“My dear Cosima, how very kind that you would condescend to visit Pendleton Hall.” Ambrose bowed and folded his hands behind his back as he took in the gaping surprise of his parents and the Tarbottoms. “May I introduce the Contessa Cosima d’Orsini, an acquaintance of mine from my days in Italy? I hope you will enjoy our English hospitality, Cosima—pray, will you take tea with us?”
“Signora, forgive me?” Orsini raised his—no, Ambrose decided, her head and blinked her large, dark eyes. “To arrive here without sending word, for my Pagolo to invade as though he were a feathered Napoleon—this is not the introduction I would have wished for!”
Mrs. Pendleton closed her hand over Orsini’s and smiled. “My dear girl, it’s a lovely surprise! Any acquaintance of my son is welcome at Pendleton Hall. And their parrots, too!”
Ambrose suspected that his mother had not been charmed by the Tarbottoms, so the surprise arrival of a young Italian lady presented an agreeable distraction for her. And, as her gaze moved from the surprise visitor to their parrot, Ambrose noticed his mother’s smile grow larger.
An ally, Ambrose realized. Perhaps all was not lost after all.
“You will have some tea, won’t you?” Mrs. Pendleton gestured toward the pot.
“I have traveled since dawn, I am beside myself.” Orsini rose delicately to his feet and nodded toward the Americans, who stared at him in mute disbelief. “Tea would be very welcome. I fear I will swoon!”
“Swoon,” Pagolo repeated, nodding in his businesslike fashion. Then he turned his beady gaze on the Tarbottoms but said nothing. He simply stared.
“Tea for all!” Mrs. Pendleton enthusiastically poured the tea, wielding spoon and strainer like weapons. “So unexpected to have a houseful! Aren’t we lucky, Mr. Pendleton—hmm?”
Ambrose caught an edge to his mother’s voice, which usually signaled the beginnings of conjugal discord.
“Blessed,” her husband replied in a clipped voice. “Surely you are not traveling alone, miss?”
Orsini settled elegantly on the sofa beside Harriet, offering the girl a cherubic smile that Harriet returned, though her eyes narrowed just a little as she took in this new arrival and possible pretender to her crown.
“I have been with my brother in London. He is both father and business manager to me.” Orsini’s gaze shifted to Ambrose. “When Amadeo told me that he had seen the capitano, I admit that I lost my head. As soon as the sun rose, I left my brother’s rooms and hastened to your home in pursuit of the man who still has my heart. I have braved the road alone these past days. My brother thinks I am intriguing in London and will be seeking me there— I am not proud of the falsehood!”
Ambrose had to remind himself that Orsini was playing a role. The lovelorn, abandoned contessina. Ambrose passed Orsini his tea, the cup rattling discreetly against the saucer in his trembling hand. “Contessina, your tea.”
“Grazie, Capitano,” Orsini said sweetly, taking the cup, yet the look he gave him was meaningful, imbued with longing and not at all subtle. “I had hoped you might call on me in London, for you have not always been so shy.”
Before Ambrose could summon a response, Mrs. Tarbottom emitted a scandalized gasp and clutched at her throat. “Harriet, you should not be listening to this.”
Mrs. Pendleton intervened. “Oh, nonsense, Mrs. Tarbottom—I’m sure the young lady merely means that when Amby was younger, he bounced with vitality. He’s a more sober fellow altogether now that he’s a gentleman. Is that not what you mean, Contessina?”
“He was not at all sober as I remember him,” Orsini purred. “And my brother tells me that Captain Pendleton was raising hell in your capital. Women, brandy, carousing in the squares! Amadeo is a man of respectable birth—noble birth—he was in an outrage at your behavior, sir. Yet still I adore you. You have bewitched me time and again!”
As Orsini buried his face in her handkerchief, Mr. Tarbottom told his wife and daughter, “This is not appropriate for ladies such as you. You are excused, Mrs. Tarbottom, Harriet.”
A look passed across Harriet’s face and was mirrored in her mother’s. Only a flash, but it was there long enough for Ambrose to notice their shared look of calculation.
“I’m sure your brother exaggerates, Contessina.” Ambrose sighed. “I should explain—I traveled Italy with Amadeo Orsini. He and I were excellent friends. He is the son of a count, of an ancient line. And while in Italy—” Ambrose could feel the bristling interest of his father from the other side of the room, so he plunged on regardless. “—while in Italy, this young lady and I became—ah…rather well acquainted, you might say.”
