Chapter Eighteen #2
“Rose?” Juliet—or Annabelle—evidently did not appreciate hearing that name again, as her foot was tapping again. “Why? What has she done?”
“She won’t have done anything, you silly girl,” sniped Romeo, coming out from behind his tree. “He’s a patron, ain’t he? Looking for new talent?”
“‘Talent’? Oh, what a talent,” bemoaned the man now seated again in the front row. “I have never seen a woman like it. Oh, Rose, she was a marvel. She could make anyone believe anything.”
Yes, Samuel thought darkly. That is precisely the problem.
“You know I replaced her?” opined the young woman with a haughty sniff. “She was old.”
“She’s well under thirty,” Samuel could not help but point out.
“Yes, but she was close to it.”
“You are a fool if you let her go,” said the man whom Samuel had to presume was the manager, or owner, or something. “I let her go and now look at me! Stuck with her!”
Juliet theatrically looked behind her, then scowled when she turned back to the seats. “You’re a cruel man, Ted. And after I let you take me to bed, too!”
Samuel watched as the two of them bickered. Romeo pulled a pipe out of his pocket and started to smoke it, suggesting that the debate that was currently being run through was one he had both heard before and he no longer bothered to interject into it.
“—but I tell you, Rose was always able to—”
“I don’t want to hear any more about Rose!”
Samuel did. It was strange, standing here with three people in this unfamiliar place who had also known her.
He knew her, but in a far different way. These people had lived alongside her for months, perhaps years. He had never inquired as to precisely when Rose had returned from Italy, after all.
They had rehearsed with her, acted with her, celebrated when a play performed well and likely as not commiserated together when it had not. They had seen her joy and her spark, her incredible kindness, for eons longer than he had.
How precisely they had let her go, Samuel did not know. The woman had mentioned her age. Good God, that Ted was a fool, if he’d looked at the gorgeous Rose for a moment and considered her too old to play a beauty.
“Oh, go and practice a scene with Romeo here!” snapped the fool in question.
Juliet narrowed her eyes. “Which scene?”
“Any scene!” The man threw up his hands. “Just—Just go away and let me speak to this gentleman!”
Juliet—Samuel had already forgotten what her true name was—flounced off the stage in a manner mostly resembling a child. He spotted Romeo rolling his eyes at Ted, and then the younger man sighed heavily, blew out his pipe, tapped it against the pretend tree, and stomped off after his fellow actor.
That left Samuel and Ted.
The latter turned to the newcomer. “Is it true, then? You were looking for Rose because you wanted her to play a role?”
The irony was not lost on Samuel. Yes, he wanted to say. Yes, I want her to play the role of my wife forever and ever and ever. And somehow through her fear and my stupidity and her secrecy and my nonsense, there’s a gap between us and I don’t know how to fill it.
“Something like that,” was what he actually said.
Ted sighed. “I should never have gone for youth over experience. Honestly, Annabelle is hopeless. I wish Rose had stuck around in Brighton. I would have taken her back in a heartbeat.”
Taken her back in a heartbeat.
Samuel tried not to think about how those particular words could be applied to his own life, and instead said, “I wanted to know a little bit about her.”
His stomach sank heavily with Juliet’s insinuation. Ted had lain with Rose’s replacement. Had he ever done the same with Rose?
Strangely, though, he found he would not have been mad at Rose if that were true. He’d just have felt sorry for her. Ted was no prize to be had in bed, by the looks of him.
Ted’s eyebrows rose. “She still keeping quiet about her past? Oh, that’s Rose. She never wants her real life to interfere with the roles she’s playing.”
Now wasn’t that the truth.
Samuel gestured to the seats and the two men sat down, the marquess trying not to bash his knees into the other man. “But what do you know of her? Any… Any information would be helpful.”
If Ted was suspicious as to his reasoning, he did not seem it. Perhaps it was common in the theater world, Samuel guessed, to come and go without giving much insight into one’s past. Perhaps it was just as common for theater owners to inquire into such things.
Either way, the man said heavily, “Look, there’s not much I can tell you about Rose. She was, is, a clever girl. Smart with her mouth and her mind.”
Samuel’s whole body went rigid. He didn’t like the sound of that. “‘Smart with her mouth’?”
“Oh, the way she could rattle off lines without a single fluff, I have never seen the like,” Ted said solemnly, clearly utterly unaware of just how suggestive his previous comment had been.
