The Laughing Hangman by Edward Marston

Author:Edward Marston [Marston, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Historical
ISBN: 9780749015909
Google: xzeKAgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2007-01-02T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

When he reached the landing, he made an effort to compose his features and to straighten his back. It was as a man of the theatre that his admirer had first seen Edmund Hoode. She would lose all respect for him if he were to slink apologetically into her company and behave like a callow youth in a fumbling courtship. A dramatic entrance was called for and he did his best to supply it.

The maidservant tapped on a door, opened it in answer to a summons from within and then stepped back to admit the visitor. Pretending that he was about to face an audience in the innyard, Hoode went into the chamber with a confident stride and doffed his hat to bow low. The door closed soundlessly behind him. When he raised his eyes to take a first long look at the mysterious lady in his life, he was quite bedazzled.

She was beautiful. Fair-skinned and neat-boned, she had an alabaster neck which supported an oval face of quiet loveliness. She wore a dark blue velvet dress but no jewellery of any kind. Well-groomed blond hair was brushed back under a blue cap. Gloved hands were folded in her lap as she sat on a chair, framed by the window.

Hoode was struck by her poise and elegance. Her voice was low and accompanied by a sweet smile of welcome.

‘It is a pleasure to see you, Master Hoode,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ he replied politely, ‘but I fear that you have the advantage over me.’

‘My name is Cecily Gilbourne.’

A second bow. ‘At your service, Mistress Gilbourne.’

‘Pray take a seat, sir.’

She motioned him to a chair opposite her and he lowered himself gingerly onto it, his gaze never leaving her. Cecily Gilbourne was a trifle older than he had expected—in her late twenties, perhaps even thirty—but her maturity was to him a form of supreme ripeness. He would not have changed her age by a year or her appearance by the tiniest emendation. It was reassuring to learn that she was no impressionable child, no giggling girl, no shallow creature infatuated with the theatre, but a woman of experience with an intelligence that positively shone out of her.

‘The Merchant of Calais,’ she announced.

‘A workmanlike piece,’ he said modestly.

‘I thought it brilliant. It was the first of your plays that I saw and it made me yearn to meet the author.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Such an understanding of the true price of love.’

‘Your praise overwhelms me.’

‘Not as much as your work overwhelms me,’ she said with a sigh of admiration. ‘You are a true poet of the soul. The Corrupt Bargain.’

‘Another apple plucked from the orchard of my brain.’

‘Delicious in the mouth. Love’s Sacrifice. We have all made that in our time, alas. Your play on that theme was so profound.’

‘Drawn from life.’

‘That is what I guessed. Only those who have suffered the pangs of a broken heart can understand the nature of that suffering. Love’s Sacrifice gave me untold pleasure and helped me to keep sorrow at bay during a most troubling time in my life.

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