The Captain and the Theatrical Read online

  “If only that were so.” Ambrose’s gaze passed slowly over the revelers and the pavilions, the garlanded trees and the musicians and dancers and tumblers. “I very much doubt I shall ever return, alas. The position Mr. Tarbottom would offer me is in America.”

  Orsini’s chin dipped, his gaze falling away to the floor. He said nothing for a few moments, but gave Ambrose’s arm a little squeeze. “You must be very excited, Pen.”

  Ambrose stared ahead, over the dancers, not really seeing anything, even though he knew that he was unlikely to visit Vauxhall again. He pursed his lips and shook his head.

  “If Waterloo wasn’t bad enough—I only want some peace and blasted quiet! Father is so desperate to impress the Tarbottoms, and he cornered me, saying ‘Little Harriet has taken quite a shine to you, Amby! You could do with a wife, and think of all the money I’ve spent to raise you as a gentleman, and don’t think I’ll let you sit about here on the fruits of my labors. I don’t care what you got up to at Waterloo, you’re not a hero now!’ Father’s intentions are all too obvious, do you not think?”

  “I am so very sorry, Pen, for I know how you dreamed of the theater, and I had never thought a fellow like you might be on the battlefield, let alone in industry.” Orsini sighed and stroked his finger down Pagolo’s feathered back. “Can you not say no, thank you, Father, for the theater life is the one for me?”

  “How can I not accept?” Ambrose gaped at his friend in surprise. No matter how odious the proposition was, the thought of rebelling against his father’s will had to be dismissed. “Father decided my profession for me while I was yet in my cradle. I owe him my duty as his son—I cannot refuse his wishes.”

  “And what of the young lady in question? Is she as charming as Cosima?”

  “Most certainly not.” Forgetting himself, Ambrose touched a trembling fingertip to Cosima’s cheek. But at a warning look from his friend, Ambrose shoved his hand into his pocket. “I barely know her. She is superficially pleasant, but…” Ambrose stared off into the middle distance again. He thought of Italy, of times long past and out of reach. “She doesn’t make my heart dance.”

  “You cannot be stroking respectable Italian ladies in public, sir,” Orsini informed him primly. Ambrose met his friend’s gaze, glad to see a gentle humor reflected there. “Come, my friend, let us find an excellent wine and wander through the gardens? I think a little peace might go a long way.”

  They strolled to the nearest refreshment stand, and Ambrose bought them both drinks. He noticed the admiring glances they received and smiled to himself. They made a most handsome couple indeed.

  “Let us be happy now, you and I, in the time that’s left to us.”

  “Let us drink, Captain, and the fair Pagolo and Cosima shall turn our minds to the conundrum.” She tapped a fingertip to the parrot’s soft head. “You truly have no wish to be wed to the Miss Tarbottom in question?”

  Ambrose sighed. “Not at all. But Father, as he never ceases to tell everyone, worked his way up from nothing, you see, so he wants me to work hard, too. No slacking, no living off his money. But I do not even like Mr. Tarbottom. He seems a most insincere sort of fellow—a very slick character. But I suppose successful types are.”

  “Slick cogs,” decided Pagolo. “No slacking!”

  “I cannot imagine you in America, Pen.” Arm in arm they began to walk, strolling through the gentle pools of lantern light beneath the trees and deeper into the grounds. “And why must it be just as I reach English shores? I have long dreamed of recapturing the magic of our Italian summer, and here I arrive just in time to lose you!”

  “What a wonderful summer it was!” Ambrose’s voice was soft with nostalgia. “I truly believe that was the best and happiest time I ever knew. I often think of it, you know.”

  “I have never had such a time since, Pen. Tell me that you are still writing, at least? I have treasured my copy of Of Fleet Fortune.” Orsini smiled and tossed his hair a little coquettishly. “For it gave Miss Cosima her name, of course.”

  “It did?” Ambrose chuckled as they ambled beneath the branches. “I have written many plays since, but none, you will not be surprised to know, have been performed. I write them more or less in secret, alas—for my own fun. I should not expect an audience to sit through a play of mine without dropping off to sleep!”

  “Pen, please, you can hardly believe that. Why, you should be performed in the Haymarket every night of the week!”

