“Behave,” Niall told him in a low voice as he moved to leave the stage. “Or else I’ll have Patrick punish you later.”
“Ooh, yes please,” Everett cooed in a particularly fey manner, winking past Niall at Patrick.
Niall shook his head as he left the stage. “Make sure he doesn’t get arrested before opening night,” he told Patrick as he passed.
“If it hasn’t happened by now….” Patrick let the rest of the sentence fade.
Niall chuckled and moved on, heading back to the theater’s workshops to put out whatever other fires had started with his production before it was too late. His grin over Everett’s antics and Patrick’s understated adoration faded before he’d made it to the hall. The letter in his pocket demanded his attention once again, as if it were literally on fire. He thought about it every spare second of the day. Whenever the necessities of his production, on stage and off, or essentials, such as sleeping and eating, weren’t at the forefront of his mind, the letter was.
He’d read it so many times that he didn’t need to take it out of his pocket to remember the words.
“Dearest Niall. I will be blunt. Since seeing you again after such a long and bitter separation a fortnight ago, my life and my world have utterly fallen apart. I don’t know how to explain the heaven and hell that my life has been for the last ten years—heaven because it has brought me three wonderful children, whom I love more than life itself, and hell because I have been forced to spend those years without you. Oh, Niall, I was so wrong to pretend that you didn’t matter to me and that what we shared was nothing more than the folly and experimentation of youth. Not a day has gone by when I haven’t remembered you with a smile…or more. Seeing you again after so long only proved to me that my self-inflicted wound of a decade ago has not only failed to heal, it has only gotten worse.”
“Oh! Mr. Cristofori! Mr. Cristofori!”
Niall nearly jumped out of his skin as Martin Piper seemed to leap into his path out of nowhere, he’d been so lost in remembering the letter.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” Martin went on, his words rushed and his color high. “I wanted to ask you about this line of dialog in Act One, right before the ballroom scene.”
Martin’s arms were filled with prop swords, and a small, wooden shield was fastened over one of his arms. He held the script in his right hand and something that looked like a rubber bat in the other. Combined with the man’s perfect oval face and large, hazel eyes that looked perpetually startled, Niall had a hard time determining whether the man was coming or going.
“What do you need to know?” he asked all the same.
“This is my first speaking, singing role, you see,” Martin said in an almost apologetic voice, as if Niall hadn’t been the one to cast him as Everett’s page, one of the secondary leads. “I want to make sure I get it right. I’ve always wanted a life on the stage, but all I’ve done so far is work with props. I’ve done that in theaters all across England though, but never for very long at a particular theater. I have no idea why—” Two of the swords slipped out of his arms as he attempted to fumble his way closer to Niall in the midst of his ramble to show him the script. “Oh, dear.”
Martin bent to pick up the swords, which caused him to drop three others and the rubber bat. As the man turned to retrieve a sword that had bounced out of his reach, he knocked into a small table containing the remnants of someone’s tea, sending a teacup crashing to the floor.
“Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen,” Martin said, whirling the other way to reach for some of the shards of teacup. Another of the wooden swords fell out of his arms, and he kicked the bat against the wall. He grunted and seemed to reassess what he was doing, then reached for the bat, knocking the table again and toppling a discarded glass of water as he did.
“Martin, Martin, stop!” Niall told the man, grabbing his arm and hoisting him upright. “You’re going to bring the entire theater down if you don’t stand still for three seconds.”
“That happened once,” Martin replied, wariness in his eyes. “At the Community Playhouse in Durham. I was responsible for changing out the stage during intermission and—”
As he spoke, he leaned over to pick up a few more swords. The few he’d managed to get back in his arms spilled to the floor. This time, Niall bent to help pick them up. As he did, the letter fluttered out of his pocket and landed near the shards of teacup and spilled tea. Throat squeezing with irrational levels of fear over ruining his precious missive, Niall snatched at the letter.
“What’s that?” Martin asked with a curious smile as they both straightened. Martin held so many wooden swords and in such an awkward manner that he looked like an overgrown hedgehog as he eyed the letter. “It must be important, the way you jumped at it.”
“It is important,” Niall said, flustered, tucking the letter back in his jacket pocket, hands shaking.
“Who’s it from?”
Niall eyed the man warily. “An old friend,” he said. “Lord Selby.” He didn’t know what prompted him to give Blake’s name to a man he’d only come to know recently. There was no way Martin could possibly know the nature of his connection to Blake, though even if he did, like almost everyone else in the theater world, he wouldn’t care. In fact, Niall had seen Martin ogling some of the male dancers from the ballet that the Concord Theater shared an alley with during breaks. But that didn’t mean Niall was ready to spill the whole sad story of his shattered love affair.
“Oh.” Martin seemed satisfied enough with the cryptic answer. “Friends are lovely, aren’t they?” Before Niall could answer, Martin breezed on with, “Anyhow, about this line.” He managed to hold the script up enough so that Niall could see the scene in question. “Do you want me to be serious or comedic with this line? Or with the whole part. I mean, I would never want to steal focus from the Everett Jewel, but it strikes me that quite a bit could be made of this part.”
Niall’s mouth twitched into a grin. Martin would never be competition for Everett in terms of leading man material, but as a comedic performer, Martin was perfectly capable of stealing shows, whether he knew it or not. That was precisely why Niall had pushed to have him cast in spite of Abrams’s hesitation.
“Make the most of it, I say,” he told Martin, resting a hand over his heart to make sure Blake’s letter was secure. “Go ahead and challenge Everett’s standing as the star of the show.”
“Oh, I could never be the star of any show,” Martin went on, eyes round.
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”
Niall gave the man a friendly smile and would have slapped his shoulder in encouragement, if he didn’t think it would cause Martin to drop wooden swords all over again. Martin truly was the clumsiest man Niall had ever known, but he was also far, far more intelligent than anyone gave him credit for.
Not unlike Blake when they’d first met at university.
Another pang hit Niall’s heart as he walked on. He remembered the way Blake had smiled modestly whenever Niall complimented him in those early days, remembered the bright and youthful energy in Blake’s eyes. He remembered the warmth of Blake’s smile and the way his lips had tasted the very first time they’d kissed, remembered the way his heart had sped up, the bittersweet fear that they two of them would be caught. He remembered the perfection of Blake’s arms around him, the joy that had infused every part of him as their bodies entwined. He remembered the sounds of surprise and pleasure Blake made when he was worked up and the explosive way he cried out when he came.