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The night was lucky. The strollers played at the inn, on a stage demarcated by a green curtain and paper screens.

Wire contraptions of hoops and nails had been hung from the ceiling, a candle stuck on each spike.

Benches arranged at the front of the house served for boxes, and the standing audience jostled behind, stamping their feet and sloshing their pints, sending up roars of mirth well before the kettle drum beat the preamble to the opening entertainments.

“I should have brought my lute!” squealed Agnes when she saw the orchestra pit, three chairs at stage right set up erratically to avoid drips of wax from the crude chandeliers.

In the chairs sat farmers with fiddles, hired on for the evening.

Georgie recognized Robert Peach. The youth was much better with a bow than a fencing foil.

Crammed to capacity, the room was close, smoky, odorous, and suffocatingly hot.

Mr. Arbuthnot’s company lacked elaborate properties, varied scenery, and celebrated talents.

But the specially written prologue—spoken with wonderful naturalness by the theater manager himself—painted the village of Twynham as a wellspring of gentility and taste, and throughout his delivery, Georgie sensed an upswelling of beneficence from the Quality seated around them on the benches.

The next moment, the pantomime commenced, with such an explosion of antic buffoonery even the most genteel spectators could be excused a few uncouth bellows and guffaws.

The majority needed no excuse and shook the house.

Mr. Arbuthnot’s strollers had been lucky, but beyond that, they possessed whatever alchemy transforms the ordinary into something more, that guides an audience into waking dreams. The room was no longer a room but a series of worlds.

Elf was nearly crying with laughter, gripping Georgie’s hand, utterly focused on Harlequin, who whacked at nothing with a mop stick.

Here was everything Georgie loved combined: the noise, the heat, the motley crowd, the spectacle, the feeling of aliveness too big for one body to hold.

And Elf, holding on to them. The two of them holding on to each other, sharing it all.

She let go of their hand to applaud wildly when Charlotte and Louisa sang and danced between the acts.

But she gripped them again during the play, which Mrs. Alderwalsey had requested from the repertoire— Macbeth .

Georgie would have chosen something less grisly and tragic.

Much Ado. All’s Well. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The performance, however, riveted completely.

Sally had complained about the actors who’d deserted after the fire, over half of the company’s men, and all its male principals.

This loss proved a boon, making for exhilarating casting.

Women played Banquo, Donalbain, and Macduff.

A gentleman of color played Macbeth, his expansive interpretation of that noble villain the most perfect Georgie had ever witnessed.

Mrs. Arbuthnot played Lady Macbeth with a fiendish intensity.

It mattered not at all that the dagger derived obviously from a drawer in the inn’s kitchen.

Or that the witches appeared to the sound of thunder made by mortar and pestle.

When the afterpiece ended, and the cheers of approbation died down, illusion faded, and the revelers found themselves back in a beery public room.

The innkeeper rapidly reclaimed his tables, and members of the company sat and ate a hearty supper, joined by Sir Hugh and other notables, while the rest of the audience poured rowdily out the door, or lingered in groups, conversing, laughing, and, in some cases, drinking additional pints.

Mrs. Alderwalsey received compliments on behalf of the strollers, enthroned on one of the fiddler’s chairs between the chandeliers.

Georgie, Elf, and Agnes went to her to express their gratitude for their tickets, which she’d bestowed upon them free of charge.

Mrs. Roberts, standing nearby with Jane Ratcliff’s mother, looked over with a sour expression, and Georgie guessed the price of her ticket had been set rather higher.

Jane Ratcliff herself wasn’t in attendance, but Jane Slater was, only she was Jane Worrell now.

She met Georgie’s eyes from across the room, then turned away as she was greeted by a second Jane—Jane Tetley, now Jane Avery.

The two Janes put their heads together, whispering.

Georgie gazed at them, an odd little pull in their chest, not exactly longing for the good old days, when every village gathering provided an occasion for mischief, but rather wistfulness.

Their former accomplices were all but strangers, and there was no crossing the gulf between then and now.

Except both Janes suddenly returned their gaze and smiled.

Their smiles were not the vapid, wifely smiles Georgie expected, but the familiar smiles, lively, and a little bit sly.

And Jane Slater—no, Worrell—glanced at Elf and then at Georgie, and her smile shifted, became a tad more meaningful, and Georgie laughed aloud.

Before they could approach, the Janes were departing on their husbands’ arms, but even as the physical distance increased, the gulf seemed smaller.

Georgie faced the uncomfortable thought that, perhaps, when they’d called on the Janes, they had been the one whose behavior made confidences impossible.

They’d sat awkwardly with a teacup, imagining the Janes not so much busy with marriage as essentially altered by it.

That was the law of the land. Marriage legally dissolved a woman’s personhood.

But the law was just a story. Its claims were enforceable, not true.

The Janes weren’t wives , or rather, they weren’t only wives.

Maybe Georgie would have understood that more readily if they hadn’t thought of the Janes as the Janes in the first place.

