Wilful Impropriety (2 page)

New Jersey/Mexico, December 2011

With a name like Portia Nightingale, the girl was destined to become an actress.

That, and she was born in a dressing room.

That, and she was abandoned to be raised by a roving theater troupe.

That, and she had a terrible time telling the truth.

Considering these factors, it’s safe to say that from the earliest age, Miss Nightingale’s sense of reality was entirely subjective. One might say warped.

But she knew every single word Shakespeare had written, even the “problematic” plays, and that was a priceless skill in a profession that was respected only a fraction more than prostitution. In this elegant, gilded age of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria’s inimitable, empirical reign, skilled adaptability meant survival.

The day she met Mr. Smith in some northern province, however, her methods of survival would broach new and intriguing territory. He quickly became the most interesting thing that had ever happened to her in her eighteen years of life.

The production was
The Tempest
. The town was drab, dull, unresponsive, and her Ariel was praised with lukewarm applause. She knew it was her very best, and that Will Shakespeare would be proud. She didn’t need an ovation to prove it. A tiny candle of confidence flickered deep in her bosom, kept alive by a more minuscule bellows of pride.

Dusting the white powder out of her brown-blond curls kept reasonably short for maximum adaptability between roles, Portia padded barefoot backstage to her “dressing room” (a few set flats angled to create a simulation of privacy). She began to wipe the pale greasepaint off her face that had made her into an androgynous, colorless spirit, revealing fair skin, a few freckles and youthful color brushing high cheekbones.

She had a “classic” beauty, “one those Pre-Raphaelites would covet,” a theater manager once told her before trying to seduce her. She resisted. She was fired. Thus, she hesitated plying her trade in the London circle. Directors, producers, and patrons expected too much of an actress, in every way. In the provinces, a girl could get by without all the sexual politics, and Portia played whatever roles the rest of the small touring company didn’t want, which was the only reason why they kept her around and reasonably well fed. She was unbuttoning her vest to access and unravel the binding that kept her small breasts flat against her torso, when she noticed an intruder standing at the corner of her dressing-room flats. Whirling to look him dead in the eye, Portia snapped to attention, her posture tall and defiant against attack or interrogation.

He was tall and angled. A mop of unruly dark locks poked out from beneath a weather-worn, wide-brimmed hat, his burgundy coat was long and a striped cravat was undone but looped loosely about his neck. Portia honestly couldn’t tell if he was attractive, but he was compelling, young, and vibrant and yet full of gravity. Ageless, somehow. His expression enigmatic, his stare parceled her out piece by piece like Olivia’s personal inventory to Viola in
Twelfth Night
:
Item, two lips, indifferent red, item, two gray eyes, with lids to them . . .
His dissecting stare continued as he spoke.

“Don’t undo your paint,” the man said, holding out a longfingered hand. “Don’t undress. Please. In fact, tell me nothing about you. If you are male or female, I cannot tell, and I do not want to know. You’ve an incredible timbre to your voice—it’s just that perfect, median range, do you know that?”

She cocked her head at him. “I’ve been told my voice is useful. Malleable. Keeps me working. Any part, whatever needs playing, doesn’t matter to me. Why?”

“Just tell me your last name. Please.”

Portia blinked, baffled. “Nightingale.”

The man laughed and bounced on his feet. “Perfect. Nightingale you shall be! Tell me, do you have any interest in breaking out upon the London stage?”

Portia folded her arms. “I was just thinking I’d rather avoid the politics.”

“What if we
created
the politics?”

“What if you told me who you are and what you want?”

“I’m not asking who
you
are, am I?”

“You asked for a name. What’s yours? Coming backstage uninvited is a piss-poor way to introduce yourself.”

“Mr. Smith. Just Smith. Will you come with me? You could be anyone. Anything. Just as you say, whatever needs playing. I could make you anything. You are utterly brilliant on the boards. Come with me.”

Portia blushed beneath her greasepaint despite the unexpected boldness of this conversation. “I don’t know you. It would hardly be wise to follow a stranger to London.”

“You’ve a family?”

“No.”

“No one to miss you, then. Come on.”

Portia set her jaw. She hadn’t expected pity, but she did expect the man to talk a bit of sense. “Tell me your full name, your aims, and why I should entertain your company a moment longer.”

“My aim is to make you a London sensation. Something and someone they’ve never seen. I am a manager and director and I’ve great plans, I just needed the right actor. I have found, now, in you, the right actor for
every
role. And I’ve no name other than Mr. Smith, so don’t go around asking about it. You’ll not find a thing save for the various Covent Garden theaters where I built my roving reputation. Together we will build something far greater—”

“What do you mean, you don’t have a name other than Mr. Smith?”

“I mean exactly that. Now. Give me Viola’s speech, if you will. ‘Build me a willow cabin—’”

“Shouldn’t you have auditioned me
before
absconding to London with me?” She scoffed, unsettled and intrigued. How did he know she’d just been thinking about
Twelfth Night
?

“Who said anything about absconding?” Smith scoffed. “I shall take you as my willing companion. And my star. With no obligations other than rehearsing, performing brilliantly on the stage, and maintaining your mystery. Now, ‘Build me a willow cabin—’”

Portia shook her head and began the speech she could recite in her sleep and backward.

How could someone not have a name? Or not wish it to be known?

What scandal did he hide?

How could she trust a man who didn’t have a name?

A name was everything. It told the world who you were.

Considering her tenuous world was made up solely of characters, greasepaint and foreshortened walls, a birth name was something to grab hold of. Something personal and real. She found his refusal to tell her his name profoundly upsetting. But possibly freeing. She finished the speech.

