Heart Burn (28 page)

Now she stood face to face with the man capable of cutting her heart out completely. It was enough to make her stomach heave.

“Not you again.” Roger Style stopped midstride and thrust both hands on hips exaggerated by his fashionably short trunkhose. He glanced up and down the street and must have realized he had nowhere else to go except past Min. Disgruntled theatre-goers, leaving the White Swan Inn after suffering through his latest play, surged down the narrow thoroughfare and around him as if he were an island in the middle of a rapidly flowing stream. The irony was, they had no idea that he was the man responsible for the farce they’d paid good money to see.

However, the crowd wasn’t so large that the buffeting would last long. Min had to take her chance while Style could not escape. If she didn’t, there would be no more opportunities. London’s other theatre managers had already turned her down twice. Style was her last hope. The very last. None would listen to her pleas a third time.

Drawing in a solid dose of courage along with a deep breath, she planted her booted feet on the muddy ground and held up her manuscript. “Mr. Style, I’m simply asking that you read it. Just one little, quick read—”

“No.” Style took a step closer. He was short, only a little taller than Min herself, but he had presence borne from years of acting in leading roles. It was an advantage he knew how to use.

Min refused to be intimidated. Again. She’d backed down from Style once already. She’d been very close to throwing her manuscript in the fireplace afterwards, but sense had thankfully returned in time to save it from oblivion. She couldn’t afford to give up this time, not unless she wanted to find herself wed to Ned Taylor.

“I would be doing you an injustice, my dear, to read the play you thrust beneath my nose,” Style said. He linked his hands behind his back and squared his shoulders. “Due to the smallness of their brains, women
cannot
write plays. Alas, it is not of my doing, but God’s.” He indeed seemed quite apologetic on the Lord’s behalf. “It is His will that the gentler sex be given the gifts of beauty and…” He waved his gloved hands just like the wise old wizard he’d played on stage the month before in a rather forgettable play. “…other things. Reading it would simply encourage you to write more. In that endeavor, your poor brain would not be able to cope with so much activity and, in short, it might expire. Nay! It
would
expire. I cannot have that on my conscience.” He smiled down at her the way a master smiles down at his favorite puppy after it has pissed on the rushes.

Min almost bit her tongue off to refrain from saying something that would completely destroy her last chance. She might be desperate, but she liked to think she wasn’t a complete fool.

“Now, if you’ll be so good as to step aside.” He lifted thick, woolly brows, expectant.

“Please, Mr. Style, I shall be indebted to you. I’m not asking for money.” She put her right arm behind her back to hide the threadbare patch on the cloak sleeve. “Not much anyway. I simply want—”

“No.” He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Would you like me to explain it to you again?” He tossed his head and brushed the cheek of a passerby with the long white plume decorating his hat. “Women cannot possibly write the sort of plays my company performs. The nuances, the rhythms, are simply too intricate for the poor female mind to comprehend.”

“Many women attend your plays, sir, and enjoy them.”
Used to enjoy them
, she might have added. After the most recent outbreak of the plague, Lord Hawkesbury’s Players—Style’s company—could no longer be relied upon to entertain. With their chief playwright succumbing to the disease that had emptied the city and ravaged those who’d remained behind, the new plays had been awful. Not a single one had lasted more than two performances. Most not even that many.

As a consequence, audiences had dwindled. The one that attended this afternoon’s performance had already turned into a trickle leaving the inn. That alone gave Min hope. A theatre company with a diminishing audience equaled a desperate manager. And desperate people took risks.

Style lifted a hand. “Watching them is one thing,” he said, “writing them entirely another.”

What remained of Min’s heart sank into her stomach. It was hopeless. He wouldn’t look at her play if his life depended upon it, or his livelihood as it were.

The crowd had dispersed entirely, the gray clouds encouraging them to find shelter before the rain broke and made the roads slippery and their ruffs droop. Style moved to step around her.

“Wait!” She caught his arm, jerking him to a halt.

