Unraveled by Courtney Milan

Author:Courtney Milan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Courtney Milan
Published: 2011-12-04T06:40:15+00:00

SMITE HAD SET THE term of his arrangement with Miranda at one month because he’d thought it just short enough that they’d both avoid unnecessary emotional entanglement.

As the curtain rose at the Theatre Royal six days into the affair, he was contemplating how enormously he’d mistaken the matter. He was entangled already.

Miranda sat beside him, her gloved hands folded in her lap. Her attention was fixed on the stage before them. Her eyes were bright and she leaned forward eagerly.

They had taken seats in the pit of the theater. Both of them had dressed in plainer, simpler clothing, so as to not draw attention to themselves. It had been a tactical decision on his part to sit among the common folk. In a box, dressed in finery, everyone would see them. And everyone would talk.

Smite had enough ribald jokes to contend with from his fellow magistrates; he didn’t want them to add Miranda to their repertoire.

Normally, he’d have kept Miranda in seclusion. But when she talked of the theater, her eyes lit. Her voice grew animated. And maybe—just maybe—he’d wanted to see them light more.

He was definitely in danger.

But Miranda’s eyes were not alight with pleasure now. They were narrowed on the stage in front of her, and she sat back in her seat.

“Oh dear,” she whispered.

“What is it?”

“If they brush that castle wall the wrong way, it’s going to topple over,” she said under her breath.

He followed where she gestured with her chin. He hadn’t noticed it himself. But now that she mentioned it…the wall swayed in a light draft. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged. It had never occurred to him that she might criticize the theater.

It should have.

As the first act proceeded, she muttered about the acting, the execution of stage directions, the costumes. Miranda apparently took the business of putting on a play quite seriously.

If she’d been writing scathing commentary for the Bristol Mercury, she’d have had an adoring readership.

“It’s a ghost,” she muttered. “You’re scared! You’re acting as if you’re speaking to a passing dairyman.”

Then, a moment later: “Oh, no wonder. That has to be the least frightening ghost in all of England. Could he deliver his lines with any less feeling? ‘Avenge me. Has the post arrived yet? Pass the saltcellar.’”

Smite choked back an outraged laugh.

Not so successfully. The man next to him nudged him with his elbow and glared at him pointedly. “Shhh!” he warned.

The other man hadn’t noticed Miranda’s commentary. Indeed, Smite could scarcely hear her himself. It was Smite’s poorly-suppressed response that he was condemning. But Miranda didn’t stop, and the theater seemed more and more absurd with every whispered remark. She drew his attention to people walking in before their time, lines got wrong, speeches mangled. She mocked costumes. He actually did laugh out loud. Twice.

Perhaps that was why, as the curtain fell on the first act, the man beside him jostled his shoulder. Smite turned, and found himself looking up and up into the narrowed eyes of a behemoth of a man.

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