Wilful Impropriety (4 page)

Rothschild was jovial and generous, possessed of a razor-sharp wit and a keen eye for everything artistic and philosophical. By the end of the night, the rest of the company having tired of the two of them finishing one another’s sentences, Rothschild had invited “The Nightingale” to be a regular at his club—an exclusive club—as his guest. Portia opened her mouth to protest.

“Nay, I
insist
upon it,” Rothschild declared. “But you’ll have to be male. No women are, of course, allowed in gentlemen’s clubs,” he said, his hazel eyes sparkling.

“But Lord Rothschild,” Portia countered, squaring her shoulders in the way men tended to, “you’ve said that I am ‘everything of humanity in one soul.’ Every facet. Unlimited identity. You say it thrills you. But if I am to only remain Mr. Nightingale in your presence, where are my other facets—”

“Oh, only at the club,” Rothschild smirked. “I fully intend to take
Miss
Nightingale to the opera. It will be the talk of the town.”

He spoke knowing she’d not deny him. Portia wondered if her blush betrayed her right then and there, the knees of their fine black suit pants nearly touching.

They’d almost forgotten Smith was in the room. But he didn’t seem to mind, he just grinned. The puppeteer appeared to enjoy retreating into the role of quiet audience, director and voyeur.

In the next weeks, as the papers took up new ammunition with Rothschild’s complicity in Nightingale’s ambiguity—first at the club as friends, and then at the opera possibly in courtship—soon it was forgotten that The Nightingale was a superb actor, and the pressure became personal. Vicious.

Today’s theatrical breed continues to prove its unnatural tendencies. From Wilde’s upcoming trial to the likes of Lord Rothschild, now a patron of mad Mr. Smith’s shifting, restless company, cavorting about with a creature who refuses to tell the world what it is, the thespian life drops its curtain to reveal a perverted bacchanal. Perhaps Smith and Nightingale think they remain charming, alluring and at the height of parlor conversation. Instead, this reporter wagers the carnival attraction has lost its appeal. The curious masses have no wish to see Miss Nightingale’s take on one of Shakespeare’s female pants roles, only to take on the very pants the next day as the lead hero in some sort of mockery of the sexes. Has Darwin not sufficiently undermined the order of things? One cannot elude destiny forever, Nightingale. You’ll be outed soon enough, and this whole tedious charade will fade into the obscurity in which it ought to have remained.

—
The Times

It was a threat.

Rothschild remained unruffled, much like Smith, laughing that society’s psyche should be so insecure. So needing validation of its rigid, righteous mores that its populace flouted in hushed secret. So needing to keep up its untenable hypocrisy.

Rothschild never asked about her sex. Portia respected and abhorred this equally. He stood too close and brushed up against her like all the rest of the men did. But with him it was natural, and she hoped it wasn’t her imagination that sparks flew when they inadvertently touched. Because he did not pressure her to give up the secret, it only made her want him more.

She would never know if the pressure of newspapers and biting editorials pushed her over this line, or merely her body’s own need to be recognized at last, that she did indeed out herself. But only to him. Perhaps she wanted it to be on her own terms, not anyone else’s.

They’d spoken like bosom friends all evening at the club, her in a suitcoat and fine silk cravat, posturing as stiff and elegant as any proud young man might, reveling in her handsome companion who glowed in the gaslight. He’d placed a hand upon her shoulder, firmly—a commanding hand, a suggestive hand.

He offered up his London apartments, as the hour was quite late . . .

But she had another idea. There in his apartments would be servants, and servants would talk . . . She needed someplace vacant for what she had planned.

“Come to the theater, Rothie. I’ve something I need to show you.”

She had a stage-door key and a private dressing room that only herself and Smith had access to, a room even Rothschild as benefactor didn’t know about. She led her darling Rothie backstage, giddy as she approached the precipice of danger. She bid him sit upon a chaise in the small room that lit up brightly the moment she turned on all the new electric lights. The bulbs buzzed, garish, revealing.

She passed him a brandy and took a double. The draught was as strong as her desire. They hadn’t said a word for maybe the last hour, only stared at one another, Rothie curious, his lips partly open.

He was so beautiful, sitting across the clothing-strewn room, his perfect, seamless look and presentation such a contrast to the mess of the space backstage. The ten feet between them felt like an impassable gulf when all she wanted was to throw herself at him.

“What do you have in store for me, my little bird? A new poem?”

They’d taken to reciting poetry to one another. All the latest works, the suggestive ones. The pump had been primed for this moment, she knew it. Did he?

“No. I cannot hide anymore,” she said finally, whipping her cravat open, exposing her throat. “See me as I truly am. Please,” she whispered. “I can’t go on—
we
can’t go on like this . . .” Her heart thudded in her ears as she began to undress.

“No,” Rothschild protested quietly, “don’t, you—”

“I
have
to, Rothie. How can you know everything about me and nothing about me all at the same time?” she snapped, tearing open her vest, waistcoat, undershirt, tossing them aside. And then came the silk-paneled modified corset that fastened up to her throat to keep her small breasts flat against her body, something she’d had made in secret as it was more secure than winding cloth or bandages about her bosom. Turning away, she loosened the strings and popped the hooks and eyes. Her breasts strained and ached to be released, to be free and acknowledged. As much as clothing had given her certain freedoms, so was it her prison, too.

She turned back around to face him. Naked. Trembling.

She stared, first down at herself, her waiflike, young woman’s body, and then up at Rothschild, who had lost his ruddy color suddenly, as if seeing a ghost.

She wanted to be proud of that body but she was scared. It was foreign. It was a secret.

“I love you,” Portia murmured. “I’ve loved you this whole time, and I can’t stand it.”

Tears filled Rothschild’s hazel eyes. He approached. Portia trembled.