“My girl,” he said with exaggerated effort, “I am
very
busy.” He glanced back at the inn. Looking for assistance from his players? It was unlikely they would come to his aid—they were probably still drowning their professional sorrows in the taproom. “Please remove yourself from my presence or I shall have to—”

“There’s been a misunderstanding.” She had to do something, say something, to get him to listen. “I didn’t write this play.”

“Very well.” He pried one of her fingers off his arm, using only his thumb and forefinger as if he might catch something from her.

As soon as he let go of her finger, she clamped it down on his arm again. “What I mean to say is, a
woman
didn’t write this play, a man did.”

Style frowned. “Then why didn’t you tell me so before?”

She shrugged. She didn’t have an answer for that. Not yet.

“Well, if you didn’t,” he said, “who did?”

She quickly scanned the faces of passersby, but therein lay the flaw in her plan—they passed by. Style would not believe one of them had interest in their conversation. There was only one man who lingered. He had his back to them and was a little near for her liking. Well, he’d have to do; Style was growing restless.

“Him,” she said.

“Him?” Style’s eyes narrowed as he studied the man.

Min studied him too. He leaned against the wall of a haberdasher’s shop, arms and ankles crossed. He was tall and dark haired. Unlike the gentleman fops she was familiar with, he wore simple black with no elaborate stitching and not a hint of jewelry. Even his ruff was small. She couldn’t determine the material of his doublet and hose, but they fit him well. Not a sag in sight. A talented tailor had made them precisely for this man’s body. And what a body. Wide shoulders and a fine leg with a muscled and shapely calf.

The figure in question suddenly shifted, a barely noticeable stiffening of his back and shoulders. Min noticed it, however. She felt strangely in tune with him—like the fiddler off stage and dancer on it, they were separate and yet together.

“Then why didn’t he approach me himself instead of sending you?” Style cocked his head to the side without taking his gaze off the stranger. “Lo!” he called out.

“Shhh!” Min hissed. “He’s, er, shy.” She cringed. She might have an overactive imagination but it wasn’t a particularly quick one.

The man must have heard because he turned around. Min swallowed a gasp. He was very handsome with tanned skin that spoke of warmer climes or an intriguing parentage. But it was his eyes that sent a shimmer of heat up her spine. They were bright blue, the color of a summer sky. Amidst all that darkness, they were an oasis—vivid and glorious.

And they were staring straight at her.

“He doesn’t look shy,” Style said.

He most certainly did not. Min had never seen a man quite like him. He exuded a self-contained power, and despite his idle stance, she could see he was alert to his surroundings—a cat lazing in the sun but with an eye on the mouse.

Or in this case, Min.

“Well, he is shy,” she said. “Very.”

“I want to meet him.”

“No!” She leaped in front of Style.

He peered over her head and frowned. “Oh. He’s gone.”

Thank you, Lord
. Min breathed out and managed a smile. “As I said. Shy.”

“He shouldn’t be. Men who look like that don’t need to be shy. I wonder if he’s ever thought of acting. He’d make quite a striking figure on stage.”

“I’ll ask him next time I see him.” She held out her manuscript. “Will you read his play?”

Style took it and Min felt her heart rebuild itself in that instant. She didn’t squeal in delight, but it was an effort not to.

“I’ll read it tonight,” he said.

“Wonderful. I’ll meet you back here tomorrow, same time. You won’t be disappointed, sir.”

Style cast his eye over the front page. “Bring the playwright.”

“The…er, yes, of course. He’ll be here.” Her face heated at the lie, knowing she’d need another to explain why she hadn’t brought him.

“Good day, Mistress…What was your name?”

“Peabody. Minerva Peabody.”

Style nodded and left, hurrying the short distance to Gracechurch Street without looking back.

Min watched him go with a growing sense of exhilaration. He was going to read it! The battle was half won. She might finally,
finally
see her dream of two years come to fruition, and just in time too. Money was running out and Ned Taylor was hovering, preparing to swoop in and snatch her for his wife. She would rather live in poverty than wed that swine of a man, but her father could not. He was too old. And poverty meant they would lose their beloved maid, Jane.

