Wilful Impropriety

by Ekaterina Sedia

Genres: Romance; YA Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

The Victorian era is significant for the rise of the middle classes and marked changes in social relationships, both in the home and in wider society, with the proliferation of domestic help and the development of increasingly rigid gender roles.

These are romances that chafe against the restrictions of the period, with heroes and heroines who defy social convention, igniting firestorms of gossip. The aristocrats, impostors, social climbers, domestic workers and undercover agents of these stories exist in an authentically lush world, depicted here with telling attention to detail.

While most of the stories are strongly realistic, some incorporate elements of fantasy.

Release date: June 7, 2012

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 448

Sample

For the people living through it, the era of Queen Victoria’s rule in Britain was one of constant revolution. Steam power and Marx’s Capital gave rise to a new, more antagonistic, relationship between workers and bosses. The discoveries of germ theory and anesthetics brought medicine into its modern form. Networks of gas lines erased night across London, and telegraphs and railways shrunk distances around the globe. Even the novel was transformed, by a notion called “realism”, which posited that a story could carry a reader into another person’s life across barriers of gender, geography, and social station.

Given this maelstrom of change, it’s odd that today we view the Victorian era as a tableau of stuffed shirts, fancy frocks, and good manners. Or perhaps it’s this juxtaposition between decorum and chaos that makes the period so compelling. We imagine of the lord of the manor sipping tea while reading in his morning Times that slavery has been abolished, or that Mr. Darwin has forever altered the horizons of religion and natural philosophy. These contrasts make for good drama. After all, the most theatrical place to deploy a flame-thrower is a tea party.

Teenage readers, of course, have a stake in flame-throwing. They’re too young to have been co-opted into the social order, but are old enough to test its limits. They relish discovering how arbitrary social mores can be, and how identity is imposed both from without and within. At the same time, teenagers are exploring how their own bodies work, and all the biological realities that underlie the abundant customs surrounding race, gender, and even clothing.

It’s into this rich stew that this anthology takes us. Many of its young protagonists live inside the systems of Victorian privilege. But as ladies of class, their fortunes aren’t secure without a proper husband in their future. Other stories are about young people whose race, sexuality, or simple poverty leaves them outside of the circles of power, and whose improprieties endanger them every day.

In the Victorian era, behavioral codes were at once stronger and more fragile than they are today, with all the dangers of the magic spells you’ll find within these pages. The wrong word, the wrong hemline, even the wrong flower in a bouquet could result not only in humiliation, but in social banishment and—for the working classes—deadly economic isolation.

So the stakes are high, here in these tales of ancient manners and traditions at war with young bodies and wills. These are stories about revolutions, after all, some as small as a proper dance turn, some as large as the solar system’s movements. But all of them are driven by the human heart, that most potent engine of rebellion.

Adult writers and editors enjoy arguing about what makes a book suitable for a young-adult audience. While there are probably as many answers as there are writers (and editors), we can still agree on a few things. Most notably, books for a young-adult audience are by no means restricted in their tropes, but thematically they are more likely to deal with coming of age, identity, and rebellion than books for adults. After all, what other age category is so often defined by defiance?

Recently we saw a great rise in both Victorian and young-adult categories of fiction, and to me these two go hand in hand. If being a teenager is about disobedience, the notion of Victoriana (at least the way it is perceived by a modern reader) is often centered around propriety and convention, rigid social structures, and impermeable class, race, and gender barriers. Yet, where there is convention, there is also defiance, and the opposite side of this Victorian coin is the realization that as long as there are barriers and conventions, there will be those who will rise up against them—suffrage, human rights, notions of equality all find their beginnings in that rigid age.

So it seems to me that the Victorian age is a perfect medium to tell these stories of defying convention, of individuals chafing against the constraints of what was considered to be the unchangeable order of things. Against the expectation that one should know one’s proper place, determined by one’s race, class, and gender, against the notion of marriage and binary gender constructs, against the expectations of strictly heterosexual attraction. These struggles are universal and recognizable, but they take place in the world in which the stakes are very high.

