He got up then, moved their chairs closer to the dying fire, and they sat down side by side. Amber lifted her legs, bracing her feet on one side of the narrow fireplace so that her skirts fell back above her knees and showed her legs in black silk stockings and lacy garters. He reached over to take her hand in his and they sat for several moments, perfectly still and silent, but with the tension mounting between them.
What shall I do? she was thinking. If I do, he'll take me for a harlot—and if I don't, maybe he won't ever come back again.
At last she turned to face him and found his eyes on her, intense and serious, glowing with desire. One arm reached out and went around her waist, drawing her slowly toward him, and she slid over onto his lap. For a moment she hesitated, and then her face bent to his and she felt the pressure of his mouth, moist and warm and eager; his hand moved over her breasts, and she could feel the heavy beating of his heart against her own. Her blood began to rush, filling her with warmth and quick passion—she felt herself sliding to surrender and had no inclination to stop.
But as he would have knelt before her she jumped up suddenly and left him, crossing the room to stand before the black windows, her head buried in her hands. Instantly he was behind her, his fingers taking hold of her shoulders, pressing her back against him. His voice whispered to her, pleading, and as his lips touched the back of her neck a thrill ran along her spine.
"Please, darling—don't be angry. I'm in love with you, I swear I am. I want you, I've got to have you!" His fingers cut into her shoulders and his voice in her ear was hoarse with intensity. "Please—Amber, please! I won't hurt you—I won't let anything happen—Come here." He swung her around to face him.
Amber wrenched herself free; her own eyes were a little wild and her face was flushed. "You've got the wrong opinion of me, Captain Morgan! I may be on the stage, but I'm no whore! My poor father would die of shame if his daughter gave herself up to a sinful life! Now let me go—" She brushed past him, starting to get her cloak, and when he turned swiftly, catching her arm, his jaw set and hard, she cried warningly, "Have a care, sir! I'm not one of your willing rapes, either."
She jerked away and getting her cloak, flung it on, took up her muff and went to the door. "Good-night, Captain Morgan! If you'd told me why you brought me here I could've saved you the cost of a supper!" She looked at him haughtily, but the cold angry expression on his face alarmed her.
Now! she thought. If he doesn't really like me I've spoiled everything.
One eyebrow went up as he stared at her and his mouth twisted slightly, but as she took hold of the knob he crossed over and stopped her. "Don't go away like this, Mrs. Clare. I'm sorry if I've offended you. I'd heard— Well, never mind. But you're a damned desirable woman. A man must be gelt if he wouldn't want you—and to tell the truth, I'm not." He grinned down at her. "Let me see you home."
After that she saw him often, but not at the theatre, for she was not sure of him yet and did not care to give Beck the opportunity of jeering at her. Beck, meanwhile, continued to boast and brag of his attentions to her, showed Amber his gifts, and gave her the intimate details of his visits. Amber was receiving some gifts, too: A pair of exquisite black-lace stockings from France, garters with little diamond buckles, a muff made of wide bands of gold brocade hooped at either end with black fox—but she was very mysterious about the giver.
She used every trick she knew—and by now they were several—to heighten his desire for her. But each time he imagined himself about to succeed she pushed him off and insisted again that she was a woman of virtue. Fortunately for her, he did not suggest that such behaviour seemed quite the opposite of virtuous. Sometimes he bellowed that she was a jilting baggage and stormed off swearing that he would never see her again. Other times he stayed and pleaded, doggedly, with real desperation, and then finally went away defeated. But each time he came back.
And then one evening, his face haggard and his cravat askew, he slumped down into a chair, demanding, "What the devil do you want, then? I can't go on like this. I'm fretting my bowels to fiddle-strings over you!"
She had a sense of quick poignant relief. At last! And though a moment before she had been feeling tired and discouraged and all too inclined to be virtuous no longer, now she laughed, got up, and went to the mirror to smooth her hair.
