Shadow Marriage. Penny Jordan

together.

      She had only just entered drama school when it happened; a late entrant, having decided at the last minute not to go on to university, but to try her hand as an actress instead.

      She had only been nineteen when she was offered the part of Mary Fitton. Shakespeare had been played by Dale Hammond, an actor whose star was very much in the ascendant. Unlike her, Dale had gone on to international fame, and a smile plucked at Sarah’s lips as she remembered several instances of his Puckish sense of humour. They had got on well together, so well that she had found no embarrassment in their intensely emotional and sensual scenes together, unlike those she had had to play with Benedict de l’Isle, the actor who was playing the Earl of Southampton, her other lover, and reputedly Shakespeare’s as well!

      As she unwrapped the package, she shivered, suddenly cold, unwilling to remember the desire that had flamed between the two of them; a desire which had left its mark on the film, highlighting the emotional drama they played out as Southampton and Mary Fitton. Dale had been her friend, and in consequence of their friendship she had been able to relax while they played their love scenes, but with Benedict there had been no relaxation possible. And that was why…

      The script slipped from her fingers, landing on the polished wooden floor with a thud, bringing her sharply back from the past. Schooling her thoughts, Sarah bent and picked it up, flicking through the opening pages and then going back to read them more slowly as the typed words enthralled her imagination.

      Two hours later, when she put aside the final page, her thoughts were still coloured by all that she had read. For that brief span of time she had been living in the twelth century, totally absorbed by the lives of the characters she had been reading about; Richard, third son of Henry II and his estranged wife Eleanor of Aquitaine; adored by his mother and hated by his father. Richard, who would one day be king. Sarah shivered in sudden reaction, trying to visualise the man who had written so sensitively and deeply about a man who, she realised for the first time, had been an intensely tortured individual, torn between duty and desire, unable to fulfil one without destroying the other. She didn’t have enough knowledge about the Plantagenet era to know how factual or otherwise the script was, but she remembered enough to sense that it had been carefully researched, and that in depicting Richard as a man tormented by his intense love for another knight, the writer had leaned towards the truth rather than inventing the relationship simply for effect. Having read the script, it was dizzyingly heady to know that Guy Holland wanted her for Joanna. The part wasn’t a large one, but then none of the female parts were. The only other ones of any magnitude were Eleanor, Richard’s mother, and Berengaria, his wife.

      Unlike earlier thirties films about Richard, this one was not concerned primarily with the Third Crusade, which she was surprised to see had occupied a relatively short span of Richard’s life. What did amaze her was the discovery that he had first gone to war as a teenager, defying, and eventually defeating, his father. But it was her part as Joanna she must concentrate on. She had three major scenes—the first when Richard accompanied her through Spain on her way to her first husband, the aged William of Sicily, a man who was fifty to her seventeen; the second when Richard came to Sicily with his army en route for the Crusade and rescued her from her unscrupulous brother-in-law, Tancred, following the death of William, and the third when she renounced the man she loved—one of Richard’s knights—before agreeing to marry Raymond of Toulouse, her second husband.

      Carew hadn’t exaggerated when he described the part as ‘meaty’, and Sarah hurried to the phone, quickly dialling his number.

      Heather, his assistant, recognised her voice straightaway and put her through.

      ‘Umm, that voice—it’s like being drowned in melted honey!’ Carew told her extravagantly. ‘Guy will find it a bonus he hadn’t expected. Well, you’ve read it, I take it? What do you think?’

      ‘You know what I think,’ Sarah managed in a husky whisper. ‘Oh, Carew…’

      Stupidly tears filled her eyes and she had to shake them away. She had fought so hard to tell herself that it didn’t matter that her career had never been the success she had wanted, that she had hardly dared to let herself hope that she might get a part like this. Now she no longer doubted that Guy Holland hadn’t been boasting when he claimed that half a dozen Hollywood greats were clamouring for it, and she could only bless the perverseness that made him such a stickler for detail that he wanted a genuine long-haired redhead for his Joanna.

      ‘Well, don’t forget there’s still tomorrow,’ Carew cautioned her, quickly soothing her leaping fears by adding, ‘Not that you’ve anything to worry about. Once Guy sees you…’

      ‘Who’s playing Richard?’ Sara wanted to know.

      ‘An old friend of yours.’ He paused expectantly, and Sarah felt her blood run cold. ‘Dale Hammond,’ Carew told her, obviously disappointed by her lack of response. ‘Apparently Guy has certain reservations about him, but his colouring is right, and there’s no denying that he has the experience for the part. Guy is very anxious that Richard should be played sympathetically, and yet remain very much the male animal.’

      The part would be extremely challenging and taxing, Sarah could see that, and in her mind’s eye she collated Dale’s roles since his Shakespeare. He had the experience for the role, he also had the slightly malicious sense of humour that had come across so well in his Shakespeare, and which was evident in some ways in Richard, but he would need intense depth and breadth for the role, if he was to be played as she sensed the playwright had intended him to be. As she hung up, promising Carew that she would not forget their lunch date, she frowned thoughtfully, curious about the writer of the film, experiencing something which was almost a comradeship with him, so caught up in the spell of his words that it was almost as though her senses knew him.

      She spent the morning in her local library, and emerged with her arms piled high with reference books, with barely an hour to spare before her lunch date.

      She dressed quickly; a dove-grey silk dress with undertones of lavender to darken her eyes, leaving her skin free of make-up apart from a slick of colour along her lips, braiding her hair and twisting it into a coronet on top of her head.

      The effect was startling, and she smiled a trifle wryly at her haunting reflection. Guy Holland was no fool. He would realise instantly that she was trying to portray his ‘Joanna’. Whether she had succeeded or not she had yet to discover.

      She arrived exactly on the dot of one and was shown to a secluded table in the cocktail bar. Carew’s eyes widened as he saw her and he struggled to his feet, a small, rotund man, with a shock of untidy fair hair and owlish brown eyes. His companion uncoiled himself from his chair far more elegantly, one lean, tanned hand extended to grip hers, his eyes coolly appreciative as they studied her, and was studied in return.

      His first question wasn’t what she had expected at all. His glance lingered on her hand as his own was withdrawn, and she had to fight against a deeply instinctive desire to wrench off the plain gold ring adorning her left hand.

      ‘You’re married?’

      ‘I… I’m divorced,’ she managed curtly, frowning as Carew rushed into what she considered to be unnecessary explanations. ‘Sarah was married briefly to Benedict de l’Isle.’

      ‘Really?’ Darkly silvered eyebrows rose speculatively. ‘I know Ben quite well. I hadn’t realised he’d been married.’

      ‘I’m sure he wants to forget it as much as I do,’ Sarah told him, glaring at Carew. What on earth had he said anything for? He knew she abhorred all mention of her brief and all too disastrous marriage to Benedict de l’Isle. A marriage that had been over almost before it had begun. A marriage entered into through ignorance and folly on her part and reluctance and guilt on Benedict’s. How much reluctance she had discovered on the night of their wedding. Thank God Dale had been there to help her. Without him…

      ‘You’ve read the script. What do you think of it?’ Guy asked her, resuming his seat.

      ‘It’s marvellous.’ Her eyes glowed with conviction.