In these pages, you will find stories of young people who manage to wilfully violate the rules. You will also find stories based in reality as well as fantasy. (After all, Victoriana has become a fertile medium for fantastic stories—just look at the latest big-screen iteration of Sherlock Holmes!) But whether the stories are realistic or fantastical, the conflicts are always recognizable, and the tropes will touch a familiar nerve. Be it cross-dressing or dancing or improper use of magic, I hope that the readers will recognize themselves in the protagonists.

In collecting these stories, I was hoping to put together a collection that spoke to modern readers about the eternal themes: love and trespass, betrayal and loyalty, and above all the defiance in the face of disapproving society, and the sacrifices people will make to be true to themselves and to those they love. Because even though the times have changed, there are still restrictions, and there are many improprieties we are willing to commit for love—be it love for ourselves or for others.

With a name like Portia Nightingale, the girl was destined to become an actress.

That, and she was born in a dressing room.

That, and she was abandoned to be raised by a roving theater troupe.

That, and she had a terrible time telling the truth.

Considering these factors, it’s safe to say that from the earliest age, Miss Nightingale’s sense of reality was entirely subjective. One might say warped.

But she knew every single word Shakespeare had written, even the “problematic” plays, and that was a priceless skill in a profession that was respected only a fraction more than prostitution. In this elegant, gilded age of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria’s inimitable, empirical reign, skilled adaptability meant survival.

The day she met Mr. Smith in some northern province, however, her methods of survival would broach new and intriguing territory. He quickly became the most interesting thing that had ever happened to her in her eighteen years of life.

The production was The Tempest. The town was drab, dull, unresponsive, and her Ariel was praised with lukewarm applause. She knew it was her very best, and that Will Shakespeare would be proud. She didn’t need an ovation to prove it. A tiny candle of confidence flickered deep in her bosom, kept alive by a more minuscule bellows of pride.

Dusting the white powder out of her brown-blond curls kept reasonably short for maximum adaptability between roles, Portia padded barefoot backstage to her “dressing room” (a few set flats angled to create a simulation of privacy). She began to wipe the pale greasepaint off her face that had made her into an androgynous, colorless spirit, revealing fair skin, a few freckles and youthful color brushing high cheekbones.

She had a “classic” beauty, “one those Pre-Raphaelites would covet,” a theater manager once told her before trying to seduce her. She resisted. She was fired. Thus, she hesitated plying her trade in the London circle. Directors, producers, and patrons expected too much of an actress, in every way. In the provinces, a girl could get by without all the sexual politics, and Portia played whatever roles the rest of the small touring company didn’t want, which was the only reason why they kept her around and reasonably well fed. She was unbuttoning her vest to access and unravel the binding that kept her small breasts flat against her torso, when she noticed an intruder standing at the corner of her dressing-room flats. Whirling to look him dead in the eye, Portia snapped to attention, her posture tall and defiant against attack or interrogation.

He was tall and angled. A mop of unruly dark locks poked out from beneath a weather-worn, wide-brimmed hat, his burgundy coat was long and a striped cravat was undone but looped loosely about his neck. Portia honestly couldn’t tell if he was attractive, but he was compelling, young, and vibrant and yet full of gravity. Ageless, somehow. His expression enigmatic, his stare parceled her out piece by piece like Olivia’s personal inventory to Viola in Twelfth Night: Item, two lips, indifferent red, item, two gray eyes, with lids to them . . . His dissecting stare continued as he spoke.

“Don’t undo your paint,” the man said, holding out a longfingered hand. “Don’t undress. Please. In fact, tell me nothing about you. If you are male or female, I cannot tell, and I do not want to know. You’ve an incredible timbre to your voice—it’s just that perfect, median range, do you know that?”

She cocked her head at him. “I’ve been told my voice is useful. Malleable. Keeps me working. Any part, whatever needs playing, doesn’t matter to me. Why?”

“Just tell me your last name. Please.”

Portia blinked, baffled. “Nightingale.”

The man laughed and bounced on his feet. “Perfect. Nightingale you shall be! Tell me, do you have any interest in breaking out upon the London stage?”

Portia folded her arms. “I was just thinking I’d rather avoid the politics.”

“What if we created the politics?”

“What if you told me who you are and what you want?”