"That isn't what Beck says. She was telling me today how last night you came to see her, so hot you wouldn't be put off for an instant."
He scowled, like an embarrassed boy. "Beck prattles too much. Answer me! What are you holding me off for? What do you want? Marriage?" She knew that he had been dreading to ask that, that he was no more eager to get married than were any of the other young men, and that even though he believed or pretended to believe her story about her aristocratic family, he would not marry an actress.
"Marriage!" she repeated in mock astonishment, staring at him in the mirror. "That's enough to give one the vapours! What woman in her right senses wants to get married?"
"Any woman, it seems."
"Well, they wouldn't if they'd ever been married!" She turned around and stood looking at him, her hands easily on her hips.
"Ye gods! Are you married?"
"No, of course not! But I'm not blind. I've seen a thing or two. What's a wife, pray? The men use 'em worse than a dog nowadays. They think they're good for nothing but to breed up their brats—and serve as a foil to a mistress. A wife gets a full belly every year, but a mistress gets all the money and attention. Be a wife? Pooh! Not me! Not for a thousand pound!"
"Well!" he said, obviously much relieved. "You talk like a woman of rare good sense. But you don't seem very anxious to be a mistress, either. Surely you don't expect to be that worthless object, a virgin, all your life? Not a woman like you."
"Have I said I did? If a man I liked made me a fair offer, I assure you I'd do him the kindness to think it over."
He smiled. "Well, now—we're getting somewhere at last And what's your notion of a fair offer, pray?"
She leaned her elbow back on the mantelpiece and stood with her weight on one foot, the other bare knee sliding out of her satin dressing-gown; she began to count on her fingers. "I'd want a settlement of two hundred pounds a year. I'd want lodgings of my own choosing, and a maid, and a neat little couch-and-four—and of course a coachman and footman—and leave to keep on acting." She had no intention of quitting the stage, for she had met him there and hoped someday to meet another and more important man. As she saw what was possible for a young and beautiful and obliging woman, her ambitions soared.
"You set a damned high price on yourself."
"Do I?" She smiled a little and gave a faint shrug. "Well— a high price, you know, serves to keep off ill company."
"If I take you at that figure I'll expect it to keep off all company, but mine."
It took Amber several days to find the lodgings that suited her and she rattled all over town in a hackney, searching, whenever she could be free from the theatre. But at last she found a three-room suite on the third floor of the Blue Balcony, down at the fashionable Strand end of Drury Lane. The rent was high, forty pounds a year, but Captain Morgan paid it in advance.
Everything here was in the latest fashion, reflecting the light gay colourful taste of the new age. The parlour was hung in emerald-green damask. There were French tables and chairs of walnut, some of them gilt, and all very different from the heavy old oaken pieces she was accustomed to seeing in inns. A long walnut couch had thick green cushions, fringed with gold, and there were several green-and-gold lacquered mirrors. She decided immediately that she would have her portrait painted and sink it flush with the wall above the fireplace, like one she had seen in the apartments of another actress, who was in the keeping of a lord.
The walls of the dining-room were covered with hand-painted Chinese paper, flaunting peonies and chrysanthemums, all aswarm with brilliant-hued birds and butterflies. The chairs and stools had thick bright-green cushions tied to them. In the bedro
om the hangings were also of damask, patterned in green and gold; there was a five-leaved screen, two leaves red and three green, and green-and-red-striped chair cushions.
"Oh!" cried Amber, when Captain Morgan went with her to see it and agreed that she might have it. "Thank you, Rex! I can't wait to move in!"
"Neither can I," he said. But she gave him a quick pout and then a smile.
"Now, Rex—remember what you said! You promised you'd wait."
"And I will. But for God's sake—not much longer."
