rehearse all day for the lead role anyhow,” Ian was saying. Niall faced him fully, forcing himself to block Blake out of the line of his vision and out of his thoughts, if such a thing were even possible. “Our special guests require constant attention.” Ian grinned like a cat who had a canary.
“Oh. Yes. I’d forgotten about your guests,” Niall said, glancing around the stage and wondering if he needed to bring on anything to serve as set pieces or to mark up the floor that early in the rehearsal process. “Are they coming to see the show?” he asked by rote.
“Of course,” Ian said with a sniff. “Although, if you’re lucky, I could introduce you to the Cannons earlier than that.”
“I’ve already met them,” Niall said, half distracted. Blake and the blokes were moving down the aisle toward the stage.
“You’ve already met them?” Niall turned back to Ian to find him drooping with disappointment.
“Yes. At a concert the other night,” Niall said. “Blake—that is, Lord Stanley—introduced me.”
Blake was in the process of leaping onto the stage with exceptional physical prowess. Niall’s train of thought was completely derailed as he imagined the power Blake must have in his legs and torso.
“Let’s get this rehearsal started,” Morton said in a booming voice, draping an arm around Blake’s shoulders once they were all on the stage. “We’ve got a passel of loose women to woo tonight.”
They all laughed, including Blake. Although Blake’s smile was somewhat tight as he met Niall’s eyes. At least, Niall thought his smile might be tight. It was hard to tell. Everything about the man was hard to tell. The Blake who had been so filled with emotion as he played a piece of his own composition and the one who laughed along with his mates as they fetched their scripts and spread out across the stage were two entirely different men.
“We’re only rehearsing Act One today,” Niall said, taking charge of the rehearsal as more cast members arrived and clambered onto the stage. “We’ll run through the opening number first, then the Act Once finale, then scene four, and then the chorus is free to go. It will just be the principles after that.”
Running a rehearsal wasn’t new to Niall. Running one with a chorus of rowdy university students wasn’t new either. He’d long ago worked out exactly how he needed to speak and even move to command the attention of men who wouldn’t normally have given him the time of day. Morton and his lot were a handful all the same, particularly as they rehearsed the scene four number in which his character, his female character, was introduced to the hero. The play was a ridiculous melodrama set in medieval Germany that involved a bride, Niall, who was kidnapped by a band of rowdy knights, Morton’s chorus, led by Ian’s character, Reinhold, to marry a depressed prince, Blake. It was love at first sight for the prince, but he had to spend the rest of the play convincing the bride of his worthiness before she would consent to the marriage and seal it with a kiss.
“Come now, Siegfried,” Ian read his line, dragging Niall across the stage to Blake. “Have you ever seen a woman as lovely as this?”
Behind them, Morton and his chorus snickered.
“A lady indeed,” one of the blokey blokes muttered.
“Not as sweet as the one old Blake was dandling on his knee last month,” Morton said in return. “But close.”
They all burst into ribald laughter. Niall’s face burned hot, though he couldn’t figure out if Morton’s lot were taking a dig at him or the woman Blake had supposedly been with, or because the fact that Blake had been toying with a woman proved he would never be interested. The burst of self-conscious confusion was so bad that the aura of authority Niall had worked to present crumbled.
“Are you going to wear a wreath of flowers in your hair, like sweet Flora had, Cristofori?” another of Morton’s crowd teased, sending a pointed look Blake’s way.
Niall wanted to disappear into the floorboards.
Until Blake silenced his friends with a serious look. “Gentlemen, we have a rehearsal to get through. We can save the pub-talk for the pub, can’t we?”
“Look who’s gone all twitchy,” Morton said with a teasing grin. “Embarrassed, are you, Stanley?”
“Only over your bad behavior,” Blake replied. Somehow, he managed to be dead serious while also grinning, as though he were in on the joke with the others. His shoulders dropped a