With Francia’s tower still in pieces backstage, Jane stood on a chair appropriated from the main house. With the red and gold striped cushion bowing in under her ribbon-tied slippers, and the back of the chair serving as in impromptu armrest, she looked out over the tiered seats of the theatre, largely empty except for a smattering of cast members, an abandoned script here, a discarded shawl there. So far, Jane had been a remarkably good sport about being stuck up there for the better part of half an hour. She claimed she enjoyed the view.
That was a good thing, decided Emma, because it looked like Jane was going to be on that chair for some time.
They had done a read-through of the script in Emma’s house in Paris, with Hortense as audience, dandling Louis-Charles on her knee and cheering them on, but this was their first rehearsal in situ. The machinery hadn’t arrived yet and the actors were discovering all sorts of problems they hadn’t encountered the first time around. They weren’t being shy about voicing their opinions.
At the rate they were going, theirs wouldn’t be a production fit for an emperor. They’d be lucky if they had a production at all.
Kort glanced down at his feet, set slightly apart as befitted a seasoned mariner on a storm-tossed sea. The floor remained still in a very un-sealike way. “I must say, I’m not feeling particularly beset.”
“Don’t worry! We’ll have the waves soon!” Emma called out from the prompt box. Dropping her voice, she muttered, “At least, I hope we will.”
Mr. Fulton had faithfully promised a wave machine that would make the Comédie-Française’s puny efforts look like puddles in comparison. So far, however, there had been little sign of one. She had called upon him before leaving Paris. He had another commission, he said, which had set him back slightly, but the wave machine was at the very top of his list and he would be sure she had it by Tuesday.
Today was Wednesday.
A very nice man, Mr. Fulton, but he did tend to be consumed by his work. If this other project proved as engrossing as it seemed, they might be forced to resort to having footmen on either side of the stage waving bits of blue cloth, an amateurism to which Emma had sworn they would not stoop.
Augustus stooped down next to the prompt box. “Shall I get the blue cloth?” he murmured.
“No!” Emma exclaimed, as though she hadn’t been thinking the exact same thing. With more confidence than she felt, she said, “Don’t be silly. It’s just a slight delay. You know what the roads are.”
“Roadlike?”
“Rutted. Why, at this very moment, a couple of sturdy stable boys might be tugging the crate down the road.”
“Or your friend might have forgotten.” Turning back to the stage, Augustus called out, “Lift your imagination with the lofty spirit of invention, Mr. Livingston. The absence of the baser realities should be no obstruction to the flight of fancy.”
Kort folded his arms across his chest, showing off the fact that his tailoring had improved considerably since his arrival in Paris, a fact for which Emma took full credit. “In a language I can understand?”
“Try rocking back and forth,” translated Emma. “And stagger a bit.”
Kort obligingly staggered. “Good?”
“Excellent!” cheered Emma.
Both men gave her a look.
That made a nice change, thought Emma. Finally, they agreed on something. Emma consulted her script, even though, by now, she knew it by heart. “Americanus, you’ve just arrived at Francia’s shores.”
“Is that what they’re calling them now?” whispered one of the spare pirates, one of Napoleon’s younger generals.
Someone near him snickered.
Emma raised her voice. “You’ve come bearing all sorts of gifts for her from your native land. Shall we pick up with ‘in my hand’?”
Kort consulted his script. “In my hand I hold for thee the peach, the pear, the blooming tree— How can I hold a tree in my hand?”
Emma resisted the urge to bang her head against the polished wood of the music stand she had borrowed from the main house to hold her script.
How had she forgotten how staggeringly literal-minded her cousin could be? This was the same man who told her that acorn caps couldn’t be fairy teacups because they would leak.
“It’s a metaphor! Oh, fine, if that makes you uncomfortable, change it to ‘In my ship’s hold, I hold for thee.’ Better?”