  Ambrose laughed. “You are kind to flatter your friend so. Although, I must say, you could play my Cosima very well—should anyone be mad enough to stage Fleet Fortune.” How pleasant it was to speak of his playwrighting attempts without fear of mockery. “She’s a sweet girl with a certain glint in her eye.”

  “But you would have to write a parrot in—although Pagolo tells me he is seeking retirement. He has earned his fortune and wishes now to enjoy it.” She glanced at the parrot, then at Ambrose with a fond smile. “And if you were to show your father the play and tell him of your talent, would he not release you from your position in America at least?”

  Ambrose shook his head. “You do not know my father! Industry, that’s proper work in his eyes. I once had a poem printed in our local newspaper, and when I showed it to him, he said, ‘Thank heavens they did not include your name’! That is my father’s opinion of the arts. If I told him I was going to write plays and refuse his plans for America, I have no doubt that he would laugh in my face and—which does rather concern me somewhat—cut me off without a penny. Not that he has admitted in so many words, but he has made it clear that he will not put his hand in his purse for me a moment longer.”

  Orsini’s immaculately shaped brows furrowed and he murmured, “And a soldier’s pay is not a rich picking, is it? What a shame we have no real Cosima for you to show off to your father!”

  He beamed then, puffing out his somewhat shapely chest and adopting a patrician tone. “Now look here, son of mine, what do you mean to tell me you had an Italian beauty hidden away all this time? And you have already made her a promise that cannot be undone?”

  Ambrose laughed, the impression of his father only needing to be rendered in a Yorkshire accent to be spot on. “Well, Father, you would have me be a man of honor, and I could not breach my promise to the delightful Cosima.”

  “Well, now, this is a sorry pickle and a to-do to boot!” Orsini tapped his lightly powdered chin, still happily in character. “I seems to me that I have no choice but to pay off the Tarbottom girl and declare myself beat! Yet how could any man be angry when he is about to have the delightful, beautiful, witty and talented Cosima as his daughter?”

  Halting at once, heedless of the crowd that buffeted around them, Ambrose clutched Cosima’s arm. “That’s it, is it not? Would he—oh, heavens, but I cannot go against the will of my father. What sort of a son would I be? And yet, the thought of going all the way to America, with a woman I do not—cannot—love… It’s worth the attempt, surely?”

  Yet Orsini was still laughing, clearly seeing only a fine jape in their conversation. He shook his head and asked, “Can you imagine, Pen, if only we could get away with it?”

  If only, indeed.

  It would be reckless, it might be silly, he could earn the eternal opprobrium of his own father, yet—

  “How long are you to reside in England? Would a trip to Derbyshire present a pleasant diversion?”

  “I end my engagement here tonight, though the papers and audiences are clamoring for more. A week is long enough to preserve Cosima’s mystery and appeal,” Orsini told him proudly. “I was planning merely to remain in London in my other guise and see my good friends—you are the best among them—and do little more than have fun. Yet a visit to your family pile sounds even more entertaining!”

  “Would you dare, my friend? The greatest performance of your life—to be Cosima throughout your stay and save me from banishment!”

  “Well, I have had a dozen proposals over the past six month
s”—Orsini informed him with a coquettish wink—“including a prince and a pair of emperors, so I believe I might be able to pass by a Derbyshire industrialist without arousing suspicion!”

  “You had me fooled!” And that was quite something, because Ambrose knew very well that under the costume, Orsini was most definitely a man. A warm Italian afternoon, delectable wine over luncheon and a bracing sea was all it had taken for the two young men to run down into the water, casting their clothes aside as they went.

  Orsini glanced over his shoulder before saying, “Then let us do it, Pen, if you are sure you want to. For once you engage Cosima, there shall be no going back to the arms of Miss Tarbottom!”

  “Oh, please, saints preserve us from the likes of Miss Tarbottom! Now—let us sit and share a drink, and—Pagolo, what would you like?”

  “Cogs!”

  “A little water for Pagolo, for he shall not drink when preparing for a role, and preparing for a role he most definitely is!” They had paused in a serene clearing in which a scattering of quieter parties occupied tables, each liberally served by bottles. It seemed like a more secluded place in which they might discuss their scheme and these intimate groups were all too involved in their own chatter to be intrigued even by the celebrated Cosima.

