Anne Perry - A Christmas Homecoming

“Thank you,” Caroline accepted quickly. “That is most kind. It has been rather a long journey, and we very much wish to be at our best tomorrow.”

“Of course.” Eliza smiled. “Will dinner at eight be suitable to you? We can always serve you something in the breakfast room at a different time, if you wish?”

“Eight will be excellent,” Caroline assured her, turning toward the stairs.

he bedroom they were shown to was large and richly curtained in dark wine red. There were chairs near the fire, and the fire itself spread such light and warmth that it was unnecessary to use the candles provided, except on the bedside table.

“I told you,” Joshua said gently, as soon as the door was closed behind the footman who had brought their cases. “We are very welcome.” He was smiling, although his face, which concealed emotion so easily now, could not hide either his weariness or a degree of anxiety.

Caroline walked over to stand close to him, then reached forward and touched his cheek softly with her fingertips. “Don’t worry about it tonight, my dear. You’ll all work on the play tomorrow, and it may not be nearly as difficult when you rehearse it together as it seems now on the page. How often have you told me that about other plays?”

He leaned forward and kissed her. “But it’s actually awful,” he said ruefully. “It’s a very difficult thing to adapt a book for the stage, and Alice Netheridge really hasn’t much idea how to do it. I wouldn’t even attempt this if we weren’t at our wits’ end to find a backer for next year. But without Netheridge’s support we would all be facing a pretty bleak spring.”

“That’s not true, Joshua,” she corrected him. “The company might, but you could always find a part somewhere. I know of at least three other managers who would leap at the chance to have you.”

He winced very slightly; it was just a tightening of the skin across the bones of his cheeks. “Walk away and leave the rest of the company with nothing?” he asked. “The theater is too small a world to do that, even if I were willing to. It’s not only Mercy and James, or Lydia—not to mention Vincent, although he would probably find something else. It’s all the others as well; the bit players who take on a dozen other tasks: moving scenery, fetching and carrying, building props, looking after the costumes.”

She had known he would say something like that, but when he did, it still gave her a rush of warmth, stronger than any heat the fire could offer.

He was frowning a little. “Are you afraid?” he asked. She had been used to being provided for, more than adequately, all her life. First by her father, then by her first husband, Edward Ellison. This was the first time she had ever realized, more than in theory, that it was possible that she could become cold or hungry, or truly at the mercy of debt, to the point of being afraid when a knock sounded on the door. Should she lie and deny that she had thought about these things? Or was honesty between them worth more than the kindness of the lie, than taking heart and having courage?

“Not yet,” she said with a tiny grimace, choosing the middle ground. “As for Alice, just don’t expect too much. Can you steer some sort of path between her work as it stands and what you would consider good enough professionally?”

“Between the rocks and the whirlpool?” He said it with a twisted smile, but there was no laughter in his eyes. “I can try. And keep Vincent from taking over and hogging the stage, Lydia from giving up altogether, and Mercy and James from endlessly defending each other from attacks that no one has made, while at the same time teaching Alice Netheridge how to do all the extra parts, and playing a credible Count Dracula myself?” He shrugged. “Of course. My wife overrates me perhaps, but she believes I can.” His voice lowered a little. “At least she says so.”

inner was a very generous affair, but informal. Joshua and Caroline arrived in the drawing room to find Vincent Singer already there. He had been the first to arrive, and had clearly rested and changed from his traveling clothes. Caroline had known him off and on since her marriage to Joshua, but she still felt uncomfortable in his company. He was very striking to look at: tall and lean with a powerful face, and at present he had a full beard, lightly touched with gray. It was neatly trimmed, although he had allowed his shaggy hair to grow a little long.

He turned from the fireplace where he was standing, glancing first at Joshua without speaking to him before coming forward to Caroline.

“Good evening, Mrs. Fielding,” he said warmly. He had a rich and exquisitely trained voice, and he never spoke carelessly. “I hope the journey was not too arduous for you?”

She knew he intended to sound concerned, and yet she felt a tiny stab of self-consciousness, as if he was also reminding her that she was older than the rest of them, and an outsider, unused to the rigors of the theater, and the self-discipline that made the players always give their best. For them, weariness, hunger, fear, and private grief were mere irritations to be overcome. She admired that in all of the troupe and wanted to equal them; above all so Joshua would never be embarrassed for her, or of her.

So she forced herself to smile at Singer. “It was a most exhilarating journey,” she lied. “I have never been to this part of Yorkshire before. I could see, even in the dusk as we approached the town, why Mr. Stoker chose to set his story here.”

She had no idea whether he believed her or not, but then she had never been able to read his face. Perhaps instead of trying to read him, and failing, she should make more certain that he could not read her, either.

“Do you think so?” he said conversationally. “I would have preferred Cornwall, myself.”

“Too easily associated with smugglers,” she replied. “Besides, how would one pass Cornwall by sea from Transylvania, in order to be washed ashore, whatever the storm?”

“You are too literal, ma’am,” he said with a tiny shake of his head. “The whole thing is … fantastical.”

“Not at all,” she insisted. “It is a story created out of the darkness of the nightmares within us. It must be consistent in itself or it loses its edge of horror.” Her mind flickered back to the past, to the terror that had surrounded and devastated her own family, sixteen years ago. She forced it away and turned to face Alice Netheridge, who came forward from where she had been standing by the curtains. She was not pretty in the usual way, but there was great emotion in her face, and when she smiled—as she did now—there was a way in which she was quite beautiful.

“Mrs. Fielding.” She held out her hand. “You are marvelously perceptive. That is exactly what I feel, too. Dracula is the demon within us. I wish I could convey it more successfully on paper. I’m Alice Netheridge.” She turned to Joshua, standing slightly behind Caroline, and now she was clearly nervous. She had tried desperately hard to force her ideas into form, and she was waiting for his judgment. She might aspire to be an actress adequate enough for the very small parts she would have to play in the adaptation, but she hadn’t the skill to conceal the vulnerability in her eyes at the moment.

Joshua took Alice’s hand briefly and smiled at her. “We will see how it reads tomorrow,” he replied. “There are always changes; please don’t feel badly if we make a few. The spoken word is very different from the written one. If we are any good at our parts, we may need to say far less than you imagine.” He turned to Singer. “Good evening, Vincent. How was your journey?”