Anna laughed. ‘I am no virgin goddess.’
Suddenly there was a crashing sound in the corridor, a burst of drunken laughter. Someone bumped into the wall outside, making the painted cloths sway.
Robert held his finger lightly to his lips and rose to his feet.
‘Shh,’ he whispered. ‘Let’s walk in the garden for a time, where they can’t find us.’
‘The garden?’ Anna asked, confused. To be alone with him, in the dark of night, with no one lurking outside the door? It was—tempting.
Too tempting. Who knew what she might do there? She didn’t even seem to know herself when she was with him.
But as he held his hand out to her, she found herself reaching for it.
‘There is a beautiful moon tonight, my Diana,’ he said. ‘And I find I am in no fit mood for company.’
She nodded, and together they tiptoed down the corridor and out of the front door into the night. Once they were outside, the raucous roar of the gathering faded away to a mere distant hum.
The garden that lay between the house and the darkened theatre was quiet and full of shadows from the shifting of the moon’s glow between drifting clouds. A tall stone wall held back the flow of Southwark life beyond—the taverns and bustling brothels, the shouts and shrieks and the clash of steel and fists. It all seemed very far away in that moment.
Anna sat down on a stone bench and tipped her head back to stare at the silvery-pale moon in the blue-black velvet sky. It was nearly full, staring down impassively at the wild human world below.
‘It is lovely,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t look at the sky enough.’
‘Our lives are too frantic to remember such simple joys,’ he answered. He rested his foot on the bench beside her and braced his forearm on his knee—so, so close, but not yet touching.
‘Your life is terribly busy, yes?’ she asked. She held tighter to the cold, solid stone beneath her, to keep away the temptation to lean against him. ‘Writing, acting, dodging demanding theatre owners, assignations with admiring ladies—fights with their husbands …’
Rob laughed. ‘Such a great opinion you have of me, Anna. I would have you know I work hard for my coin every day. And if I choose to enjoy myself when the work is done—well, life is too short not to seek out pleasure.’
Anna smiled up at him. He was so good at seeking out pleasure, it seemed, at drawing out every hidden morsel of joy in their striving, heaving existence. What was that like? What would it feel like to let go of control and duty for one mere moment and just—be?
She feared the cost of that one moment would be too high. But it was tempting, nonetheless, especially when he looked at her like that under the shimmering moonglow.
‘Perhaps we do need to stop and glance at the stars once in a while,’ she said. ‘Lest we forget they are even there at all.’
‘It’s difficult to see them in the city,’ Rob said. He sat down beside her, his shoulder pressed very lightly against hers. He did only that—sat beside her—and yet she was so very aware of the hard, lean line of his body, the heat of his skin on hers through the layers of their clothes, the raw strength of him.
‘I’ve never lived anywhere but London. Not for long anyway,’ Anna said. ‘This is the only sky I know.’
‘When I was a lad I lived in the countryside,’ he said. His voice was quiet in the darkness, as if suddenly he was far away from the garden. Somewhere she couldn’t quite see or follow.
‘Did you?’
‘Aye, and often on summer nights I would slip out of my bed and go running down to the river, where there was only the water and the sky, perfect silence. I would lie down in the tall grass at the riverbank and stare up at the stars, making up tales for myself of other worlds we could not see. Wondrous places beyond the stars.’
Anna was fascinated by this small glimpse of Rob’s past, his hidden self. She had never thought of him as a boy before; he seemed to have just sprung up fully formed onstage, sword in his hand, poetry on his lips.
‘You must have been the despair of your mother, running away like that,’ she said.
He smiled at her, a flash of his usual careless grin, but it swiftly faded. ‘Not at all. My mother died when I was very young. Our aunt then stayed with us for a time, but she cared not what we did as long as we didn’t dirty her nicely scrubbed floors.’
‘Oh,’ Anna said sadly. ‘I am sorry.’
‘For what, fair Anna?’
‘For your losing your mother so young. My own mother died when I was three.’
Rob studied her so carefully she felt a warm blush creeping stealthily into her cheeks. She was very glad of the cover of darkness—the moon was behind the clouds. ‘Do you remember her?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Not very much at all. She would sing to me as I fell asleep at night, and sometimes I think I remember the way her touch felt on my cheek, or the smell of her perfume. My father says she was very beautiful and very gentle, that there could be no lady to compare to her and that is why he never married again.’ Anna laughed. ‘So it seems I inherited little from her, having neither beauty nor gentleness!’
‘I would disagree—about the beauty part, anyway,’ Rob said, his old light flirtatiousness coming back, encroaching on their fleeting moment of intimacy.
‘I am not gentle?’
‘Gentleness is quite overrated. Spirit—that is what a man should always look for in a female.’
Anna thought of the weeping whore in her tattered yellow dress. She had not seemed especially spirited, but then Anna hadn’t seen what had come before the morning quarrel. Maybe the night had been spirited, indeed.
Had it all only been that morning? It seemed like days ago, so very distant from this quiet moment.
And she felt a most unwanted twinge of pleasure that he might think she was spirited—and beautiful. Even though she knew very well it was only a mere flirtatious comment—a toss-away he no doubt said often to many women. But she had long ago lost her youthful spirit. It was buried in the real world.
‘Surely spirit can cause more trouble than it is worth?’ she said sternly. ‘For instance—how is your shoulder tonight?’
He flexed his shoulders as if to test them before answering her. His muscles rippled against the fine fabric of his doublet.
‘Better, I thank you,’ he said. ‘I had a very fine nurse.’
Anna waited to see if he would say more, tell her how he had come to be wounded in the first place, but he did not. A silence fell around them, heavy and soft as the night itself. She let herself lean closer against him, and didn’t even move away when his arm came lightly around her shoulders.
‘Tell me about those worlds you saw beyond the stars,’ she said. ‘Tell me what it felt like to escape there.’
‘Escape?’ he said. She could feel the way he watched her in the night, so steady, so intense, as if he wanted to see all her secrets. ‘What do you want to escape from, Anna?’
Everything, she wanted to say. At least for that one moment she wanted not to be herself, here in her workaday life, her workaday self. She wanted him to be not himself, either. If only they were two strangers, who knew nothing of each other or of what the world held beyond this garden.
‘It’s more what I want to escape to, I think,’ she said. ‘Something beautiful, clean and good. Something peaceful.’
‘Something beautiful?’ he said. ‘Yes. I think I’ve been looking for that