Tears of joy welled in her eyes. It was almost too much. She felt like she would burst if she didn’t tell someone. But who? Her father would be angry that she’d wasted so much time on her play instead of helping him, and her friends didn’t quite understand how much it meant to her. The few who knew she harbored the dream of being a playwright thought her mad.

Min sighed. Her earlier enthusiasm faded. If only her mother were still alive…

She turned to go. And bumped into something hard. Not some
thing
, some
one
. A tall man, with strong hands that gripped her shoulders to steady her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, peering up at him. “I—Oh! It’s you.”

The stranger with the too-blue eyes glared down his nose at her.

“Why were you watching me?” No preamble, no “Are you all right?” or “Hello, my name is Percy Percival, what’s yours?”

Min swallowed. Blinked. Remembered to breathe. The man was overwhelming up close. Taller, broader across the shoulders with an air of danger that simmered around him. From afar he’d been like an exotic delicacy—a delicious morsel that was, alas, out of her reach—but now she received the full force of his presence. Power rippled through his touch into her body, making the tiny hairs on the back of her neck stand to attention. His blue glare bored into her as if he were trying to extract the answer directly from her head. There was a jaded languor about those eyes, as if they’d seen too much and cared too little.

“I wasn’t watching you,” she said, her voice small. She cleared her throat. “Anyway, it was
you
who was watching
me
.”

His gaze slid to her shoulders. As if he’d just realized he was still holding her, he let them go. “You are mistaken.”

“I am not. You were looking directly at me for quite some time.”

“No.”

“No?”

“As I said, you’re mistaken. I was merely looking in your general direction.”

“At what precisely?”

A pulse throbbed in his cheek. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m merely curious. As a playwright, it helps to be curious about people. Besides, one question does not ‘a lot’ make. So, what or whom were you looking at if not at me?” She wasn’t sure why she persisted. Perhaps it was to learn more about him. He might prove useful as the basis for one of her characters.

“That,” he said in a tone that could have frozen the Thames, “is none of your business.”

She sighed. He was harder to talk to than her father in the midst of his research.

“Are you going to tell me why you were looking at me or will I have to force it out of you?” he persisted.

She gasped. “Force? What kind of force?” She glanced around and wondered if any of the lingering youths or hawkers would come to her aid if she screamed. The street had become oddly quiet now that the performance was long over, and the sky had turned sinister. Everyone must have gone home or into one of the nearby shops in anticipation of a downpour.

“You could always not answer the question to find out,” he said. “If you’re curious enough, that is.”

She crossed her arms. She didn’t like to be teased.

“Who was that man with you?” he asked.

She saw no reason
not
to tell him. “Roger Style, manager and lead actor for Lord Hawkesbury’s Players.”

“The theatre company?”

“Yes.”

She thought she saw him smile but she must have been mistaken. He didn’t look like a man who knew how to smile.

He glanced back at the White Swan Inn. “And that parcel you gave him was your play?”

“Yes.”

“Ah. I see.” He bent down to her level and pinned her to the spot with an unwavering glare. “So what, madam, does Roger Style and your play have to do with me?” She opened her mouth to utter whatever excuse came out first, but he stopped her by raising a finger. “No,” he said. “I want a direct answer this time.”

Now she wished she’d chosen someone else, someone with blander features and considerably smaller in stature. Someone who didn’t turn her insides hot and cold with one glance or look like he could squeeze answers out of her.

Someone with a little less strength of character.

She reined in her galloping attention. “Style wouldn’t read a play written by a woman, so I told him a man wrote it.” She took a cautious step away from him but it didn’t weaken his effect on her. Only the distance of oceans would achieve that—no, not even then. “In short, I told him you wrote it.”

“Me?”

“Yes. You.”

“Why me?”

Because you have broad shoulders.
She shrugged. “You were standing about, not doing anything in particular and then you turned around and stared at me.”

“I thought we cleared that up. I wasn’t staring at you.” Amusement flared in those blue depths again. Min found it irritating, despite her attraction, but it wouldn’t do to let him see. She needed him, after all. “However, if it pleases your playwright’s fancy to think that I was, then go ahead and indulge in that fantasy.”