Rogue's Charade Read online

  “What’s life without a little danger?” Giles clapped Simon on the shoulder. “You’ll stay.”

  “Yes.” Simon nodded. If he stayed with the Rowley troupe, he would be able to pursue his goal of clearing his name. Blythe would still be with him as well, though he didn’t know why that should matter so. What was important was that, for once, he give her a choice. Even if there really was no choice. “I know I will. I can’t speak for Miss Marden.”

  All heads swiveled to Blythe. She was staring at them, biting her lower lip, furrowing her brow. He wanted to pull her close and kiss the frown away. Especially since he’d put it there. “It’s the best thing, princess.”

  Blythe looked from one to the other, and then her shoulders sagged. “I suppose it is,” she murmured, and, swaying, put her hands to her face.

  Simon stepped forward, but Katherine was quicker, laying her arm across Blythe’s shoulders. “There, little one. You’re tired and hungry and nothing seems right when you’re like that. Everything will look better once you’re rested.”

  “I hope so.” Blythe had regained her composure and was gazing at Simon, clearly, steadily. For the first time, though, he could not read what was in that gaze. She had learned to shutter herself away. That he might be the cause was bitter knowledge.

  “Come.” Katherine turned, her arm still about Blythe’s shoulders. “We’ll find a place for you to stay.”

  “Who knows, princess?” Simon said, goaded somehow, frightened by the sight of her walking away. “We might even make an actress out of you.”

  “Mercy!” The wide-eyed look she threw him over her shoulder went some way toward restoring his good humor. “As if I would be one of—”

  “Careful,” he taunted, hands on hips. “Remember where you are.”

  “So far, sir, the most dangerous person I’ve met is you,” she retorted.

  Giles let out a laugh. “She’s got you there, boy. Now leave her alone. You’ve enough troubles of your own. Oh, and Kate, a moment, please? We need to discuss this afternoon’s rehearsal.”

  Katherine smiled reassuringly at Blythe and then stepped away, to speak with Giles. That left Blythe and Simon alone, avoiding each others’ eyes, at a loss for words. He didn’t know why he should feel this way, so tongue-tied and awkward. She was no great beauty, no polished lady of the theater. Just a chance-met companion, whom he had abducted, and who, last evening, had been surprisingly warm and enticing in his arms.

  “I think you’ll be comfortable,” he began.

  “They seem nice,” Blythe said at the same moment. “I’m sorry. You were saying?”

  “No. You speak first.”

  “Thank you. Your friends seem nice.”

  “For actors?” His mouth twisted. “Of course, you haven’t had a shining example of our trade to study, have you?”

  “No, not quite,” she said, dryly, her head tilted to the side. “I never know when you are serious, and when you are playing a role.”

  “Then that is to my advantage, is it not?” He raised his head, lips firming. What he was about to say would hurt her. “Last night at the inn, before we were interrupted—”

  “Please.” She held out her hand. “Let us not talk of that.”

  “After today, we won’t. But last night—you clearly expected me to play the rogue.”

  All color leeched from her face. “I beg your pardon?”

  “I believe you understand me. You are right. Sometimes I do play a role.”

  Blythe jerked back. “What are you saying?”

  Simon’s hand reached out, and he pulled it back. Better this way, to make a clean break. “Last night meant nothing.”

  Blythe’s eyes were opaque. “I see.”

  “Do you, princess?” he said, taunting her, taunting himself.

  “Oh, yes. And if that were acting last night”— she took a deep breath—“you need to practice more.” With that she turned, striding out of the green room, and he let her go. But it was harder than he had ever expected it would be.

  “Well, and a fine mess you’ve made of things,” a voice said behind Simon, and he turned to see McNally, leaning against the wall. “Why’d you drag the girl into it?”