  “Would you be a love and find us some brandy?” Orsini addressed the request to an attendant who was hovering with such discretion that Ambrose hadn’t even noticed his presence. Then the Italian settled neatly on a chair, adjusting the shawl around his pale shoulders, every inch a picture of pretty femininity. He brushed down the immaculate drapes of his Roman gown and murmured, “I believe I shall like England.”

  “Even if it is not so sunny as your homeland?” Ambrose toyed with the fringe on Cosima’s shawl. “You are not cold, my dear friend? You do not fear our snowy winters?”

  “Why, Captain, you always kept me warm on those heady Italian nights.” Orsini was back in character, Ambrose realized, for it was Cosima who reached out and touched her fingertips to his cheek. “You shall not let me freeze in Derbyshire, I am sure.”

  “You can depend on your captain to keep you warm.” Ambrose closed his hand over Cosima’s against his cheek. Something—a word, a sentence—hung in the air between them. Just as Ambrose was about to speak, their brandy arrived.

  He threw a glassful down his throat and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Adopting what he thought was a sonorous, thespian tone, Ambrose recited, “Drunk? and speak parrot? and squabble? swagger? Swear?”

  Pagolo’s head swivelled until his beady eyes fixed on Pendleton. As the parrot opened his beak to speak, Orsini said quickly, “Thank Thespis that you are a playwright and not an actor, Pen. Pagolo is quite distracted by your unusual delivery!”

  “Thank heavens old Billy Shakespeare is long in his grave! Or was that bad enough to have roused him from his slumber? Perhaps his very ghost will chase me out of here!” Now that, Ambrose realized, wasn’t too bad an idea for a play. The ghost of an offended playwright, haunting terrible theatricals. He could see it now. Maybe a lady playwright, and he could fashion the role for Orsini’s Cosima.

  Pagolo tipped his head to one side, a look so inquisitive in his eyes that Ambrose was convinced that the bird could read his thoughts. He would have to include a role for the parrot as well.

  “That would be the most marvelous play,” Orsini declared, his eyes sparkling with the thought of it. “Oh, Pen, I could play that dreadful actress, proclaiming woodenly from the lip of the stage to an audience who loathe me!”

  Ambrose smiled and folded his arms. “Well, I had you down as the ghost of a lady playwright! But go on, audition for the terrible actress and try to convince me otherwise.”

  “A ghost? Oh now you have my interest, sir, tell me more!”

  “What about, a lady playwright—with you in the role. A ghost. She’s died—maybe, oh yes—maybe she’s died because of bad actors murdering her work, so she haunts other bad actors from the grave!” Ambrose patted his pockets, hoping to find a lurking pencil stub. “Think of the novels of Walpole and Mrs. Radcliffe, then think—we can make this damned funny!”

  “I adore her already!” Orsini pursed his lightly painted lips, clearly considering the possibilities of the piece. “And—oh—let us give her star-crossed lovers to unite, for what does an audience adore more than a love that conquers all?”

  Ambrose held aloft a pencil stub, which he had found lodged into the corner of an inside pocket. “Paper, quickly—we must write this all down!”

  “Where would I conceal paper in a gown such as this, sir?”

  “Surely you must have a love letter from an inamorata down your—” Ambrose gestured vaguely toward the front of Cosima’s gown, but was rendered awkward at once, as if Cosima really was a lady and he had caused her great offense. “Perhaps not.”

  “My manager, the great Orsini, does not allow me callers,” Orsini told him innocently. “For he knows how my head might be turned by a strapping soldier.”

  “If only I hadn’t resigned my commission!” Ambrose examined the pencil stub. What had—no, Orsini was only playing. He couldn’t know.

  “I am glad that you did, for every day that you were on the continent was a fresh torture to me, every report of another hundred men fallen in battle was—” He fell silent and shook his head, long-lashed eyes fluttering closed for a few moments. When they reopened the light had returned, and Ambrose recognized immediately that his friend had banished the memories of worry and was ready, as he so often was, for mischief. “I can keep the secret no more! I showed your Of Fleet Fortune; or, The Duke’s Disgrace, to Viscount Hartington. We read it together and he adored every word. Will you permit him to make your play his next triumph, Pen? Say you will, then your father will have no choice but to celebrate your achievements!”

