“Excuse m—ah, another one,” muttered a short, thin man with a roll of blue material under his arm and a row of pins stuck along his lapel. “If you’re here for Mrs. Jones, stay out of the way. You can wait over there.”
He indicated a small square of space that had a good view of the stage, with only the open curtains blocking him from the view of the audience. That would do, and from there he would likely be able to overhear whatever curses his mother might be flinging at him. “Is that Mrs. Jones?” he whispered, indicating the black-haired lass.
“That? No, that’s Mary Benson.” The fellow glanced over his shoulder toward the door. “You didn’t pay good money to see her, I hope. She’s nearly too occupied with ogling Baywich over there to remember her own lines.”
“My thanks,” Coll returned, but the man had already scurried away.
A trio of men dressed as nobles trotted past him as they exited the stage. “Stand aside, giant,” the one called Baywich commanded, his voice lilting and imperious.
Coll ignored it, and they went around him. Half a hundred Sassenachs had referred to him as a giant over the past eight weeks. Aye, he towered over most people and he had done so since somewhere just short of his sixteenth birthday. So the wee Englishmen could have their opinions; he didn’t give a damn.
Instead, he tried to reposition himself to see the two lasses arguing onstage, only to be jostled aside again by a quartet of men dragging a forest of potted trees forward, just out of sight of the audience. The foliage looked a bit tame to be the forest of Arden, but they might suffice if the light was dim enough.
A round of applause welled up beyond the curtains, and a heartbeat or two later, a lass pushed through the trees and nearly crashed into him. “Romeo, you seem to be in the wrong play,” she quipped with a quick grin that lit her blue eyes before she hurried into an alcove, two women and an armload of costumes hot on her heels.
For a good second or two, he felt like he’d been caught in a gust of wind, bandied about and left unsteady on his feet. Coll took a breath. It was no doubt the way he’d been stuffed into a small corner with crazed Sassenachs tramping around him. He and small spaces had been enemies for as far back as he could remember. That had to be it, because no wee woman could topple him, and not with one damned sentence, clever though it might have been.
He turned to get another look at her, but she’d disappeared into the tangle of scenery and props. Romeo. Ha. He had much more in common with Henry the Fifth than the empty-headed boy who’d killed himself over a woman. Henry, at least, knew how to fight a battle.
Still, she seemed to have meant it as a compliment.
Still searching, he finally caught another glimpse of her over a half screen, as one of the other lasses pulled the gown off her while the second one fluffed out a white men’s shirt for her to pull on. All he could see was her head, topped by an intricate knot of straight brown hair and a bit of neck and the top of her shoulders, but he was fairly certain she was more or less naked behind that woven cane screen.
“Look away, Romeo,” she said with a chuckle as their eyes met again. “I’m Rosalind, not Juliet.”
“Aye? Well, I’m nae Romeo,” he retorted, and kept staring.
A half dozen people immediately shushed him, and he snapped his jaw closed again. The same quartet of men then walked past him onto the stage to squawk out their lines for the next scene. As You Like It had never been one of his favorite plays, probably because he could never believe that any man—much less one who claimed to be in love with a lass—wouldn’t know when he was talking with her just because she’d dressed as a man.
The woman in front of him could never pass for a man, anyway, not with her delicate features and slender neck. Not even with her brown hair pinned up and a jaunty hat pulled down over it. She tilted her head, half bending over as one of the other women produced a pair of men’s boots. “Scottish,” she said in a quiet voice, still grinning. “Highlander. From somewhere near Ullapool. That would make you Macbeth then, I suppose.”
Glendarril Park was but two hours’ ride from Ullapool. Coll frowned. “Macbeth hailed from Inverness.”
She stepped from behind the screen to pull a coat over her slender shoulders. “Near enough for Shakespeare,” she retorted, and sauntered past him.
Damn. A woman in trousers, indeed. His fingers flexed; he had to stop himself from reaching out to take hold of her, to drag her up against him and stop her clever mouth with his. Aye, he’d been without a woman for a time, and aye, she looked a sight in those trousers that hugged her hips and practically forced his attention to her long, slender legs. As he watched her emerge from behind the curtains and onto the middle of the stage, he stopped breathing. Before his eyes, her stride lengthened and loosened, her hips halted their sway, and her shoulders lifted. Her voice when she spoke as Rosalind in the guise of male courtier Ganymede lowered and slowed a touch, in as fair a representation of a young man as he’d ever seen from a woman.
“That is Persephone Jones,” the tailor from earlier said as he hurried by.
He hadn’t needed that information. If any lass could have eleven men panting after her all in one night, it was this one. And for God’s sake—no, for his sake—he hoped she was a widow.
Her scene finished, and she exited to the other side of the stage. More actors dashed past him to play their roles, but without her out there, it was just a play he’d read and seen performed before. Aye, it had been in Inverness and with a basket-load of Scottish sensibility added to the nonsense, but the words remained the same.
“How much longer does this damned thing go on?” a low voice asked from a few feet behind him.
Coll turned his head. A well-dressed lad in a bright blue jacket stood beneath another set of sandbags, his gaze on his pocket watch. The door guard had made at least four quid tonight, then. Another figure emerged into the dim light at the periphery of the stage, and he mentally corrected himself.
Six pounds, the greedy bastard.
“I say, Brumley,” the first one whispered. “I was here first.”
“Standing there doesn’t make you any more than another man waiting,” the Brumley fellow returned. “I’ll wager you a hundred pounds I see the inside of her dressing room before you do.”
“It’s a wager, then. I should tell you, though, that I spoke with Lord Halloway, and he says that Mrs. Jones has a preference for light-haired men.”
Brumley snorted. “I don’t give a damn what color hair she prefers. Claremont’s out of town, and that makes her available. She’s a magnificent toy, and I do like to tinker.”
“Gentlemen,” a short, stout man hissed as he appeared from the depths of the backstage maze, “I must ask you to keep your voices down.”
“Don’t fret,” the not-Brumley man said with a faint smile, “the audience isn’t here to hear the play. They’re here to see her. And you have to expect there to be some disagreement over which gentleman spends the night in her company.”
“Which will be me,” Brumley responded. “Go away, Waldring. You have a wife to plow.”
Waldring made a face. “Only when it’s planting season. I prefer more delicate fruit.”