A Night Like This (Smythe-Smith Quartet #2)(41)

And he found her all the more fascinating for it.
“Tell me, Miss Wynter,” he finally said, choosing his words with measured deliberation, “have you ever tried to act in one of Harriet’s plays?”
Her lips pressed together. She’d been cornered by a yes-or-no question, and she was not happy about it. “No,” she finally replied.
“Don’t you think it’s time?”
“Not really, no.”
He settled his eyes firmly on hers. “If I’m in the play, you’re in the play.”
“It would be helpful,” Harriet said. “There are twenty characters, Miss Wynter, and without you, we’d each have to play five.”
“If you join in,” Frances added, “we’ll only have to do four each.”
“Which,” Elizabeth concluded triumphantly, “is a twenty percent reduction!”
Daniel still had his chin resting in his hand, so he tilted his head ever so slightly to give the impression of increased consideration. “No compliments for the excellent application of their mathematical skills, Miss Wynter?”
She looked about ready to boil, not that he could blame her with everyone conspiring against her. But the governess within her was quite unable to resist pointing out, “I told you that you would find it useful to be able to do sums and tables in your heads.”
Harriet’s eyes grew bright with excitement. “Then that means you’ll join us?”
Daniel wasn’t certain how she’d reached that interpretation, but he wasn’t one to let an opportunity pass by, so he immediately threw in his support with, “Well done, Miss Wynter. We all must occasionally venture outside our areas of comfort. I’m so terribly proud of you.”
The look she gave him clearly said, I will eviscerate you, you pompous wretch. But of course she could never utter such a thing in front of the children, which meant that he could watch happily as she seethed.
Checkmate!
“Miss Wynter, I think you should be the evil queen,” Harriet said.
“There’s an evil queen?” Daniel echoed. With obvious delight.
“Of course,” Harriet replied. “Every good play has an evil queen.”
Frances actually raised her hand. “And a un—”
“Don’t say it,” Elizabeth growled.
Frances crossed her eyes, put her knife to her forehead in an approximation of a horn, and neighed.
“It is settled, then,” Harriet said decisively. “Daniel shall be Lord Finstead”—she held up a restraining hand—“who won’t be Lord Finstead but rather some other name which I will think of later; Miss Wynter shall be the evil queen, Elizabeth will be . . .” She narrowed her eyes and regarded her sister, who regarded her back with outright suspicion.
“Elizabeth will be the beautiful princess,” Harriet finally announced, much to the amazement of Elizabeth.
“What about me?” Frances asked.
“The butler,” Harriet replied without even a second of hesitation.
Frances’s mouth immediately opened to protest.
“No, no,” Harriet said. “It’s the best role, I promise. You get to do everything.”
“Except be a unicorn,” Daniel murmured.
Frances tilted her head to the side with a resigned expression.
“The next play,” Harriet finally gave in. “I shall find a way to include a unicorn in the one I’m working on right now.”
Frances pumped both fists in the air. “Huzzah!”
“But only if you stop talking about unicorns right now.”
“I second the motion,” Elizabeth said, to no one in particular.
“Very well,” Frances acceded. “No more unicorns. At least not where you can hear me.”
Harriet and Elizabeth both looked as if they might argue, but Miss Wynter interceded, saying, “I think that’s more than fair. You can hardly stop her from talking about them entirely.”
“Then it’s settled,” Harriet said. “We shall work out the smaller roles later.”
“What about you?” Elizabeth demanded.
“Oh, I’m going to be the goddess of the sun and moon.”
“The tale gets stranger and stranger,” Daniel said.
“Just wait until act seven,” Miss Wynter told him.
“Seven?” His head snapped up. “There are seven acts?”
“Twelve,” Harriet corrected, “but don’t worry, you’re in only eleven of them. Now then, Miss Wynter, when do you propose that we begin our rehearsals? And may we do so out of doors? There is a clearing by the gazebo that would be ideal.”
Miss Wynter turned to Daniel for confirmation. He just shrugged and said, “Harriet is the playwright.”
She nodded and turned back to the girls. “I was going to say that we may start after the rest of our lessons, but given that there are twelve acts to get through, I am granting a one-day holiday from geography and maths.”
There was a rousing cheer from the girls, and even Daniel felt swept along in the general joy. “Well,” he said to Miss Wynter, “it’s not every day one gets to be strange and sad.”
“Or evil.”
He chuckled. “Or evil.” Then he got a thought. A strange, sad thought. “I don’t die at the end, do I?”
She shook her head.
“That’s a relief, I must say. I make a terrible corpse.”
She laughed at that, or rather, she held her lips together firmly while she tried not to laugh. The girls were chattering madly as they took their final bites of breakfast and fled the room, and then he was left sitting next to Miss Wynter, just the two of them and their plates of breakfast, the warm morning sun filtering upon them through the windows.