When our time came, as the last scene of Mansfield Park ended and the room cleared, I gave the go-ahead for volunteers to roll out tables and set them quickly with their wedding china. Tables featured every sort of pattern from understated metallic bands to profusions of blooming wild-flowers. We walked among the tables, a china garden, lifting plates to read pattern names: location names like India and Monaco, or female names such as Juliet and Guinevere, or expressive titles like Celestial Platinum and Crown Sapphire. My mother's china, Ivy Flowers, would fit in nicely here, if it weren't being held hostage by Sue, or worse, trashed.

Once the cast sequestered themselves in the music room, volunteers admitted the audience into the china garden for tea.

*   *   *

Omar arrived at the last possible moment dressed in his black staff clothes.

"Where's your costume?" I asked, restraining the alarm in my voice.

"Look, I said I would do this," but Omar did not finish speaking since Magda interrupted, poking her head in the door, sunglasses on, purse slung over her shoulder.

"Gamal," she said, then spoke rapid Arabic.

Gary looked up from adjusting his pink satin cape. He responded in Arabic. I looked from one to the other as Gary, scowling, pulled the cape off his shoulders. "What's going on?" I asked.

"My brother will be late if he doesn't hurry. I don't know what he's doing here since he knows he's scheduled for an ESL test at four-thirty." English as a Second Language.

"Reschedule it, Gary," I said.

Gary shrugged, handing me his jacket, speaking angrily in Arabic to Magda.

I turned to Magda. "People have paid money to see him perform this afternoon," I said.

"He should have mentioned the conflict to you," Magda said, her nostrils flaring. "He is not enrolled in an academic program because he has not passed the ESL exam. If he doesn't take the test and matriculate, he will have to leave the country anyway, tea or no tea. It's up to him." She threw her hands up. "Do you want to go home?" she asked Gary.

Gary walked past me, unbuttoning his shirt.

"Bring me the costume before you go," I said.

"When you work with amateurs—" Magda started to say, but I interrupted her.

"Please excuse us." I pointed to the hallway, allowing tension full rein in my voice.

With them gone, Omar in his street clothes returned to focus. "Not a single word from you," I said. "Go and dress in your costume and come back here immediately. Or I will kill you with my bare hands."

How to replace Gary fifteen minutes before teatime? Perhaps an actor could be persuaded to do it. I ran to the Freezer hoping someone lingered from the last scene but found only Gary, who placed his costume in my arms. "Sorry," he said. Mrs. Russell and Stephen Jervis practiced lines in the tiny butler pantry. Tea patrons lined up in the hall waiting to be let into the ballroom, men and women in period dress, little girls in tea-length dresses and jumbo hair ribbons. What would we do without a Count Cassel? The buffoon of the skit. Without his humor, it would fail. I would fail. Nigel and Vera arrived happy and excited, expecting a tea-theatre.

"Are you ready?" Vera asked, before noting my expression. "What's the matter?"

I told her about Gary. "Do you think Nigel would be up for a part?"

Vera frowned. "Not Nigel," she said, "but what about this line of potential actors?" She gestured toward the tea patrons standing against the wall as if we'd put out a call for Regency extras. "You said patrons should be allowed to join in the acting. Here's your chance."

A giant iron door opened, allowing me entry into the next level. What a great idea, and it was my idea. They were even dressed in Regency attire, ready to go on stage at a moment's notice. "Ladies and gentlemen," I said, as the crowd silenced and all eyes turned to me, "Literature Live believes that patrons should participate in performances. We have arrived at the moment when one of you will be chosen to play a role in our production. Who among you will play the part of Count Cassel?"

The line buzzed, several women pushed their blushing men to the fore, but my attention fixed on a tall, blustery man who announced, "Count Cassel, at your service." He removed his hat and executed a deeply dramatic bow. He reminded me of self-important Mr. Rushworth.

"Come with me," I said, taking his arm and leading him to the music room.