“And the way she inhabited a role! I once encountered her just coming off stage as Lady Macbeth, and the look she gave me, I tell you, I fair widdled my—”
“She is an impressive actress, then,” Samuel said hastily. He had had a terrible few days. The last thing he needed was to hear of another man’s difficulties in that department.
The man sighed and shook his head.
“She wasn’t an impressive actress?”
The thought should not have given Samuel hope. Was it possible then that all the encounters they had shared, they had all been true? They had all meant something to Rose? It hadn’t all been an act?
“She was the most impressive actress I had ever seen,” Ted said, dashing all Samuel’s hopes in one fell swoop.
His shoulders slumped. “Oh. Right. Good.”
It was not good. It was the worst news he had ever heard, but he could hardly be the one to say it, not with this Ted thinking erroneously that he was in the theater business himself.
“But I think what made her truly special,” the man continued, “was that all of her acting came from a place of truth.”
Samuel blinked. “I don’t follow.”
“Rose cannot lie,” Ted said simply.
There was a strange sort of ringing in his ears. Even after Samuel had shaken his head, it persisted. “I… I beg your pardon?”
“Look, right, most actors, actresses, they’re lying on stage, right?” Ted said it as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. “They don’t believe what they’re saying. They’re doing it to be dramatic like.”
Samuel was with him so far.
“But Rose… She found the truth within the words. She read things, books and things. She looked for the truth in the story, in her character, and she lived that truth on stage.” Ted was getting misty-eyed now. “There’ll never be another like her.”
The man was right. There wouldn’t. Hearing how Rose lived, how she found the truth… Was it possible she had found true affection for him?
Samuel had to hope so. There was so much about her that he did not know and whereas days ago, that had filled him with pain, it only sparked enthusiasm within him now. He wanted to know her. He wanted to spend that time getting to know her.
If she would let him.
“And kind, too.”
Samuel blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“Rose. She’s kind,” said Ted with a wry smile.
“She wouldn’t allow a man to kiss her unless she liked him, and so there were no kisses given out while she was here.
Very kind, in my opinion. Didn’t never lead the actors on.
Kept it real professional-like with me, too.
But somehow, I found I didn’t mind. Just looking at her…
That smile was enough to keep a man riveted. ”
Swallowing did absolutely nothing to quieten the strange sort of pounding in Samuel’s chest.
But—But she had kissed him. Allowed him to kiss her, and kissed him, and… Well. A damned sight more.
So she liked him?
Was liking enough?
Samuel rose to his feet, eagerness to return to London and put everything right coursing through his body…until one thought occurred to him.
Professional? Not leading men on? But what about her boasts over her chess prowess?
He sank down back onto his seat as Ted eyed him curiously.
“Yes?”
“I… I need to know,” Samuel said weakly, knowing he was foolish indeed to even consider asking—but certain he would regret not knowing all the more. “Rose. Chess.”
The look on Ted’s face was enough—almost enough—without a single word. “Ah. She said the same to you, did she? The strip chess?”
Samuel’s heart did not precisely sink; it merely ceased to be. How could he have a heart, after it had been completely broken and destroyed by the knowledge that Rose had lived such a different life to himself?
What she did with her own life, that was her call. He would never censure her for making a living for herself, even if it had required taking her clothes off.
But how could two people with such different journeys travel on together?
Ted was nodding sagely. “Yes, it used to upset people, that did.”
“I bet it did,” Samuel said hoarsely.
“Everyone did it, of course.”
“I’m sure they did,” he said weakly, desperately wishing he could escape this conversation.
“And Rose caused such a stink when—”
“I really must be going, I’ve got a carriage to—”
“—when she wouldn’t participate,” Ted said placidly.
Samuel had half-risen from his seat, but once again, he lowered himself down slowly. “I… I beg your pardon?”
“Strip chess. You said you were having the same problem with Rose,” Ted said patiently, as though Samuel were a very simple man. “Even though it’s fairly common among our crowd, she won’t play.”
“She… She won’t?”
“I suppose she’s told you the same thing that she told us,” continued the man with a shrug. “She said that she could beat everyone in chess without bothering with all that. That she was saving herself for someone special to play strip chess with.”
Samuel’s gut twisted horribly even as his spirits soared.
That had been a lie, not just a withholding of the truth. She hadn’t played it before—because she’d wanted to play it with someone special.
Him.
“I’ve got to go,” he said in a rush, rising to his feet and hurtling through the theater with only one thing on his mind.
He had to get back to Rose.
“Don’t you lose her once you’ve got her!” called Ted after him. “You’ll regret it for the rest of your life!”
The man had it right entirely.