Chapter 5: Not In The Rehearsal Room

The manor in Herefordshire had a ballroom with forty-two mirrors.

By ten to six on the first morning of location Dorian had found all of them.

Kit came in with a paper cup of tea and the intention of not being seen.

He was seen in nine mirrors at once.

Dorian stood in the middle of the floor in his shirtsleeves, saying the Earl's first line to the room.

He lifted his left hand, lifted his chin, and waited.

Then he sighed and started again.

"I can't stop," he said, to the nearest mirror.

"Since the read-through I hear it every time. I count it. It's got worse."

Kit stayed in the doorway.

The treaty was on his phone, in a photograph, and he had a clear view of clause one.

"Don't ask," he said.

"Would you give me a note?" said Dorian.

"No."

"You'd be doing me a great kindness."

"This isn't the rehearsal room," said Kit.

"It's a ballroom," said Dorian.

"It's a room in which we rehearse," said Kit.

"Which makes it, for the purposes of the clause, the rehearsal room."

"Then it's allowed."

Kit looked at the ceiling.

It had been painted with several cherubs, none of whom was going to help.

"Say the line," he said.

Dorian said the line.

Hand, chin, wait.

"You're breathing in before you speak," said Kit, walking across the floor in nine reflections.

"So you stop to get the air. Start the sentence on the way out."

"On the way out," said Dorian.

"The breath. Not the room."

Dorian tried it.

The pause was half the length.

He turned with a look of such joy that Kit had to examine a cherub.

Nine Dorians turned with him, and every one of them was thanking him.

"Again," said Kit.

He had not meant to say it in Vera's voice.

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