And so, awakening, woke them all to reality again.
There was a confused stillness at first, when the actors all fell silent, before it became clear that the playlet had ended. And then the audience rose up, literally. They applauded, and when that didn’t seem tribute enough, cheered and whistled, stomped and shouted.
Titania took a dozen bows, and could have taken a dozen more, but fled the stage before some of the more impulsive and besotted members of the audience could surge up on it to give her more than the coins and bills and tom-up bits of paper they’d thrown in a vain attempt to show all their pleasure with her. She passed Hannah and Gray in a rush, her draperies drifting past their noses as she did.
When they got to the dressing room in her wake, they found her slumped in a chair, her long legs bent apart, her elbows on the dressing table, her head on her hands, staring at herself in the mirror.
“Bar the damned door,” she said, and Peggy leaped to do it as they heard the sound of excited voices coming closer.
Titania’s eyes looked beyond her image and met Gray’s blue gaze in the mirror. It seemed her shoulders stiffened then, and her own dark, deep eyes grew cold. But all that could be seen in Gray’s clear gaze was honest admiration.
“There sure is a precedent,” Gray said, nodding, “but I’ll be damned if I ever saw an equal.”
Titania’s shoulders relaxed. She nodded, and then dragged off her flower-strewn wig, and ran long, sensitive fingers through the much shorter damp, dark hair that was beneath.
“Thank you, thank you,” Kyle said, as he continued to run his fingers over his itching, overheated scalp, “but I doubt Richard Burbage or Will Kemp ever had to worry about getting home unmolested after a performance. Some of the miners around here haven’t seen a woman in so long I think they might not mind even if they discovered who I am.”
“Hold on. They haven’t been here that long,” Gray drawled. “We’ve got some hard-looking females out here, true, and the wind does a job on their complexions, too. But I never saw one with a blue beard showing under her powder and paint!…Or at least, not such a dark one,” he amended, with just the right touch of doubt.
“Ah, but none of them have my figure…” Kyle said, but the laughter died on his painted lips when he saw the astonished look in Hannah’s eyes as she continued to stare at him. He sat up straighter.
“I choose to be a woman tonight because there was no way I could be a reputable man of the theater if I didn’t,” Kyle said, suddenly very conscious of both the cotton-wadding woman’s shape he still wore, and how successful his masquerade had been. Meeting her dark gaze with his own, he added defiantly, “The show had to go on. That is preciselyall.”
“No, it isn’t!” Hannah protested. “It was wonderful. I’ve never seen better. Oh, Kyle, if you could do a Shakespearean production with men playing all the parts, as they used to do, why, you’d make your fortune. I never realized it could be so wonderful.”
Again, Kyle’s eyes met Gray’s in the mirror, and they both grinned, one reluctantly and the other widely, as they realized she’d never understood what he’d been denying.
“I doubt it, child,” Kyle said, “times change. It would be like an all-girlPinafore, interesting, but like Mr. Dylan’s bearded lady, a curiosity, rather than art.”
He smiled to himself as if at a memory, and at that memory, quickly glanced up at Hannah’s reflection again. Only to see Gray Dylan doing the same thing with a look of longing on his face. Before he in turn, as though feeling the force of Kyle’s stare, gazed back to surprise the same expression on Kyle’s dark face as he looked back to Hannah.
Kyle turned around and looked Gray full in the face. As the men stared at each other, each recognized the unspoken claim the other made on the woman that stood between them, and each acknowledged it by their silence.
But she, all unknowing, for if she had, she’d have suffered, since she knew better than both the futility of both their intentions, only laughed with sheer pleasure and said, “Ah, but this is certainly a night to remember!”
Chapter Eleven
Royal bent his head to whisper a word to Peggy, and Blayne Darling, all the way at the head of the long, crowded table, paused in his story-telling and smiled down at him. It was a small thing, a thing of a moment, and a sweet smile, too. But Royal was silenced as effectively as if he’d been publicly censored. So he had been. It had been done charmingly, but it had been done. And it told Gray more about his host than any of his wonderful stories ever could.
