“No,” Kyle said in that same toneless low voice that silenced the other’s exclamations. “Nobody can, can they? But if you do not, no one will ever, ever ask you to go onstage, anywhere, again. It’s a rule of the business that personal feelings never interfere with our business. Nor does sickness. Nothing short of death does, actually…and sometimes I’m not too sure about that either, judging from some performances I’ve seen.”
The others chuckled, but his next words, spoken in grim, slow accents, stilled them.
“No, Lottie,” Kyle said, staring at her, “we are not seamstresses. Or grocers. Or coal miners or ranchers or shoe clerks or millionaire investors. We are unique among all professions, in that of all the workers in this wide world, wherever we are: what we promise—we deliver. Or we never work in the theater again. If you do not go on this stage tonight, I promise, you will never go on the stage again. It is not just me,” he said into the silent room. “I need do nothing. When word gets out, and it will, your career will be over.”
The others nodded. He’d said no more, if a great deal more eloquently, than they knew to be the truth. Lottie looked from face to face, her eyes wide and uncertain. Then she rose from the couch and began dragging off her costume with such rough hands that Peggy sprang forward to assist her, to save the costume.
“It doan make no difference,” she said, tossing her head. “I got a gennelman in the audience waiting for me. A rich gennelman, a very rich one I met back in Denver, and he follid me here,” she spat at Kyle. “He’s staying at the Jerome, too, but then he’s got a house and a carriage and a diamond necklace with a pair of matching earrings like you never seen waiting for me back in Denver. And so whaddo I care? E-nunciate,” she spat at Hannah. “E-mote,” she shouted at Kyle. “Not me, no more. I played the rat- holes ‘cause I thought I was gonna go big here in Aspen. An’ whaddya know? I’m back inna rathole. But not fah long. You can take your theah-ter and shove it, ‘Mister Theahter,’?” she cried. “I’m through!”
“Indeed,” Kyle said, “you are. Peggy take that costume, every last flower, and come with me. Hannah,” he ordered, “with me. Lester, get that costume off fast, and come along. You others, wait your cue,” and he strode out the door to the wings.
“Lester,” he said as Lester threw down his donkey head and managed to peel off his doublet, mid-run, as he kept pace with Kyle’s long legs, “How long can you keep ‘Where Did You Get That Hat?’ going?”
“That one?” Lester laughed, thinking of the most popular song of the last year. “With two hats from my dressing room: a week. If you need it, two. Get me a couple more hats, I can keep it going until 1890 is come and gone again. But it’s not the best intro to Shakespeare; I’ll have them howling, and you want them thoughtful.”
“I want them in their seats,” Kyle said. “I’ll get word to the orchestra, you get your hats. You just keep it going until we say go. Now, you,” he said to Hannah, as Lester nodded and raced away, “get out of those clothes, and into those,” he pointed to the jumble of gauze Peggy was holding. As Hannah gazed at him with sick shock, he went on, “You know the lines, you know the play, you’re very beautiful, and so tonight—you shall be Titania. You must be Titania,” he said, when he saw her face.
“I’m not an actress,” Hannah said, growing very pale and backing away from the heap of clothing Peggy held, as though she were fleeing a snake charmer offering her an adder. “I teach acting. I’m really very bad, I couldn’t, I know I’d ruin it, you’d be so ashamed of me…”
“Hannah,” he said flatly, fixing her with his dark, deep stare, “I’m drowning.”
She wept as Peggy fastened her into her clothes, and had no tears left as the flowers, some with long blond hairs still caught in their petals, were plaited into her own long dark hair. But she held her head high as Peggy shook the sparkles over her hair and face when she was done. With luck, the spots would show thetears as glitter, she thought as she rose and followed Peggy back to the stage, and with a miracle, she’d live through the next hours of this night.
Lester was well into his song when Hannah arrived in the wings again, and he had the audience well in hand. He wore a hat far too small for his dark head, and pranced across the stage as he sang. At his command, the audience good-naturedly shouted out the chorus, “Where did you get that hat?” with him.
Hannah stood and thought of the coming playlet. She knew she’d remember the lines and her placement, if only because she’d spent so many hours drilling them into Lottie. But now the thought of going out on the stage in front of that riotous mass of people made her mouth go dry, her hands cold, her stomach queasy, and her legs feel too weak to hold her up. She held her freezing hands together hard, and would have prayed if she could think of anything but her terror.
