The Midnight Rose by Lucinda Riley Read Free Book Online Page B

reached for her handbag. Tentatively pulling out her cell phone, she switched it on. She pressed the button to retrieve her messages and put the phone to her ear. It could not connect, and when she checked the screen, she saw there was no signal. Taking out her iPad, she saw that there were no available networks on that either.
    A glimmer of a smile appeared on her lips. This morning she had wished to be someplace where no one could find her or make contact with her, and it seemed that for tonight, at least, this was the case. She lay back and looked out of the window at the approaching dusk, the sun slowly disappearing below the horizon on the moors beyond the garden. And realized then that all she could hear was silence.
    Picking up her script from the side table, Rebecca began to read through it. She was playing Lady Elizabeth Sayers, the beautiful young daughter of the house. The year was 1922 and the Jazz Age was in full swing. Her father was determined to marry her off to a neighboring landowner, but Elizabeth had very different ideas. The film focused on the British aristocracy in a changing world, as women took tentative steps toward emancipation and the working classes no longer accepted their subordination to the aristocracy. Elizabeth fell in love with an unsuitable poet, Lawrence, whom she had met through a fast bohemian set in London. The choice she faced between disgracing her parents and following her heart was an old story. Yet, with Hugo Manners’s witty but moving script, it was a gem of a part.
    As always, the filming schedule did not start at the beginning of the story and Rebecca was to shoot her first scene in a day’s time with James Waugh, who was playing her improper poet. It was to be filmed out in the garden and included a passionate kiss. Rebecca sighed. No matter how professional she was as an actress, or how many times she had been seduced on camera, she always dreaded filming love scenes with costars she hardly knew.
    Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a flicker of movement in the garden below her. Moving over to the window, she saw the gardener sitting down on a bench. Even from here, she felt there was something lonely about him, something sad. Rebecca watched as he sat, still like a statue, staring ahead into the descending dusk.
    After having a bath, Rebecca climbed beneath the scratchy starchedwhite sheets. As she lay there, going over her lines and practicing the clipped British accent of the 1920s, she realized how tonight it felt as if she were actually living in the world of the film script. So little seemed to have changed in this house since those times, it was almost unsettling.
    Seeing it was past ten o’clock now, but convinced she wouldn’t fall asleep due to the jet lag, Rebecca reached to switch off the light. To her surprise, she slept soundly through the night, only waking when Mrs. Trevathan appeared at eight the next morning with a breakfast tray.
    At ten o’clock, she went downstairs and found her way to Wardrobe for her costume fitting. Jean, the Scottish costume designer, eyed her and said, “Darling, you were made for this period. You even have an old-fashioned face. And . . . I have a surprise for you.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes. I was speaking to the housekeeper here yesterday, and she told me that there’s a large collection of vintage 1920s gowns upstairs in one of the bedrooms. Apparently, they were worn by a long-dead relative of the current Lord Astbury and have remained untouched over the years. I asked if I could take a look, obviously out of pure personal interest, and, of course”—she winked at Rebecca—“to see if there was anything suitable that would fit you. It would be wonderful to use them in the film.”
    “It would,” Rebecca agreed.
    “And”—with a flourish, Jean pulled a silk drape from a clothes rail—“just take a look at these.”
    Rebecca gasped as a row of exquisite gowns was revealed. “Wow,” she breathed.