Somewhere My Love by Beth Trissel

Ma’am.”
    Julia started to explain that she hadn’t.
    “Nonsense,” Mrs. Wentworth insisted. “ The girl’s English . They’re natural Shakespearian actors . ”
    Jon sat with his mouth slightly ajar . “I’m gonna need something stronger than lemonade.”
    “B randy for me .” Will lowered his head in his hands. 
    Waving her handkerchief at them, his grandmother chided, “ Oh, s top moaning over trifles . Turn your minds to scout ing out a suitable fellow for the role of Laertes. A man who can fence , mind you . ”
    Jon jerked his head at her and Will lurched up right in his chair .  “We’re doing the sword fight?”
    Julia simply stared as the dogged woman wore on.
    “A best of fr om Hamlet is a poor show without that final scene .  Why, it’s magnificent . You fence quite well , William . How difficult can it b e to locate some other person? He doesn’t have to excel . Laertes loses . ”
    Will threw his hands up . “A blunderer with a sword can do more harm than an expert and you demand real blades.”
    “ Certainly . None of that theatrical r ubbish. Gentlemen used to handle swords all the time and weren’t forever in j uring themselves. ”
    “That was then.”
    She ignored him. “ I’ll play the Queen, of course.”
    “Lady Hamlet di es,” Will said dryly .
    “So dramatically. It will be my farewell performance.”
    “I thought that was two years ago in Macbeth ?”
    “An encore, then. My finest hour , like Julius Caesar’s . ” 
    “ He also fell , ” Will pointed out.
    “With such bravery. ” She sipped her lemonade, the gleam of reminiscence in her watery blue gaze. 
    Jon stole from the room with a backward glance at Will as if to say, ‘what else can we do?’
    Julia wanted to edge slowly away but didn’t dare.
    Seemingly lost in thought, Mrs. Wentworth made no remark on Jon’s absence . “We shall have period costumes appropriate to the history of this house , e arly nineteenth century w hen Cole lived. The glory days. Now there was nobility for you, Will iam . A true gentleman wouldn’t argue with his poor grandmother over her dying wish.”
    In that moment , Will looked very like the darkly brooding Hamlet . “We’ll do the play, Ma’am , and the ball , just as you wish . But bear in mind that Midsummer’s E ve 1806 is the very night Cole was cut down.”
    Dear God . So it was . Julia felt as though a fist had been driven into her stomach .
    “ The night will be a tribute to Cole , too,” Mrs. Wentworth proclaimed , l ifting her nearly empty glass in a sort of toast. “I wish we could have a horse in the hall.  It would add such a fine touch to the play.”
    “Why stop with one?” Will said in his sarcastic tone . 
    B ut Julia scarcely heard him. L ightheadedness assailed her and she gripped the sides of her chair.  
    Will shifted his exasperated focus from his eccentric relation to her . “Head down between your knee s!”
    “I beg your pardon, sir?”  
    His grandmother glanced around in marked surprise as he leapt up from his seat and ducked behind her . Gripping the back of Julia’s neck, he gently but firmly pushed her head down toward her lap. “Easy now.”  
    But it did no good. The heavens were falling and taking her with them.  The last words she caught as she swirled into black ness were Mrs. Wentworth ’s.
    “Heat’s gott en to the poor girl, I don’t doubt. These English ar en’t used to our Virginia sun. Bes t wear a hat in the garden, Miss . You ’ll drop out there for sure .”
    At first it seemed as if Julia had tumbled dow n a rabbit hole, then she floated in a timeless fog as though suspended in space . N ot a bad place to be, a nd she sensed she’d been here before. Long before. Was she dreaming of that time, or had she ente red so me alternate reality ?
    “Jules...”
    The s oft summons rippled through her muzzy min d like watered silk . She wasn’t even certain she’d heard the intimate utterance, or just wished it a