*   *   *

We ran through Count Cassel's lines and played vinyl LPs in the music room while volunteers served the three courses in the ballroom: scones, sandwiches, and tea cookies. The ballroom filled with noise of conversation, people laughing, enjoying themselves at our tea, excitement building for the entertainment. Once the play began, I watched from the butler pantry as Mrs. Russell embraced her long-lost son, Stephen Jervis. I saw how convincingly Mrs. Russell admired her son's physique as he said, "I will never leave you. Look, Mother, how tall and strong I am grown. These arms can now afford you support." Of course, we'd seen him without his shirt.

"I think Mrs. Russell has a crush on Stephen," I remarked to Omar, but he was busy looking over his lines. Just then Sixby walked in and stood at the back of the room, the spot Magda usually occupied during productions. But no Willis.

Omar and I took the stage to perform the scene where Anhalt, the tutor, is sent to instruct Amelia, who is secretly in love with him, on the good and the bad aspects of matrimony. Amelia manages to wrangle a proposal of marriage out of him before the scene ends. Omar looked a bit green. He spoke his first line and I knew we were in trouble. I wished Sixby wasn't watching, nor Nigel and Vera. Omar's eyes never left the floor. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other and his fingers fiddled with the side seam of his breeches as he forgot to ask why my character had been crying. "If you please, we will sit down," he said. I feared he would not remember the next part of his line but it came to him. "Count Cassel is arrived."

"Yes, I know," I said.

Omar took a deep breath, looking sideways at nothing. Then he skipped the next ten lines, proceeding directly to his very long line about matrimony as "the meeting of sympathetic hearts" which I knew he would never finish. I wanted to stop the show. I saw myself interrupting the scene with an apology or tears. I couldn't look at Vera. Magda was right; I should have bought a Eurail pass. As I scrambled to improvise and stop Omar's misery, I saw Sixby walking through the tables with a wild look in his eye. Perhaps he would stop the show for me.

"Miss Wildenhaim," Sixby said, dismissing Omar with a flutter of his hand. "I come from your father with a commission. Count Cassel is arrived."

"Yes, I know," I said.

"And do you know for what reason?" Sixby asked. My hero. He knew all the lines, of course, and we sailed along, improvising where he wasn't familiar with our condensed script.

Willis walked in. My heart jumped as our eyes met and he sat in a vacant chair near the door. The room came to life. "You may tell my father—I'll marry," I said.

"I must beg you not to forget that there is another picture of matrimony," Sixby said. "When convenience and fair appearance joined to folly and ill humor forge the fetters of matrimony, they gall the married pair with their weight," Sixby continued, "till one of them sleeps in death. The other then lifts up his dejected head, and calls out in acclamations of joy—Oh liberty! Dear liberty!"

"I will not marry," I said.

"You mean to say that you will not fall in love," Sixby said.

"Oh no!" I said. "I am in love." We sorted through Sixby's professed confusion until reaching the line where I accept his unintended proposal of marriage. "If you love me as you say, I will marry; and will be happy," I said. "But only with you." I glanced at Willis over Sixby's shoulder. "It will soon be known that I am your bride, the whole village will come to wish me joy, and heaven's blessing will follow."

The skit succeeded from the moment Sixby joined in. My Jane Austen especially enjoyed the baron, played by a volunteer's husband, who turned out to be an improv comedian, roasting the guest who played Count Cassel. The rhyming butler closed with his moral:

Then you, who now lead single lives,

From this sad tale beware;

And do not act as you were wives,

Before you really are.

The audience finally cleared out so the volunteers could pack up the china. As Stephen carried Mrs. Russell's boxes to her car parked behind the Carriage House, I ran to the attic.

"A smashing success!" Willis said. "You must be very happy."

"I can't believe it."

"It was every bit as professional as anything Magda's ever put on a stage."

"Vera and Nigel loved it. Vera said Lady Weston would have enjoyed it immensely. Perhaps a less formal approach was what Lady Weston envisioned in the first place."

"I had no idea you were such a good actress."

"Neither did I!" I laughed.

"So, you'll do it again?"

"Every Wednesday at four. We've already got a waiting list for next week. Vera says we need to add more tables or do a second seating." Willis joined me on the window seat. "I'm so glad you were there," I said. "I wanted you to see it."

"I enjoyed it very much," Willis said. I watched as his face assumed a more sober expression, evolving into a question. "I thought you said Omar was playing opposite you as Anhalt."