Chapter Eighteen
This was a monumental mistake.
Samuel had no clue why he’d thought this would be a good idea. It was, perhaps, the most foolish thing he had ever done.
Other than actually marry her, obviously.
“Hot pie, sir?” squawked a man wearing a stained bowler hat and a crooked, toothy grin.
Samuel smiled weakly. “No, thank you.”
“I got oyster pie and eel pie and fish pie and—”
“No, truly, I am not hungry,” said Samuel as his stomach rumbled.
Another traitorous part of his body. Now his stomach, previously his manhood. Probably at all times his brain.
The pie seller looked disappointed. “Why’d you come to Brighton, then, if not to have fish pie?”
It was an excellent question and not one Samuel thought he could answer. As his attention raked over the horizon, the ocean before him and the scent of salt in the air, he realized he had absolutely no idea why he was here.
Brighton.
It had seemed a good idea at the time. Get out of London, away from the pain of realizing that the woman he had married was still a complete stranger to himself—a ridiculous revelation when he had knowingly married a stranger to begin with—and get back to where it had all started.
Though perhaps in hindsight, his thought process had not been that careful. Now that Samuel came to think of it, he had bundled himself into a carriage that night and ordered the driver to just go to Brighton. Brighton, the place where he had first met Rosemary Morgan.
So not much thought had been involved.
The pie seller had moved along the beach, hoping to entice others with the stack of pies on a tray around his shoulders. In a strange way, Samuel rather missed his company.
It was lonely, standing here on the sandy beach and looking out across the ocean and knowing that he was forever parted from the woman he had been growing to love. Painful, to know that there would never be a connection like it.
“Not a disappointment, I hope.”
“Not a disappointment, no. Now be quiet, and do what you are told.”
Samuel pulled his mind away from that moment of intimacy and started to trudge along the beach.
There was no particular direction, nothing he was aiming for. Just trudging.
The air was cold, the afternoon fading. The hotel room Samuel had taken had been a mistake, the same hotel where he and Rose…where he and Lady Rose Morgan had resided before their ill-fated wedding. Every minute spent there was like a punishment.
Samuel tugged his greatcoat closer as his breath started to appear on the air. The beach was hardly populated at all, most of the residents clearly deciding that they could enjoy the beach view another time.
Like July.
He wondered if he would even still be married come July.
“Damn it, woman,” Samuel muttered. “Why did you have to keep so many secrets?”
The fact that he had given her few opportunities to tell him anything was neither here nor there, he told himself firmly.
So was the fact that they had not known each other when they’d been married.
And that, judging by the look of her face as she had revealed that the Marquess of Dalton was her father, some of her memories were truly painful.
Samuel stamped the beach off his boots as he left the beach and meandered through the Brighton streets.
The trouble was—the real trouble, he thought ominously, was that he had attempted to escape Rose and instead, he had come to a place that reminded him of her with every passing corner.
There. That was where they had run into each other. He had knocked her down, Samuel remembered with regret.
Over there. That was where they had lunched, and he had first suggested his ridiculous and most outlandish idea.
There was the part of the beach where they had walked. Samuel had assiduously avoided following in their footsteps, but it was a small town. He could not avoid the sight of it completely.
Samuel cleared his throat and the air blossomed around him.
Damn it. He knew the place he had been avoiding for the last two days, and his treacherous feet had led him right to it.
The Grand Theatre.
He looked up at the facade, wondering if he was brave enough or foolish enough to enter. After all, this had been the last place that Rose had worked her previous life. There were undoubtedly people who were inside right this moment who knew her…perhaps better than he had ever done.
The thought tasted bitter in his soul. Samuel had thought, for just a few days, that he and Rose had come to an unspoken understanding. That night on the hearthrug…he had been sure of it. And now he was sure of nothing.
Well, what did he have to lose?
Stepping forward and trying the handle, he was almost disappointed that it opened easily. The entrance hallway was empty, so he merely kept on walking through doors.
It’s like a church.
That was the first thing that rushed through his mind, that the space was like some sort of grand, Continental cathedral. High ceilings and faraway walls, pillars that made echoes bounce and candles everywhere.