“I’m not asking who you are, am I?”

“You asked for a name. What’s yours? Coming backstage uninvited is a piss-poor way to introduce yourself.”

“Mr. Smith. Just Smith. Will you come with me? You could be anyone. Anything. Just as you say, whatever needs playing. I could make you anything. You are utterly brilliant on the boards. Come with me.”

Portia blushed beneath her greasepaint despite the unexpected boldness of this conversation. “I don’t know you. It would hardly be wise to follow a stranger to London.”

“You’ve a family?”

“No.”

“No one to miss you, then. Come on.”

Portia set her jaw. She hadn’t expected pity, but she did expect the man to talk a bit of sense. “Tell me your full name, your aims, and why I should entertain your company a moment longer.”

“My aim is to make you a London sensation. Something and someone they’ve never seen. I am a manager and director and I’ve great plans, I just needed the right actor. I have found, now, in you, the right actor for every role. And I’ve no name other than Mr. Smith, so don’t go around asking about it. You’ll not find a thing save for the various Covent Garden theaters where I built my roving reputation. Together we will build something far greater—”

“What do you mean, you don’t have a name other than Mr. Smith?”

“I mean exactly that. Now. Give me Viola’s speech, if you will. ‘Build me a willow cabin—’”

“Shouldn’t you have auditioned me before absconding to London with me?” She scoffed, unsettled and intrigued. How did he know she’d just been thinking about Twelfth Night?

“Who said anything about absconding?” Smith scoffed. “I shall take you as my willing companion. And my star. With no obligations other than rehearsing, performing brilliantly on the stage, and maintaining your mystery. Now, ‘Build me a willow cabin—’”

Portia shook her head and began the speech she could recite in her sleep and backward.

How could someone not have a name? Or not wish it to be known?

What scandal did he hide?

How could she trust a man who didn’t have a name?

A name was everything. It told the world who you were.

Considering her tenuous world was made up solely of characters, greasepaint and foreshortened walls, a birth name was something to grab hold of. Something personal and real. She found his refusal to tell her his name profoundly upsetting. But possibly freeing. She finished the speech.

Smith clapped. “Very good. Now, give me some of Sebastian—”

“But I—”

“But you do know it. You’re a talent that knows every word, don’t deny me, I can tell.”

How could this man grasp anything, truly, about her? Smith seemed to know her, though. His bright brown eyes, more gold than brown really, pierced her to the core. It was as if he’d anticipated how she’d respond, as if he’d written the script of these moments himself. Had he spoken with her castmates, who might have told him that, yes, she could step in to play any role (and had, often) at any time? She couldn’t imagine any one of her crew that would say kind words about her. While they were civil, none of them was kind, and all of them were jealous. Smith’s expression was more kind than any look she’d received in a long time.

Her protests at Sebastian clearly would mark her as a female. Surely he had to see the truth of her—but it seemed Smith refused any clues. Considering she did know every word the Bard composed—and that was her only useful trait to offer the world—Portia felt a deep, compelling urge to impress this strange man.

And she was quite sure, as she performed the lines of Viola’s male twin, Sebastian: “I am yet so near the manners of my mother, that upon the least occasion more mine eyes will tell tales of me . . .” that Portia’s eyes did tell tales of her. She was sure her eyes spoke of a hunger she didn’t know she had, an emptiness she didn’t know she needed filled until this stranger had appeared, dangling a curious carrot of adventure before her.

“Brilliant!” Smith applauded. “No one would question you as Sebastian. Or Viola. Or any of the young persons of the great canon! I’ll set you up at the Royal, playing Sebastian in Twelfth Night for one week, and then the following week, at the Lyceum, playing Viola. I’m not going to have you be some poor patron saint of one house and one company. True freedom means gracing every London stage, never overstaying your welcome, and never answering questions. It will add to your mystery. I promise you. I only take risks I believe in. And I believe in you.”

He was so passionate and yet so matter-of-fact that Portia found herself struck dumb, unable to argue, unable to refute him. Unable to say no to this mad proposition. Her awestruck silence was apparently enough for him. A contract.