  “I had to.” Simon slipped out a door, hoping McNally wouldn’t follow. It had been so long since he’d been in a theater, since before his arrest, and breathing the air was like coming home. A few steps here, and he could see onto the stage, quiet, bare. It drew him, called to him, making him walk faster, through the wings made up of sliding scenery, onto the stage at last. Before him the auditorium echoed in its emptiness, the rows of backless benches worn and polished from the thousands of people who had sat there over the years. In the boxes that ringed the auditorium, velvet curtains hung heavy with dust and age. Altogether it was dull, workaday, and yet Simon knew that when the great chandelier overhead was lighted tonight, that it would be transformed into a place of magic, demanding the very best of him. Which was certainly not something he’d given to anyone lately, and least of all Blythe.

  He shifted from one foot to another, looking high above the stage, where various ropes and catwalks and ladders hung, for access to the scenery needed to set the stage. Lord, what was wrong with him? For the image that had flashed into his mind, of a temptress with honey hair streaked with gold, was not that of the Blythe who had tramped beside him for the last days. It was of the woman who had lain, soft and melting, in his arms last evening at the Tabard inn.

  “I had to,” he said again, though McNally, who had followed him, had said nothing. He’d had to hold her, had to kiss her, and if they hadn’t been interrupted, he would have had to make her his own, and to hell with the consequences. “The soldiers were after me and I needed help escaping.”

  McNally dragged an empty crate onto the stage, the sound grating and loud. “So you dragged her into it.”

  “You’re not my father, McNally.”

  McNally appeared to mull that over. “No, lad, I’m not, but someone needs to set you straight about this. You’ve ruined that girl’s life.”

  “What am I supposed to do, marry her?”

  “No, that would be the worst thing you could do.”

  “Am I such a bad catch?” Simon demanded.

  “Ordinarily, maybe not. But now? There’s a price on your head, lad, and don’t you forget it.”

  The silence was thick and heavy. “You think I did it, don’t you?”

  McNally turned his head and spat. “I don’t know.”

  “Hell.” Simon spun around, hands balled into fists. If even old friends doubted him, what chance had he with anyone else?

  “Think of how it looks,” McNally went on calmly. “You’d had business with Miller—that was common knowledge—and reason to dislike him.” He pursed his lips. “Is it true you had an affair with his wife?”

  “No,” Simon said wearily. “I barely knew her, and I had enough to deal with, with...”

  “Aye, lad, I know,” McNally said after a moment. “With Laura.”

  Simon nodded, his heart aching, as always it did when he thought of Laura. And her child. “But it only made me look worse. I don’t know how that rumor started. There’s something strange about it, though.” He turned. “It was her knife.”

  “Eh? What’s that?”

  “When I found Miller. It was her knife.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “She said at the trial that it had been stolen from her. A pretty little thing, a jeweled dagger from the Orient. Brass and glass, really. Miller imported such things, you know. And she carried it with her always.”

  “Except she claimed it was stolen.”

  “Yes.”

  “She could be the one who did for him, then,” McNally said.

  “She could be.”

  “Sweet Jesus, boy, then you need to prove it.”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.” He turned to face McNally. “When she came in and found us—him—she seemed genuinely shocked. I think I would have known were she acti
ng.” He paused. “And there’s the matter of the money bag found in my room.”

  “Miller’s.”

  “Yes. Damned odd, wasn’t it? That I’d have his money lying about like that? You’d think I wanted to be caught.”

  “Then you didn’t take it?”

  “Of course I didn’t take it.”

  “Then how did it get into your room?”

  “That is what I need to find out.” He turned. “Will you help me?”

  McNally frowned. “How?”

  “This troupe travels near to Canterbury.”

  “Sweet Jesus, boy, you’re not thinkin’ of going back there!” McNally hissed.

  “I have to. Someone killed Miller and then arranged it so it looked as if I did it. Stage-managed it, as it were.” His smile was grim. “If I weren’t familiar with the stage, I wouldn’t see it. But I do. Well?” He stared at McNally. “Will you help me?”

  McNally frowned. “I don’t know how—but, aye, lad, I will. Though I warn you, it won’t be easy.”

  “I don’t expect it to be.” Simon took his first deep breath in what felt like hours. If McNally didn’t believe in Simon’s innocence, at least he would help in trying to prove it. Mayhaps that was the best he could expect of anyone. “The answer’s there. In Canterbury.”

