The Captain and the Theatrical Read online

  “I’ve never slept in a harlot’s bed before. It is really quite enormous?”

  “Vast as an ocean, Pen, and a sight to behold.”

  “Lead on, sir!” Good. If it was as huge as Ambrose imagined, they could not awkwardly roll into each other. He’d had quite enough of that in rough-and-ready billets in the Army.

  No one wants to wake up at five o’clock in the morning only to find a bristly old sergeant in one’s arms.

  “Come on, my harlot, shall we take the brandy?” Orsini stood and extended his arm to Ambrose, immediately assuming the plummy tones of a rather oily, rather seedy upper-class Englishman. “Come into my bedchamber, my dear innocent young creature, let me show you my ancient artifacts. I can assure you they will delight, amuse and leave you wide-eyed!”

  Having never been called a harlot before, even in jest, Ambrose took a moment to recover from his surprise. “I’m…I’m sure I certainly shall be left wide-eyed!”

  Was that a raise of the eyebrow from Orsini? Ambrose was struck by an image of writhing, naked flesh, which he very quickly dismissed from his mind. Only for it to be replaced by the memory of Orsini, naked as a babe newborn, dancing through the waves as they crashed along an Italian beach.

  “Captain, would that you had seen my Little Pickle.” Orsini imbued the character name with all sorts of other meaning. He seized Ambrose’s hand and pulled him to his feet with such force that, for a moment, the two men collided. “We charmed the continent. Cosima must bless that rakish role every day, for it made her name! Orsini is the manager, the chap with the purse, but it is Cosima whom they cheer for!”

  “Yes…yes, I’m sure you did charm the continent, and several other places too!” What a racy way to make one’s name. Not with a Titania, no, nor even a Polly Peachum. Ambrose glanced at Orsini’s shining eyes and wondered anew if sharing a bed with him was a good idea. But it was all jokes and blather with Orsini—nothing untoward would go on.

  Even if the devil in Ambrose wished otherwise.

  “They offered Cosima Garrick’s strange little bastardization of the piece for her London debut but in I said no grazie. Nice enough, but not when one has performed Wycherley!” Orsini laughed. “I am Orsini by day, Cosima by night, there is little I cannot tell you of life!”

  Pausing only to snatch up the brandy decanter as they passed, juggling it rather nimbly with his glass, Orsini led Ambrose along the hallway, silent now but for their footsteps, and through a pair of double doors that already stood ajar. In the room beyond, a fire burned, illuminating a chamber of such ridiculous splendor that it took Ambrose a moment to fully appreciate it. If the apartment had been Versailles in miniature, then the bedroom was all of that and more, packed into one chamber. Across one wall was a dressing table already piled high with Orsini’s cosmetics and jewels, a silk banyan abandoned rakishly over the chair.

  And the bed… Well, he had not overstated it.

  It was a canopied confection of dark wood, the pillars intricately carved with foliage and fruit, the canopy and textiles a deep, claret red on which patterns were picked out in gold and silver thread. The gold-tasselled edging fluttered in the breeze that blew softly from the grate and there in the pillow and on the covers was the slight shape of Orsini, who must have napped here before embarking on his evening.

  “Hartington certainly knows how to have fun!” Ambrose couldn’t quite believe that this was where he would be sleeping. Though his parents’ houses were lavish and expensively decorated, they had nothing on this. The part of his brain that functioned as a chiffonier of random impressions, which he raided for his plays, busily absorbed every feature of the room. “Romping with his mistress, the naughty fellow!”

  Ambrose shook off his already unbuttoned tailcoat and hung it over the back of a chaise longue. He bent to the mirror over the dressing table and fumbled with the elaborate knot of his cravat. Within moments Orsini was there with him, unknotting the cravat with an impressive turn of speed no doubt born of a lifetime in the theater. He pulled it clear with a flamboyant gesture and cracked the cravat like a whip.

  “Picture this Orsini standing before his dearly missed father, the late Conte d’Orsini, who was full of horror when I told him I could not breathe if I could not act, but it was left to my mother to turn him to our scheme,” Orsini told him. “After all, he was wed to an opera diva, how could he do any other!”