“Good, then!” Smith bounced forward, handing her an envelope. “We’ll begin rehearsing tomorrow. Ten A.M. The Royal. Don’t say goodbye, don’t tell anyone where you’re going or what you’re doing. If you have second thoughts about disappearing, then this conversation and this idea dies and ends here, and you hand me back that envelope with notes and train tickets. Are you willing to discard your old self and life for a grand new experiment?”

Her mind spun. She thought of the many petty goings-on of her days on the road. She thought of how little anyone truly cared for her, how much she longed to lose herself in London and be rid of the countryside forever. She’d always loved London but she’d been so scared the city, and the people in it, would eat her alive. But with Smith, this odd, indomitable Smith as her benefactor, and a new life with a malleable identity as only she could create it . . . Why not?

“All right then.”

“Good!” Smith shook Portia’s hand. “Very good! Now. You arrive male, Nightingale, and you see to it that no one thinks otherwise. You have no first name, no pet name. I’m Mr. Smith, you’re Mr. Nightingale. The following week, for the reversal, Miss Nightingale, we’ll need to arrange chaperones and all that nonsense,” he muttered.

How odd.

No one, even Smith, would know who she was beneath the changing trappings.

In a way, it was every actor’s dream to wholly invent, reinvent, and invent again, on the grandest of stages, one’s very life.

Fascinating.

That night, she packed her meager bag of things, said nothing, and slipped out at first light without so much as a second glance behind her as the distant whistle of the train approached the tiny station.

Smith must have gone on ahead to London, for Portia was alone on her morning train ride. But that was all right, in a fine suitcoat, waistcoat, and top hat (stolen from the dressing room with a few pence left behind for poor Heidi, who would throw a fit to discover her finest contemporary male pieces missing) she needed no chaperone. While she’d seen the world through a male lens via Shakespeare’s text, all the sixteenth-century words of fools, nobles, and gentlemen could hardly have prepared her for the freedoms of being a contemporary male in Queen Victoria’s England. She was free . . .

Of course, freedoms had their limits, even in the terribly modern 1890s.

Mr. Wilde was about to be brought into court on charges of “gross indecency” with young men. Some things, even for men, were off limits. If men in her company were of that persuasion, they were utterly discreet. But from what she knew of Mr. Wilde, that simply wasn’t his style. A flamboyant, generous, genius soul, an innovative, modern, luminescent candle against the constant rehashing of the Bard, his trial and shame would prove a loss for the theatrical community. And a warning shot across the bow for any who dared veer from a “moral and upstanding lifestyle.”

The train into London gave her food for thought of the myriad possibilities for her life. She watched how people watched her, and felt reinvented down to the very bones. Small towns grew larger and larger until the hulking, sprawling behemoth of London, great sooty London with its dragon-bellows factories and its hellfire of industry and innovation, rose before her like a great Tower of Babel, its denizens thronging its labyrinthine streets. Everyone and everything she gazed upon became a course of study, and she took note of all attributes and quirks, anything that would be useful in imitation and foolery. She had to blend in with London, she had to be one with its multifaceted spirit.

As per instructions and a key left in the envelope, Portia arrived in London and hailed a hansom cab to take “Mr. Nightingale” to “his” new home, a small Covent Garden flat, the address of which would change every other week around the environs. Smith did not give her long to settle in before it was time for rehearsal.

Portia tried not to gape as she set foot inside the theater, all golden and velvet and sparkling gaslit sconces that were about to be wholly replaced with the new electric light . . . She realized how used to unadorned, provincial places she’d become. This was a palace. A palace of her new birth. Reborn a star who no one could get too close to, for she would burn so bright . . .

Smith presented Mr. Nightingale to the company with quite an introduction.

“I told you I would go out hunting and fetch you the most promising buck of our generation!” Smith cried, standing upon a chair in a box seat. “Nightingale here will surprise you, and the world. You just wait. We’ll make history, friends.”

Her new company looked at her appreciatively, both the boys and the girls, and she got the distinct impression she was being flirted with by both sexes. Since she had arrived as Mr. Nightingale, she was sure to give the women more attention from the first. This wasn’t difficult, as she’d always tended to seek more female company—men got the wrong ideas and assumed actresses were quick to lie flat on their back at the least advance.