She’d be touched. At last. Finally, someone was
seeing
her.
Truly
her. He reached out a wide hand which entirely cupped the side of her face. Oh, was he going to kiss her. . . . She nearly swooned into him, her bare body against his fully clothed one made her so deliciously vulnerable . . .

“Oh, you beautiful creature,” he said quietly. Sadly.

Why was he sad?

His hands did not travel down her body as she craved. He did not cup her in a passionate kiss. He did not lay her back upon the divan and take advantage of her, as she’d imagined so many nights alone in her rooms. Instead, his tears splashed down upon her cheeks as he placed his wide, luscious lips upon her forehead.

“You beautiful creature,” he repeated.

Creature?

“Beloved friend,” he continued, still in that gentle, sad tone.
Beloved
was a welcome word.
Friend
was not. Lover, yes. She needed a lover, and wanted to hear
that
word. Portia blinked up at him, not bothering to wipe his tears from her face. “I love you as well,” he murmured. “But not in
that
way. I . . . if you were . . . I truly thought . . .”

The realization was like a knife into her vulnerable, exposed flesh.

“You thought I was a boy . . .” Portia choked. She thought, since he knew her so well, he had to
truly
know . . .

People believed what they wanted to.

Tears were in her eyes in turn. Her cheeks burned with red-hot shame. She snatched at the adapted corset that kept up her male appearance, the layered boning that enslaved her, that had tricked him . . . that had let them both down. She furiously began trying to dress herself again, haphazardly, the wrong layers first.

Rothschild grabbed her hands, kissing them, dragging her close and she fell against him, feeling like a ruined fool but unable to resist his insistent embrace.

“I am so sorry . . .” he murmured. Portia wept against him, for everything she was not. For everything she did not have. For everything she could not be. For Rothschild’s sake, she wished to God she had been born male. She wished society would have permitted their love. She wished Mr. Wilde was not about to go to trial. She wept harder.

“Now we know our deepest secrets, we two,” Rothschild murmured, still keeping her folded, all long limbs tucked like a paper crane against him as he bent to lift a silk dressing gown, a simple, sexless gown that bore no particular mark of masculinity or femininity, and slipped it onto her shaking body. She could not look at him. But he forced her gaze to his. He was never kinder, never more loving. Yet not in
that
way.

“And we must keep our secrets, take them to the grave, must we not? Does your very existence not require that your secret be kept?”

Portia nearly blurted out that she’d have given it all up to be Rothschild’s lover. But she held her tongue. No use making a further fool of herself . . .

“And must you not keep mine?” He pressed. “The law is hardly on my side. And while I likely could have kissed you and enjoyed it, while it certainly would be easier if I could just lie with you, be with you, I can never lie
to
you. I love you too much for that.”

“But not enough—”

“It isn’t about enough, my Nightingale.”

“My
name
is
Portia
.”

“It isn’t about enough, dear Portia.”

“Then what is it about?”

“Who I am.”

Portia wasn’t sure she understood, because she wasn’t quite sure who she was, at the end of the day. Other than a woman. But that wasn’t enough . . .

Rothschild tied the silk ribbon of her robe around her waist and stepped back. The absence of his heat was eviscerating. The robe made her less chilled, but she’d not stopped shaking, her cheeks nearly the same scarlet as the gown.

“Come,” Rothschild rallied with the gusto that had brought him into her room, the sacred, sanctified space, now tainted . . . “Shall we to the club—”

“No, Rothie.” She stared at the hem of her gown. “No.”

Silence. Rothschild’s tread retreated. They knew their secrets. They were strangers once more.

The dressing-room door quietly opened and shut. Portia sank onto a pool of red silk. She was there for a very long time. She remembered one of the box cleaners saying that a woman had killed herself from a broken heart in a laudanum-induced haze in that very dressing room ten years before.

While she admitted that suicide was attractive at that desperate moment, killing herself over a man was not the sort of woman she wanted to be. She was young—the world prized a pretty girl of eighteen. Yet she sat broken, her womanhood rejected in a cold theater by a man who meant her no harm. She sat hollow and empty—an idea. But ideas didn’t die. They couldn’t.

Eventually, at some point, Portia collected herself from the pool of silk. She bound her breasts, donned her waistcoat, tied her cravat. Smoothed her short, sensible locks with a pinch of pomade. This week she was a male youth, and she needed to remain so. The only way to lie was to be consistent. Her sanity depended on lies and consistency.

Just as she moved to the door, Smith burst in, startling her.

“There you are, Nightingale. Was out looking for you everywhere. We mustn’t keep the Vicomte waiting! He’s a late-night creature, but really, don’t be rude!”

“Sorry,” Portia mumbled.

She’d forgotten about the company soirée with a French aristocrat. Rothie had made everything else unimportant. The last thing on earth she wanted to do was to be charming to a patron. A sudden rage filled her, and her nostrils flared.

“No. I’m not sorry, Smith. I’m not going. I’m quitting. I cannot do this anymore.”

“Of course you can. What’s gotten into you?” The matter-offact way he asked her, and the frank, uncanny way in which he always stared at her made Smith the one person she could not lie to.

“I just had my heart broken, if you must know.”

“Oh. Terribly sorry. By whom?”

“No business of yours whom,” she hissed. He likely knew very well who, but was being kind and playing ignorant.

“Can I make it better?” he asked. Portia clenched her fists and nearly punched the wall.

“No, damn you, Smith, you’re not God, you’re not a
doctor
, you can’t
always
make things better!”

“Yes I can,” he stated with the maddening, unwavering confidence that at once drove her mad and that she coveted passionately.

He stared at her, up and down, and his doing so made her glance in the mirror. And there she was—the perfect picture of a young, handsome man of Her Majesty’s gilded age.