Each Jane had always been and was still living her particular life.

They wanted to rush after Jane Worrell and Jane Avery and apologize, but it wasn’t the time or the place, and what would such an apology do anyway?

They’d call again soon. They wouldn’t spend the visits apologizing. They’d spend the visits paying attention.

The claws of self-recrimination retracted, and hope unfolded its wings.

“It was Jane Worrell, wasn’t it?”

Georgie blinked. “What do you mean?” Elf was studying them with a slight smile. “What about Jane Worrell?”

Elf raised her brows…and puckered her lips.

They stared, speechless, caught entirely off guard.

“You’re blushing,” she informed them.

They recovered and leaned in, lowering their voice. “Because what you’re doing with your mouth makes me think about where your mouth has been.” They straightened, noting the result of their words with satisfaction. “Now who’s blushing?”

Elf scowled, pinkly. “I’m right, though.” She peered after Jane Worrell with intrigue. “She’s the one you kissed. And she knows, doesn’t she?” Elf whispered it. “How does she know?”

“About us?” They matched Elf’s whisper, even though nobody was listening. They liked whispering in her ear. They especially liked whispering us . “Some things are glaringly obvious once you know how to look.”

They raised their eyes, and over there, the two men in the corner. Case in point.

“Charles Peach,” they whispered, pointing with their chin. “Should I go thank his dimples for last night?”

Elf’s elbow connected with their ribs, and they laughed and tucked her arm under theirs. With their other hand, they waved at Phipps, close by his lover, lounging with his shoulder on the wall. Phipps lifted a brow in answer, his smile pleased as punch.

All at once, Mrs. Alderwalsey’s authoritative voice rang out. The low rumble of conversation ceased. Every head turned. She had risen from her chair, the trimmings on her hat flirting worrisomely with the candle flames above.

“Mr. Arbuthnot,” she said, and gestured to the manager, still at his table.

He laid down his cutlery and somehow, without moving another muscle, increased his dignity of bearing.

“In days of yore,” continued Mrs. Alderwalsey, “back when even I was but a child, strolling companies strolled right by our hamlet, bound for more populous towns. When rarely companies did beg leave to play for us, the magistrates rightly denied them licenses. Too often country actors are nothing but unscrupulous mountebanks. You will not disagree.”

Mr. Arbuthnot’s tufted eyebrows commiserated with her assertion.

“This has been our first ever theatrical evening here in Twynham,” she went on. “I am gratified that your players are so well-conducted. And I trust that you have felt well-received. I bespoke your performance thinking it a charity, and I now retire feeling I am in your debt. Thank you, and adieu.”

“Thank you , good lady,” cried Mr. Arbuthnot, standing and raising his glass. Every glass in the room rose with it. Mr. Arbuthnot hefted his higher. “He that dies pays all debts. And mine to thee expires only then.”

He drank, for rather longer than a toast required.

Mrs. Roberts’s face had turned such a ghastly shade that Georgie angled away from her.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Alderwalsey had addressed herself to Agnes and Elf.

“I will drive you home,” she announced. “It is late.”

It was ten o’clock. Georgie was wide awake. They were ready to climb mountains, to skip from star to star.

“I will drive Miss Marsden myself,” they said. “In my gig.”

“To bed,” moaned Agnes, rubbing her hands. “To bed.” She’d been unusually quiet since the performance ended, and she hadn’t once stopped worrying her fingers. Georgie understood why with a sudden jolt, and wished again that Mrs. Alderwalsey had picked a comedy.

“Out, damned spot!” moaned Agnes.

“Language!” barked Mrs. Alderwalsey.

“Out, dratted spot,” moaned Agnes.

“That reminds me.” Mrs. Alderwalsey swung around to smile victoriously at Mrs. Roberts. “The dratted spotted muslin. You may bring it to my house tomorrow morning.”

So that was the price of admission.

Georgie bowed their head in deference.

“Come along.” Mrs. Alderwalsey beckoned to Agnes then sailed for the door.

Elf watched her sister go with an expression of mild concern. “She won’t imagine herself as Lady Macbeth forever,” she said, as though hoping to be convinced.

“ Fair is foul ,” sang Charlotte, materializing at Georgie’s elbow.

“ And foul is fair ,” sang Louisa, right beside her.

“You were bewitching witches,” Georgie told them.

“I feel like a fillet of a fenny snake,” complained Sally, the third witch, face shining with sweat and speckled with soot from the candles. “It’s hot as a cauldron in here.”

“There’s a fishing pond near my house.” Georgie looked around the little circle, inspired. “We could bathe under the moon. I wouldn’t be able to fit you all in the gig, but it’s only a mile, and…”

“Stop right there!” cried Sally. “I’ll ask Mr. Arbuthnot. He never says no to a lark.”

Mr. Arbuthnot didn’t say no. He said, “Fetch me another bottle and we’ll go in the wagon.”