The rehearsal process was smooth. Any English actor worth their salt could offer up Shakespeare in their sleep, and Smith was just inventive enough in his staging and interpretation to be interesting. He worked with them from a theatrical box reserved for wealthy patrons, pacing the velvet-lined stall and occasionally exclaiming random truths and new interpretations. His carefree, quirky nature infused all of them with a youthful sense of play.

And the audiences loved them. They particularly loved Mr. Nightingale. The papers were full of praise.

Mr. Nightingale’s performance as Sebastian was refreshingly genuine and particularly moving. A compelling young face one finds it hard to look away from. Here we have a young man of the stage Mr. Henry Irving himself would kill to have in his company.

Mr. Henry Irving. No faint praise. Portia had thought about seeking out the most successful actor of the age in hopes of working at the Lyceum. But Irving was quite the man for a special effect at the cost of his castmates. Sparks literally flew from his sword-fighting scenes, and she just didn’t know if she had it in her to be on the receiving end of the electrical charge as she stood on a metal plate. Acting for a passable wage was one thing—allowing England’s foremost actor to sizzle you with an electric shock was another. Still, having one’s name associated with Irving’s in a review was money in the bank.

And the next week, at the next theater, the press was similarly glowing.

Miss Nightingale’s Viola lit the stage with luminous charm and beauty. Easy on the eyes and ears, we find ourselves her new devotees. Considering last week’s production featured a Mr. Nightingale, perhaps, dare we hope, that there is a new theatrical dynasty that has emerged?

It was the week after that they realized the two performances were the same person. The question then rippled through London—who was Nightingale?

Growing up backstage hadn’t prepared Portia for the limits and contradictions of the world offstage, and Smith hadn’t prepared her for the scandal. But he did at least try to cover both their behinds.

Smith published a brief letter to the editor of the Standard.

I understand there is some confusion as to my two Nightingales. The Nightingales are twins, one boy and one girl. I’ve a certificate to prove it, lest anyone court libel or say that the law should come down upon my company. But even if there were only one Nightingale, what law could stop him? Her? The fact that a Nightingale is a damn fine actor is the only law of my land.

The fact that the Nightingales were never seen together meant the public didn’t believe in any such certificate. They preferred to embrace the scandal. Soon schooled in the fickle, forked tongue of the press, what to Portia and Smith was playing a bit of a game, it seemed that to London they had struck a deeper chord. .

It’s a positively shameful scandal, this confusion of identity. It is sacrilege, unnatural that someone should be paraded about, no matter how talented they are, as fluid between two sexes. I realize the theater is perverted, but this spits in the very face of our refined, civilized culture. This stunt of Mr. Smith’s company makes fun of what it is to be British, that is, entirely self-possessed and proud men and women of the Empire who present themselves as God intended.

Scandal, of course, was phenomenal for business.

The dinners and the intrigues soon followed.

If she thought the theaters were grand, they were nothing compared to the homes in which she was entertained. She tried not to make her awe evident, but she was still young and her wealthy benefactors seemed to find her wonder an additional charm.

Countless patrons and endless flirtations, from men and women, were laid at Portia’s feet like bouquets, each trying to draw her out. Each sure that they had her pegged.

“Ah, but look at how he carries himself—a woman could never hold that sort of bearing and piercing stare. Why, look at how he doesn’t even blush or bat an eyelash as he gazes upon me,” flirted countesses and merchants’ daughters in husky voices dripping with need, daring Portia to look them straight in the eye and mouthing behind their fans an invitation for a secret rendezvous. Portia did not take them up on it. But she did return their stares. Hard.

“Ah, but see the artful cheek, her delicate ringlets, the demure tilt of her head—why, the fairer sex, the gentler sex, it is positively written all about her!” cried aristocrats and Members of Parliament who stood too close and “accidentally” brushed their hands across her to search out her most obvious feminine parts, murmuring indecently in passing that she could reveal herself to them, that they’d never tell . . . She knew enough of the average man not to trust them as a species. The many layers and starched fabrics she put on, large and lavish dresses she’d never have dreamed of being able to wear were they not a part of Smith’s costuming for her life, made it impossible for anyone to come away with a physical impression.

