The Girl From Summer Hill Read online

  The rehearsals had been of Lydia giggling and teasing, flirting with Wickham, glad they’d run away together. But that wasn’t the way Lori played it onstage. She seemed to mimic how she’d felt when Devlin kept her imprisoned in the motel room. Outwardly, she was nice to him, but she let the audience see the fear that was inside her. The reality of a fifteen-year-old girl being seduced by a thirty-something-year-old man was more than creepy.

  The twist on the scene had the audience enthralled—and it made Devlin very angry.

  When the scene ended, he stomped off the stage in a fury. “Did you see that?” he said to Casey and Tate. “After all I’ve done for that little bitch! Has she been telling people lies about me? I spent hours listening to her whining about how her grandmother was abusing her. Since I’m related to the kid, I felt it was my duty as a responsible adult to get her away from the old hag. I would have called the authorities, but I thought I’d better find out the truth first, so I took the kid away. Is there anything bad in that?” Devlin glared at the stage, where the men were changing the set. “She acted like I had seduced her! Look, Landers, if I lose this contest, it’s not my fault. Got it?”

  He stormed away, his rage making the whole stage vibrate.

  Tate and Casey looked to the other side to see Rowan. He had heard it all. He didn’t say anything, just walked down the stairs to the dressing rooms.

  The next scenes dealt with the aftermath of Lydia and Wickham being married. When Mr. Bennet returned home, Mrs. Bennet greeted him with quiet relief, and Kit and Olivia walked away, arm in arm.

  When Lydia and Wickham arrived at the Bennet house, Lori wasn’t laughing in triumph, as Lydia was in the novel. She looked like a girl who’d learned her lesson—but was too late. Lori delivered the lines in the script, but not with the happiness that was in the novel. Instead, she put a modern twist, a politically correct slant, on the words. She was a fifteen-year-old girl and she was now married.

  Her words to her sisters weren’t gloating but showed her knowledge of what she was going to be missing. No more giggling with them. No more flirting at parties. No more hope for her future.

  When Lydia told Lizzy that Mr. Darcy had found them, it was said in the terms of a rescue, that Darcy had made the best of a very bad situation.

  From the far side of the stage, Devlin—out of character as Wickham—sent glares of threat to Lori. She knew the audience had seen them, so she stepped almost behind Casey, who put her arm around Lori’s shoulders and shot Devlin’s looks of threat back at him.

  At the end was a bit of dialogue between Elizabeth and Wickham, and Casey let the man—and the audience—see what she thought of him.

  The next scene was much-needed happiness, as Jack as Mr. Bingley asked the beautiful Gizzy as Jane to marry him. After the sadness of Lydia and Wickham, the audience burst into happy applause.

  In the next-to-last scene, Hildy, as Lady Catherine de Bourgh, came on and gave a marvelous over-the-top performance. She was so outrageously snobbish that the audience laughed. Encouraged by them and by all the disruption in previous scenes, Hildy put extra drama into telling Elizabeth how unworthy she was of a rich, aristocratic man like Mr. Darcy. She seemed to be talking of the cook and the movie star.

  Casey replied that she agreed but that he wanted her, so what was she to do? Say no to him? Impossible!

  Hildy delivered her long speech of shock with such conviction that Casey almost said she’d stay away from Tate. But she put her shoulders back and said that if he again asked her to marry him, she wouldn’t say no.

  At last came the final scene. It began with only Lizzy and Darcy. There was a bit of talk of blaming themselves, then Tate said he loved her.

  “From the first moment, you have seen me as a man,” he said while holding her hands, his face close to hers. “Not as how the world sees me, with the riches I have acquired, but as I truly am. I have grown to love you with all my heart.”

  His lines weren’t as they were in the script, but by that time Casey was used to impromptu. She opened her mouth to reply, but Tate stepped back and held his hand up so the audience could see. On the little finger of his left hand was a staggeringly beautiful ring with a big diamond in the center.

  He pulled it off, went down on one knee, and asked Casey to marry him.

  The appearance of the ring and the look in Tate’s eyes so jolted her that she couldn’t remember her lines. All she could do was nod yes.

  With a smile, he slipped the ring onto her finger, then stood up and drew her into a kiss. The curtain came down. The end.

  The audience rose to its feet, and when the curtain went back up, Casey and Tate were still locked in an embrace. Staying in character, the other players rushed onto the stage to congratulate them. But Tate and Casey didn’t break their kiss.

  One by one, the players went to the front of the stage and took bows. When Olivia and Kit stepped forward, hands tightly held, the audience went crazy. Outside, car horns were blowing, and a couple of police cars set off alarms in appreciation.

  Kit stepped back to give the audience a clear view of Tate and Casey wrapped in each other’s arms. But Kit shook his head and gave a thumbs-down. His meaning was clear. A youngster like Landers didn’t know how to kiss!

  Following Kit’s lead, Olivia batted her lashes at him, flipped her hip, and sashayed off the stage with a panting Kit running after her. Everyone laughed loudly.

  Lydia and Wickham came next. When Lori wouldn’t let Devlin even touch her hand, he had a flash of anger, then he twirled his imaginary mustache and leered at her.

  Their act was a relief from what they’d done in the play, which had seemed so very real.

  Finally, everyone stepped aside to show Casey and Tate, who were still kissing. They broke apart and took bows. Casey held up her diamond ring, blew on it, and polished it on her shoulder. She raised her arm in triumph, as though to say that she’d just won first prize at the fair.

  Tate grabbed her hand and pulled her off the stage, acting as though he couldn’t wait to get her alone. They stopped just behind the curtain to watch the audience and the other players, who were taking second bows.

  Casey was looking at the ring. It flashed even in the dull light. “This looks real. I think the whole proposal was a great addition to the play. Why didn’t you warn me?”

  “It is real, and no man warns of a proposal. Hear that?”

  The audience was chanting something, but Casey was still staring at the ring. “Real as in how? Diamonds?”

  “They’re saying ‘Lizzy! Lizzy!’ They want you.”

  Casey didn’t know what he meant.

  “Go! Take your bows. You earned them.” He pushed her back onto the stage.

  By herself, Casey walked to the edge. It was hard to believe, but the audience really was yelling for Lizzy. For her. Emmie ran across the stage, nearly outweighed by an enormous bouquet of pink roses, and handed them to Casey. The child, smiling hugely, started to leave, but Casey took her hand and they both bowed to the applauding audience.

  Emmie, young but an old pro, stepped back, her arms extended, and looked toward the curtain to her uncle. In the next moment she started running and Tate caught her. He picked her up and walked out with her to stand beside Casey. The applause, the whistles, shouts, and horns were deafening. It was a long while before they left the stage.

  What greeted them offstage was a bewildered Devlin in handcuffs. “I didn’t know she was so young, and she wanted to stay with me. And now she’s saying I held her against her will?” He was sputtering. “I can’t be held responsible for her lies. If she’d told me the truth I would have helped her—which is what I was trying to do in the first place. How was I to know she was a pathological liar? She should be in handcuffs. Not me! I was trying to—”

  He broke off because the crowd was calling for him and Lydia. “You have to remove these! They want me.”

  Rowan gave a snort of derision and clamped down on Devlin’s upper arm.