Free Improper Advances by Margaret Evans Porter Page B

company. And when I escort you to the Douglas assembly rooms, I promise I shall behave with absolute propriety.”
    She’d never attended an assembly ball in her life. Stage performers were never invited to mix with gentry-folk and the nobility. She couldn’t tell him that her only opportunities for social dancing had occurred at the public masquerades held at Ranelagh or in Vauxhall Gardens, where rakes and rogues and ladies of easy virtue supped together, listened to music, and dallied in dark groves and alleyways.
    Marching over to the bed, he picked up the book she’d left there.
    “Give it to me, she commanded.
    He found the page she had marked, and began to read.
    “Kiss again: no creature comes .
    Kiss and score up walthy sums
    On my lips, this hardly sundered
    While you breathe. First give a hundred,
    Then a thousand, then another
    Hundred, and then unto tother
    Adda thousand . …”
    He looked up at her, eyes dancing. “You’re a romantic.”
    She wanted to protest that characterization—or was it an accusation? Her affinity for Ben Jonson’s verses was impossible to explain without mentioning her Stuart ancestors’ court masques, or her plan to set her favorite sonnets to music. With her silence, she accepted the label he bestowed. It wasn’t inappropriate.
    Oriana was accustomed to seeing Dare in the coats and riding leathers and top boots typical of a well-to-do country gentleman. When he returned to Glencroft late in the day, he resembled the elegant stranger whose birthday dinner she’d interrupted. His cravat was intricately tied; he wore a patterned silken waistcoat with his dark coat and knee breeches. His eyes glittered devilishly when he complimented her green gown and insisted that she show him which slippers she’d chosen.
    The doctor’s family warmly welcomed them to Ballakilligan, and Mrs. Curphey sat them down in her parlor and served a cordial and sweet biscuits. Oriana, whose own dinner parties were attended by celebrated writers, witty actors, and gifted musicians, feared the conversation would prove tedious. It didn’t, because it centered on the Cashins, a noble clan in the neighboring parish of Maughold.
    “Lord Garvain’s linen mill succeeds beyond expectation,” Dare commented during dinner. “My friend Buck Whaley, one of the directors, boasts about the quantity of fabric being exported to England.”
    “Lady Garvain will be lying in next month,” said Mrs. Curphey.
    Dare nodded. “The Earl of Ballacraine must hope for a grandson, to carry on the title.”
    “That young couple are so devoted,” the doctor declared, “his lordship will get a litter of grandsons and granddaughters in due course.”
    “Earls and barons live on this island?” Oriana asked, covering her alarm at this unwelcome news.
    “We’ve one of each,” Dare informed her. “And our very own duke as well. But the less said of Atholl the better.”
    “On the fifth of July, when Tynwald meets, you’ll meet them all,” the doctor declared. “As well as the full contingent of government officials.”
    “By that time, I shall be back in London.”
    In a fortnight she would give up her pets and pay off her servants, and leave the quaint cottage in the glen. Until then, she would avoid any gathering that might include aristocrats.
    A maidservant bearing a soup tureen paused by her chair to ask shyly, “Vel shiu em’akin Ben-rein Hostyn?”
    Oriana looked to Dare for a translation.
    “She wonders whether you’ve seen the Queen of England.”
    With a smile, she answered, “Yes— ta, several times. The King also. And they’ve seen me.”
    Everyone at the table laughed.
    Her host wished to know where her encounter with royalty had taken place.
    “At the theater,” she answered. “Their Majesties sit in their velvet-draped box, with the coat of arms carved upon it.”
    She’d been on the stage, singing for them.
    After dinner Mrs. Curphey suggested that they leave the gentlemen to enjoy their