.”
I shiver and make for the door. “We should catch the others.”
She blocks my way. “You’re as stubborn as an old mule, Rosalyn Snow. When have you ever cared a whit for social differences? That man misses you desperately, longs for you—it’s cruel, the way you ignore those beautiful letters, stashing them away like kindling.”
I go still. “How did you know about the letters?” I always keep them tucked in that little box. No one ever sees them. Someone has been informing the duke of Simon’s survival, and of the letters, and I could never imagine who.
I should have burned each of them the moment they came in the post. “How did you know, Jane? How did you know that Simon—”
“Oh, don’t be cross about it. I haven’t been snooping.”
Jane is the one—Jane has been informing the duke, without even realizing the danger of what she did. “You found my letters.”
“I merely happened upon your poor maid cleaning them up one day in the morning room. I startled her and she dropped them all over the floor, poor dear.”
It isn’t Jane. It’s Sally.
Sally.
I glance behind me. All around. Uncle is standing outside the theater alone. “Jane, where is Sally?”
Jane waves her gloved hand toward the deep shadows to our right. “She set one foot inside this theater and veered off to find a place to freshen herself. Yet…” she glances around too. “I’m surprised she hasn’t returned by now. Do you suppose she’s lost? It is rather dark in here.”
No, because she isn’t looking for us.
I grab Jane’s arm. “Jane. We must leave now.” I tell her everything in a rush of clipped words that leave her white and wide-eyed.
“Why, that little minx.” She huffs. “We must warn Simon. But the duke cannot possibly arrive with any haste. It’ll be hours, at least.”
“It isn’t the duke who will be chasing him.” I bolt back into the auditorium and weave through the crowds of workers, down the aisle, and around the back behind the curtain. They stare at me.
Let them.
I push past discarded costumes and set pieces backstage, afraid to call out. Afraid to alert Sally. But Simon has disappeared.
My note—he must be looking for me.
I hurry back to the front entrance. “Don’t follow me, Jane,” I whisper. “Watch for them, whoever Sally brings—keep them away from him.”
I hurry out the door and slip into an alley and feel my way through the dark, praying I meet no pickpocket.
I wind through streets and along the river until I come in sight of the place that makes my heart pound.
Down into the hollow beneath the bridge, slipping on slushy ground, and up the stairs into the crumbling tower ruins of St. Edmund’s Church above the Old Exe Bridge.
In the tower, I lean against the brick… and wait. It’s all I know to do.
If he finds me, I shall warn him.
If he does not, I shall know—this is how it must be.
In the quiet, I squint down at the place Papa had once called home, missing him. Longing for even a drop of his wisdom in this moment.
Footsteps echo below. Someone stops, breathless.
I dare to peek out the window, and the familiar old frock coat appears under the glare of gas lamps, just for a flash.
Then the darkness swallows him. I duck back inside to make for the stairs, but the footsteps cease. I look out again, and he’s gone.
Perhaps it wasn’t him.
Minutes pass as my heart pounds. Another look—the street is empty. The ache in my chest is unbearable.
I turn away from the window and move toward the crumbling doorway to leave, and there he is—Simon Balfour, halfway up the steps into the tower, hand resting on the remains of a window, watching me, his face lit by gaslight.
I feel the ache of my empty existence, with this small taste of what might have been.
What I experienced for a brief time over Christmas. He climbs the rest of the way up to me.
“They’re looking for you,” I say, backing into the shadows with each step he takes toward me.
He takes up so much of the tower. His energy—his presence. “They always have been.”
“He’s been watching me. Trying to find you.”
Understanding flashes over his face. “Enough that you could not send letters.”
I drop my gaze. Then, taking in a long breath, I look up into that uniquely engaging expression, the quiet expectancy that life is about to mete out something he shouldn’t miss.
I reach out a gloved hand, but stop before touching his jaw. “You’ve shaved.”
He smiles. Runs a rough hand over his face.
“Which means… you’ve settled somewhere.”
“Nowhere I care to stay. But it’s a roof, yes.”
I tug him away from the window. “Keep out of sight.” I duck behind him as two men sprint down the sidewalk opposite the bridge. Moon glow and streetlights streak through the empty windows.
He pins me gently in place with a look. “He’d never hurt you, you know.”
“Who?” I can scarcely breathe. I’ve thought of Simon Balfour more often than I can ever admit, like the orchestra music in the background of my life’s play—ever present, subtly coloring the moments.
“The duke.” His hand reaches for my hair, tentative and gentle. “You aren’t in danger, being near me. He wouldn’t dare.”
My eyes are wide in the dark. “It is you who are not safe around me.”