CHAPTER 12: Temptation

For the week after Christmas Mr. Fairweather asked his leading players to choose roles for their benefits, to launch the fortnight of "Holiday Sensations" he hoped would close out their season in Kelsingham with enough profit to finance the next leg of their rural tour.

The manager chose to restage the Pantomime, and Jack had to go on for Clown, since Alphonse was away in Bristol. George Plumleigh, a great favorite with the local people, chose to play the villainous Sir Giles Overreach in A New Way To Pay Old Debts for his ben, as he did every year. The next night, Mrs. Swan was featured in an opera and a burletta. 

Two days after that, Richard Gabriel was to repeat his Malvolio in Twelfth Night as the after-piece, with one of his most popular farces for the main. 

For extra impact, Fairweather had bills printed up introducing "Mrs.Lightfoot and her Brother, Mr. Dance, the new Kembles, as Viola and Sebastian." Richard Gabriel had spent one entire day promoting the event among his acquaintances in Bath and had returned with every box and half the pit and gallery pledged.

But early in the afternoon of the performance day, Charlotte Fairweather sank into a dangerous fever from which she could not be raised. A midwife was sent for and as the anxious hours wore on, Miles Fairweather refused to leave her bedside.

"Madame F does not want a vigil," Mr. Ingram told the company at the playhouse. "She desires the performance to go on, especially with all of Mr. Gabriel’s people coming from out of town. But Mr. F regrets he cannot go on for Duke Orsino."

"Can no one be picked up for the part?" someone asked.

"We go on in four hours," the prompter sighed. "And it's too large a part for any of you to double, the Duke overlaps with everyone in the final scene. I'd have a go at it myself, Gabriel, but I’m not up in the lines and I'm afraid I would reflect poorly on you in front of your public."

"Could you take a smaller part?" Tory ventured. "Sebastian?"

"Sebastian?" echoed Ingram, who was short and sandy-haired. "I might, at that. But I hardly resemble your twin, Mrs. Lightfoot."

"Perhaps not, but my brother, Jack, can play the Duke."

Everybody looked at Jack.

"Is that so, Mr. Dance?" asked Ingram. "You know this part?"

Jack experienced an instant of rebellious jitters; it had been so long. But he felt Richard’s anxious eyes upon him. And Tory’s.

"I do, sir. I’ve played it often enough." After four years in the provinces as a lad, he had played everything.

"Do you need a rehearsal?"

"Not if you don’t," Jack smiled, an odd sense of light-headedness flooding him. His wits numbing, no doubt.

"I certainly shall," declared Ingram. "Find me a dark wig, Mr. Amos. And bring me the book."

"Would it not be more practical to put Mr. Harding back in for Sebastian and take Antonio yourself?" suggested Mrs. Kennett. "It was his role before."

Harding had to calculate if he would lose or gain advantage by this change, but once he agreed to it, the company lost no time in arranging things. As Jack was called into the wardrobe to be fitted for Fairweather’s costume, Richard sidled over to him, eyes downcast.

"I am . . . indebted to you, Jack," he murmured. "Again."

"Save your thanks until you’ve seen me play."



The main farce was a roaring success, Richard’s every drollery applauded by the crowded house.

"Well, it’s Gabriel’s typical crowd, isn’t it?" muttered Harding to Plumleigh backstage, as Tory passed them. "The mollyhouses of Bath are standing empty tonight, depend upon it."

But Tory paid him no mind, too caught up watching as Jack made his first entrance for Twelfth Night, demanding music, as Mr. Amos, who doubled as musician, sawed away industriously on the fiddle from the opposite wings. Self-mocking disdain sharpened Jack’s voice as he begged that his taste for love might sicken and die, and the play was under way. Tory had often heard Miles Fairweather deliver this opening speech in his genial manner, highlighting the most poetical phrases as if he were pointing them out to a classroom of scholars. Jack found an urgency in the lines, mocking his own romantic despair even as he gave himself up to it, and the Duke gained a vitality Tory had not noticed before.

But she had not realized what it would mean to play a romantic part opposite Jack. The lines of love talk she had traded so glibly with Miles Faitrweather seared when addressed to Jack. Tory felt a new kinship for Viola, disguised as Cesario, struggling to conceal her passion for the one love forbidden her by all moral and natural laws. And her turmoil brought poignancy to their playing, for the house which had come to laugh at Richard Gabriel’s eccentric Malvolio and idle away the rest grew attentive for Tory’s scenes with Jack, caught up in the anxiety of the boy who dared not confess his love for the man.