  Ambrose dropped onto the edge of the chaise longue to pull off his Hessians. “Alas that my mother was never an opera diva, but merely a cordwainer’s daughter!”

  “But she was awfully well-behaved,” Orsini furnished in a sing-song voice, as though it were the punchline to a bawdy joke. He disappeared behind a chinoiserie screen, undressing as any blushing young bride might, away from the eyes of her paramour.

  “Not as such—my brother’s birth came but a month after my parents’ marriage!” Ambrose turned away as he unbuttoned his breeches. “But, as Mama is fond of saying, theirs was a love match. She fell for my father when he commissioned a pair of boots from my grandfather—how utterly romantic, don’t you think? Anyway, you don’t mind sharing a bed with an awfully well-behaved captain wearing naught but his shirt and his drawers, do you?”

  “I sleep as God made me, but for you, Pen, I shall throw on a silky something,” Orsini promised as he emerged. Cosima was gone, and in her place there was the young man from Italy once more, the auburn curls tied back in an elaborate queue finished with a red ribbon, and the dress replaced by…nothing. “I should not want you to feel inferior!”

  The memory of the roar of the sea as it crashed along the golden strand filled Ambrose’s ears. Orsini seemed entirely comfortable in his nudity, and his eyes danced with mischief. Ambrose dragged his glance away, but not before he had registered that the slim-hipped youth he remembered from Italy had become a slender, lightly toned man. And as for his little pickle—

  No, a gentleman does not pass comment upon another gentleman’s anatomy, and certainly does not allow his gaze to linger there.

  “Let us see what we have,” Orsini decided. He opened the linen press and rooted through, offering Ambrose a glimpse of the silks and velvets that made up his friend’s flamboyant wardrobe. It was absurd, wonderfully so, and entirely unlike anything he had ever seen in Derbyshire. Finally Orsini withdrew a silk robe that was as red as his suit had been, and decorated with intricately embroidered golden flowers. He pulled it on with a swish of silk and tied the belt as he told Ambrose, “This was a gift for an attitude I performed for the Grand Duchess. I gave her a little Lady Hamilton, and she gave me this. I believe she may have thought me a young lady!”

  She certainly wouldn’t have thought so if she’d seen what Ambrose just had. But he chose not to mention it. “You do most certainly convince—very well, might I add.”

  “Let us just say that I have received more than a few proposals of marriage from the most surprising quarters.” Orsini laughed, though he had the good grace to blush. “And one Russian gentleman in particular was most persistent, the poor soul. When I appeared to him in my suit and said, I am a fellow just like you, he merely cried, ah, here is my beautiful Cosima wearing the clothes of a gentleman, but I shall not be fooled! Happily, he has since wed a ballerina and forgotten all about his Cosima.”

  “I shall have to put that in one of my plays!” Ambrose laughed and pulled back the bedcovers. He paused, struck by a sudden, bitter barb.

  “Well, I would do, if…” If I wasn’t being sent away. But he and Orsini had a plan. “Anyway—I’m being very rude. Do you have a preference—which side of the bed is yours?”

  He watched Orsini approach the bed on light feet, and Ambrose realized that he could see something feminine in Orsini that needed only costume and a small slicking-on of paint to transform him into a woman. And a rather beautiful one at that.

  “I sleep on whichever side is empty,” Orsini told him scandalously before drawing back the covers in climbing in. “Or here, alternatively.�
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  Ambrose lay back on the bed and pillowed his head on his arm. He gazed up into the elaborate canopy, tracing the patterns in the gold and silver thread. “Is this bed usually quite full, then, Orsini?”

  “Not so far,” he admitted. “It is my first trip to London, I have too many exciting sights to see to spend hours in bed with whoever might be passing. So you are honored indeed, Pen!”

  “I am!” Ambrose rolled over onto his side so that he could better see his friend. The Italian beamed back at him in the low firelight, his eyes alive with brandy and silliness. Really, Ambrose could not have asked for a better companion for those months of his Grand Tour.

  “Just think, Orsini, this bed has seen Hartington in the altogether—the very idea of it!” Ambrose chuckled but soon found himself helpless with laughter at the thought. In a booming voice, he declared, “My darling Priscilla—that should be the name of his mistress—divest me of my breeches, for I wish to tup you!”

