Decency and Desire (10/?): In Which there is Much Rehearsing of the Play, and of various other things
Note: if you are not fairly familiar with Twelfth Night, and/or are having trouble working out what's going on in the scenes they're rehearsing, I recommend reading this on AO3 instead, where there are mouseover summaries of the play scenes in question.
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I publish the Banns of Marriage between Castiel Milton of Swaffham Bulbeck and Joanna Harvelle of Willingdown Hall. If any of you know cause, or just impediment, why these two persons should not be joined together in holy Matrimony, ye are to declare it. This is the second time of asking.
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“Say I do speak with her, my lord - what then?”
Dean turned, paced back the length of the ‘stage’ marked off at one end of the ballroom. His eyes were sparkling to match the spangled green of Orsino’s cloak thrown about his shoulders (as yet unhemmed), his gestures extravagant and impassioned. Charlie thought he looked very well indeed in his delight at the sport, although not so well as Jo did in Viola’s breeches.
“O, then unfold the passion of my love! Surprise her with discourse of my dear faith!” Dean tipped Jo a wink, a roughish conspiratorial sort of expression that looked queer directed to a woman, although Charlie had seen him use it many times with familiar gentlemen. “It shall become thee well to act my woes - she will attend it better in thy youth than in a nuncio’s of more grave aspect.”
“I think not so, my lord,” replied Jo, with Viola’s words. Charlie thought she sounded a little distracted, a little hasty as she spoke her line almost too late; but it was only natural for Viola to find herself bewildered by Orsino’s charms.
“Dear lad, believe it,” and Dean stepped closer to her, more earnest in tone and expression than when he spoke of the distant unattainable Olivia: reached out to touch her cheek. “For they that say thou art a man shall yet belie thy happy years. Diana’s lip is not more smooth and rubious; thy small voice is as the maiden’s organ, shrill and sound; and all is semblative a woman’s part. I know thy constellation is right apt for this affair.”
Charlie herself had suggested that direction - that Orsino ought to stand close, to trace over the features he described with eye and hand as with voice, that Viola ought to look at Orsino with love - but she found herself startled nevertheless, in watching them rehearse it. Jo seemed frozen, lips a little parted as they had been before he had touched her; her eyes were fixed upon Dean’s face, wide and wondering and still as if bewitched; and there was little of Viola in her demeanour. A curious moment of honesty, that stirred unexpected warmth in Charlie’s belly: how would it be to have a man you had loved look on you like that, in the safety of theatricals?
It lasted only a moment, as Dean made a grimace that was presumably intended to convey Love Unacknowledged. Then Jo was looking away, tossing her head with an awkward little laugh, and Dean was stepping back, clearing his throat, and ordering invisible servants to attend ‘Cesario’ on his quest to woo Olivia.
Charlie shot a look sideways at Mr Milton, where he was lounging in his chair to watch the rehearsal, but even his sharp scrutiny (fastened though it had been on all four of them of late) seemed to have caught nothing amiss. Perhaps it had been only Charlie’s imagination.