“Good heavens!” Kyle cried. “How glad I am that none of you were my forefathers—or mothers!”
This time he waited until they all wore matching puzzled looks before he began to explain.
Dinner that night was a merry affair, with all the players together having such a good time of it that the other passengers were heard to observe that dining with them was as good as a play. They worked all day in groups according to their talents, but they played each night as a theater company, ensemble, in every sense of the word. Only three days out of New York City, and there were already two liaisons absolutely confirmed: a winsome young brunet dancer had moved into John Wills’ compartment with him, and a very young tenor seemed about to do so with Maybelle. Mrs. Jenkins might cluck her tongue at the scandalous goings on, but only because she and Polly would be the ones evicted if he did, since therewas no other solution: he shared quarters with three other male singers, so Maybelle could scarcely move in with him. Although, as Mrs. Jenkins said spitefully, she probably would if they’d let her. Mrs. Jenkins might look after her daughter’s morals, but there were things even Polly knew. After all, she’d been in the theater since she could toddle.
Both Frank and Nelson seemed to be vying for a chance to supplant Hannah as Lottie’s roommate, that was, when they didn’t seem to be trying to evict Lottie so that they could secure a place in Hannah’s compartment. Amusing as they were, flattering as it was as well, and gratifying, too—if only for the look on Lottie’s face when she saw the game they played—when dinner was done, Hannah was only too glad to rise and leave them a clear path to her pupil. Knowing Lottie as she did, especially after sharing cramped quarters with her, she pitied whoever won. She doubted the bliss of carnality was worth the pain of living so close to Lottie, and was actually pleased to think she might soon be ousted from her quarters. She didn’t think she’d mind sharing a compartment with anyone else, and had it in her mind not to protest at whomever Kyle suggested—until he did, after he’d invited her to sit and take an after-dinner cordial with him.
He eyed her appreciatively. She always dressed in good taste, with a bit of theatricality to save that taste from boredom. Tonight she wore a deep blue gown, ornamented by nothing but the shape it displayed. Its stark simplicity was highest drama: high at the neck, tight to the waist, and bustled lightly in the back. It was a rich, warm velvet that belied the stern fashion, and by showing up the purity of the creamy skin it encased, set a man to wondering about relative textures. His gaze went to her hair, and without thinking of what it was he must say, he said first what he wanted to, which was as strange and disturbing a thing for him as it was for her.
“Why do you wear it in such a puritan fashion?” he asked, gazing at her tightly bound hair.
“Why…because it looks more professional so,” she answered, taken aback by his question as well as his frown.
But he was frowning at himself and his lapse and not at her, so he answered more roughly than was his usual way.
“It looks like a professional matron’s at the Tombs,” he said gruffly. “Your profession is the theater.” He saw her hands flutter up to her hair as her eyes widened, and relented. “You might not wish to be taken for an actress,” he said on an engaging smile, “but there’s no need to look so fierce. You’ve lovely hair, and I should think you’d be able to appear to be whatever you wish to be taken for without such a masquerade.”
“You may be right,” she admitted. “It’s only that as I am on my own, I don’t want to appear to be fast.”
“But you’re not alone now,” he said gently. “You’re a member of a troupe. That’s what I wanted to speak to you about. I’ve watched you. You’re very good withlaLesley. Astonishing, that. It’s like waxing a dirty floor, actually, how you make her shine! One could almost forget what lies beneath the luster.”
She felt she should protest, but his phrasing was so apt, all she could do was to laugh and make little sounds of denial, while all the while she felt a great surge of relief because someone saw what was actually going on. Lottie resented her as much as she needed her—which was to say, a great deal. It wasn’t only her spite and anger that plagued Hannah, it was the way Lottie flaunted her desirability and bragged about her conquests, the more so when she realized that her haughty, mighty tutor and roommate had no beaux. A woman without a man or the promise of one was nothing at all, in Lottie’s opinion. And since it was such a widely held one, there was never anything for Hannah to do but fall silent when Lottie brought the matter up, which was often. Or leave the room, if she could, when she was challenged by the nastier things in Lottie’s arsenal.
Just last night, Lottie had undressed for bed, and then for the first time, suddenly showed dismay at her usually proud and brazen display of her nakedness. She’d gasped, making a great show of trying to cover her ample breasts with her little hands, so inadequate to the task. Then she’d stared, wide-eyed, at Hannah, explaining that she was trying to spare her sensibilities…or desires. All Hannah could do was gasp, before she managed to retort about preferring true Guernseys if her tastes ran tothat. But Lottie didn’t know what a Guernsey was. In fact, as Hannah went on to rage, she’d have trouble with the word “cow.” But she was asleep by the time Hannah thought of a really good reply, so there was no satisfying revenge exacted for that bit of cruelty. Or any others, Hannah thought sadly. Thestupid, she decided, were as safe as the smug when it came to insults. But since Hannah had vast experience with both sorts of people, she was soon asleep as well.
Kyle’s words were balm. And he knew it.
“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 hislover, 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 threeisa 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.