“Slightly.” Emma made a note of it on her master copy, and Kort returned to his script. “For I shall bring you crimson leaves, and rippling wheat in golden sheaves, a cache of berries, red and sweet, and dappled deer on silent feet.”
Instead of the seductive litany Emma had envisioned, his reading sounded like a merchant ticking off items on an inventory.
“At least he has the American accent down,” murmured Augustus, settling himself on the edge of the prompt box, his long legs dangling down next to her.
Emma whacked him in the ankle and poked her head out of the prompt box. “You’re not inviting her to the theatre, Kort. You’re trying to get her to run away with you and be your love. Surely, you can show a little more feeling than that.”
“In fact,” said Jane, shifting a bit from one foot to the other. The cushion beneath her feet made an unhappy squelching noise. “I am perfectly happy in my tower. I need proper inducement to entice me to leave.”
“I can see to that!” called out one of the pirates.
He was abruptly silenced by the whap of thickened cardboard hitting an equally thick skull. Emma had her suspicions as to the source but preferred not to verify. If she hadn’t seen it, it hadn’t happened.
Kort tapped the script. “Why would I haul half of America to her shores if only to turn around and go back again? It makes no sense.”
“It’s a gesture,” said Emma, through gritted teeth. “It’s meant to be romantic.”
“It’s not romantic, it’s impractical. I wouldn’t blame Francia for turning me down flat.”
A pirate popped up from behind the half-finished backdrop at the back of the stage, declaring, “First sensible thing I’ve heard all day!”
Miss Gwen might have traded in her signature parasol for a pirate’s cutlass, but her character hadn’t changed in the slightest; chaperone or scourge of the high seas, it was all the same to her, just so long as she got to lay about with a pointy implement at regular intervals.
Emma didn’t like to think of Miss Gwen unleashed on the Spanish Main. It was enough to make the blood run cold. From the curl of Augustus’s lip, Emma could tell he shared that view.
Undaunted, Miss Gwen stalked forward, her knee-high boots revealing a surprisingly spry figure. A gold ring bobbed in one ear as she said, with relish, “Wheat and berries? Deer? What is he? A gentleman or a gamekeeper?” She hoisted her cutlass imperiously in the air, like a ship showing its colors. “Turn him down and impound his ship, that’s what I say.”
“Er…” Emma looked from Miss Gwen to Augustus.
They hadn’t even gotten to the pirate part yet and this was already turning from a rehearsal into a mutiny.
“Here.” Augustus bounded up onto the stage in one fluid movement, knocking Miss Gwen’s cardboard cutlass out of the way. “Watch me.”
Sweeping the script out of Kort’s hand, he flung himself to his knees before Jane’s tower, arching his back and stretching out his arms in supplication. He looked, thought Emma, like a piece of Renaissance statuary, intensity encoded in immobility, passion quivering beneath the still surface of the tableau.
Emma wasn’t sure why he had bothered to appropriate Kort’s script. It dangled forgotten from one hand as he held his pose, his eyes fixed on Jane’s still form with a quiet intensity that caught the attention of everyone in the room. Even the pirate Miss Gwen had so expeditiously silenced gave up clutching his head and moaning in order to watch the scene unfolding on the stage. For once, Augustus’s flowing shirt and tight pantaloons didn’t look silly. They were just right against the half-painted backdro
p of a stormy sea. Watching him, Emma could almost imagine that Jane stood in a tower rather than on a chair, that her hair flowed freely down her back rather than being coiled neatly and practically at the back of her head. A wind seemed to stir, flowing down the length of the theatre, a wind straight from the sea, redolent of salt and brine and the tang of adventure.
Not until the theatre was quiet did Augustus speak, in a rich baritone that reached all the way to the farthest walls.
He opened his hands to Jane, palm up. “For I shall bring you crimson leaves, and rippling wheat in golden sheaves.” His voice wheedled, it cajoled, it seduced. “A cache of berries, red and sweet—”
Emma could taste berries on her tongue, warmed by the sun, tartness giving way to sweetness, seeds catching between her teeth.
