Wicked Company (67 page)

As the ensemble interwove the spoken word with music and song, Sophie suddenly recalled Thomas Sheridan’s exclamation at his final lecture on elocution delivered in the Edinburgh operating theater so many years earlier.

Never forget! English is the language of the immortal Shakespeare! And whosever has command of this man’s mother tongue, has command of much in this world!

On this rain-drenched September day, David Garrick had never been more in command of his audience. For Sophie, the sounds caressing her ears were like a healing balm. Something was happening to her, something startling and full of renewal.

Certainly, she could never dare to consider herself a writer in Shakespeare’s class, or anything approaching him, but she loved her native language and felt a sudden desire to return to play writing. Her eyes glistened as she absorbed the sounds of Garrick’s magical voice, so powerful, so controlled. By the time Garrick delivered his concluding lines, which resonated with his love and reverence for the playwright whose works had made Garrick himself the toast of his age, the entire audience had been beguiled out of its apathy and forgot its soggy feet.

As the last notes of music faded, Garrick rose from his gilded chair. He stood motionless in the hall that was now completely silent except for the steady downpour on the Rotunda’s roof. He was alone—without costume, without paint—and his performance had been a triumph. He simply bowed and the spectators went wild.

With tears streaming down her face, Sophie watched as the audience in one body stood on its feet and applauded rapturously. As the tumultuous clapping continued to thunder in her ears, she made her escape. David Garrick had saved the Jubilee, but Sophie McGann still had tomorrow’s program to deliver to the printer’s shop on a mud-soaked Stratford street. And then there was the question of Hunter Robertson and tonight’s masquerade ball.

***

Sophie procured a candle stub, along with a bowl of hot pottage from the kitchen, and carried both to her little room adjacent to the stable yard. Painstakingly, she made a fire on the hearth and lit the wick of a tall candle on the table next to her bed. As mellow light filled the low-ceilinged chamber, she noticed a large box resting on her mattress. Curious, she pried off the top and stared at its contents.

Lying neatly folded inside the carton was a finely wrought, filmy costume made of shimmering sage green silk with pale satin streamers cascading from the shoulders, cuffs, and beneath the bosom. The garment was scandalously skimpy, with no waist and a ragged, handkerchief hemline that she wagered would hardly reach below her knees. When she lifted the airy confection out of its wrappings, she discovered the package contained a pair of fine silk stockings in a matching shade of pale green and two petite sage-colored satin slippers. A tag sewn into the neckline of the sheer raiment revealed the name of the dramatic character it had clothed at Drury Lane.

“Ariel…” Sophie murmured aloud.

She stared at the gauzy costume. It appeared to be constructed principally of silken cobwebs, reminding her of a performance she had witnessed of
The Tempest
in which the airy sprite who attends his master, Prospero, flew across the stage in wild abandon. In this untamed sorcerer, Shakespeare had created a being who could magically invoke the wind and rain to do his master’s bidding. Both men and women played the much sought-after role, and when a woman was cast as Ariel, the nuances of sexual tension between Prospero and his supernatural servant contributed an added depth and excitement to Shakespeare’s romantic drama.

Prospero!
Sophie thought, startled. Hunter had been wearing Prospero’s costume earlier in the day—a purple velvet doublet and hose and a paste coronet, denoting his rank as Duke of Milan.

With trembling fingers she began to dress for the ball, shivering before the fire. Who but Hunter could have arranged to have these gossamer garments delivered to her door?

***

“God’s wounds, but you’ll
freeze
in that rig!”James Boswell exclaimed as he caught sight of Sophie entering the public room in the White Lion Inn with her cloak over her arm.

“So will
you!”
she retorted, eyeing Jamie’s portly figure costumed in the attire of an armed Corsican chief, complete with feathered miter hat and a tall staff shaped like a snake. He had a rifle slung over his back and a large leather ammunition pouch strapped around his ample belly.