  “Sorry—Hartington, you say?” Ambrose’s thoughts had dwelled on Orsini’s tender concern for him, but it took a few seconds for him to see the import of what he had just told him. “How you jest! Lord Hartington cannot possibly find that scrap of scribble in the least amusing. He might find a use for my manuscript by cutting it up to light candles with, perhaps, but not—” Ambrose lounged back in his chair, laughing. “You are a fine one for a jape, my dear friend!”

  “There is no joke!” Orsini widened his hazel eyes. “He begged to meet the playwright, but I would not disclose your identity. I said simply that it was penned by a handsome traveler. Do you see? Penned, Pen!”

  Ambrose barely heard Orsini’s pun. Handsome traveler. Was that—did it mean that Orsini—? No, he was joking, that was all, because he was dressed as a lady, and anyone seeing them walk through Vauxhall Gardens arm-in-arm might conceivably think they were courting, and—except they weren’t. And besides—Viscount Hartington?

  “Hartington wanted to meet me?” Finally Ambrose was paying attention. “The producer? He wants to—my play?”

  “He adored it. I believe he would stage it tomorrow, no, I know he would!”

  Orsini wasn’t joshing him, and Ambrose’s face cracked wide with a grin. “I don’t know what to say! It is so long since I read that play over—so long since I gave it to you as our parting gift when I left Italy for home. Do you truly believe that my youthful scrawlings have merit?”

  “Tonight, sir, we shall retire to Pall Mall and read it again!”

  “I should enjoy that—meeting Cosima, and Mr. and Mrs. Mallett and the Spanish marquesa again after all this time.” Ambrose’s world had been so gray without Orsini in it, and now he beamed at him with joy. “We will meet my long-lost friends!”

  “Oh, don’t look!” Orsini made a great show of turning away from a table a little to their left and in doing so, of course, simply drew his friend’s attention to it and the lady who was sat there surrounded by clearly well-meaning friends, dabbing at her eyes. “A lady in distress, Pen, poor thing.”

  Ambrose looked because, as a playwright, he was unavoidably drawn to human drama.
r />   “Oh good heavens, one speaks of Viscount Hartington and there is his mother, as if summoned by my very words. The dowager viscountess, poor petal,” Orsini whispered, clutching his diamond necklace.

  Even the ostrich plume rising from the dowager viscountess’ coiffure had drooped, and her silk gloves had wrinkled. She was a picture of misery, so at odds with the frantic glee of almost every other guest at Vauxhall.

  “The poor dear lady was the victim of a thief this past month,” Orsini whispered, inclining his head in response to the bashful waves from the lady’s attendants. “She had hosted a ball to celebrate the birth of her seventh legitimate grandchild and some terrible creature stole into her chambers and danced away with her treasured pearls! They were a betrothal gift from the late Viscount H. some five decades ago. This country is awash with villains and one of them is waltzing off with silver and jewels each time there is a ball!”

  “Awash with villains? But what of your mountain paths garlanded with banditti?” Not that Ambrose had met with any on his Grand Tour, but even so. “Rascals are to be found amongst all peoples of the world, I fear—sadly for someone like the unhappy dowager.”

  “The poor lady, though.” Orsini’s full lips formed a perfect O of shock. “And the villain remains unapprehended, whoever he might be.”

  Orsini whispered something to the parrot, who took off at a fair flight, eventually settling neatly atop the table in front of the viscountess. Pagolo gave a little bow then without further ado, launched into a rather bawdy song of a sailor and his mate, entirely unsuitable for a noblewoman but eminently suitable for a lady who needed cheering up.

  Ambrose couldn’t help but laugh, and watched the parrot’s performance and the viscountess’ reaction. The venerable lady went from weeping to surprise then swiftly to amused before the end of the first verse. “Where did you find that parrot?”

  “He found me, as I sat on the beach and looked at the sea and said a tiny prayer for a soldier in battle that I know,” he said gently. “I had thought for a moment an angel had alighted on my shoulder, but it was just my Pagolo. I believe he has a lover somewhere for sometimes he will fly away for a day at a time, but he always finds me again.”