“Ladies,” Tarbottom said firmly, dismissing his wife and daughter with a stern nod that this time, they obeyed. Mr. Pendleton watched them depart then coughed and gave a nod of his own.
“Mrs. Pendleton, you too are excused.”
“But—” Mrs. Pendleton looked from her husband to Cosima and finally to Ambrose. Her lace cap had begun to slip. “Shouldn’t I stay? The young lady surely requires a chaperone.”
“Amadeo shall be furious already. I cannot say what he will do should I be alone without a chaperone,” Orsini agreed. “Capitano, speak up, is my brother not a man of violent passions and masculine fury?”
Ambrose was sure his face had betrayed him, for he struggled to picture Orsini, who at this moment was convincing so well as a lady, in a masculine rage. But he nodded vigorously nonetheless. “Oh—oh—! Indubitably. No one should want to get on the wrong side of that warm Mediterranean temperament.”
“And this brother is in London?” Tarbottom nodded in reply to his own question. He cracked his knuckles and, with that gesture, told Ambrose that he wasn’t beaten yet. “What of your parents?”
“My father is in heaven. My mother even now travels for England hoping to see me. What she will say, I cannot guess!”
Mrs. Pendleton patted Orsini’s shoulder and flashed her husband and Mr. Tarbottom a defiant look. “You must not fret, my sweet, for you’re a guest in my house and you are not friendless.”
Orsini lowered his handkerchief and blinked his large, dark eyes at Mrs. Pendleton. His creation really was quite stunning, Ambrose thought, because she was quintessentially Orsini. The most eligible women in the land had been presented at Pendleton Hall over the years and no matter how pleasant, how winning, Ambrose had remained impervious to their feminine charms. In Orsini though, in the fair Cosima, he saw all that was beautiful, inside and out.
“Contessina, is it?” Mr. Pendleton asked, his voice betraying a note of interest. A title versus industrial might, Ambrose could almost hear the inner struggle. Which is better when bragging at the club?
“Si,” Orsini whispered, his gaze flitting across to Ambrose again. “I am the youngest daughter of the late Conte and marvelous Contessa d’Orsini. I am in the care of my brother, Amadeo, and—”
“A brother who brings you to London?” Mr. Pendleton blinked in surprise. “Alone?”
Once again that dark gaze settled on Ambrose and he felt a stab of guilt, as though he truly had seduced and abandoned this young, innocent creature.
“Before her marriage, the contessa was famed for her soprano and I have inherited her theatrical muse,” Orsini explained, his voice trembling as Mr. Tarbottom’s lips grew thin with distaste at the very thought of it. “I had always wished to be on stage and mamma e papà—”
The thought remained unfinished and he dissolved into tears behind his handkerchief again.
Mrs. Pendleton slipped her arm around Orsini and threw a glare—this time at her son. “Now, now, let’s not have your pretty face stained with tears.”
“Pray do not weep, Cosima.” Ambrose nodded stiffly. “Whatever is there to cry over?”
“You stole my youthful heart as the waves crashed against the Italian shore,” Orsini told him tearfully. “And since that day, my heart has been yours alone.”
Embarrassment flared in Ambrose’s cheeks. He looked at Orsini again and was
caught in his gaze. “I…I—goodness me. I’m so—gosh, my dear Cosima, I’m so sorry.”
I’m so sorry, Orsini, for running out on you before you had even woken up.
“I had thought you might carry me away to the altar.” He shook his head and dropped his chin, evading Orsini’s gaze. Then she murmured, “Yet I adore you still.”
A guilty shiver went through Ambrose.
Would that it were true.
“You,” Orsini hissed toward Ambrose, casting a wide-eyed glance at Mr. Tarbottom, who was taking all this in without a word. “Sir, you broke my heart, but it is aflame for you!”
“By heck!” Mrs. Pendleton gasped, her lace cap slipping further sideways on her head. “Amby, you—you profligate—oh, my word, I had no idea, that our boy—oh, Barna—Mr. Pendleton, oh—oh!” She gripped her husband’s hand, her knuckles white.
Ambrose dropped to his knees in front of Orsini, his head bowed. How strange that so much guilt could wash through him for something he hadn’t actually done. “Gosh. Sorry.”