Around them milled assorted Dutchmen, Chinese Mandarins, Pierrots, Highlanders, Nubians, and some rather unoriginal types: foxhunters, dustmen, milkmaids, and charwomen.

“Shall we depart?” Boswell inquired with a mischievous glint in his eye. “A particular friend of ours has asked me to see you safely to the amphitheater. We can watch the fireworks en route.”

Unhappily, in the continuing downpour, the event was a disaster. Poor Dominico Angelo, grand master of Drury Lane’s special effects, together with his assistants, lit one battery of fuses after another on his marvelous constructions—to no avail. The flints fizzled, the wicks sputtered and died, and every attempt to light the sodden touch papers ended in failure. Pinwheels got stuck and wouldn’t rotate. The rockets remained steadfastly earthbound.

When Angelo finally admitted defeat, Sophie and Boswell joined the disappointed crowd wending its way back to the Rotunda. By now the meadow was submerged in several inches of water, so their legs were caked with mud by the time they arrived at the ball.

“Here,” Sophie said, leaning against a wall just inside the amphitheaters door. “We’ll use my cloak to wipe our feet.”

Together they quickly repaired the damage to their costumes and Sophie donned her mask. Then she put on the green satin slippers she had stowed under her cloak to protect them from the rain. She took several practice steps and found the shoes were a miraculous fit, considering the diminutive size of her foot.

“I’ll wager Mr. Jackson has rented four hundred quid’s worth of rags tonight,” said a deep voice as the orchestra ceased playing minuets and struck up a lovely country dance tune.

Hunter had suddenly materialized by Sophie’s side, and from the startled glances the two of them received from nearby spectators, she concluded that their coordinated costumes and their disparate sizes had rendered them a striking couple. Hunter nodded his thanks to James Boswell and immediately led Sophie in the direction of the dance floor. As soon as he touched her hand, she felt a current of excitement shoot up her arm.

“Do you… think Mr. Garrick will object to your borrowing these handsome pieces of… of wardrobe?” she asked shakily, clutching her costume’s filmy fabric between her fingers. Hunter’s blue eyes stared down at her from behind his mask.

“To the contrary, he practically commanded that we wear them,” Hunter replied, pulling her closer to him. “I wished to seek m’lady’s approval several times these two days on the matter of our fancy dress attire, but you kept disappearing.”

“’T-tis an occupational hazard for airy sprites,” she stammered, feeling her pulse quicken. “You must keep a sharp eye on nymphs, you know, or they vanish at regular intervals.”

“Not Ariel,” he murmured against her ear. “Don’t you know your Shakespeare, lass? Prospero is lord and master.”

“But if Ariel’s more man than sprite…?” she challenged.

“Not this night, I assure you,” Hunter replied, staring down at her steadily. “May I have this dance?”

Sophie rested her hand on his arm to prevent moving on to the dance floor.

“Hunter I…” she began, and then swallowed hard. “First, I think we should speak of… I… well, three years ago when you left that note on—”

Sophie halted, failing to find a way to express her remorse and hurt and confusion about the events surrounding Danielle’s death and Hunter’s violent and unfair response to what he had seen in her flat above Ashby’s Books.

But he merely smiled and slowly shook his head, leading her, instead, to join the throng of dancers. He surveyed the costumed figures gliding across the floor in time to music played by Dr. Arne’s orchestra.

“I command my Ariel”—he ordered softly, as if delivering a speech written by Shakespeare—“to harbor no thoughts of the past. For now there is just the tempest outside, the magic of this night—and thee and me.”

For hours, Sophie and Hunter hardly spoke. While the rain pounded relentlessly against the Rotunda’s roof, they whirled among the gods and goddesses, Merlins and Guineveres cavorting all around them. Dr. Arne directed his orchestra to play louder to drown out the cloudburst thundering above their heads—and to a great extent, the musicians succeeded. The masquerade ball grew more boisterous by the hour.

“No one can leave this place without drowning, so we might as well dance all night!” Sophie said gaily, gasping for breath as a particularly rollicking gambol came to its rowdy conclusion.