Smith clapped. “Very good. Now, give me some of Sebastian—”

“But I—”

“But you
do
know it. You’re a talent that knows every word, don’t deny me, I can tell.”

How could this man grasp anything, truly, about her? Smith seemed to know her, though. His bright brown eyes, more gold than brown really, pierced her to the core. It was as if he’d anticipated how she’d respond, as if he’d written the script of these moments himself. Had he spoken with her castmates, who might have told him that, yes, she could step in to play any role (and had, often) at any time? She couldn’t imagine any one of her crew that would say kind words about her. While they were civil, none of them was kind, and all of them were jealous. Smith’s expression was more kind than any look she’d received in a long time.

Her protests at Sebastian clearly would mark her as a female. Surely he
had
to see the truth of her—but it seemed Smith refused any clues. Considering she did know every word the Bard composed—and that was her only useful trait to offer the world—Portia felt a deep, compelling urge to impress this strange man.

And she was quite sure, as she performed the lines of Viola’s male twin, Sebastian: “I am yet so near the manners of my mother, that upon the least occasion more mine eyes will tell tales of me . . .” that Portia’s eyes
did
tell tales of her. She was sure her eyes spoke of a hunger she didn’t know she had, an emptiness she didn’t know she needed filled until this stranger had appeared, dangling a curious carrot of adventure before her.

“Brilliant!” Smith applauded. “No one would question you as Sebastian. Or Viola. Or any of the young persons of the great canon! I’ll set you up at the Royal, playing Sebastian in
Twelfth Night
for one week, and then the following week, at the Lyceum, playing Viola. I’m not going to have you be some poor patron saint of one house and one company. True freedom means gracing every London stage, never overstaying your welcome, and never answering questions. It will add to your mystery. I promise you. I only take risks I believe in. And I believe in you.”

He was so passionate and yet so matter-of-fact that Portia found herself struck dumb, unable to argue, unable to refute him. Unable to say no to this
mad
proposition. Her awestruck silence was apparently enough for him. A contract.

“Good, then!” Smith bounced forward, handing her an envelope. “We’ll begin rehearsing tomorrow. Ten A.M. The Royal. Don’t say goodbye, don’t tell anyone where you’re going or what you’re doing. If you have second thoughts about disappearing, then this conversation and this idea dies and ends here, and you hand me back that envelope with notes and train tickets. Are you willing to discard your old self and life for a grand new experiment?”

Her mind spun. She thought of the many petty goings-on of her days on the road. She thought of how little anyone truly cared for her, how much she longed to lose herself in London and be rid of the countryside forever. She’d always loved London but she’d been so scared the city, and the people in it, would eat her alive. But with Smith, this odd, indomitable Smith as her benefactor, and a new life with a malleable identity as only she could create it . . . Why not?

“All right then.”

“Good!” Smith shook Portia’s hand. “Very good! Now. You arrive male, Nightingale, and you see to it that no one thinks otherwise. You have no first name, no pet name. I’m Mr. Smith, you’re Mr. Nightingale. The following week, for the reversal, Miss Nightingale, we’ll need to arrange chaperones and all that nonsense,” he muttered.

How odd.

No one, even Smith, would know who she was beneath the changing trappings.

In a way, it was every actor’s dream to wholly invent, reinvent, and invent again, on the grandest of stages, one’s very life.

Fascinating.

That night, she packed her meager bag of things, said nothing, and slipped out at first light without so much as a second glance behind her as the distant whistle of the train approached the tiny station.

Smith must have gone on ahead to London, for Portia was alone on her morning train ride. But that was all right, in a fine suitcoat, waistcoat, and top hat (stolen from the dressing room with a few pence left behind for poor Heidi, who would throw a fit to discover her finest contemporary male pieces missing) she needed no chaperone. While she’d seen the world through a male lens via Shakespeare’s text, all the sixteenth-century words of fools, nobles, and gentlemen could hardly have prepared her for the freedoms of being a contemporary male in Queen Victoria’s England. She was
free
. . .

Of course, freedoms had their limits, even in the
terribly
modern 1890s.

Mr. Wilde was about to be brought into court on charges of “gross indecency” with young men. Some things, even for men, were off limits. If men in her company were of
that
persuasion, they were utterly discreet. But from what she knew of Mr. Wilde, that simply wasn’t his style. A flamboyant, generous, genius soul, an innovative, modern, luminescent candle against the constant rehashing of the Bard, his trial and shame would prove a loss for the theatrical community. And a warning shot across the bow for any who dared veer from a “moral and upstanding lifestyle.”

The train into London gave her food for thought of the myriad possibilities for her life. She watched how people watched her, and felt reinvented down to the very bones. Small towns grew larger and larger until the hulking, sprawling behemoth of London, great sooty London with its dragon-bellows factories and its hellfire of industry and innovation, rose before her like a great Tower of Babel, its denizens thronging its labyrinthine streets. Everyone and everything she gazed upon became a course of study, and she took note of all attributes and quirks, anything that would be useful in imitation and foolery. She had to blend in with London, she had to be one with its multifaceted spirit.

As per instructions and a key left in the envelope, Portia arrived in London and hailed a hansom cab to take “Mr. Nightingale” to “his” new home, a small Covent Garden flat, the address of which would change every other week around the environs. Smith did not give her long to settle in before it was time for rehearsal.

Portia tried not to gape as she set foot inside the theater, all golden and velvet and sparkling gaslit sconces that were about to be wholly replaced with the new electric light . . . She realized how used to unadorned, provincial places she’d become. This was a palace. A palace of her new birth. Reborn a star who no one could get too close to, for she would burn
so
bright . . .