  “Not until one has obtained one’s rock from Garrards, my lord,” was Orsini’s coquettish reply. “Until fair Pris has her diamond, her gates must remain unbreached, no matter how you tempt!”

  Ambrose winked. “Perhaps you will give your devoted Harty a little taste, my lady, before he heads to the jeweler’s?”

  “A little flash of my precious jewels?” Orsini drew the sheet up to his chin, batting his long eyelashes. “A lady might be ruined, Lord H., for it is not cheap to maintain one’s modesty. A shoulder for a shilling, with the rest negotiable?”

  “A shilling? Yes, a shilling it is!” Ambrose went on laughing, even though it seemed as if the viscount himself was there in the room, watching in horror at his mockery. Orsini howled with laughter and began to lower the sheet very slowly, stopping just before his pale shoulder became visible.

  “All monies in advance, sir, for a girl cannot put too high a price on her modesty.” He let out a hoot of hilarity. “Can you imagine, Pen, what sights this room has witnessed? Why, I’ll wager it is no stranger to the royal favor, if you follow!”

  Ambrose nodded conspiratorially. “Then this bed must be quite a feat of engineering not to have collapsed with old Georgie Porgie rolling about on it!”

  “Let us hope he never sees the fair Cosima, or I may be the Princess Regent!”

  “Don’t worry, I shall defend your honor, my dear Orsini.” Ambrose puffed out his chest. “I shall challenge him to a duel!”

  “So long as it is not a duel to see who might stuff themselves with port and pie, you are sure to win.” Orsini finally pushed the blanket lower, until it rested across his chest. “How civilized we are in our harlot bed.”

  Orsini’s shoulder, now revealed, sent that jolt once more through Ambrose, enlivening his loins. He was relieved indeed that the bed was so large, otherwise the embarrassment of his erection might be rather obvious. Why must he desire Orsini? Why could he not desire the woman his father seemed so keen for him to take as his wife? Instead, here he was, in the bed of a mistress, lying beside an Italian actor, and all Ambrose could think of was how much he wanted to—

  “I might have another splash of brandy before I sleep. What do you say, Orsini, to send us off to sweetest slumber?”

  “Please do,” he agreed. “It will give us pleasant dreams, I imagine!”

  Ambrose slipped out of the bed, making sure he kept his back to Orsini. He poured two glasses from the bottle and took a large gulp. Returning to the bed, he hoped that the brandy would calm his embarrassment—and he hoped Orsini hadn’t noticed.

  “Brandy, my dear friend!” Ambrose climbed back into bed and passed a glass to Orsini. Did Ambrose catch a rather Puckish look on that all-too-innocent face? A slight quirk of his eyebrows and faintest hint of a smile?

  No.

  “You are blushing, Captain!”

  Yes, then.

  “Am I?” Words unspooled from Ambrose’s mouth at speed. “I must say, I hadn’t noticed. I can’t think that I have reason to, I…I…” He put his glass down beside the bed and fussed with the blankets as he got comfortable again. “It’s all this talk of goings-on, it had quite a strange effect on me.”

  “Then we shall talk of goings-on no more, but instead drink our brandy like respectable gentlemen in a harlot’s bed.”

  “One feels very far from respectable indeed in this bed!” Ambrose retrieved his brandy and let the pillows swallow him as he reclined, sighing in contentment. Their plan to upset his father’s nuptial arrangements would work—it had to. “Do you know, Orsini, I’ve not felt this happy in an absolute age.”

  Orsini beamed and shifted across until he could rest his head on Ambrose’s shoulder, rather vexing Ambrose’s schemes to keep himself at a respectable distance. The actor blinked up into the ornate canopy and murmured, “It feels just so, doesn’t it?”

  “It does.” Ambrose draped his arm loosely around his bedfellow. It would have been rude not to. “I feel all warm inside, and I don’t think it’s only the brandy.”

  “Then it must be friendship,” his friend decided softly. “For we have been apart too long.”

  “That must be it.” Not desire. And certainly not love. Ambrose could never admit to that. “I’ve never met anyone half as fun as you.”

  Orsini laughed and told him, “And you will not again, especially not in America!”

