Mary Balogh - Slightly Wicked

“Here? Now?‘ She set the glass down on the table. ”How absurd. There is no stage, there are no props, no other actors, no script.“

“A talented, experienced actress surely does not need a script for some parts,” he said. “And no stage or props either. There are any number of famous soliloquies that do not require other actors. Perform one for me, Claire. Please?”

He raised his glass and held it up to her in a silent toast.

She stared at him, the flush back in her cheeks. She was embarrassed, he thought in some surprise.

Embarrassed to put on a private performance for a man who was about to become her lover. Perhaps it was difficult to think one’s way into a dramatic role under such circumstances.

“Well, I could do Portia’s famous speech, I suppose,” she said.

“Portia?”

“The Merchant of Venice,” she explained. “Surely you know the ‘Quality of Mercy’ speech?”

“Remind me.”

“Shylock and Antonio were in court,” she said, leaning slightly across the table toward him, “for it to be decided if Shylock had the right to take a pound of flesh from Antonio. There was no doubt that he had such a right—it was stated clearly in the bond they had both agreed to. But then Portia arrived, intent on saving the dearest friend and benefactor of Bassanio, her love. She came disguised as a lawyer’s clerk and spoke up in Antonio’s defense. At first she appealed to Shylock’s better nature in the famous speech about mercy.”

“I remember now,” he said. “Do Portia for me, then.”

She got to her feet and looked around. “This is the courtroom,” she said. “It is no longer an inn dining parlor but a courtroom, in which the very life of a noble man hangs in the balance. It is a desperate situation. There would seem to be no hope. They are all here, all the principal players of the drama.

Shylock sits in that chair.” She pointed at the chair Rannulf was occupying.

“I am Portia,” she said. “But I am disguised as a young man.”

Rannulf pursed his lips in amusement as she looked around again. She lifted her arms, pulled back her hair, twisted it, and knotted it at the back of her neck. Then she disappeared for a moment into the bedchamber and came back buttoning his caped cloak about her. She still looked about as different as it was possible to be from any man. And then she had finished doing up the buttons and looked up directly into his eyes.

Rannulf almost recoiled from the hard, controlled expression on her face.

“ ‘The quality of mercy is not strained,’ ” she told him in a voice to match the expression.

For a moment, foolishly, he thought that it was she, Claire Campbell, who was addressing him, Rannulf Bedwyn.

“ ‘It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven / Upon the place beneath,’ ” she continued, coming closer to him, her expression softening slightly, becoming more pleading.

Devil take it, he thought, she was Portia, and he was that damned villain, Shylock.

“ ‘It is twice blest.’ ”

It was not a very long speech, but by the time she had finished it, Rannulf was thoroughly ashamed of himself and ready to pardon Antonio and even go down on his knees to grovel and beg pardon for having considered cutting a pound of flesh from his body. She was bending over him, tight-lipped and keen eyed, waiting for his answer.

“By Jove,” he said, “Shylock must have been made of iron.”

He was, he realized, half aroused. She was very good. She could bring a role alive without any of the fancy theatrics he associated with all the most famous actors and actresses he had ever seen onstage.

She straightened up and smiled at him, unbuttoning his cloak as she did so.

“What else can you do?” he asked. “Juliet?”

She made a dismissive gesture with one hand. “I am two and twenty,” she said. “Juliet was about eight years younger and a pea-goose at that. I have never understood the appeal of that play.”

He chuckled. She was not a romantic, then.

“Ophelia?” he suggested.

She looked pained. “I suppose men like watching weak women,” she said with something like contempt in her voice. “They do not come any weaker than that silly Ophelia. She should simply have snapped her fingers in Hamlet’s face and told him to go and boil his head in oil.”

Rannulf threw his head back and shouted with laughter. She was looking pink and contrite when he lifted his head again.

“I’ll do Lady Macbeth,” she said. “She was foolish and could not sustain her wickedness, but she was no weakling for all that.”

“Her sleepwalking scene?” he asked. “Where she is washing her hands of blood?”

