“I don’t know if I can,” Niall sighed. “He hurt me, John. Ten years, and I still haven’t recovered.”
John reached across the table and patted Niall’s hand. “The heart is the most difficult organ to heal, but it’s better than leaving it broken.”
Niall glanced at his friend. John was right in theory, but in practice, forgiveness was much harder. Niall didn’t know if he was capable of it. He’d invested too much of himself all those years ago and had paid a steep price for it.
“What exactly happened between you and Blake anyhow?” John asked. “I mean, I know about Annamarie and everything the late Lord Selby demanded of Blake, but what happened between the two of you?”
Niall swallowed the lump in his throat, his whole body throbbing with bittersweet memories. He took a deep breath and said, “It’s a long story.”
Chapter 2
York – 1880 – Ten Years Earlier
The room Niall had been able to commandeer for auditions for the play he’d written over the winter as the last project of his final year at university wasn’t all that he’d hoped it would be.
“It’s too small,” he muttered to John and David as they helped set up chairs for their fellow students at the back of the room, who had come to audition. “It doesn’t even come close to approximating the stage in the auditorium.”
“At least it has a piano.” John nodded to the instrument in the corner.
“Why wouldn’t they let you hold auditions in the auditorium?” David asked, taking two chairs to the table that had been dragged into the center of the room for Niall.
“I’m just a student, and Professor Carroll is giving a lecture there this afternoon,” Niall answered with a sigh.
“That old windbag?” John snorted a laugh. “Lecturing about his trip to Egypt last autumn again, is he?”
“For your information,” a young man with sandy-brown hair piped up from the cluster of hopefuls at the back of the room, “Professor Carroll is a great explorer and Egyptologist. His excavation work in Thebes has garnered international attention.”
“Yes, of course, and I respect him highly for it,” Niall answered the young man graciously, then turned a scolding look on John. “Professor Carroll’s lecture is more important than auditions for a student play.”
“Yes, but aren’t you performing this as part of commencement festivities next month?” David went on, taking a few chairs to the front of the room, which had been designated as the stage area.
“That’s the arrangement I have at the moment,” Niall said with a wary sigh.
In fact, it had taken a minor miracle and the intervention of Professor Ballard from the English department to convince the committee in charge of commencement ceremonies to allow Niall to stage his original musical play during the most public week of the university’s year. Few of the men on the committee had wanted to take a chance on a green playwright. Even fewer had loved the idea of an all-male production of a show with explicitly female parts, particularly as it was a love story.
Truth be told, Niall was anxious about the production himself. Not just because he was the only person he knew with a voice high enough to perform the lead female role. If and when he was able to stage the play in London, he would most definitely cast women in the female roles. Seeing as there was a dearth of women in attendance at university—and even if the place had been crawling with female scholars, none would have dared to audition—if Niall wanted his play produced, he would have to fill the leading lady role himself.
“At least they didn’t force you out into the green for your auditions,” John said, crossing the room to inspect the piano. It was a simple upright that stood in one corner. John tapped a few keys, proving that the instrument was in tune, at least. “That was sporting of them.”
“This is the choir room,” Niall said, going to the table to organize the sides he’d had made up for auditions into piles designated by scene. “Gentlemen, if you’d care to come forward and sign your name to the audition list, then take some of these scenes to study, we’ll begin the audition momentarily.”
The dozen or so fellow students who had come to audition gathered around the table, putting their names down and taking sides, all while murmuring to each other. Niall moved to the piano, where David and John were picking out simple tunes and flirting a little too obviously.
“The two of you had better watch your step,” Niall warned them. “The walls have eyes, and you know how difficult life can be if the wrong people get wind of who you are and what you like.”
“I’d like to see them try to cause trouble for us,” John said, sending David a fond look. David was too busy playing the piano to notice. “Besides,” John went on. “If anyone asks why David and I are thick as thieves, we’ll just tell them it’s because we’re working together to start a law practice in London after graduation.”
“So you’re going through with those plans?” Niall asked.
“Yes,” David answered, proving he was paying attention after all. “So when you eventually relocate to London to launch your fabulous career as a playwright and theater impresario, we can all still be friends.”
“Well,” Niall replied with a wry grin, turning back to his table. “At least we can still be friends.”
It was nice to share a laugh with men that he did, indeed, consider his friends. Friends had been few and hard to come by for Niall. Aside from being raised in a quiet section of the English countryside, where most of his peers were more interested in the latest in farming equipment or crop rotation techniques when he was up to his eyeballs in Shakespeare and Moliere, few of the other lads had wanted to play with the slender, effeminate boy whose voice didn’t seem like it would ever change.
It wasn’t until he had secured a place at university and found himself amongst his own kind—in more ways than one—that Niall had begun to flourish. He’d made friends, put on a few needed pounds of muscle, learned to play cricket—though he would never be any good at it—and his voice finally dropped…a bit. And for a change, he was celebrated for his skill with a pen instead of teased for it. With graduation right around the corner and the excitement of his planned move to London to pursue the theater as a career—mad as everyone thought he was for it—Niall felt as though his life were just about to begin.
“Thank you for coming out to audition, gentlemen,” he addressed the small but growing crowd of hopefuls who were waiting to audition for his play. He could hardly believe that anyone would be interested in something he’d written, let alone forgoing other activities to take part in it. “A few of the roles have already been filled, but plenty of major parts are still in need of casting, including Siegfried, the male lead.”
“Who’s playing Greta, then?” a tall man standing near the back of the room asked with a cheeky grin.
“Please say it’s one of the Miller twins,” another hopeful added, causing a round of laughter. The Miller twins were buxom sisters, daughters of the university’s bursar, whom half of the student body had their eye on.