  “Mayhaps.” McNally nodded, rising from the crate. “Come, lad. You look dead tired, and it’ll do no one any good if you’re discovered here. I’ll show you where you’re to sleep.”

  “I’d welcome that,” Simon said, turning and clapping his hand on McNally’s shoulder. It would be good to sleep. And maybe, just maybe, he’d manage to forget about Blythe, and those few magic moments last night when he’d held her. Maybe, but he doubted it.

  Blythe awoke the following morning feeling better than she thought anyone in her situation had a right to. Sitting up, she glanced around the room that she shared with Katherine and another actress, Odette, and shook her head, feeling her hair fall heavy and soft down her back. Clean. She was clean, for what felt like the first time in weeks, and though she had slept on a pallet on the floor, still she had been indoors. In the buttery warm sun streaming in through the thick-paned window, matters seemed better than they had yesterday. She still knew little about the people who had taken her in, except that they’d given her shelter, with no questions asked, and would help her get home. She’d done nothing wrong. Nothing. If she could just reach her village, where she was known, she could prove that and clear her name. And she would never have to be bothered with Simon Woodley again.

  She glanced over at the bed, which Katherine shared with her dresser, apparently a common occurrence. Apparently, too, they were used to traveling rough; both had commented favorably on the room, small though it was. Once Blythe was settled Katherine had turned intensely pragmatic. There was a play to be performed that evening. Nothing must be allowed to interfere with that.

  Last night Blythe had been only too glad to stay within, away from curious eyes and the fear of being recognized. The morning sun, however, made that fear look slight. She had much too much energy to stay indoors. She was used to working, to being busy. Lord knew what she could find to do in a theater, but surely she’d be helpful somewhere.

  She dressed in a skirt and bodice borrowed from another actress, grateful to have clean clothing again, and bundled her hair up under her cap. Thus attired, and with a breakfast of bread and cheese inside her, she set off for the theater. No one in Rochester knew her. The chances she would be recognized were slight.

  Still, she looked carefully around as she stepped out the door into a lane. Their lodgings were above a draper’s shop and thus were near the center of the city. Since she had been hidden during their arrival, she had had no chance to see her surroundings. Now as she walked along, she looked with interest at the square medieval keep brooding over the river, with the cathedral in its shadow. Eventually she came to the theater, turning into the alley beside it and finding the stage door.

  Inside, she plunged into the dusky darkness that was so unexpected to her in a theater, and blinked to adjust her eyes to the dimness. “Here, what are you doing here, lass?” a voice said. “Thought you were safe in your room.”

  “I was.” She smiled, recognizing McNally, sitting on a tall stool near the door, though he didn’t return the smile. “I was also terribly bored.”

  “Giles won’t like it,” McNally predicted darkly. “Not if you bring soldiers down upon us.”

  “If I had stayed in the room all day the landlord would be bound to be curious,” she said, suddenly cool. “Since I am supposed to be with this troupe, then I should be at the theater, should I not? And I imagine,” she went on, pressing her most telling argument, “that Mr. Woodley is here.”

  The corner of his mouth tightened. “That he is, but ‘tis different for him.”

  “Why? Isn’t he as much a target for the soldiers as I, if not more?”

  “Aye, but he belongs here, miss, for all that. You’re a lady. This is no place for you.”

  That made her smile. “Lately that doesn’t seem to matter. Since I am here, I might as well make myself useful.”

  McNally raised a hand in defeat. “All right. Just don’t get in the way.”

  “I’ll try not to,” she said, and slipped into the green room. Through another door she could hear voices, rising and falling in the measured cadences of what probably was a play. Shakespeare, she realized with surprise, and, slipping between two partitions, looked out upon the stage.

  Blythe had never been in a theater before. Her family hadn’t had the money to go to performances, and her employer had considered it immoral. Blythe didn’t know what she had expected to see, but the workaday scene before her was not it. The stage floor was dusty; the proscenium curtain was faded, with some of the nap worn off the velvet. Beyond the edge of the stage, long backless benches, presumably for the audience, marched away into the distance. A huge chandelier hung above, its candles unlit, and on the stage itself were grouped various people in various poses. In one corner a woman Blythe had yet to meet paced back and forth, frowning at a sheaf of paper and muttering to herself. The main group, consisting of several men led by Giles, were at center state, declaiming lines, gesturing, and then stopping, sometimes trying a different motion, sometimes, it seemed, simply to argue. And, at the very back of the stage, sitting on a crate, was Phoebe, looking alone and forlorn.