But it seemed that the mystery made her all the more appealing to each, and men and women, boys and girls fought over her as if she were a prize, sometimes forgetting she was a human being in the room with them. Not a toy. Not a theory. A person.

As the weeks went on, she wondered if she’d transcended humanity and become an idea instead—one of Shakespeare’s pants roles like Rosalind’s or Viola’s disguises come ludicrously to life and trapped in a cycle of a madman’s making, wondering who would write “The End.”

No one ever touched her true contours. Only she did, when she bathed. She was the only one who knew her most private, and now most sought-after, secret. Well, and God. She supposed “He” knew. She could not have predicted how shatteringly lonely this life soon became.

Clearly, thought Portia, detaching herself from among lush dinner arguments over her body parts, those who waged war over her identity as if it was something that touched on their own pride, hadn’t been around enough actors. She knew men who could pass as very convincing young women. It was, after all, the theatrical tradition in Shakespeare’s day, when women weren’t allowed on stage. But the former was something a man did in utmost secrecy, and the latter had been an accepted custom of previous centuries. What she was doing—what Smith was doing to her—was unprecedented.

From Romeo to Juliet, from Lysander to Helena, from Ophelia to Hamlet—oh, yes, they tempted the favor of the theater gods even with the melancholy prince himself—Portia began to feel that she was as much one sex as the other. Each of her two sets of behaviors came organically from within her, and she lost herself in the trappings of the clothing she stepped into, her body’s mask.

Never had it been so glaringly proven to her that people believed only what they wanted to believe. She heard them arguing after every show as she retreated into the shadows, their ardent suppositions about her hanging in the air like moths to the footlights.

Smith was ever present during the company fetes, a mischievous, delighted soul who needled on each side until opponents were nearly frothing at the mouth in indignation for their “cause” of proof of her gender—he was a mad scientist adding his powders to an impassioned brew. All that ever seemed to incite Smith in turn was a good analysis of a well-made play. He clearly enjoyed sitting back and watching the distinct yet utterly titillating unease his Nightingale’s unconfirmed presence had on everyone. And to Portia, Smith remained an enigma. She wondered if he’d ever loved, had family, or other professions—she knew nothing about him other than his unfaltering belief in her.

Which was the only anchor she had in a life of secrecy.

Portia had been instructed to always dress at her apartments—mysterious lodgings that changed constantly and that no one but Smith knew the location of. She hadn’t seen the sense of this at first, but it wasn’t long before castmates were bribed exorbitantly to spy upon her changing rooms, and certain patrons felt they had the right to charge backstage and see if they could intercept Portia to see for themselves.

She started to fear for her safety. But Smith was ever on guard, which calmed her. Still, she wondered how long before paying audiences, press aside, were fed up with her too.

That question was answered when an angry mob burst into their rehearsal of Lear, on stage at the Savoy. She was Edmund at the moment, the bastard. Next week she would take up Cordelia. Edmund’s glory in the base and unnatural was an uncanny herald to the evening.

The leader of the protesting mob, a stout, scowling man in a bowler and fastidiously trimmed mustache, called for an end to their nonsense, that it was a bad influence on London.

“It will corrupt our sons and daughters, this charade of yours,” he said, huffing like a walrus. “The youth will think they can play games with what makes the world turn—men and women in their proper place. We here have an injunction—”

Smith appeared from his usual place in rehearsal, popping out from the shadows in one of the front boxes—he liked to be above things, and he leaned down to examine the mob of ten buttoned-up men and sour-looking women, his loose cravat hanging low over the gilded railing.

“Oh, you. You of the striving classes. You’ve the most to lose and the most to gain, which means you are always tense. You want your world ordered and methodical, full of rules so that you may advance properly when you understand the formula. My Nightingale is every freedom you feel threatened by.”

“You, Smith, just who do you think you are?”

He shrugged, grabbing onto the rail and shaking it. “Just a madman in a box! You give me too much credit! It’s the idea that has caught hold! The idea that has London on fire. The idea that life is nothing but costuming and choices! It can be rewritten as we choos