“You might tear my beating heart from my breast, and I would forgive you, amore mio.” Orsini ran his fingers through Ambrose’s hair then, quite unexpectedly, caught him tightly by that same, now rather ruffled hair and jerked his head up. “Would you tear my heart out, Capitano?”
“No one’s tearing anything out of anybody,” Mr. Pendleton told them. “Come on now. This is not the continent!”
“Seed cake?” Mrs. Pendleton held out a slice on a gilt-edged plate. “It’s very good.”
Memories of the night in the harlot’s bed flooded Ambrose’s mind as Orsini grasped him by his hair. Those near-kisses, his embarrassment making itself known, and Orsini’s body, curled around him through the long, dark hours of the night. And after sharing his bed, he had run from Orsini like a base cur.
Ambrose’s hand trembled again as he took Orsini’s. A sigh forced its way out of him. “Oh, my darling Cosima, forgive me!”
“Did you use me, sir?” Orsini eyes were wide and dark, as gentle as those of a fawn, and his lips settled in a sad pout. “Or were your words of love from the heart?”
“I meant every word I said,” Ambrose told Orsini. “I love you, my darling Cosima.”
The slice of seed cake skidded off Mrs. Pendleton’s plate onto the floor. “My word,” she breathed.
“And your question to me, the question that you asked me as we strolled in the surf…” He blinked again, holding his gaze, as beautiful as the brightest star. “You still wish me to take me for a wife?”
Ambrose had thought back so many times to that swim, as the surf crashed over them, when they had been young and free and happy. Yes, so very happy. If only— “A hundred, a thousand times—yes! My sweet, darling Cosima, be mine, oh, won’t you please? Marry me, darling lady!”
“Now, just wait—” Mr. Pendleton began, but even he was silenced by Cosima’s exclamation in reply.
“I shall, my love, I shall! Oh, how I have longed for you, ached for you, dreamed of your loving embraces that I once knew.” Orsini put his lips to Ambrose’s cheek and kissed him, before finally releasing her supposed lover’s hair and lifting his head to address the Pendletons. “Your son is a man in every sense of the word now, yes?”
The plate followed the slice of cake to the floor as Mrs. Pendleton gasped again. “My word…”
Ambrose returned to his feet and included everyone in his neat bow. “Mother, Father—a man has many duties. To his parents, yes, but also to—to those he loves. And who love him.” He reached for Orsini’s hand. “Do I have your blessing, my dear parents?”
Mrs. Pendleton’s lace cap slipped even further sideways and she smiled at the hopeful couple. Ambrose followed her glance until it alighted on his father, and her smile withered away.
“No, no you do not have my blessing,” Mr. Pendleton told him sternly, gesturing toward the white-faced American. “I will not be humiliated, sir. If you think for one moment that—”
“Come now,” Mr. Tarbottom soothed. “The lad is young and carried along by love. Let us not be too quick to condemn. Why, Captain Pendleton, did you not speak of this young lady before today?”
Ambrose mastered himself. He had faced down the French on the battlefield at Waterloo—he could face down an American in his father’s drawing room.
“I did not, because…” Ambrose clutched Orsini’s hand. “Because I thought it was hopeless. I thought that because I had dashed off and left her that she could not possibly still love me, even though I have never stopped loving her.”
“And I you, my love, from the first moment we saw one another, you have held my heart.” Placid once more, he settled his dark gaze lovingly on Ambrose. “Amore mio, how I have missed your embraces.”
“And I…I have missed yours. So much.”
“Mr. Tarbottom—” Mr. Pendleton began, his face white with fury, but the American cut him off with a smooth, smiling reply.
“I’m a man of the world, sir, and a man of business. There’s nothing here that I’m sure we two cannot negotiate on.” He nodded toward Orsini politely, Ambrose clearly not to be included in discussions of his own destiny. “All this talk of love is for novels and poets.”
“Novels and poets!” Pagolo repeated. “Novels and poets and Tarbottoms!”
Mrs. Pendleton shifted in her chair, her silk dress puffing up around her as she nodded to her husband. “And young men without a shilling to their name, who moon after cordwainer’s daughters—is that not right, Mr. Pendleton?”