Kyle hid his own slight smile in a swallow of wine, but then Kyle was of the theater and had met the like of Blayne Darling before. Hannah showed no expression at all; if Gray had not been sitting next to her, he’d never have known how hard her fingers clenched her napkin. But so they had all through the meal, and she’d eaten little enough of it. Course after course had been brought out to them: game and vegetable soups preceded the service of assorted shellfish and pâtés, which gave way to sorbet and salad, before a round of fish, variety meat, and game croquettes, cutlets and patties arrived to prepare the palate for the main courses. The newest hotel in the West wanted to show its visitors that it knew excess as well as the East did. By the time the turkey was brought out, there’d be no one with any place to put it, Gray thought—except for Hannah. Because she’d only moved her food around her plate as she’d watched her father with all her heart in her great dark eyes—so like to his, and yet so different: hers showed hurt, and his, only pain. And that, only when his stories called for it.
Blayne Darling insisted on playing host tonight. Gray and Royal had planned on taking Hannah and Peggy to Thanksgiving dinner, Kyle had arranged for a dinner with his troupe, but Blayne Darling said that he wanted his daughter and her friends to be his guests. Since Kyle appreciated having someone else pick up the bill as much as he did dining with the famous, and as Hannah was the famous man’s daughter, now they all sat at a long table that was the envy of all the other guests in the hotel dining room. And Gray heartily wished for it to be over almost as much as Hannah did.
They weren’t the only ones. Because, Gray noted, if dinner weren’t over soon, Blayne Darling might find that he could pause until Saturday and smile until his lips froze, and Royal and Peggy wouldn’t notice. Despite their host’s charming show of annoyance, they were slowly becoming oblivious to everything but each other. But then, they’d reason; Royal had told Gray that tonight was to be the night.
“The troupe’s going home after this engagement. I mean to see she ain’t going with them,” Royal had sworn as he’d dressed tonight. He’d stayed in a steaming bathtub until Gray rousted him out, declaring he’d taken off his top layer of skin and couldn’t afford to lose more. Then, under Gray’s bemused eyes. Royal had put on a new shirt, new pants, and new boots. At the last, he’d anointed himself with cologne that kept his head turning as they left the room, because—as he’d finally sheepishly admitted—he couldn’t get over the feeling that he’d some French woman following him, close. He’d put a sizable ring in his pocket, and all his hopes in his heart. If the girl refused him, Gray decided now, remembering Royal’s nervousness as well as the man himself, he’d personally have her kidnapped or committed. But from the way she was gazing at Royal, he’d doubted he’d have to bother.
Hannah had eyes for no one but her father, and that. Gray found, was more than lowering or annoying to him, it was hurtful. Because it seemed he couldn’t help but feel her pain. Blayne Darling had embraced his daughter warmly, exclaimed over her beauty, introduced her around to all his many influential friends, and made much of her, acting just as a father should. That was just it. It was impossible for Gray to know just how much he was acting, but judging from Hannah’s eyes, it was a performance to rival Kyle’s Titania.
“I hear you’ve been asked to stay on another week,” Blayne said. “That Titania of yours is astonishing. I can understand your keeping her close, but on Thanksgiving Day? My dear fellow, is that fair, is that kind?”
Kyle smiled, “My dear sir, no. It is not. But it is expedient. You know your good friend Mr. March would offer her the moon, while your own impresario, Mr. Baker, would add the stars, if she’d sign with them. But luckily for me, she and I have an understanding. She doesn’t mind dinner in her room, so long as I come by later with her just desserts.”
Blayne Darling threw back his mane of dark hair and gave a full-bodied peal of laughter, very much in the style of his D’Artagnan, Hannah thought. Then he shook a finger at Kyle, “Naughty, naughty fellow. But clever. She is indeed, a find. Shall we see her in New York?”
True sorrow flashed in Kyle’s eyes before a more familiar ruefulness replaced it, and he sighed and said, “Who can say? She is of Romany descent. I have her fast now, true. But her moods change with the wind. She’s a creature of elemental fancies and desires. I can no more hold her than I can hold the wind in my palm. Alas, that is her glory and her fault, and so I must only appreciate her whilst I may, and live in hope. She will play the rest of this week. But after that?” Kyle shrugged. “Who can say?”
At that, his troupe applied themselves to their dinners with studied concentration. He was giving an even better performance tonight than he did as Titania, because they’d all heard him say firmly this morning and this afternoon, as he had the night before or whenever any of them asked about whether he’d do it after this engagement: “Never, not ever, never again.” He’d discovered, to his astonished sorrow, that though he’d do almost anything to survive in the theater if he absolutely had to, there were, after all, some limits to what he’d do to succeed in it.
