LITMIR.BIZ

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rosewater perfume on the linen folds, and he dragged in a deep breath to hold it with him for one more fleeting instant. That bitter weariness was pressing down on him, but he couldn’t rest now, couldn’t take refuge in the softness of Anna Barrett. He had to deliver those papers.

      There was a quick knock at the door, and Rob shook away the last of the pain to gather the concealing cloak of a careless player around him again. The two sides were so much a part of him now it was as easy as changing papier-mâché masks on stage. But could it all become too easy? Did he lose his real self in the switch?

      ‘Rob, are you there?’ a man called. ‘They told me you were hiding in the tiring-house.’

      It was his friend and sometimes co-conspirator Lord Edward Hartley. ‘Come in, Edward,’ Rob said. ‘Obviously I am not hiding so very well.’

      Edward pushed open the door and slipped inside, closing it behind him. As usual he was dressed in the very height of Court fashion—black velvet doublet slashed with crimson satin, a short cloak embroidered with gold thread, and a plumed cap. He looked like a bright peacock dropped into the drab, dusty backstage area of the theatre.

      But Robert knew the steel that lurked behind that jewelled velvet. Edward had saved his life many times, as Rob had saved his in turn. They both served the same cause. With him, Rob could relax his ever-constant vigilance just a bit—just for a moment.

      Edward held out a rough pottery jar. ‘I heard tell there was a brawl of some sort this morning. I thought perhaps you could use this.’

      ‘Word does travel fast,’ Rob said as he reached for the jar and uncorked it. The heady smell of home-made mead rose up in a thick, alcoholic cloud, and he tipped his head back for a long drink. It burned going down, doing its task most effectively. ‘I thought you had gone off to the country with your beauteous Lady Elizabeth.’

      At the mention of his lady-love, Edward grinned like a passion-struck fool. ‘Not as of yet. Our departure was delayed for a few days, which is a good thing if you need stitching up after a fight.’

      Rob wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘No stitching up required this time. Mistress Barrett mended me well enough.’

      ‘Did she, now?’ Edward’s brow arched as he reached for the jar to take a drink of his own. ‘And does the fair Mistress Barrett know the true nature of this quarrel?’

      Rob remembered the look on Anna’s face as she told him how his behaviour affected them all. He took another drink of the mead, but even that couldn’t quite erase the memory of her frown. ‘She knows I quarrelled over a whore’s payment. Like everyone else.’

      Edward nodded. ‘And the papers?’

      ‘I have them.’

      ‘Shall I go with you to deliver them to Seething Lane, then? Maybe with two of us there will be no more trouble on the way.’

      ‘Perhaps tomorrow.’ Rob corked the jar again, and resisted the strong urge to dash it to pieces on the flagstone floor. It was his damnable quick temper that had got him here in the first place. He had vowed never to let it get the better of him again, yet it had led to the bloody fight—and almost revealing himself to Anna. ‘There is something I must do first.’

       Chapter Four

      Anna bent her head over the ledger books spread across her desk, trying to concentrate on the neat rows of numbers tabulating that day’s receipts from the theatre. She usually loved keeping the accounts—in the end, figures always added up to the correct answer. Unlike human life, they were regular and predictable. She understood them.

      Tonight, though, the black ink numbers kept blurring before her eyes. Images kept flashing through her mind, bright and vivid, of Robert Alden and that blood on his shoulder. The solemn look in his eyes as he looked up at her, as if he hid ancient and terrible secrets deep inside—secrets he had only allowed her to glimpse for that one moment before he concealed them again.

      ‘Fie on it all,’ she cursed, and threw down her quill in frustration. Tiny droplets of ink scattered across the page. Of course Robert had secrets. Everyone in their world did. It was a dirty, crowded life, and everyone had to survive any way they could. She saw it every day. No one emerged with clean hands or hearts, least of all those who relied on the theatre for their living. She held enough secrets and regrets of her own—she didn’t need anyone else’s.

      Yet something in his eyes had moved her today, quite against her will. Rob Alden was a handsome, merry devil, known to be as quick with a mocking laugh as with his rapier. Today he had looked old and sad, as if he had seen far too much. As if one too many friends had suddenly turned enemy.

      Then that glimpse had been gone, and he was hidden again behind his handsome face. But she couldn’t forget that one flashing, sad look.

      ‘Don’t be such a gaping fool,’ Anna said out loud. She was as bad as that sobbing bawd in her cheap yellow dress, weeping over Rob in the street. There was no time for such nonsense, no time for soft emotions—especially over a rogue who did not deserve them and would only laugh at them. Actors were good at counterfeiting love onstage, and rotten at living it.

      She carefully scraped the spilled ink off the vellum and tried to return to the neat columns of figures. Shillings and pounds—that was what she needed to ponder now, what she could understand.

      Suddenly the house’s front door, just beyond her sitting room, flew open, and her father stumbled in. Through the door she caught a glimpse of the White Heron across their small garden, the theatre dark and quiet now in the gathering twilight. The afternoon’s revels were long ended by this hour, the crowds gone back to their homes across the river or to more dubious pleasures in the nearby taverns and bawdy houses.

      It seemed that was where her father had been, as well. Tom Alwick’s russet wool doublet was buttoned crookedly, his hat set askew on his rumpled grey hair. Even from across the room she could smell the cheap wine.

      Anna carefully set aside her pen and closed the account book. Her precious quiet hour was done. There would be no time for reading poetry now, as their usual evening routine began. At least her father, unlike her late husband, was an affable drunk. Tom was more likely to regale her with wild tales before he fell to snoring in front of the fire. Sometimes he would cry for her mother—dead since Anna was a toddler of three, but never forgotten by her father.

      Her late husband, Charles Barrett, had used to slap her and break their plate before insisting on his marital rights. So, aye, she much preferred this life here with her father.

      ‘Anna, my darling one!’ Tom cried, stumbling on the raised threshold of the sitting room. He reached out with one flailing hand to catch his balance, nearly tearing down an expensive painted cloth from the panelled wall.

      Anna leaped up from her chair and caught him by the shoulders before he could ruin their furnishings. She knew too well where every farthing came from to pay for their comfortable house. He leaned against her as she led him to the chair by the fire.

      ‘Are you working again?’ he asked, as he fell back onto the embroidered cushions.

      Anna moved her sewing basket away and gently lifted his feet onto a stool as she said, ‘I was going over the receipts for today’s performance. The takings were down a bit, though Lord Edward Hartley took his usual box for the performance.’

      ‘The Maid’s Dilemma is an old play,’ Tom said. ‘We’ll have rich takings indeed once we open Rob’s new play, I swear it.’

      ‘If we open it,’ Anna murmured as she tugged off her father’s boots. They were damp and muddy from his lurch through the Southwark streets, and she set them by the fire to dry.

      ‘What do you mean, my dearest? Rob has never been late delivering a play! And they are always great earners. Audiences love them.’

      Of course they were great earners, Anna thought. Women came flocking to see them, hoping for a glimpse of the

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