The Captain and the Theatrical

by Catherine Curzon

  Cosima gazed up at the painting, her eyes roaming over the magnificent canvas, taking in every inch of it, every individual piece of pigment that went to make up this chronicle of the family’s early days. Ambrose watched her as she did, seeing wonder in her eyes and such love that it almost stole his breath. How he adored his friend, the man who would risk everything to keep them together.

  “This is magnificent,” Cosima eventually breathed. “And, Pen, you are so very, very tiny!”

  “So very, very fat! Look at those big round cheeks! And why was it so important that I showed my mother the rattle? I’m sure she’d seen it a hundred times!”

  “A christening present from a viscount,” Mrs. Pendleton told them, in hushed, reverential tones. Mr. Tarbottom nodded approvingly and his daughter cooed but now Ambrose was looking to his father, who was regarding his wife with a look of affection and—

  Sadness, he realized, and he rarely saw Barnaby Pendleton sad. The couple had argued, Ambrose knew it without a doubt, and it sent a pang of regret through him, for theirs was not a union built on conflict. What had his father endured in childhood, pushing down the memory of his own errant parent as though he was never there in the first place, making Cosima the target for his ire against that earlier actress as though all women of the stage must now carry the cross she had forged for Barnaby Pendleton’s sorry father.

  Not for the first time, Barnaby Pendleton was wrong.

  “Now then,” Mr. Pendleton said suddenly, turning around to address the group. “Let us process into the drawing room. This has put me in the mood for a little entertainment. Captain Pendleton, will you play for us awhile before the ladies sing?”

  “Tradition can hang,” Mr. Tarbottom agreed. “We would love to hear you play, Captain!”

  Ambrose rarely played now, and never in company as the tremble might come into his hand and make a clown of him. But he cared not if it did tonight. “I would be happy to, Mr. Tarbottom.”

  Ambrose went ahead of the party into the drawing room. He pushed back the lid of the piano, uttering a silent prayer. Please, God, let the thing be in tune.

  His parents and their guests—and the parrot—processed in, while Ambrose played a sonata. He tried to find something in the notes, as each plaintively rolled from his fingertips, that might carry him out of this world of determined industrialists and their daughters, of fathers who measured everything in gold.

  Ambrose moved into a waltz, playing at sarcastic speed. The notes hurtled from his steady hands as the music moved by faster and faster, losing control like a desperate horse escaping its reins.

  “Who would have thought the little plump lad from the painting outside would grow into such a man as this!” He heard his father’s voice, filled with pride despite their conflict, and knew he was addressing the portrait of his son in uniform.

  “The brave Captain Pendleton!” Harriet declared to the room. At which remark, Ambrose played faster still, his fingers almost stumbling on the keys as the tremble returned and took over his hand.

  “Our very own British hero!” Tarbottom declared. “At the vanguard of Philadelphia’s industrial might, with me as his guide and mentor!”

  Ambrose thundered to a crescendo and the piano was suddenly silent. He turned on the stool to face the party and briskly brushed his hands.

  “My dear Cosima,” Mrs. Pendleton declared. “Will you sing for us?”

  “Miss Tarbottom sings marvelously,” her father told them quickly. “Perhaps our young ladies might join forces. Mrs. Pendleton, what say you?”

  “I should love to hear the two of them sing!” Mrs. Pendleton replied.

  “Figaro’s Letter would be perfect,” Cosima told him, rising to her feet and crossing to sift through the music available. Ambrose was sure it would, not only for the voices it needed but perhaps the rather germane subject matter. Cosima certainly shared Orsini’s mischief, it seemed!

  Harriet glided across the room on tiny steps that barely disturbed her gown, hands neatly folded. She leaned in at Orsini’s elbow.

  “You must sing the soprano,” Cosima told her, holding out the music for Harriet to inspect. “I freely confess that I cannot always do justice to the highest notes.”

  “Now, ladies, are we ready?” Ambrose placed the score on the music stand and rested his fingers on the piano’s keys, looking from one woman to the other. His hand had stopped shaking now, and he softly counted the singers in.