“There. You see?” She looked contemptuous again as she gestured toward him with one arm. “I suppose most men like that scene best. Wicked woman finally breaks down into madness because typical woman cannot be eternally strong.”

“Macbeth was hardly sane either by the end,” he reminded her. “I would say Shakespeare was impartial in his judgment of the relative strength of the male and female spirit.”

“I’ll do Lady Macbeth persuading Macbeth to murder Duncan,” she said.

And he, Rannulf supposed, was to be a silent Macbeth.

“But first,” she said, “I will finish my wine.”

Her glass was two-thirds full. She drained it in one gulp and set down the empty glass. Then she undid the knot of hair at her neck, and shook her hair free.

“Macbeth has just told his wife, ‘We will proceed no further in this business,’ ” she said. “He is backing out of the planned murder; she is spurring him on.”

Rannulf nodded, and she turned her back for a moment and stood quite still. Then he watched her hands ball slowly into fists and she turned on him. He almost got up from his chair and retreated behind it. The green eyes pierced him with cold scorn.

“ ‘Was the hope drunk / Wherein you dress’d yourself?’ ” she asked him quietly. “ ‘Hath it slept since, /

And wakes it now, to look so green and pale / At what it did so freely?’ ”

Rannulf resisted the urge to speak up in his own defense.

“ ‘From this time / Such I account thy love,’ ” she told him.

She spoke his lines too, leaning over him to do so and speaking in a low voice, giving him the impression that he was saying the words himself without moving his lips. As Lady Macbeth she whipped into him with her energy and contempt and wily persuasions. By the time she had finished, Rannulf could fully understand at last why Macbeth had committed such an asinine deed as murdering his king.

She was panting by the time she came to the end of her persuasions, looking cold and triumphant and slightly mad.

Rannulf found himself near to panting with desire. As her identification with the role she had played faded from her eyes and her body, they stared at each other, and the air between them fairly sizzled.

“Well,” he said softly.

She half smiled. “You must understand,” she said, “that I am somewhat rusty. I have not acted for three months and am out of practice.”

“Heaven help us,” he said, getting to his feet, “if you were in practice. I might be dashing off into the rain to find the nearest available king to assassinate.”

“So what do you think?” she asked him.

“I think,” he said, “that it is time for bed.”

For a moment he thought she was going to refuse. She stared at him, licked her lips, drew breath as if to say something, then nodded.

“Yes,” she said.

He bent his head and kissed her. He was quite ready to tumble her to the floor and take her there and then, but why put them to that discomfort when there was a perfectly comfortable-looking bed in the next room? Besides, there were certain bodily realities to consider.

“Go and get ready,” he said. “I’ll wander downstairs for ten minutes.”

Again she hesitated and licked her lips.

“Yes,” she said and turned away. A moment later the bedchamber door closed behind her.

The next ten minutes, Rannulf thought, were going to feel like an uncomfortable eternity.

Devil take it, but she could act.

Judith stood with her back against the bedchamber door after she had shut it, and closed her eyes. Her head was spinning, her heart was thumping, and she was breathless. There were so many reasons for all three conditions that she could not possibly sort through them all to regain her customary composure.

Primarily, she had drunk too much wine. Four glasses in all. She had never before drunk more than half a glass in one day, and even that had happened only three or four times in her life. She was not drunk—she could think quite coherently and walk a straight line. But even so, she had consumed all that wine.

Then there had been the intoxicating excitement of acting before an audience—even if it had been an audience of only one. Acting had always been a part of her very secret life, something she did when she was quite, quite sure she was alone and unobserved. She had never really thought of it as acting, though, but as the bringing alive of another human being through the words the dramatist had provided. She had always had the ability to think her way into another person’s body and mind and know just what it felt like to be that person under those circumstances. Sometimes she had tried to use that ability to write stories, but it was not in the written word that her talent lay. She needed to create or recreate characters with her very body and voice. When she acted the part of Portia or Lady Macbeth, she became them.