lodgings to collapse.
She should know better. No matter what occurred, he always kept moving. It was almost as if he was one of his own heroic creations.
But she had touched him today, been near to him—looked into his eyes for that one fleeting, vulnerable instant. She knew how warmly human he truly was.
‘I heard there was a bit of a disturbance this morning,’ her father said. ‘But he was writing in his usual corner of the tavern, so all must be well. We can press him about the new play when he arrives.’
Anna braced her palm on the carved fireplace mantel, staring down into the crackling flames. Robert Alden was coming here tonight. She didn’t want to see him again so soon after mending his wound. How could she look at him across her table and keep that secret?
How could she stop herself from reaching out to touch him?
‘Father—’ she began, only to be interrupted by a pounding at the door.
‘I will go,’ Tom said as he tried to push himself out of his chair.
Anna shook her head. ‘Nay, I will go. It seems Madge is otherwise occupied.’
She took a deep breath as she made her way slowly to the door, steeling herself to see Rob again and to remain expressionless. Yet it was not Rob who waited there on the threshold, it was Henry Ennis, another of the actors in Lord Henshaw’s Men.
As he smiled at her and bowed, Anna pushed away that unwanted and unaccountable pang of disappointment and said, ‘Master Ennis. We haven’t seen you at the White Heron in a few days.’
Henry’s smile widened and he reached for her hand to bestow upon her fingers an elaborate salute that made her laugh. Next to Robert, Henry Ennis was the most handsome of the company, slim and angelically blond where Rob was dark as the devil. Henry always seemed to be laughing and cheerful, as open and easy as a fine summer’s day, with no hidden depths or concealed secrets.
Anna always enjoyed being around him. He made her laugh along with him, and forget her duties and worries. He never made her feel flustered or confused, as Rob always did.
Against her own will, she glanced past Henry’s shoulder to the shadowed garden behind him. But no one was there.
‘My beauteous Anna,’ Henry said as she took his arm to lead him into the corridor. ‘It has pained me greatly to be away from you, but as I had no role in the last production I thought it best I travel to the country to visit my family. They have been neglected of late.’
‘Family?’ Anna said in surprise. In their strange, vagabond London life she often forgot the actors might have real families tucked away somewhere. They formed their own bonds among others of their kind, with her father’s house as their temporary hearth.
Did Rob have a family, too? A wife and blue-eyed children, in a cosy village somewhere?
‘My mother and sister in Kent,’ Henry said. ‘I have not seen them in many months.’
‘Then I hope you found them well?’
‘Very well. A bit bored, mayhap—they always long for tales of London.’
Anna gave him a teasing smile. ‘I’m sure they especially long for tales of your London courtships. Does your mother not wish for handsome grandchildren to dandle on her knee?’
Henry laughed ruefully, his handsome face turning faintly pink. ‘Perhaps she does. I should so like …’ His words trailed away and he shook his head, turning away from her.
‘Should so like what, Henry? Come, we are friends! Surely you can talk to me?’
‘I should so like for her to meet you, Anna. She would like you very much, I think,’ he said shyly.
Anna was so shocked by his quiet, serious words that she stopped abruptly in the dining-chamber doorway. Henry wished for her to meet his mother? But surely their friendship was only that—a friendship? Though he was kind and sweet-natured, and so handsome …
She studied him in speculation in the flickering half-light of the smoky candles. Aye, he was handsome, and so earnest as he watched her. Perhaps friends was a fine place to start. Friends was safe and pleasant—not a threat to her calm serenity, the quiet life she had worked so hard to earn and build.
But as she looked at Henry Ennis she saw not his pale grey eyes, glowing with wary hope as he watched her, waiting for—something. She didn’t feel his arm under her hand. She saw Robert’s bright blue eyes mocking her as she bandaged his shoulder, staring deep, deep into her hidden soul and letting her glimpse his for one moment. It was his bare, warm skin she felt.
Anna made herself laugh, and tugged Henry towards the dining chamber. ‘I am not the sort of lady mothers like very much, Henry. And I fear I shall never leave the city now. The country air is far too clean and sweet for me after so long in London.’
Henry seemed to take her hint, and he laughed merrily, as if that instant of seriousness had never been. Perhaps she had merely imagined it. It had been a long, strange day, after all.
‘And my mother will never come to London,’ Henry said. ‘She is quite certain villains lurk on every street corner, ready to cut an unwary throat. So perhaps you will never meet, after all.’
‘Perhaps your mother is right to keep her distance,’ Anna murmured. And far wiser than she was herself, living in the very centre of such a perilous world. But she had no desire to leave; this was her home, the only place she could belong. A quiet country hearth was not for her.
There was another knock at the door, and Anna left Henry at the table with her father so she could hurry and answer it. More of the actors waited for her there, far more than her father claimed to have invited. They greeted her exuberantly, kissing her cheek and lifting her from her feet in fierce hugs, before they dashed into the house looking for food and drink. It seemed her father’s ‘some people’ invited to dine included the whole company, along with their always voracious appetites and endless need for wine.
Anna was accustomed to such evenings. Her father’s hospitality was boundless, and his memory for such practical matters as how much food to serve was non-existent. Anna sent the servants for more dishes and jugs of wine from the tavern, and the evening passed in a swift, happy blur as she made sure everyone was served and there was enough bread and stew.
Finally she was able to collapse by the sitting-room fire with her own goblet of wine. She tucked up her feet on her father’s footstool, listening to the shouts and laughter from supper. Her father would be busy until dawn, and then some of the actors could carry him up to his bed.
Anna reached into her sewing basket for the new volume of poetry she had bought at one of the stalls at St Paul’s churchyard just that day. It was an anonymous sonnet cycle about the deep love of a shepherd for an unreachable goddess he’d once glimpsed at her bath, called Demetrius and Diana. Everyone was reading and talking of it, and she could see why. The words and emotions were beautiful, so filled with raw longing and the sad realisation that such a love was impossible. Life was only what it was—lonely and cold—and there was no escape from that, even through passion.
She lost herself in that world of sun-dappled sylvan glades and passionate desire, that need for another person. The noise from the company, which grew ever louder