Only when Samuel blinked did he realize that he was standing inside the theater itself. And he was not the only one. The theater was not packed, so this was not a public performance, and Samuel could not help but feel he was seeing something he ought not to.
“Deny thy father and refuse thy name!” cried a woman in a medieval-style gown, striding across the stage with her hand outstretched.
Samuel swallowed, lowering himself as quietly as he could onto a seat right at the back of the theater.
It was a coincidence, that was all. ‘Deny thy father’? Yes, that was what Rose had done. Denied her father to the point where she had not revealed her true parentage.
“Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,” continued the woman with a dewy expression, “and I’ll no longer be a Capulet!”
That’s the strange thing about women, Samuel thought dismally.
They marry, and they take on completely different names.
Morgan, indeed. The man had undoubtedly been a brute.
He had no evidence of that, but it was difficult not to take an instant and irrational dislike to a man who had previously wed his own bride.
The bride he had, in essence, paid to wed him.
“Shall I hear more?”
Samuel jolted. He had not spotted the young man in similarly medieval garb, though perhaps he had not been immediately supposed to. The actor was partially hidden by a pretend tree just to the left of the stage.
“Or shall I speak at this?” added the young man in a loud pretend whisper.
“’Tis but thy name that is my enemy,” said the actress dreamily, facing in the opposite direction quite on purpose. “Thou art thyself…”
She continued on, but at this point, Samuel’s thoughts strayed elsewhere.
This was Rose’s world. Strange, to think that she would have known this place better than anywhere else in England. Samuel had never thought much about rehearsals; plays usually appeared fully formed before him on a stage, on the rare occasion that he attended.
But of course rehearsals were vital and would have taken up a great deal of her time. That stage, these very boards, would have been familiar to her.
Samuel swallowed, a knot in his throat still untied. They could have been something special, even though the way they had found each other was…unorthodox.
But now that was over. Gone.
The Juliet on the stage moved toward the center, and she was staring now right at him, though Samuel was unclear whether she could actually see him.
“What’s in a name?” she asked in a clear, ringing voice. “That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.”
Samuel stiffened.
Dear God, it was uncanny.
“No, no, no!” An angry voice appeared from the front row.
Samuel had not noticed him before, but a man had stood up from the second row and was shaking his head as though what he had just seen was not only dreadful, but borderline offensive to the acting profession as a whole.
“You really must enunciate, Annabelle—honestly! Rose had a way of speaking that reached the very back of the theater and you are mumbling, Annabelle!”
Juliet no longer looked ethereal and delightful, but greatly peeved, her fists on her hips and a stomp to her feet. “I’m doing my best!”
“Your best needs some serious improvement,” said the man tartly. “Now, give me that line again.”
The actress scowled. “What’s in a name?” she said, her tone threatening. “That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.”
Samuel flinched. Honestly, the coincidence was almost galling. Yes, Rose was beautiful and charming and lovely no matter what her birth name had been. But that didn’t account for… the secrecy. The fact that he hardly knew the woman.
“And again!”
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.”
“Again, girl!”
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet.”
Prickles of irritation were circling up Samuel’s spine.
He didn’t have to listen to this—he could leave at any point he wanted.
The fact that he was still sitting here, listening to the repeated reminder that his affection for Rose should not be based on knowing her full history, was neither here nor there.
“Really elongate those vowels, Annabelle!”
“What’s in a naaaaame? That which we call a rooooose by any other woooord would smell as—”
“Enough!” thundered Samuel, rising to his feet.
Juliet, Romeo, and the man now standing in the front row all turned to stare.
Samuel cleared his throat. Well, damn. “I mean… Pardon me.”
“Who the hell are you?” yelled Juliet, her voice losing its delicate refinement and reverting to something more akin to the accent belonging to the pie seller Samuel had met on the beach. “This is a closed rehearsal, I’ll have you know!”
“I… I wanted to ask you about Rose Morgan,” Samuel found himself saying, stepping down toward the stage and knowing full well that this was a most definite mistake.
What the hell was he doing?