When all disguises were stripped away and all the lovers reconciled, the company formed its line onstage for their bows. Tory and Jack were obliged to make theirs together and tradition called for a closing embrace. Miles Fairweather had always given her an avuncular buss on the cheek. But when she turned to face Jack, she was utterly lost, delirious with the heat from the lamps and the hooting and cheering from the house and the momentary pressure of Jack’s body against hers. And Jack became her flesh, her bone. She could no more let go of him than she could have stepped out of her own skin. His soft kiss only missed her mouth by a hair's breadth, to the scandal of all; his eyes bored into hers, and she nodded as if he had spoken. Yes.

They broke apart to face the audience, two hands still fastened together, as Richard strode past them to the front of the stage to receive his ovation. Their hands were still clasped as the curtain descended and as the players dispersed, Jack dragged Tory into the shadowy wings for a second hasty embrace.

"Where?" she breathed against his ear.

"My room. Richard will be out. Take the back stairs."

But Tory could feel too many avid eyes pretending not to watch them, so she  peeled herself away and hurried off.

Fortunately, the ladies in the dressing room were too abuzz over the latest news of Mrs. Fairweather to waste any gossip on Tory. That lady's fever had broken, and she and the babe she carried were out of immediate danger. It shamed Tory that she had not had a thought to spare for poor Mrs. Fairweather; her only thought was to get out of her costume, out of her make-up, out of the playhouse and back into Jack’s arms. No power on earth could stop her now.
    
Outside the playhouse, she waited an eternity in the shadows for the crowds to thin, then crossed to the Blue Fox. She shrank into the mean shelter of a darkened doorway when she saw Richard Gabriel in evening clothes emerge from the tavern with a younger man with vivid red hair. It seemed like hours before Gabriel and his friend finally rode away in a carriage. Then Tory slipped round to the alley behind the tavern, climbed the servants’ back stairway, and bustled down the shadowy hallway to Jack's room.

"Rusty." Jack scarcely breathed her name, catching her by the waist and drawing her inside, pushing the door behind him with his hip as he pulled her to him. She had forgotten how good he smelled, how good he tasted, how good he felt, and for a moment they were unable to move, collapsed against the door together, clinging to each other. Jack pushed her cloak back from her face with a gentle, clumsy hand. "B’god, I can’t believe how long it’s been . . . "

He lifted her face and fed her mouth to his for a long, ravenous kiss. Tory yanked her loosened cloak free of the door handle as they staggered another step or two into the room.

"Oh, hombre . . . " she gasped, but their hands and bodies were speaking faster than their wits could tonight. She tore away her cloak and Jack fumbled open her collar and feasted on her neck and throat. Her hands clawed up the back of his shirt until it pulled free of his trousers and she somehow managed to wrestle it off over his head.

They stumbled halfway across the room in this manner, tearing at fabric and clutching at the flesh underneath, kissing each other whenever and wherever they could until Jack peeled away her chemise and froze, staring at her body.

"Hellfire, Rusty, what have they done to you?" He put out one finger to touch one of the bright pink marks pressed into her flesh from just under her breasts to her waist, two vertical stripes down the middle, and smaller marks at angles on either side, as if she had been branded.

"It’s only the boning. From the stays," Tory apologized. Jack’s hand, so insistent a moment before, grew tender as he caressed one brutal mark. "It will fade. It’s all right."

"No, it's not," Jack protested, sinking down before her, trying to kiss away the marks of civilization on her body. Tory half-closed her eyes and swayed against his hungry mouth; then he straightened and scooped her up in his arms, staggered the last couple of steps to his bed and tumbled her across it and himself on top of her, sinking at last into her eager arms.

Jack wanted to go much more slowly, to rediscover Tory inch by inch, to draw the lovemaking out, to make it last. But her hands were too demanding, roving up his belly and chest and down his scarred back, pulling him to her. He was rocking inside her before he knew it, as rapid and sure as a heartbeat, and all he knew was the warm, deep cradle of her body and his own desperate hunger and her ragged breath shaping his name like an incantation.

They had not spoken or moved in so long, Jack wondered if Tory had fallen asleep. It would be so easy, as drugged with pleasure as they both were, but so dangerous. Then he felt her sigh against his chest.
 

"We have to tell them," she said, very quietly.

"I know." Jack sighed too. "But it must be the right moment. They’ve so much else on their plate just now, with poor Mrs. Fairweather’s condition."