  Only as they began and Cosima came to sit beside him on the stool did Ambrose realize her ruse. She had surrendered the larger role and taken the more comic, for what was Orsini if not famed for his comedy? Here she was transformed into Susanna, her brow furrowed and her character emerging as she mimed taking down the dictation of the cunning young countess, played rather aptly by the cunning daughter of a cunning industrialist. The rolling of her eyes was just so, the warning looks of bewildered surprise perfectly timed and though Harriet might possess a sweet voice, she seemed unwilling or unable to interpret the song as her adversary was doing, rigid and poised while at her side Cosima pantomimed and playacted and stole the scene from under her nose. On a few occasions Ambrose saw Cosima look to Harriet in an effort to involve her in the comical scene but the other woman was too focused on wringing what emotion she could throttle out of the piece. It was left for the Italian to walk off with the plaudits, Cosima’s mimes and attitudes growing sillier with each passing note.

  Mrs. Pendleton clapped and laughed, clearly loving every moment. Ambrose glanced up from the piano to see her, and smiled. His gaze moved to the Tarbottoms, who were unimpressed, which made Ambrose smile all the more.

  When the song came to an end, Tarbottom told his daughter, “Give us your Ruhe Sanft.”

  He said this with a sly smile that suggested this was something of a specialty. No doubt this was Harriet’s crowning glory, and it would now be employed to devastating effect. “She will break your heart.”

  Cosima, of course, retained her place beside Ambrose and whispered to him devilishly, “Or shatter your windows.”

  Ambrose nudged Orsini, biting his lip to avoid laughing once again.

  “Very well. I have the music here. Do bear with.” Ambrose shuffled through the scores until he found the one he needed. If only it were Orsini who was singing instead.

  Harriet did a very good job of her sweet rendition—one could almost suppose that she was capable of loving someone, even someone who didn’t have a vast fortune. But the way she took her breaths at the beginning of each line told Ambrose that this was a young lady who had been subjected to music lessons, drilled relentlessly like a private learning to charge with a bayonet. Her voice quavered slightly on her highest notes, in a way designed by music tutors to tug at the heart, which all seemed a little too obvious to Ambrose’s ears.

  Gentleman that he was, however, Ambrose played on, and when Harriet ended her song, he turned to her and clapped.

  “Bravo, Harriet, a wonder!” Mr. Tarbottom decided. “Accomplishments and beauty, her mother’s daughter to her toes, is she not.”

  Her stern faced, thin-lipped mother’s daughter. Indeed she was.

  “Very pleasant,” Mrs. Pendleton replied, as if she had been asked her opinion on the soup they had had for dinner. Still perched beside him, Cosima now rose to her feet.

  “I have a little piece to perform, a duet. I need no partner, just…” She turned to the music scores atop the piano and took one from the bottom of the pile. “This is a pretty and funny little song from a piece that Viscount Hartington hopes to produce in London. It has never been heard in public before. An amusing duet for a star-crossed girl and her barrel-chested, pompous but lovable papa. If you would, Capitano.”

  She put the handwritten score before him—the song from Fleet Fortune.

  Ambrose’s hand shook so much when he realized what song Orsini had chosen that he had to sit on his fingers to make the trembling stop. “Ahhh…it is familiar, Cosima. It uses, I believe, a simple m
elody, so I should be able to play without too much trouble. I shouldn’t wish to ruin the song’s debut!”

  His hand now still, Ambrose placed the music on the stand in front of him.

  “One can hardly sing two roles.” Cosima beckoned to Pagolo and he fluttered carefully from Mrs. Pendleton’s shoulder to the mantel, where he took up his place on the edge. Then Cosima inclined her head to the parrot, whom Ambrose now realized was intended to be her partner in the duet. A pompous little fellow indeed.

  “Captain Pendleton.” She beamed and placed one delicate hand on Ambrose’s shoulder. “Would you be so kind, sir?”

  “Absolutely.” Ambrose decided to show off a little himself, and embellished the introduction with his own stylistic quirks, until he began the song.

  And Cosima, who had already almost stolen the show, now claimed it as her own. The words that he had written, the little melody they had composed together in Italy, now sprang into life as though they were on the stage at Covent Garden. It was as funny as it was beautifully sung—by Cosima at least —and it was so absurd that it was impossible not be charmed. Unless you were Harriet and Mrs. Tarbottom, of course, though they were doing a passable impression of amusement even though their faces looked like they might crack, forced to smile too widely for too long.

