Jack was loud and indiscriminate in his complaints. Grandmamma had clearly forgotten what it was like to be below the age of forty. Did she really believe that one could derive entertainment from cavorting around a stage all day and all night, bullied and harangued by a dry middle-aged stick who would be satisfied with no less than perfection? It would not be as intolerable, perhaps, if one were not surrounded so exclusively by one's cousins. Hortense was pretty enough, and Prudence had a certain spirit that one might admire. Constance was too young to be noticed, though she promised well. But how could one get excited about females with whom one had romped as a child?

He did not add aloud to anyone that the only female who might have brightened his stay was proving quite elusive. She made life interesting, of course, but one never quite knew where one stood with old Alex. He had married the girl a few years before, Jack gathered, because he had felt he had compromised her in some way, and then he had left her and presumably forgotten her very existence. It was only fair that another fellow should be free to try his luck with her. But Alex had jumped to her defense that first afternoon, and he had a disconcerting habit of turning up at the wrong moment, just as if he were any ordinary jealous husband.

There had been the afternoon before, for example, when Claude had announced that he needed only Maud and Martin for rehearsal. Jack had seen Anne, book in hand, wander off along the tree-lined driveway toward the main gates almost two miles distant. He had been quick to follow and to catch up with her out of sight of the house.

"Anne," he had said, favoring her with the smile that usually brought color to the cheeks of any female, "I see that you too feel the need for air and exercise. Do you mind if I walk with you?"

"Not at all, Jack," she had said in the quiet voice that had come to intrigue him. And he was gratified to note that she had blushed.

He had given her time to get used to his presence, walking silently at her side and looking up into the treetops. "Are you happy to be here?" he had asked. "The grounds are quite splendid, are they not? I imagine it is quite a welcome change for you to be here after living at Redlands for so long. A drab old place, as I remember."

"Oh," she had said, turning to him an animated face, "it is no longer so. I have had an ornamental garden created before the house. It stretches for fully half a mile. It looks lovely even at this time of year with box hedges and lawns and graveled walks and a fountain in the middle of it all. But soon it will be quite glorious. I can hardly wait to get back home so that I might not miss the flowers beginning to bloom."

"Indeed?" he had said quietly, looking steadily at her. "I might have known, Anne, that you would not live there fretting. You are a beautiful little creature who would have to spread beauty around you."

Anne had looked startled and blushed hotly. "Oh," she had said, "what a strange thing to say."

"I should like to see what you have done to the old place," he had said. "May I visit you there, Anne, this summer?"

Her lips had parted as she looked earnestly at him. Jack had been reaching out to take the book from her hand so that he might draw her arm through his when Alex had appeared from nowhere. He had apparently come through the trees almost abreast of them, and had fallen into step the other side of Anne after giving his cousin a long and level look. Jack could not think of a more frustrating way to spend an afternoon than in the presence of a woman whose interest one was trying to fix while her husband looked on silently. Alex had said not a word after his initial greeting to the pair.

What Jack wanted was some outside interest. There had to be some attractive and unattached females within a radius of five miles of Portland House. It was Peregrine who thought of the vicar's brood, with whom they had all played as children. They must all be grown up by now. Surely if one rode into the village and paid a call at the vicarage, one might find two or three of them still at home. It would be a great relief to find some young people who were not constantly preoccupied with drama.

That same afternoon, then, saw Jack, Peregrine, Freddie, Prudence, and Hortense on their way to the village, the men on horseback, the girls in an open barouche. Claude had called a rehearsal for Alex and Anne alone.

Anne was the only one of the family to have memorized her part quite reliably. Even those who had only a few lines to remember had a disconcerting habit of piping up with accurate words spoken in the most inappropriate moments of the script. The duchess bullied at almost every mealtime, and Claude fumed, asking rhetorically if anyone thought he actually enjoyed his task, or if they believed that he had wanted the job in the first place, but no one ever seemed smitten enough by conscience to rush off, book in hand.

Only Freddie was apologetic. If he only had Alex's brains, he said, or even Jack's, he would be able to remember that he must not speak all his part at once, but must pause to allow other people to speak between his lines. He considered it quite provoking of Mr. Goldsmith to write a play where everyone spoke just a sentence or two and then had to pause to listen to others and remember when to start speaking again and what words to say. However, he was willing to concede that it might be all clear to him if only he had been blessed with Alex's brains.

Not only did Anne know her part, but she had thought herself into the role and thoroughly enjoyed acting out the part of Kate Hardcastle. She could not talk to Alexander in her own person. She always felt unsure of herself, unsure of his attitude toward her, and shy and tongue-tied. She felt unattractive with him, as if she were still the dull, overweight creature she had allowed herself to become when living with her brother after the death of Dennis.

Even the fact that Alexander had come to her room every night since his arrival and had made love to her each time, twice even the night before, failed to boost her confidence. Although he always stirred her to such passion and satisfied her utterly, she was not at all sure why he did so. He rarely said anything, though he always stayed for the whole night, and he was invariably grim and distant during the daytime. Did he merely wish to put the stamp of his possession on her, to remind her that she was totally subject to his will? There was never the faintest hint of love, or even of affection, in his behavior toward her.