“—and dappled deer on silent feet.” Through the woods of Emma’s memory, a speckled fawn turned its funny, narrow face to stare through the leaves before breaking and running fleet-footed through the brush, leaves crackling beneath its hooves.
In a voice almost contemplative, he finished, “All these and more shall be thy dower, the woods, the winds, the sea thy bower—if my humble presents might thee move, to live with me and be my love.”
The wind whistled around her, the stars circled in a dizzying whirl; on the branches of her bower, nightingales sang and leaves rustled, all the elements working in harmony to shade their lovers from all harms, leaving them safe in each other’s arms.
Emma’s mouth was dry and her eyes burned as though from reading too long and too late into the night. Take me! she wanted to cry. I’ll run away with you.
But she couldn’t, even if she could have forced her tongue to form the words. The theatre was locked in silence. Even a breath would break the fantasy.
This, Emma thought, this was why people mistrusted the theatre and inveighed against the dangers of playacting. This was why, this creation of a fantasy more powerful than reality, a fantasy that could rob one of speech and sense, bring tears to the eyes, and arouse inchoate and impossible longings.
It was Miss Gwen who broke the silence.
“Not bad,” she said grudgingly.
Not bad? That had been extraordinary. Beyond extraordinary. Emma’s overtaxed senses abandoned the search for adjectives. Already it was slipping away, normality encroaching. Augustus clambered to his feet, the scuff of his shoes against the boards a homely, workaday sort of noise. At the back of the theatre, the young officers resumed their whispered conversations; the birds outside dared to chirp again, and the gardeners to garden.
Had it been only a moment? It had felt like longer.
“Are you sure you shouldn’t take the role?” said Kort wryly, and Emma felt a surge of affection for her cousin.
Augustus offered Kort his script back. “The poet to turn player! Never! Not for the humble scrivener the clamor of the audience’s acclaim or the sweaty work of making words turn flesh.” His voice was a good half-octave higher than it had been a moment before, nasal and slightly drawling. So much for not acting, thought Emma wryly. Turning to Jane, Augustus added, “Madame. As always, I am honored to declare my affections to so worthy an object.”
The words were sheer absurdity; the look that accompanied them was in dead earnest.
There was acting, and then there was…not.
Emma cleared her throat. “I think we’ve all done enough for now, don’t you? We can resume tomorrow morning.”
Talking, laughing, complaining about their costumes, the others filed out in clusters of twos and threes. Jane went with them, her head tilted attentively towards one of the naval officers who would be playing a naval officer. Emma didn’t miss the way Augustus’s gaze followed them out through the door, into the last harsh glow of late afternoon sunlight.
“Well,” she said, too loudly, “that went well.”
The door closed, shutting out the light and Jane. Casually, too casually, Augustus clasped his hands lightly behind his back and strolled back between the rows of seats, towards the stage and Emma.
“That,” he said, “is taking optimism too far. Even for you.”
He offered her a hand to help her up out of the prompt box. Emma accepted it gratefully. His hand closed around hers, surprisingly strong for someone who spent the day wielding a pen, hauling her up with as little effort as though she were nothing more than a roll of paper.
“Thank you. I’m fine now.” Emma self-consciously extracted her hand, making a show of shaking out her skirts and stretching her stiff limbs. “I am still worried about the ending, though.”
Augustus took a step back. “Haven’t we had this discussion already?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t make you any more right.”
“It doesn’t make me any less right, either,” he said mildly. “We only have a week; there’s no time to start changing things around now.”
“The actors haven’t rehearsed that bit yet,” said Emma hopefully. “And if we got them a new script by tomorrow—”
The theatre door opened and they both turned. It was a strange, hunched silhouette framed in the doorway before it resolved itself into a man in a rough cotton smock lugging behind him a large crate on a wheeled cart.