She insisted on having the whole of her allowance in advance and, when she got it, hunted out Shadrac Newbold— whose name she remembered, Bruce Carlton had told her— and put it with him at six percent interest. In Cow Lane they found a second-hand coach which, though small, was freshly painted and in good condition. It was glossy black with red wheels and red reins and harness, and he bought four handsome black-and-white horses to draw it. The coachman and footman were named, respectively, Tempest and Jeremiah, and she ordered red livery trimmed with silver braid for them.
She hired her maid from an old woman Mrs. Scroggs recommended with the absolute assurance that the girl was honest, demure, and well-bred, that she could carve and sew and clean, would not sleep late or gossip to the neighbours or run about in slovenly dress. She was a plain-faced girl whose teeth had wide spaces between them and whose face was entirely covered with little pale freckles. Prudence was her name, which Amber did not like, for she remembered simple harmless Honour Mills who had been in league with a pair of thieves to rob her. But still the girl seemed anxious to please and looked so pitiful at the prospect of not being hired that Amber took her.
The first night at her new apartments she and Rex had an elaborate supper sent in from the Rose Tavern nearby and opened a bottle of champagne, but they scarcely drank a glass, for he picked her up impetuously and carried her in to the bedroom. And yet for all his passionate fervour he was tender and considerate, as eager to give pleasure as to take it, and Amber thought that this was far more like a wedding-night than that wretched experience she had had with Luke Channell. For the first time in a year and a half she was wholly and completely satisfied, for Rex had the same combination of experience, energy, controlled violence, and instinctive understanding which Lord Carlton had also had.
There's a world of difference, she told herself, between being a man's mistress and his wife. And as far as she was concerned that difference was all for the better.
The next afternoon Amber found the women's tiring-room buzzing like a swarm of angry hornets, and Beck Marshall was the centre of their chattering indignation. She realized instantly that they had heard about her and Rex. And though they all turned at once to fix upon her their cold wrathful stares, she sauntered into the room and pulled off her gloves with a great show of unconcern. Scroggs waddled over to her immediately, a self-satisfied grin on her ugly old face.
"Damn me, Mrs. St. Clare!" she said now, and her deep hoarse rough voice carried above all the noise of the room. "But it pleased me mightily to hear of your good fortune!" She leaned close, smelling strongly of brandy and spoilt fish, and gave Amber a jab in the ribs. "When ye asked me t'other day where ye might hire a woman I says to m'self, 'Aha! Mrs. St. Clare's a-goin' into keepin', I'll warrant you!' But I'll swear I never guessed the gentleman'd be Captain Morgan!" She leered and nudged, and jerked her thumb in the direction of the glowering group across the room.
Scroggs had taken Amber's cloak and fan and muff and was helping her out of her gown. "Neither did anyone else, I see," murmured Amber, glancing toward them with a significant lift of one eyebrow. She bent over to step out of her petticoats.
"Foh! Ye should've seen the look on the face of Mrs. Snottynose when she heard the news!" She laughed heartily, showing the holes in her mouth where teeth had been, and slapped her great thigh. "Damn me! I thought she'd bust a gut!"
Amber smiled, taking the combs out of her side curls and giving her hair a shake. And then, as she looked at her, Beck's head turned and their eyes met directly. For a long moment they stared, Amber exultant, taunting, Beck seething with rage, and then all at once Beck turned away, raising her right hand to show Amber the stiff middle finger. Amber laughed out loud at that and picked up the black wig she was to wear for her part as Cleopatra in Shakespeare's tragedy, sliding it down over her own coarse bright silken hair.
She knew well enough herself that she was ill-suited to play the Egyptian queen—the part might much better have gone to Anne Marshall—but the idea had been Tom Killigrew's and in her black wig with her eyes elongated by black pencil, a sleeveless sequin-spotted vest which just covered her breasts and a thin scarlet silk skirt slit to the knees in front, she had attracted an overflowing house for the past week and a half. Most productions were limited to three or four days, because so small a part of the London population attended plays, but some of the young men had been back four or five times to see this Cleopatra. They were used to a woman's breasts being displayed in public, but not her hips and buttocks and legs. Every time she walked onto the stage there were whistles and murmurs and the most unabashed comments, but the boxes had been noticeably empty and the ladies were said to have protested they could not tolerate so lewd and immodest a display.