“Aye, well, maybe…” He shook his head but Ambrose saw a softening in the industrialist at the reminder of his own youth, his own meeting with the woman who became his wife. “It’s a different world we’re in nowadays, Mrs. Pendleton.”
“It most certainly is.” Mrs. Pendleton flared her nostrils. Talking to Pagolo more than anyone else, she said, “How money changes a man!”
“For shame!” Pagolo squawked. “For shame, Mr. Pendleton!”
Mrs. Pendleton nodded firmly, and this time her lace cap did not move. “That’s right, Pagolo, that’s it—for shame!”
Orsini, however, had turned his attention to Ambrose once more, gazing softly at him even as he murmured, “When shall we be wed?”
“Wait one moment!” Mr. Pendleton’s voice boomed across the opulent drawing room, enough to silence them all. “This liaison, and the young lady doesn’t seem sure there was one, was during a tour a half dozen years ago or more. Now, I see no child, I see no one calling of ruin other than the lady here. There’ll be no weddings on the strength of five minutes spent being bellowed at by an Italian!”
“I’ll arrange the marriage license.” Ambrose stood in front of Mr. Barnaby Pendleton with all the firmness of a captain in His Majesty’s Army. “I shall marry the woman I love—I must do my duty by her. You have always told me, a gentleman must honor his debts—and I shall honor that owed to my sweet Cosima. I have only to call on the reverend, and all shall be arranged. You need not involve yourself in the matter, Father.”
“We shall discuss this later,” Mr. Pendleton told his youngest son firmly, his eyes filled with anger. “I’ll not be made a show of.”
“Come along now, Mr. Pendleton!” His wife was at his sleeve, smiling at him playfully. “No need for grumps! We shall all be best of friends as soon as we sit down to dinner, eh?”
Ambrose returned to Orsini and sank to his knees again, taking Orsini’s hand.
“The boy shall not speak to me so in my own home,” Mr. Pendleton said firmly. “I’ll not have us shown up, Mrs. Pendleton, not by our own lad.”
Mrs. Pendleton turned rather pale and returned to her armchair, her lace cap farther askew. Ambrose knew there was no point in forcing the issue any further at the moment—his father was as receptive as a piece of slate once he was stoked with ire. Ambrose nodded to Orsini and withdrew to the window seat with a cup of tea.
“Madame.” Orsini addressed Mrs. Pendleton gently, the parrot silent no
w. “We have come into your home and behaved disgracefully. I am so very sorry, it has been a long and tiring journey from our homeland.”
Mrs. Pendleton glanced at her glowering husband. Surely his own father wouldn’t hurl her out on her ear? But Mrs. Pendleton smiled gently to Orsini. “It’s quite all right, dear, I get fractious myself after being thrown about in a carriage for hours on end!” When Orsini smiled back after this remark, Mrs. Pendleton grinned broadly in return.
Ambrose managed to restrain a sigh of relief but, all the same, he wondered how his mother would react once she realized that her new acquaintance was only an invention and that Cosima was only present for a deception.
“I can’t pretend I’m happy at all I have heard.” Mr. Pendleton looked pointedly at Ambrose. “But let us speak of it no more today. The fault is not yours, young lady, but Captain Pendleton’s.”
It made a change for Ambrose to incur his father’s displeasure for something he hadn’t done. And to be glad of it, too. Ambrose smiled at Orsini, impressed by his friend’s acting skills, because the character of Cosima gazed at him as if she actually loved him. As the notion crossed Ambrose’s mind Orsini smiled, a radiant, beaming smile.
But a terrible notion struck Ambrose. While his alleged profligate behavior could save him from banishment to America, might his father not consider such ungentlemanly behavior worthy of punishment? Ambrose might be rewarded with a trip beyond the seas after all.
“We’ll get all this sorted out, I am sure,” Mr. Pendleton told him. Yet Ambrose knew they must play this unexpected scenario with infinite care. There would be questions, of that he was sure.
How had he not mentioned her since his grand tour? Was this not just a seduction, a fancy? And, of course, there could be no wedding, for there was no real Cosima, there was only Orsini, an actor playing a role.
“Mrs. Pendleton, perhaps you would take the young lady to a nice quiet chamber where she might gather herself. Mr. Tarbottom, you and I shall retire to my study and discuss business. Ambrose, go about your own business, if you would, sir.”
The Captain and the Theatrical Page 6