  “Indeed, unless I smuggle you out of the country with me.” Ambrose tightened his arm a little around Orsini. He was comforted by the scent of him, even if his spicy, exotic perfume seemed designed to excite, not to calm.

  “I shall snuggle into a trunk with my favorite suits,” Orsini decided. “I wish you did not have to go.”

  “We shall not think of it. Not tonight, for I do not want anything to cloud our joy.” Ambrose kissed Orsini’s brow. Only once he had bestowed the kiss did something in his mind tell him that he should not have done so.

  “Nor will it,” came the soft reply. “Not tonight.”

  Ambrose yawned. He felt so warm and happy, and there was a look of such contentment on Orsini’s face as they embraced. He would struggle to feel like this again.

  “Sleep well, my dear friend,” Ambrose whispered.

  “And you, my captain,” he whispered tenderly in reply. “My husband-to-be.”

  Chapter Three

  Something brushed against Ambrose’s cheek, waking him from confusing dreams of sharing a bed with Orsini. When he opened his eyes, he realized it was a length of Orsini’s soft auburn hair that had come loose from its queue. This was no dream after all—he really had passed the night with his friend.

  And Ambrose lay curled behind Orsini with his arm around him, as if they were lovers. As if they belonged together.

  I must go.

  Now that the London season was ended, he had to return to Pendleton Hall. And before the carriage left, he had an appointment with his tailor for a new suit of clothes, for it would not do to be a shabby gentleman.

  Even if a shabby gentleman indeed flitted from a bedroom in the early morning without a goodbye.

  Ambrose wanted to stay in bed with his arm around Orsini. He wanted to kiss him, even though he knew he mustn’t want such a thing. Orsini was only playing. He could not possibly want the amorous attentions of a retired soldier and hopeless industrialist. And besides…a fellow could get into trouble.

  Ambrose’s head pounded from the effects of last night’s brandy, and the weight of his impossible desires. He might have had the occasional interlude here and there with men before, but this was Orsini, his friend. He should not feel—he must not think of him that way.

  It was best to go before Orsini awoke, before those long-lashed eyelids opened and Ambrose was caught in Orsini’s gaze. He had been a fool to hope that their ridiculous plan would work. Orsini might convince as a woman in Vauxhall Gardens, but it was a stretch indeed to expect that Cosima could glitter in the drawing room at Pendleton Hall without something giving Orsini away.

  Ambrose had to accept that there w
ould be no playwriting for him. No theaters, and certainly no theatricals. It would be coal and industry all the way, just as his father had always planned. But what a terrible pang gnawed at Ambrose, banished from everyone and everything he knew, to start a different life in a faraway land. A life he didn’t want, with a spouse he hadn’t chosen.

  Ambrose collected up his clothes and crept noiselessly out of the bedroom without looking back at the figure in the bed. He dressed quickly in the drawing room, hoping he would not wake Pagolo, who was asleep on his perch with his head tucked under his wing.

  Despite the only pen he could find being made from a hugely elaborate peacock feather, Ambrose was able to write a note.

  My dear fellow,

  I have many and tedious appointments today which cannot wait. Would that I could have spent the day with you, but alas, this is not to be. Please do not think badly of me.

  I must ask that you do not trouble yourself to travel to Pendleton Hall—our plan seemed so amusing last night under the aura of brandy and good cheer, but I cannot ask you to risk scandal or damage your career for me. I must accept my father’s will with good grace, even if it is with a heavy heart that I do so.

  Thank you so very much for your entertaining company. I wish we could have had many more evenings at Vauxhall Gardens.

  Your loving friend,

  Capt. Pendleton

  * * * *

  Each turn of the coach’s wheels took Ambrose farther and farther from London. An oppressive load was upon him, as if he stood at the very bottom of one of his father’s mines with an unconscionable weight of rocks and stones and earth above his head. Orsini’s world of bright silks and parrot’s wings was but an exotic dream in the world that Ambrose Pendleton inhabited. Their plan would never have worked, and Ambrose was cold with shame that he had even contemplated shrugging off his duty to his father.

  Ambrose endured his melancholy reflections as he traveled alone along miles of English highway, rattled and shaken over potholes and sharp bends. Finally he arrived at his brother’s residence, where he received a stiff, tight-lipped reception.