“The best always does,” Jane said.
“I delivered her final soliloquy, then died in Lear’s arms. I stole a glance to the crowd. They stared back at me, rapt. You could hear a pin drop. It was as though another dimension had opened up. We’d entered a new plane. I wore a costume of rags, and I was barefoot. I looked up again. The rough man who’d wanted his money back was still in the audience. He was crying. He sought me out afterward and told me he was going to call his daughter, whom he hadn’t spoken to in twenty years.”
Jane smiled. “Brava.” She touched Sofia’s shoulder. “You already have all the tools you need to play this character.”
“But how?” Sofia asked.
“What kinds of things does Mrs. Allen say?” Jane asked.
“My first line is ‘We neither of us have a stitch to wear!’ They put me in ridiculous outfits. One day I wore an actual ship in my hair.”
“What ship? A frigate? Schooner?”
“Not sure. A tugboat, maybe. Every time Mrs. Allen misses a stich in embroidery, she announces it to everyone. Why?”
“Women are notorious for apologizing,” Jane said with a shrug. “An illness afflicting us from birth.”
“She is the punch line to her own jokes,” Sofia continued. “She recites a three-minute monologue about muslin.”
Jane scratched her head. “Who is this character I have created?” She spoke to herself, more than to Sofia. “Perhaps she is based on someone I have met.”
“Like who?” Sofia said. “Is it a thinly veiled takedown of some enemy of yours? Spill, Jane.”
Jane paused. “I’m thinking back over all the women of my acquaintance. There is a woman who is my neighbor, Lady Johnstone. She is a vicious person. Perhaps that is who I have based her on. Is Mrs. Allen cruel?”
Sofia tilted her head. “Actually, no. She’s not cruel at all. She’s sort of . . . sad.”
“Ah,” Jane replied. “A sad one.” She offered a rueful smile. “I know this character.”
“Who is she?”
Jane stared at the floor. Sofia normally viewed the top of Jane’s head when they talked—she towered over Jane—but now as they sat at eye level, Sofia took a good look at her face. She was smaller and prettier than her portrait at the Jane Austen Experience. Her doe eyes stared into the middle distance and seemed to pierce the space between the door and the wall. What was she thinking about all the time? Lord only knows, but she stared this way often.
“Who is she, Jane?” Sofia said again.
“She is no one,” Jane said. “Just a woman.” She smiled. “I’ve observed in this place not how things change, but how they stay the same. Women speak more but expose more flesh. Mothers and washerwomen alike, chambermaids and duchesses. While they darn socks and knead dough, their minds wander and their hearts sing. How deep the waters run behind the masks we wear. I cannot say for sure, but I wager this character lives a second life inside her heart, and she hides some sadness behind her chatter of expensive fabric.”
Sofia nodded and sat up. “So how do I play those ridiculous lines?”
“Those lines are ridiculous because women of a certain age are ridiculous. Men of sense and intelligence have deemed it so. Where I come from, her fertility and her dowry comprise a woman’s value. Now, her worth seems to lie in her looks. Never has anyone mentioned the brain—occasionally the heart, but never the brain. To grow old is a privilege denied to many, yet women bear it as a curse. She is a woman who has aged. So play her like one. With all the dignity and humiliation that entails. With all the happiness to have survived, and the sadness youth is gone. The dishonor that looks have faded, and the grace that you know this to be true.” Jane turned her head to Sofia. “When I first met you, I stood in awe. You strolled around this new Bath with zest and splendor.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you now,” Sofia said.
“You sit more magnificent now on the floor of this kitchen, with your heart laid bare. Could this pass not as a tragedy, but a liberation? With your ornamentation gone, the opportunity presents itself.”
“The opportunity to what?”
“To tell the truth. You once hung as a bauble. You played the handmaiden for others’ desires. Now you can set yourself free.”
Sofia wiped a tear and shook her head. “To do what?”
Jane smiled. “To do the thing you were put on this earth to do.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
Sofia waited alone on set in her green dress costume. “What is the holdup?” she asked Derek. “I’ve been standing here for thirty minutes. I’m sweating my no-makeup makeup off.”
Derek shrugged and promised to find out.
Rehearsals had entered their final week. Sofia waited for them to fire her. Today’s schedule called for a pivotal conversation between Mrs. Allen and Catherine Morland before they entered the evening assembly. Twenty extras gathered in the square behind the Pump Room; they’d grow to four hundred on the day of filming.
Derek returned and whispered to Sofia, “It’s Courtney. She won’t come out.”
Sofia smiled. “She’s in her trailer? Is she throwing a tantrum?” She called over to Jack, “Mr. Travers. You’d better go see what’s going on with your star.”
Jack shook his head. “She’ll be out when she’s ready.”
“We’re all standing
