“Spoilsport.”
“I might call you the same.”
“Later,” she said firmly. “You are going to show me later.” She was fascinated by this newly revealed talent of Lord Hugh’s. Surely he wouldn’t mind one little equation. He’d done it for Frances.
“We can read one of my plays,” Harriet suggested. She started rifling through the stack of papers on her lap. “I have the one I started just last night. You know, the one with the heroine who is not too pink—”
“And not too green!” Frances and Elizabeth finished excitedly.
“Oh,” Sarah said with great dismay. “Oh oh oh oh. No.”
Lord Hugh turned to her with some amusement. “Not too pink or green?” he murmured.
“It is a description of me, I’m afraid.”
“I . . . see.”
She gave him a look. “Laugh. You know you want to.”
“She is also not too fat or thin,” Frances said helpfully.
“It’s not actually Sarah,” Harriet explained. “Just a character I’ve modeled upon her.”
“Quite closely,” Elizabeth added. With a grin.
“Here you are,” Harriet said, holding a small stack of papers across the carriage. “I have only one copy, so you’ll have to share.”
“Does this masterpiece have a name?” Hugh inquired.
“Not yet,” Harriet replied. “I’ve found that I often must complete a play before I know what to call it. But it will be something terribly romantic. It’s a love story.” She paused, her mouth twisting in thought. “Although I’m not sure it will have a happy ending.”
“This is a romance?” Lord Hugh said with a dubious quirk of his brow. “And I’m meant to be the hero?”
“We can’t really use Frances,” Harriet said with no sarcasm whatsoever. “And I’ve only got the one copy, so if Sarah is the heroine you’ve got to be the hero, since you’re sitting next to her.”
He looked down. “My name is Rudolfo?”
Sarah nearly spit out a laugh.
“You’re Spanish,” Harriet said. “But your mother was English, so you speak it perfectly.”
“Do I have an accent?”
“Of course.”
“Can’t imagine why I asked,” he murmured. And then, to Sarah: “Oh, look. Your name is Woman.”
“Typecast again,” Sarah quipped.
“I hadn’t thought of a proper name yet,” Harriet explained, “but I didn’t want to hold up the entire manuscript. It could take me weeks to think of the right name. And by then I might have forgotten all of my ideas.”
“The creative process is a peculiar thing, indeed,” Lord Hugh murmured.
Sarah had been reading ahead while Harriet was speaking, and she was developing serious misgivings. “I’m not certain this is a good idea,” she said, tugging the second page out of the pile so she could read further.
No, it definitely wasn’t a good idea.
“Reading in a moving carriage is always a risk,” Sarah said quickly. “Especially riding backwards.”
“You never get sick,” Elizabeth reminded her.
Sarah looked ahead to page three. “I might.”
“You don’t have to actually do the things in the play,” Harriet said. “This isn’t a true performance. It’s just a reading.”
“Should I be reading ahead?” Lord Hugh asked Sarah.
Wordlessly, she handed him page two.
“Oh.”
And page three.
“Oh.”
“Harriet, we cannot do this,” Sarah said firmly.
“Oh, please,” Harriet pleaded. “It would be so helpful. That’s the problem with writing plays. One needs to hear the words said aloud.”
“You know that I have never been good at acting out your plays,” Sarah said.
Lord Hugh looked at her quizzically. “Really?”
Something about his expression did not sit well with her. “What does that mean?”
He gave a little shrug. “Just that you’re very dramatic.”
“Dramatic?” She did not like the way that sounded.
“Oh, come now,” he said, with far more condescension than was healthy in a closed carriage, “surely you don’t see yourself as quiet and meek.”
“No, but I don’t know that I’d go so far as dramatic.”
He looked at her for a moment, then said, “You do enjoy making pronouncements.”
“It’s true, Sarah,” Harriet put in. “You do.”
Sarah whipped her head around and fixed such a look onto her sister’s face that it was a wonder she didn’t wither on the spot.
“I’m not reading this,” she said, clamping her mouth shut.
“It’s just a kiss,” Harriet exclaimed.
Just a kiss?
Frances’s eyes opened nearly as wide as her mouth. “You want Sarah to kiss Lord Hugh?”
Just a kiss. It could never be just a kiss. Not with him.
“They wouldn’t actually do the kiss,” Harriet said.
“Does one do a kiss?” Elizabeth asked.
“No,” Sarah bit off. “One does not.”
“We wouldn’t tell anyone,” Harriet tried.
“This is highly inappropriate,” Sarah said in a tight voice. She turned to Lord Hugh, who had not uttered a word for some time. “Surely you agree with me.”
“I surely do,” he said, his words strangely clipped.