She and Hunter stared down at the dance floor beneath their feet. A full inch of water had seeped through the floorboards and was now lapping at their toes.

“Jesu!”
Hunter exclaimed, clasping her hand. “’Tis the Great Flood all over again. Come… let’s have a look outside.”

Removing their masks, they peered out of the amphitheater and were shocked to see that the Rotunda was completely surrounded by a lake. Candlelight from the building’s interior cast paths of gold across the acres of water that stretched on all sides.

“The Avon’s breached its banks!” Sophie exclaimed.

“Aye, but look… the water’s only a few feet deep on the village side,” Hunter said. He took her chin between his strong fingers and gazed into her eyes. “Well, Ariel… ’tis past four in the morning. Can you fly home, or shall I lend you some assistance?”

Before Sophie could render her decision, he scooped her up in his arms and proceeded to wade into the low-lying meadow that was now a pond. The sky had begun to lighten, signaling the hour was actually closer to five.

“We’ve truly danced all night,” Sophie murmured against Hunter’s broad expanse of shoulder.

Fifty yards from the Rotunda, a cluster of carriages waited axle-high in mud near a dirt lane that led back to the heart of the village. Some costumed gallants were carrying their ladies on their shoulders, piggyback style.

“Hunter! Have a look over there!” Sophie giggled, pointing toward a portly woman dressed in shepherdess attire. The benighted soul stood knee-deep in muck and was bellowing for help.

“Not to worry,” Hunter laughed. “See… there’s a chivalrous devil attempting to rescue her!”

The black-caped Lucifer trod over to the large-framed figure whose batiste apron was streaked with mud. Her shepherdess’s crook had slipped from her grasp and was floating downriver. Lucifer heaved the distressed damsel over his shoulder and staggered toward higher ground. Then, in the midst of his exertions, he suddenly halted and, without warning, tossed the poor drenched baggage into a water-filled ditch.

“I fear the devil discovered
she
is a
he,”
Sophie shouted through the rain, and they both began to howl at the comical sight. She laughed so hard, her tears mingled with the rivulets of water cascading down her cheeks. Hunter, too, was nearly doubled up with mirth. Suddenly, he seemed to lose his balance and the pair toppled into the mud.

“Oomph!” Hunter grunted as Sophie fell on top of him.

“Hunter!” she screeched as he rolled her over into the muck. “You did that on purpose!”

“I merely wish to confirm that in your case,
he
is, indeed, a
she…
” he laughed, his eyes drifting from Sophie’s face to her sodden costume.

Despite the fact they had landed quite close to the road, the two found themselves lying in nearly five inches of water. Sophie’s silk garments were plastered against her skin. Her coiffeur had utterly disintegrated as strands of her long hair clung to her face and neck.

“You’ve transformed yourself from air to water sprite,” Hunter chuckled, his large frame looming over her small one. He held her head above the saturated meadow by the nape of her neck. “But just look at the front of you. ’Tis a scandal! Have you no shame?”

Sophie glanced down at her bodice and gasped. Soaked with water, the filmy fabric had become completely transparent. Her breasts and nipples stood at attention, plainly visible through the gossamer cloth. Slowly Hunter lowered his face within an inch of hers, his breath warm against her lips.

“What an absolutely fetching ensemble…” he said.

“Hunter, I—”

“’Tis a pity that we must soon strip you of these soggy rags… but first—”

His lips brushed lightly against hers, and then he probed her mouth with the tip of his tongue, deepening the kiss until Sophie forgot they were embracing in a muddy quagmire in full view of hundreds of refugees from the ball. Strangely, the mud felt warm against her back as she pulled him closer, reveling in his weight now pressing against her chest. She tasted the rain on their lips, savored the downpour grazing her eyelids. She felt as if she would soon be engulfed by the tide of sensation that rippled through her body.

“God’s bones, Robertson!” a familiar voice exclaimed. “You’ll drown the lass!”