Tipping the cart, he let the crate slide with a distinct thump to the ground next to Emma, in direct contravention of the words painted on the side, advising all comers to handle with care.
Emma didn’t recognize the crate and she certainly didn’t know the man, but she knew that writing.
“You Madame Delagardie?” the man demanded.
Emma flung herself at the crate. “The wave machine!” She beamed at Augustus. “See? I told you Mr. Fulton hadn’t forgotten.” Turning to the deliveryman, she said confidingly, “It was the ruts, wasn’t it?”
The man puffed out his chest, as though preparing for a fight. “We put the ruts just where we was told to,” he said, “in the other place. Did you want’em both over here? Because that’ll cost extra.”
“Pardon?” said Emma. She glanced back over at her crate. “There’s only supposed to be the one.…”
Unless Mr. Fulton had felt guilty for the delay and tossed in an extra mechanism to make up for it?
“Here.” The man thrust out a four-times-folded note, secured with a blob of sealing wax without a seal. It looked as though it had been dunked in a puddle a few times along the way.
The hand remained outthrust even after Emma took the note from it.
As Emma eagerly broke the wax, Augustus dug into his pocket, extracted a coin, and pressed it into the man’s palm. “For your troubles,” he said. “With all the ruts.”
Over the top of the letter, Emma gave Augustus a look.
Having been remunerated for his pains, the deliveryman ambled off, convinced they were all crazy.
Emma bent her blond head over the letter. “It is the wave machine,” she said delightedly. She flapped the paper at Augustus. “Mr. Fulton has even included instructions for its use.”
“Good,” said Augustus. “I hope you can figure it out, because I can’t.”
“Nonsense,” said Emma in a preoccupied tone, her head bent over Mr. Fulton’s scribblings. “If I can learn to make sense of these things, anyone can.”
Augustus propped an elbow on the sill of Francia’s tower, currently still under construction. “Why did you? I wouldn’t have thought mechanics would have been your métier.”
The lid had been very carefully nailed down. Oh, bother. She was going to need to find someone with a crowbar. And considerably more arm strength than she possessed.
“It’s not.” Maybe she didn’t need a crowbar after all. If she could find something to use to pry back those nails…Emma looked around the crowded backstage area. She saw paint, paintbrushes, lumber, and enough rope to string up an entire troupe of highwaymen, but nothing that resembled a useful tool. “But it all reduces to simple enough principles once someone explains.” She slid her fingers under the join of the lid and gave an experim
ental hitch. “Bother. I need something to get this lid off.”
“A crowbar,” said Augustus, in that definitive way men have when talking about tools, even men clad in decidedly effeminate costumes. “Your husband took an interest in these things, didn’t he?”
Emma picked ineffectually at one of the nails in the lid. “Yes.”
Too much of an interest. As Paul buried himself deeper and deeper in diagrams and models of mechanisms, she had accused him of wanting her dowry more than he wanted her, of marrying her merely to fund his pet project: the draining of Carmagnac.
Ironic, if that were the case, since her family had cut her off without a penny in punishment for marrying without their permission.
In retrospect, she felt distinctly sorry for Paul. He had found himself without the fortune he had been led to expect, saddled with a temperamental fifteen-year-old girl who demanded homage and went off in a huff when she didn’t receive it.
If she hadn’t idolized him so much at the start, they might have done better. But then, he had been just as guilty as she. He had been equally surprised when she had turned out to be not the goddess of his imaginings but a fifteen-year-old girl, spoiled and untried.
What a mess they had made, both of them.
Augustus hunkered down next to her. “You’re never going to get the nails off that way,” he said. “I’ll find you a crowbar.”
Looking at him, his long hair curling around his face, his attention innocently on the crate, Emma couldn’t stop thinking of his expression as he had gazed up at Jane, as rapt as if she were the Cytherea his poems proclaimed her. It had been a joke before, his devotion, but now…