But when she was acting, Anne could forget herself and become Kate Hardcastle, the woman she would like to be. She loved the scene in which Alexander as Charles Marlow met her for the first time, knowing that she was the daughter of the house, and was so shy that he stammered his way through the interview, not once looking her fully in the face. She loved the reversal of roles, when she could be confident and amused, helping Marlow through the interview and at the same time falling in love with his handsome person.

But today they were to practice the scene in which Marlow sees Kate dressed in her plain country clothes, mistakes her for the maid, and flirts with her to the point of an attempted seduction. She enjoyed playing along with his error, giggling and inviting his advances without in any way behaving improperly. She wondered what would happen when they reached the part in which Marlow stole a kiss from her.

But Merrick was wooden. He knew the lines for this scene. It was only halfway through the play and he had spent more time on this than on the later scenes. But he found it very difficult to throw himself into the part. Or maybe it was the other way around. He found it too easy to identify with Marlow, poor fool. Merrick had never understood how Marlow could have married Kate willlingly at the end of the play, when he had appeared an utter fool so many times in her presence. How could he have ever recovered enough self-esteem to be easy in her presence, to assert himself as her husband?

Not that he had ever before taken the play very seriously. It was an amusing piece with a very clever and intricate plot. But now, suddenly, it had taken on a very unpleasant reality for him. As if he had not appeared often enough at a disadvantage before Anne, he must now act out a part in which he became doubly foolish. He found it almost impossible to enter into the spirit of the farce.

Claude fumed and paced back and forth across the polished floor of the small ballroom in which they rehearsed. Anne was great, he said. She was Kate Hardcastle, surely as Goldsmith had imagined her. And she had never acted before, never even seen a play performed before. How could Alex be so utterly lifeless? He was flirting with a pretty woman. Then, he must flirt! It was not as if he were suddenly thrown into the company of an utter stranger. Anne was his wife, for heaven's sake. Claude's rhetoric faltered when he realized what he had just said. They all knew that Alex and his wife had been estranged from the start, and none of them knew what the state of affairs was now, though much speculation went on when the pair was not present.

"I want my tea," he blustered, covering his confusion, "but I positively refuse to allow the two of you to leave this room until you have done something to this scene. If you dare put in an appearance in the drawing room, I shall instruct Aunt Jemima to refuse to serve you so much as a cup of tea. You work it out between you. I shall return in half an hour." And he stalked from the room, leaving a startled and silent pair behind him.


************************************

The party from Portland House caused quite a stir as they rode through the village. It was generally known that the duke and duchess were gathering their family around them for a few weeks in preparation for the grand ball that was to be held in less than two weeks' time in honor of their fiftieth wedding anniversary. It was many years since all the family had been gathered together here. There had been the time when Master Alexander had lived there, a perfectly quiet and nicely behaved young gentleman until he was joined by Master Jack, Master Peregrine, and the young ladies. Then they had all been holy terrors. The only one of the whole pack who had been invariably courteous to all the lesser mortals of the village was Master Frederick, who had always stayed to smile and nod after the others had taken to their heels, having upset an applecart or done something equally mischievous. But then, everyone had suspected that poor Master Frederick did not have all his wits about him.

Now those who were on the street or close to a window as the barouche passed, followed closely by a group of horses, saw that indeed all those naughty children had grown up into remarkably handsome and fashionable ladies and gentlemen. The vicar's wife was one who saw them coming. She shrieked to her girls, who were all in the room with her, variously employed, and rushed to the study to inform her husband that the young people from the house were approaching. Her son was there too, perched on the edge of his father's desk, swinging a leg and mending a pen.

Thus it was that by the time Hortense and Patience had been helped from the barouche and the men had all dismounted and secured their horses to the picket fence that surrounded the vicarage, the buxom figure of Mrs. Fitzgerald was curtsying in the doorway, the thin, slightly stooped figure of the vicar behind her rubbing his hands together, a gaggle of girls behind them, each striving to get a view of the visitors. Only Bertrand Fitzgerald dared venture out of the house. He came bounding down the pathway, right hand extended.

"Jack, Perry, Freddie!" he exclaimed, shaking hands heartily with each one in turn. "How bang up to the minute you all look. I say, this is famous. Where's Alex?"

"Rehearsing," Freddie explained, "for Grandmamma's play, y' know. Has brains, has Alex. Big part. Must practice lots. I just have a small part. No brains, y' see. Can't hold the lines in m' head."

He spoke the last words to Mrs. Fitzgerald, who was smiling and curtsying in front of him. Bertrand had already been claimed by the girls.

"What, Fitz," Hortense cried, pushing past Peregrine, "are we invisible just because we are females? For shame."

"Well," Bertrand said, standing back and looking admiringly at his former playmates, "aren't you the grand ladies all of a sudden? I wouldn't have recognized either of you without tangled curls and smudged noses and tears in your dresses."