Amber more than half expected trouble and was prepared for it, but though the atmosphere was undoubtedly tense, everything went as usual until the last scene of the last act. Then, as she stood waiting at the side of the stage for her cue to go on, both Beck and Anne Marshall came to stand beside her, Beck on her right, Anne slightly in back. Amber gave Beck a careless glance but continued to watch the stage where the men—in their great plumed headdresses which told an audience that this was tragedy being performed—were deciding Cleopatra's fate.
"Well, madame," said Beck. "Let me offer my congratulations. You've progressed mightily, they tell me—to be kept by only one man now."
Amber looked at her sharply, and then said with an air of profound boredom: "Lord, madame, you should see your 'pothecary. I swear you're turned quite green."
At that instant a pin pricked her from behind and she gave an angry start, but before she had time to say anything Mohun came off the stage, scowled, and muttered at them to go on. With Beck on one side and Mary Knepp on the other Amber walked out, proclaiming in a loud clear voice:
"My desolation does begin to make
A better life. 'Tis paltry to be Caesar..."
But for the commotion in the audience, the last scene progressed smoothly—through Cleopatra's dialogue with Caesar, her decision to end her life, the trial suicide of Iras, and then Cleopatra's own seizure of the papier-mache asp, which she addressed in full dramatic tones:
"With thy sharp teeth this knot intrinsicate
Of life at once untie; poor venomous fool..."
While Beck, as the faithful serving-woman who could not bear her mistress's death, ran distractedly about the stage, Amber applied the asp beneath her vest and heard a young man down in Fop Corner remark, "I've seen this six times. That viper should be weaned by now."
She clenched her teeth and shut her eyes as in a sudden spasm of pain. But she did not take her tragic parts very seriously and had to resist the inclination to laugh.
After standing motionless for a long moment she began to turn slowly in her death agony. Halfway around, she was arrested by a sudden barking shout of laughter from nearby. And then the sound was repeated from hundreds of throats. It swept on up through the boxes to the galleries beneath the roof, growing ever louder and nosier as it rose, until it seemed to fill the theatre and to come from all sides at once, hammering against her with an almost physical force.
Instinctively conscious that the laughter was directed at her, Amber swung quickly about, putting her hand to the back of her skirt. And though she half expected to find it torn open, she felt there instead a piece of cardboard and ripped it off, sailing it furiously across the stage. Beneath and before and above her she saw a blur of faces, a seemingl
y endless vista of opened mouths, and at the same instant the apprentices began to beat their cudgels and stamp their feet and a roaring chant went up:
"My tail's
For sale.
Half-a-crown
Will lay me down!"
Half-crown pieces had begun to ring upon the stage and Amber felt them pelting her sharply, hitting her from every side. The men were climbing onto their benches, shouting at the top of their lungs; the ladies had put on their masks but were shaking with laughter; from top to bottom the theatre was a bedlam of noise and confusion—though not more than forty seconds had passed since Amber's unlucky turn.
"You lousy bitch!" Amber ground the words through her clenched teeth. "I'll break your head for this!"
With a hysterical titter Beck started off the stage at a run and, just as the curtains swished frantically together, Amber went after her as fast as she could go, yelling, "Come back here, you damned coward!"
Anne, waiting in the wings, stuck out a foot to trip her, but Amber jumped over it, gave Anne a backhand swipe that sent her staggering, and rushed on. Flying down the narrow dark hallway Beck turned to look back just as she reached the tiring-room, gave a shriek when she saw how close her pursuer was, and dashing in slammed the door. But before she could throw the bolt Amber had burst against it, shoved it open, and with a violent push was inside. In one movement she flung the bolt herself and turned to grapple with Beck.
Forever Amber Page 27