Tory did not believe there would ever be a right moment to explain the enormity of their deceit, that not only were they not siblings, as promoted in the bills, but . . . what would they be called? Adulterers? Libertines? Casual unions between white men and ladies of color were commonplace in the Indies — not that there was anything at all casual in the way she and Jack felt about each other. But things were so different, here. Any scandal would shame the Fairweathers, who had been so kind to them.

"It would be nice to be able to tell the truth. For once," she said.

She felt a slight vibration of laughter in Jack’s chest. 

"When has there ever been any refuge for us in the truth?"

"I mean this truth," Tory answered, rising up long enough to kiss him slowly, once. "The only one that matters."

"We’ll tell them soon," Jack murmured. "I promise." He shifted a little, cradling her closer. "I suppose I ought to think about getting you back," he went on sadly. "It must be very late."

"Oh, no, there’s plenty of time. It was the nightingale, not the lark," she teased. "Don’t send me back, yet."

"Oh, Rusty  . . . "

"Not yet, hombre. Not yet . . . "


Richard Gabriel hurried along the dark street. He had his collar up and his topper pulled low, but he wasn’t thinking about the icy, bone-numbing cold. He was thinking about Ginger, with the same disappointment and regret he always felt after an encounter with Ginger. It was worse tonight, costlier, because Richard had had to provide a theatre ticket and a room at the coaching inn to bring the lad over from Bath and perhaps for that reason, Richard had expected more. Ginger, of course, knew nothing of the drama and cared less. He was not much for conversation, much less empathy, and Richard never seemed to remember this about him until after, when the long, unfillable hours of the rest of the night stretched out before them both. Some nights, Richard didn’t mind. But tonight, he did.

Still, Ginger had an unholy pull on him. He was a good-looking fellow in his rough way, red-headed or not, small and nicely muscled, like a young wrestler, with the most impertinent behind. You could take high tea off that boy’s behind. It was a great pity he was such a vulgar, uneducated creature. Further proof, if any more were needed, that men like himself were the Lord’s greatest experiment or His cruellest joke, made to sin and repent and reform or else suffer endless torment. Never did Richard more yearn to reform than after an hour with Ginger; how it would amuse that lewd boy to hear he was an instrument of God.

And suppose he was, Richard thought. The Bible said 'God shall bring every work into judgement, with every secret thing, whether it be good or whether it be evil.' How often had Richard given in to evil in secret? How often had he failed to resist temptation with Ginger, with all of them? How many opportunities to reform had he thrown away? How many more would he be given?

The playhouse was long dark by now, but there was still some commerce in the taproom of the Blue Fox, even at this hour. Richard had no wish to meet anyone else from the theatre tonight, so he slipped round to the back stairs, suddenly very weary. He would spend an hour on his knees in the parish church tomorrow, seeking comfort in vain, for he knew his repentance could mean nothing without genuine reform. And he wanted to reform, to please God, but for these cravings he could not seem to —

He came back to the moment when he found the door to his room unlatched. Had thieves crept up the tavern stairs? He tensed and nudged the door inward an inch or two. His own things, on the left-hand side of the room seemed to be in order, nothing disturbed. Belair’s cot against the back wall looked as tidy as he had left it, but there was a dim light burning from within. Had Jack returned already? Surely he would be out tonight, celebrating his triumph.

Richard pushed the door further open, but paused when he spied what looked like a litter of rags on the floor. Not far from his own foot was some distasteful object of a muddy-looking Scotch plaid and beyond it, a shirt. And another. Further in, Richard saw a twisted shimmer of some gauzy stuff, not the sort of item to be found in Jack’s wardrobe, as far as he knew. Like a man in thrall, Richard could not keep his eyes from following the trail of clothing to the corner of Jack’s bed, and up. All he could see from where he stood was a limp arm and a section of exposed leg upon the bed, with a hand — a foreign hand, a female hand —resting on the hip. So Jack was celebrating, after all.

Common Christian decency told Richard he should back away, shut the door and hie himself down to the taproom for an hour. But the image of that naked hip burned in his mind. Just one look, he would not disturb them. What could be the harm? And Richard nudged the door open and slipped into the room.

He caught his breath at the heedless sprawl of Jack’s body across the tangle of bedclothes, intersected by a couple of the woman’s limbs. They both slept as if drugged. Richard’s eyes roved up Jack’s long leg and over his thigh, partly obscured by a female arm. At the last moment, Richard’s greedy eyes rose to the face of the woman sleeping there. 

Top: Malvolio, self-portrait of actor Edward Petherbridge in the role
Above: Costume sketch for Duke Orsino