She made an even fairer Titania than the spectacularly blond Lottie had done, Kyle thought as his eyes roved over her, because she looked ethereally dark and mysterious. But she was also trembling like a tuning fork, so much so that the spangles on her costume flickered and shook, and all the bits of iridescence on her skin and hair fluttered like true fairy dust. Her heart beat so hard he could see it in the veins in the fragile, pulsing line of her neck. He gazed at her, and then at Lester, and at a glance from Lester, nodded, and then tossed a huge mock Stetson to him. The audience roared as Lester discarded the little hat with disdain, and jammed the new one on his head until it half covered his eyes. “Oh, where did you get that hat!” they shouted with glee.
“Listen,” Kyle said, taking Hannah by the shoulders and holding her at arm’s length, “you’ll do well. You’ll do fine. It’s only a little scene, soon done. It’s the sort of thing you could do in your sleep.”
“I wish I could,” she said on a shaky laugh, shivering and sparkling in his clasp.
“My dear,” he said gently, “what difference will it make, except to us, here and now? You’re not on the bill, and when I announce you after, you’ll be Miz Roberts, or Miss White or Black or Brown or whatever you will. You could not have more anonymity if you wore your costume up around your ears, believe me. There’s nothing to fear.”
“I know, I know, I know,” she said wretchedly, knowing she was babbling, but not caring anymore. “But it’s just as I told Gray: knowing is not feeling. And Idon’t feel right. Ah, for all I wanted to see him, I hope he hasn’t come tonight, after all. He’d be so ashamed of me, after all he and I said, he’d think me such a c-coward,” she grieved with a broken gasp. “And I am, and I know it, but for all I know, I don’t know how to stop this,” she confessed, as she kept shivering and gazed hopelessly at him.
The rest of the cast of theMidsummer Night’s Dreamstood in the wings, watching, still as statues of the fantastic beings they were supposed to be; a huddle of fairies and peasants and kings and queens, awaiting the signal to go on stage to become momentarily real. And their queen, queen of all the fairies, shuddered and shook in Kyle’s arms. His long face grew still, and he stared down at her with dark and hooded eyes. Then he frowned and looked up and away to the rear of the backstage, and grimacing at someone, nodded abruptly, mouthed a silent “get him,” and inclined his head.
“Where did you get that hat!” the audience cheered again.
“She’s going to play Titania tonight,” Kyle eventually said to someone over Hannah’s head, as he released his grasp on her arms at last, “but I believe she’s having a crisis of confidence. She mentioned something—am I to understand you’ve discussed this with her before?”
“I’ve never seen you looking so beautiful,” a too long unheard and thrilling familiar voice said, and Hannah’s head snapped up to see the most fantastical vision of all standing backstage with her. Gray Dylan smiled down at her, “You’re going to be acting tonight? This is a treat. Lucky that I got up-front center seats…even though you never answered any of the messages I left for you today, all day. And there were a few.”
Hannah began to protest because she’d never gotten word of one, but then her eyes opened wide and flew to Kyle, as Gray stared at him, too, and added with a wry smile, “I guess it’s only natural to have guards at the stage door in a rough town, but my name seemed to close their fists, as well as the door, tonight. And neither love nor money would open them. I thought of something that might, but on second thought, didn’t think a dustup at the door would help my cause much. Guess my message finally got through to one of you, though.”
“All things in their due time,” Kyle said tersely. “I’d be pleased to squabble with you later. Just now, perhaps you might say something to help put a little heartinto our new Titania? She mentioned something about your concept of cowardice?”
“Oh no,” Hannah said too brightly, putting her chin up, since suddenly the thought of not going out onstage was more terrifying than staying where she was. “What nonsense. I was just momentarily shaken, believe me. It was the prospect of facing my own…wild horse, I suppose,” she said with a brilliant smile at Gray. “But I can do it. Why not? It’s only a little playlet, and no one has to know who I am, do they? I shall be…Miss White, if you please, Kyle. Yes, Miss White will do well. Yes, it will.”
“Are you sure?” Gray asked quietly, his eyes searching hers. “After all, your father might not be pleased with you acting under a new name.”
“How should he know?” she asked airily, hearing another line of Lester’s lyric, and wondering how many more there were; hoping he’d finish, and hoping he’d never be done.
“He’s in the audience,” Gray said.
She was lovely: fragile, yet lush, very much the sprite and the vision of delight Titania was supposed to be. Gray thought. He’d paused when he’d first seen her, as astonished as beguiled at seeing her sparkling and shimmering in the theater’s half-light. He’d tried to see her before the performance, and when she hadn’t answered his notes, had begun to worry about why she hadn’t. But then when he’d seen Blayne Darling in the audience, he’d decided she’d been too taken up with her father to remember him. And though that hadn’t disturbed him as much as the thought of her forgetting him for no reason, it had, strangely enough, still stung much more than he’d thought it would. His spirits soared when he realized it was only that Kyle had banned him.
