Free Love Plays a Part by Nina Coombs Pykare Page A

passed swiftly. There was always something for Samantha to do. She only found time for her meal because Maria insisted on it. And then it was time for the performance to begin.
    As she took her place in the wings for the opening scene, Samantha was joined by Kean. The brown makeup changed him greatly, but Samantha would have known him anywhere from those piercing black eyes. He glanced down at the richly embroidered tunic which stopped shortly above his knees and the open Roman sandals and smiled ruefully. Then he leaned close to Samantha to whisper, “Your manservant was right. This get-up is terribly drafty.”
    Samantha could not help but smile at this piece of humor on the great man’s part. Together they watched the villainous Iago go about his machinations. Samantha shivered slightly. “How evil the man is.”
    Kean chuckled. “Wait till you see my Iago, if you think that’s villainy.” He grinned at her. “You may not even like me afterward.”
    Samantha frowned. “Of course I should still like you. You are not that kind of person.”
    Kean regarded her seriously. “There are those who contend that a man plays best those  characters  that are most like his own. And my Iago is very wicked.”
    “Nonsense,” said Samantha. And then, seeing the twinkle in his eyes, she smiled nervously. “You are funning me. That’s not fair.”
    Kean shrugged. “Just a little practice. I am an actor, you know.”
    And then it was Scene Two, and Kean entered with Iago and the attendants with torches. Before her eyes the man was transformed. He seemed to grow bigger, and though Samantha knew for a fact that he stood no taller than she, still he seemed to project so much power, so much manliness, that he looked bigger than anyone else on the stage. She stood there spellbound as he spoke, and when he said, “I fetch my life and being/From men of royal seige,” he looked every inch a prince.
    There was a movement beside Samantha as someone took a place there but, engrossed as she was in the play, she took no notice until someone whispered, “He does it quite well, don’t you think? The little man is a far better specimen of royalty than our own beloved Prinny.”
    Samantha turned to look up into the darkly smiling face of the Earl of Roxbury. “What are you doing here?” she said coldly, trying not to let him see how his closeness unsettled her. In the past several days she had resolutely pushed all thoughts of the man from her mind on those too frequent occasions when they had intruded there. She was not to be driven away from her long-awaited dream by any toplofty lord. “You have no business backstage.”
    “Au contraire,” said his lordship. “As a patron of Drury Lane, I have free ingress to its inner sanctuaries at all times.” He reached out a gloved finger and lightly touched the furrow between her brows. “Do not scowl so, little one. You will mar that lovely face.”
    “I am watching the play,” said Samantha, thinking how difficult it was to be icily correct when one was forced to whisper. “And I’ll thank you to leave me alone. Lily is probably in the greenroom.” She regretted this last remark the moment it was made, for it revealed a familiarity with his lordship’s concerns that indicated far too much interest on her part.
    Just as she feared, he was not slow to pick up on its implications. “Jealous already, my pet?”
    For a moment Samantha almost forgot where she was. She opened her mouth to shout at him angrily and then, remembering, closed it sharply and turned back toward the stage, where Othello was entering the duke’s council chamber with the others.
    “A noble figure, is he not?” continued Roxbury, quite as though she had never told him to leave her be. “I particularly like this speech.”
    On the stage Othello was saying, “Little of this great world can I speak,/More than pertains to feats of broil and battles.”
    “See how warrior-like he looks,” Roxbury went on.