Now. I nodded at Mr. Brontë and gripped Lydia’s milky-white upper arm, pulling her back.
“Ow!” She shoved my hand away and continued to applaud as a trio of actors dressed as manservants took their bows.
“We’re leaving, Lydia,” I said. “Bessy, Mary. Ned, wake up!”
Miss Brontë, ever fragile, was struggling to rouse the boy between her coughs, but her brother stepped in, guiding Ned out of the box. She stood, steadying herself by holding on to a chair.
“This way!” I told her, using my folded fan to gesture toward the exit. “We don’t wish to be caught on the stairs.”
We were.
Somebody must have whispered to Mr. Beverley that his improvised finale was becoming tiresome and dragged him into the wings. For as we reached the stairwell, the doors to the auditorium flew open and a flood of people streamed out, their voices raised even higher than before the enforced silence, dissecting the play or, more likely, debating their entertainment for the rest of the evening.
Heat.
Panic rising inside me when we were in the midst of the fray, surrounded by faces, yet losing the ones we knew, glancing back and shouting indistinguishable instructions at each other about which way to go and where we should meet.
Halfway.
Just breathe.
The chaos around us took on a different character. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, which was strange, as a moment before there’d been no space at all.
A man with a commanding voice was shouting, “Move aside, please. Move aside! A lady has fainted. Bring smelling salts and water.”
I went up on my tiptoes but could see only the backs of men’s heads and ladies’ crumpled bonnets.
“Mama!” I looked down, and there was Ned, now very much awake. “It is Miss Brontë—she has fallen!”
Hand in hand, we fought our way to the clearing. There indeed was Miss Brontë, lying on the litter-strewn floor, with Lydia and Bessy crouched on either side of her.
She couldn’t be ill. I’d have to find another governess and maybe, if she left, Mr. Brontë would leave us too. But, ah, she was fine and coming to. What a fuss over nothing.
“Step aside, madam. Step aside. This lady is unwell,” said the man I’d heard policing the scene earlier.
“This lady is only our governess,” I snapped at him, at the very second that Mr. Brontë emerged.
The tutor was apologizing to a larger lady he’d knocked into in his haste. Thank heaven he hadn’t heard me.
The crowd was thinning now that the people could see Miss Brontë wasn’t a striking damsel in distress and that her life was in no immediate danger. We were in the theater after all, and beauty and death always provided the best spectacles.
“Thank you, sir, for your assistance,” I told our self-appointed director. “Would you be so kind as to fetch someone from the theater?”
He nodded and left, subdued.
“Anne?” Mr. Brontë bent over his sister.
“Branwell, I—I’ll—” Miss Brontë collapsed into a coughing fit that sounded a little forced to my ear.
“Mr. Brontë.” I touched his arm.
He spun toward me as if attracted to a magnet.
“Trust me to look after dear Miss Brontë.” My hand lingered a second too long. His arm was warm, his bicep taut.
He went to protest.
“No, no. I insist,” I said. “I wouldn’t have anyone else see to her.”
Miss Brontë’s coughing was constant, upsetting my nerves even more than the earlier clapping and bravos.
“Can you walk with the children?” I asked her brother, sorry to be rid of him but reestablishing control. “Take them back to the Cliff? Here’s Ned, the older girls, and— Where’s Mary?”
“I’ll find her.” Bessy kissed Miss Brontë’s forehead, stood, and hurried to the top of the next staircase.
Ned and Mr. Brontë followed her.
“Lydia,” I said in a tone I hoped was warning.
My oldest daughter hadn’t moved. She was still kneeling beside Miss Brontë and had a strange glint in her eye.
“Go with your sisters,” I said.
“Oh no, Mama,” she answered with a smile, her words ringing clear now that Miss Brontë’s fit had subsided. “I insist. I wouldn’t have anyone else see to dear Miss Brontë.”
Was she mocking me?
I didn’t have time to react to her insurrection. Three of the “manservants” were striding toward us, still wearing their tights.
“We hope you’ll allow us to assist you, madam.” One of them, a very handsome young man who must have been around Mr. Brontë’s age, addressed me. “Mr. Beverley is anxious that the lady be made comfortable.”
* * *
WE WERE USHERED THROUGH a disguised side door and led through a series of winding corridors, with uneven floorboards and greasy fingerprints along the walls. We must have looked a sorry procession—Lydia openmouthed to be “behind the curtain,” me flinching at the proximity of the actors, the incapacitated Miss Brontë at the rear. Soon we were in some sort of office and face-to-face with the man of the moment himself.
Up close, you could see that Mr. Beverley was born to be an actor. His face was large, flexible, and expressive, with arched brows and almost womanly full lips. He must have been six feet tall and dominated in the low-ceilinged room as much as onstage, his rich voice booming out just as loudly.
“No trouble at all, miss, I assure you!” He talked over Miss Brontë, hitting her with the full force of his chivalry and kissing her gloved hand.
She fell back in the chair our medieval gallants had deposited her in and drew a glass of water to her lips, quivering.
The desk in front of her was covered with receipts, playbills, and all manner of props—a pistol, a handkerchief embroidered with strawberries, and Mr. Beverley’s discarded skullcap. The room itself was cramped and windowless, with a pungent smell of gin.
“It is a pleasure, Mrs. Robinson, Miss Robinson, to meet you all,” the actor continued.
Lydia and I pulled back our hands in unison as he veered toward us.
“And my boy. Where is my boy? Well, we both say so, don’t we, my lad?”
The most handsome of the “manservants,” who had come to Miss Brontë’s rescue—the young man who had addressed me—had remained, unlike the others, and now stepped forward to join his father.
The likeness to Beverley was there, although the young man’s features were more classical. His mother must have been a beauty. His face had an honest look about it despite his profession, but that wasn’t enough to speak in his favor. We needed to extricate ourselves from this irregular situation and quickly, especially since Lydia had refused to leave with the others.
“Delighted, Mr. Beverley,” my daughter said, holding out her hand and giggling as the son swept into a bow flamboyant enough to rival his father’s curtain call.
“Not Beverley but Roxby,” he said, hovering over her knuckles and flashing her a smile. “Henry Roxby.”
A bastard? Shameless, intolerable. What would Edmund say if he could see the company our daughter was keeping?
My disgust must have been visible, for “old Harry,” as the locals called him, hurried to correct my assumption.