Free Love's a Stage by Laura London Page B

Bed,” gave Frances three slices of baked beef rump with mincemeat fritters, peas in cream sauce, a compote of Siberian crab, and a currant tart, and encouraged her to take a nap that afternoon. When Miss Isles returned later that afternoon, she took one look at the feverish countenance of her sleeping niece, and, as she had already taken that young lady’s measure, Miss Isles seized her chance to stow every item of Frances’ clothing in the satinwood-veneered spare wardrobe, lock the door, and remove the key to some mysterious location that she refused to divulge to Frances. Thus persuaded, Frances had no choice but to remain abed, using up stacks of Aunt Sophie’s tatting-edged handkerchiefs, writing a long and fictitious account of her activities to her mother and a longer yet and more truthful account to her brother Joe, and trying in vain to teach Mr. Bilge to say “pretty boy” and “you’re a sweetie.”
    Unfortunately, these activities left Frances with more unoccupied time than she was used to, and because a large portion of that time seemed, despite her best efforts, to be filled with unwanted memories of Lord Landry, she was only too glad when Aunt Sophie was satisfied that Frances had coughed her last cough and gave her niece the wardrobe key, decorated with a bow of shiny gold ribbon to suit the occasion. Miss Sophie Isles was not a heartless woman. To be sure, she announced herself to be most pleased to see Frances well, but she added in a complacently disapproving tone that she supposed that this would mean that Frances would be up and trailing after Kennan like a hunt hound after a rabbit.
    “Kennan is a fox, not a rabbit!” protested Frances with a smile. “And this time I shall go right to his lair. I’m going to wait outside his house until I can see him and be sure that he is the man Joe and I saw on the hill and then . . .”
    “Don’t tell me!” said Aunt Sophie, holding up her hand to protest her niece’s confidences. “What you will do next is more than I can bear to know. Acting in a public theater, indeed!” Aunt Sophie’s chubby frame was wrenched by a frugal shudder of revulsion. “I live in dread that next I shall hear you had dressed up as a page and followed Kennan into a Pall Mall gambling hell. You’ll ruin yourself yet, missie, see if you won’t. And that is my last, absolutely my last, word on the subject!”
    *     *     *
    Edward Kennan, as everyone knew, lived in the Duke of Fowleby’s enormous town mansion. Frances had seen the Duke’s name mentioned several times of late in the newspapers as a Raphael Madonna had recently been stolen from his fabulous collection of paintings. In addition to being an admirer of the fine art, the Duke was a great theater patron and had acclaimed Kennan as the finest actor of the day.
    Besides providing Kennan with a modest stipend, Fowleby granted the actor rent-free use of the east wing in Fowleby Place. There was even a separate gateway with a twenty-four-hour guard maintained for Kennan’s use. It was to this entrance that Frances directed the driver of the hackney carriage, after negotiating the hire of this vehicle on a street corner near her aunt’s residence.
    Frances had waited for the cover of darkness to approach Fowleby Place. It was through a black-velvet London sparkling with the flares of a hundred thousand candles that Frances traveled. The hack moved west across the city to Mayfair, where the grand homes of the rich and powerful lay in neat, wide avenues like enormous building blocks left by giant children called away to tea. As she rode, Frances wondered how she would contrive to watch for Kennan with any semblance of discretion. A hack and pair were not to be concealed behind a streetlamp. When at last the Kennan gate to Fowleby Place was reached, however, the problem appeared to be not so much how to hide the hack, but rather, how to stop close enough to have any view of that famous gate! Frances was