  Cosima and Pagolo performed their duet and, to Ambrose’s delight, he heard his father’s chuckles turn into belly laughs. He gave little spontaneous applause now and then, too, his foot tapping along in time with the music each time Cosima flicked her fan toward him. It was a showstopping performance, and by the time it was concluded, with Pagolo finishing up perched atop Cosima’s head, it had turned Harriet Tarbottom quite, quite green.

  “Oh, Cosima, love—you are right to be on the stage!” Mrs. Pendleton smiled fondly. Mr. Pendleton was nodding his enthusiastic agreement, his cheeks ruddy with humor and alcohol.

  “A pretty comical piece,” Tarbottom agreed with no trace of the annoyance that he must surely have felt. He looked to his daughter and said, “Harriet’s comedy is sublime but her soprano is angelic—it would be a travesty indeed to employ it in anything less than the finest arias. Yet I think comical pieces can be so well chosen for those of us who lack the clarity of Harriet’s own soprano.”

  Ambrose nearly snapped down the lid of the piano. “Would anyone else care to play?”

  “You play so beautifully,” Cosima told him as she took a seat beside her mother. “Will you not give us a little more to accompany our conversation?”

  “I’d be delighted.” Ambrose gave a formal bow and returned to the piano. He flipped the piano lid open again. Lazy afternoons spent doodling at the piano while he pondered his plays had not been ill-spent, and he nimbly darted his fingers along the keyboard, chasing after each note. The tremble had gone. For now, at least.

  “I am not a man with a love of the theater,” Mr. Pendleton admitted, “but when that play appears, I might be convinced to venture along to see it. I confess I have not laughed so hard in a long time. The parrot put me in mind of someone, though I cannot think who!”

  Ambrose was about to suggest they go to the theater as a family, but the specter of a square rigger with him on it, heading out across the Atlantic, robbed him of that thought. He shook the vision away. If Barnaby Pendleton had found much in the song to laugh at, then surely—surely there was a chance that his future might be saved? Perhaps his play was good enough after all, not just scribbled whimsy.

  “What a shame that Amby won’t be able to join us,” Mrs. Pendleton remarked. She sipped at her drink with pursed lips.

  Presently, as the conversation ebbed and flowed, Mr. Pendleton excused himself as his son knew he was wont to do after one glass of claret too many. The gathering seemed barely to notice his absence, even though even by his standards it seemed drawn out. Eventually, however, as Ambrose played on and the ladies discussed the finer points of Harriet’s immense talent for needlepoint, the door opened again and his father returned.

  He crossed to the window to peer out at his kingdom and, as the ladies chatted and the parrot dozed, Tarbottom joined his fellow captain of industry to survey the grounds. The two men were speaking, Ambrose could see, but their voices were hushed, their topic of conversation a mystery. Tarbottom was all confidence, he surmised, and had won Pendleton over wholeheartedly.

  Ambrose’s fingertips froze above the piano keys. Was this really a man he could take on and win? He glanced at his own portrait. The artist had followed his mother’s demand and added a brave glitter to her son’s eye, but that bravery was not pretend. It had carried Captain Pendleton onto the field of battle at Waterloo. He had helped to defeat Napoleon, and whatever Theodore Tarbottom might think about his wedding plans, Ambrose would defeat him.

  Or, at the very least, put up a fight that no fellow could be ashamed of.

  Chapter Sixteen

  It was torture to wish Cosima goodnight and retire to bed without knowing whether he would see Orsini again that night, but Ambrose had no choice. He couldn’t even hope to steal a moment with his father, for Mr. Tarbottom had monopolized him until the very last, talking of the vast returns Barnaby Pendleton’s investment promised and the future that awaited in Philadelphia. Yet Ambrose was a man who was used to the nuance of conversation—he was a playwright, after all—and he could hardly help but note that only one man seemed to be parting with any money and it wasn’t Theodore Tarbottom.

  “Capitano, are you abed?” Orsini’s voice was a singsong melody as he stepped into the room, clad in the bright suit he had worn for their picnic. “Today has been most eventful, has it not?”

  “I can’t think where to begin.” Ambrose embraced him and softly kissed Orsini’s cheek. “Although perhaps—let me apologize on behalf of my father. My mother told me a most tragic story today, which has been hidden from me all these years. My grandfather—Orsini, you do not look surprised?”

