“Vanity and pride are not inherited along with a title!” Joan flashed. Then she slammed the door shut.
Thaddeus’s jaw tightened, and he could feel a nerve ticking in his jaw. He banged on the roof. “Around the front.”
“Yes, my lord,” the coachman shouted.
The coach lurched slightly as his groom jumped onto the back, and the horses began clopping over the cobblestones. The carriage looked as if a trunk had exploded in it. Thaddeus began picking up her garments and folding them.
Stockings, light as air and marked with clocks on the side. Delicate straw-colored shoes, curiously embroidered. A white and gold fichu, subtly anointed with fresh scent that made his heartbeat speed up because he would always associate elderflower with Joan. A tall wig, though not large for a woman.
By the time the carriage rounded the front of the theater, he had Joan’s belongings folded on the opposite seat or tucked in the traveling case. He stepped down to the street and paused. The Wilmslow theater wasn’t what he had imagined.
He had been to the great London theaters throughout his life. He was particularly fond of the Haymarket Theatre. Like many others, he would arrive by boat on the Thames, escorting his mother up the steps and into the elegant stone building. He would stroll into the theater, nodding to gentlemen, most of whom he would recognize, feeling every inch a future duke. His knee buckles were adorned with rubies, if not diamonds. His frock coat was elegant; his silk waistcoat likely trimmed with gold.
He would join his fellow noblemen, who were ushered to the upper regions via private doors, while apprentices crowded the pit just below the stage.
Damn it, the cursed memory made him feel as if he had donned a costume and strolled through the Haymarket Theatre as an actor playing a duke. And his mother on his arm, playing the duchess.
But this was no London stage.
With a sinking feeling, Thaddeus realized that Joan’s sensitive, melancholy prince would tread the boards—of a barn. The people crowding in the entrance, throwing ha’pennies in the general direction of the man collecting fees, were not wearing diamond buckles.
Some of them were obviously inebriated, and since large flagons of fortified ale were being sold at the door, others soon would be. No wonder Wooty was worried about flying vegetables.
The ale sellers weren’t the only people at work; boys were pushing their way through the unruly crowd, likely collecting purses as they went, and women with garish lip color were plying their trade as well, ushering men around the side of the barn.
Unhurriedly, Thaddeus walked forward, flanked by two grooms who sprang from the carriage. He glanced over his shoulder at the coachman. “Don’t loosen the harnesses, if you please. The grooms can stay with you.”
The man nodded, his eyes scanning the unruly crowd.
A brightly painted woman stepped into Thaddeus’s path. “Time and enough to go round behind, sir,” she said, jerking her head toward the side. “You smell that good.” She leaned in and took a loud sniff.
“Thank you, but no,” Thaddeus replied, giving her a coin.
The crowd pulled back as he approached the door, watching him, not silently but with cheerful interest. Comments flew among them, comparing him to a local squire, and then rightly guessing that he must be a swell coming from Lindow.
“One of them at the castle,” he heard distinctly. “Not a Wilde, though. Them Wilde eyebrows is unmistakable.”
“Didn’t you see the coach?” another asked. “That’s a Lindow coach. I seen the picture on the door.”
Thaddeus handed over a ha’penny coin.
“All standing tonight. Only seating’s on the stage,” the doorkeeper told him. “Additional sixpence for a stool.”
Thaddeus gave him sixpence.
“Haven’t seen anyone else wanting to pay,” the man said. “Don’t have the missus with you? You might be on your own to the side of the stage, but you’ll blend in, I’d wager. The play is about kings, as I heard.”
“I heard the same,” Thaddeus said amiably.
“I hope there’s something to keep the crowd happy,” the man confided, dropping the money into a leather bag tied with strong cord to his belt. “Last thing I want is my barn burning down, as has happened in other places when the play doesn’t please.”
“The play is excellent,” Thaddeus said, raising his voice so that all behind him could hear. “It has everything: tragedy, deaths, disclosures, ghosts, love and despair, illusion and disguise.”
“Hope you’re right,” the doorkeeper said, turning to holler, “Jehoshaphat, get yourself over here. Get a stool and take the gentleman up on the stage.”
An eight- or nine-year-old boy led Thaddeus to the back of the barn where a crudely built stage jutted at waist height. Thaddeus put a hand on the boards and leapt up.
“Are you looking forward to the play?” Thaddeus inquired, as Jehoshaphat fetched a stool.
“I heard there’s a king,” the boy said. “I’m named after a king. And swords! I like swords. Plus, there’s juggling in between every scene, not just the acts.” He hopped down from the stage and disappeared into the crowd milling about in front of the stage.
Thaddeus positioned his stool off to the side, where the wings would be in a London theater, close enough so that he could snatch Joan from the stage if need be, but not awkwardly in the way of the action.
He sank onto the stool. He was used to being alone, seated above the crowd. Walking through the world in a duke’s costume. He barely suppressed a grimace.
Rather than survey the crowd—many members of whom showed a ready willingness to engage in fisticuffs if they took affront—he sent those closest a silent warning that had them turning their backs, and then stared across the stage at the barn wall.
He didn’t have to live in costume. He was no Hamlet.
Yet somehow he had become Hamlet: emotional, uncontrolled, desperate.
His reaction felt primitive and entirely ungentlemanly. No subtleties. He wanted—he wanted her. Joan. No Lucy Lockett for him.
He would have her, his unladylike, dramatic, illegitimate . . . love.
He turned the statement over in his head until he realized that reason played no part in it. He had fallen, not for feminine wiles, but for something altogether more powerful and honest: a woman who made him laugh, who made his heart pound with a mere glance, who seduced him with a spoonful of rose jelly.
He was still mulling over what in the hell had happened to him when Jehoshaphat came back with two more stools, and a couple in tow. They ponderously mounted steps to the stage that he hadn’t noticed.
“Mrs. Meadowsweet,” the lady told him, when he rose and bowed.
She had a faint resemblance to a gladiator: well fed and possessed of a remarkable breastplate. “Mr. Meadowsweet and I were just married this morning, so we thought we’d have a bit of fun to celebrate. I told Mr. Meadowsweet that I wouldn’t tolerate being down among the groundlings.” She sat down heavily, teetered, and managed to keep her balance on the stool.
“Mrs. Meadowsweet is worth three times as many sixpences,” her husband announced. He bowed. “Mr. Meadowsweet, at your service.”
Thaddeus bowed. “Lord Greywick.”
Mrs. Meadowsweet turned to her husband. “A real lord! Now aren’t you glad that we chose the theater over a trout stream? You can see trout any day of the week!”