  Blythe’s heart went out to her. She had always had a soft spot for the misfits, the lonely ones, and she had never met someone so out of place in her surroundings as Phoebe. Except, she thought ruefully, glancing around, herself. Letting her breath out and squaring her shoulders, she made herself stride across the stage.

  “What are they doing?” she asked, pulling another crate close to Phoebe and sitting down.

  Phoebe jumped, looking both dazed and startled. “Who? Oh. Mr. Rowley and the others? They’re blocking a scene.”

  Blythe frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “It means they’re deciding where everyone should stand, and when they move.”

  “Oh.” Blythe watched the actors for a moment, not particularly enlightened. “What happens next?”

  “They’ll block the next scene.” Phoebe sank her chin into her hands, like a child. “That’s when they’ll need me.”

  Blythe glanced at her in surprise. “Are you in this play?”

  Phoebe blinked. “Of course.”

  “Mercy.” She remembered, though, that yesterday Giles had spoken of Phoebe’s role. “Have you played in Macbeth before?”

  “Shh!” Phoebe’s hand shot out and caught Blythe’s arm in a surprisingly strong grasp. “Please do not speak so loudly.”

  “Why not?”

  “‘Tis not safe.” She glanced nervously about the stage. “‘Tis bad luck to speak of the Scottish play, bad luck to perform it. I argued with Mr. Rowley about it, but he would have us do it.”

  “Oh,” Blythe said, thoroughly mystified. �
��Excuse me for saying this, but I can’t imagine you as Lady Macbeth.”

  “Nor can I. I have told Mr. Rowley that I am not right for it, but he would have it that I am.” She let out a gusty sigh. “He pats my shoulder and tells me I’ll be fine.”

  Blythe shifted her crate a little closer. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked, prompted more by the forlorn note in Phoebe’s voice than by any inspiration.

  “I need someone to help me run lines,” Phoebe said gloomily.

  “Run lines?”

  “Yes. I’ve a scene which I can never get right. If someone would read the other part for me I can practice my lines. Pray they’ll be correct.”

  “Oh.” Blythe stared at her blankly. Running lines. Well, there was nothing else to do. “Could I do it?”

  Phoebe looked up at her. “Would you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, wonderful!” For a moment Phoebe’s face glowed, filled with an animation Blythe hadn’t thought she possessed. “Here. She thrust a grimy sheaf of papers at Blythe. “‘Tis the lengths for your part.”

  Blythe frowned at the papers. What in the world was she doing? She’d never playacted in her life. “Where?”

  “At the beginning.” Phoebe sounded impatient. “Duncan’s line.”

  “Oh. All right,” she said, and read the line.

  Phoebe replied, her voice suddenly a low, deep hiss overlaid with honey. Blythe stared at her, until Phoebe nudged her with an elbow. “Go on, ‘tis your line.”

  “What? Oh.” Blythe looked back at the script and stammered out the next line, her mind reeling. Not only did Phoebe sound different, but she looked different, too: taller, somehow, and older, her eyes like slits, yet with a hint of voluptuous femininity to her mouth. Blythe had never seen the like. How had Phoebe transformed herself so?

  “No, no.” Phoebe frowned, herself again. “You are a king. You want to sound confident. Assured. Try it again.”

  “What?”

  “Speak the line again,” Phoebe said impatiently. “But this time believe in it. I can’t act with you if you don’t.”

  She was in a madhouse, Blythe thought. One actor pacing and talking to himself, several others arguing about where they should stand while speaking words someone else had written. Bedlam. Did Phoebe really expect her to become part of it? Blythe shrugged, cleared her throat, and made a conscious effort to lower her voice, like a man’s. “I’ll try,” she said, and spoke the line again.