  “Your mother came to see Cosima this morning.” He slipped his arms around Ambrose’s waist. “I told her that you had not compromised the good, Catholic girl who so loves you and she told me in turn of your grandfather’s ruin. It has simply made me more determined, Pen. We will save you and see your father singing the praises of theatrical ladies, for we are not all ladies of dubious repute. Why, Mrs. Tarbottom is far more dubious than Cosima has ever been, and her daughter is more dubious than even that!”

  “She was—I did not imagine it, did I?—Mrs. Tarbottom is somewhat taken by Orsini?” Ambrose chuckled as he caressed Orsini’s beautiful face. “Mr. Tarbottom was certainly fascinated by Cosima’s bosom, or was that just your sapphire?”

  “Miss Harriet Tarbottom, of Philadelphia, was wearing the pearls stolen from Dowager Viscountess Hartington, I am sure of it.” He lifted his head to look at Ambrose. “Nobody knows jewels as I, Pen, and those pearls are the pearls of Lady H.”

  “I wonder if perhaps Tarbottom bought them, without realizing they were stolen?” Something, a notion he had not previously entertained, was nudging at the edge of Ambrose’s mind. “But there is also the very real chance that the Tarbottoms somehow contrived to steal the pearls. Though I cannot think why they should have bothered when they could easily buy whatever they wish.”

  “Tomorrow, Pen, I want you to do all you can to keep the ladies busy so that I might examine the jewels of Miss Tarbottom and send word back to the city, to ask those who know such things whether any of them might be purloined!” Orsini frowned. “Just this morning your mother agreed to invite the dowager to the ball. Let us see what she says when she sees those pearls, and what if Harriet is the creature who has liberated half a dozen other jewels during the season’s balls?”

  “Will we be in time, I wonder? But my goodness…I’m not sure I’m much good at entertaining ladies, though I shall do my best so that you can examine the jewels undisturbed.” Ambrose unfastened the ribbon from Orsini’s queue and ran his fingers through the loosened hair. “Unless that lady happens to be called Cosima,
that is.”

  “How I love you, and I long for the day when we walk arm in arm together as Captain and Mrs. Captain, the envy of all.” Orsini’s elegant fingers began to work at the knot of Ambrose’s cravat as the two men kissed again. “Oh, Pen, can we? Would it be a deception too far?”

  Ambrose stroked Orsini’s delicate face. “You are a woman when you are Cosima. So when you stand beside me at the altar in a gown, what objection can there be?”

  “You have yet to ask my mother for my hand in marriage.” The cravat whispered free and Orsini cast it aside. “She shall say yes. She is long since resigned to Cosima occupying five days out of every seven!” Then he moved his hands to Ambrose’s shoulders, holding him there. “I believe Mamma believes that there is a Cosima, that we have somehow conjured her from the rouge and powder!”

  “Perhaps Cosima was your twin, lodged at a palazzo in a different city?” Ambrose brought his hand between them and stroked it over the front of Orsini’s breeches. “But tonight, I am most certainly with the brother.”

  He smiled in reply, dark eyes glittering, and began to lazily unfasten Ambrose’s shirt. Once again Orsini’s hand caressed his lover’s chest through the fabric as, beneath Ambrose’s palm, his arousal was all too evident.

  Ambrose began to unbutton Orsini’s jacket. There were no words then, only kisses and their hands, shedding layers of silk and velvet until Orsini was easing Ambrose’s shirt over his head. He threw it aside and dipped his mouth to feather gossamer kisses over his lover’s strong shoulders.

  Ambrose stroked across Orsini’s chest, then down under the waistband of his breeches. “May I?” he whispered into Orsini’s hair.

  “You may,” came the breathless reply. “Please…”

  “Thank you, dear heart.” Ambrose popped open the buttons, slowly, teasing, and gasped as he reached inside to caress his lover’s erection. Orsini gave a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a whimper, one hand flying up to seize Ambrose’s shoulder again. The warmth and the heft of Orsini in his hand made Ambrose sigh. He carefully edged down Orsini’s breeches and took him more tightly, stroking with firm rhythm. “Oh, yes, definitely the brother.”