Free Arms of a Stranger by Danice Allen Page B

do you think? Will you pay a call to the Chevalier box?”
    Lucien slowly lowered the opera glasses and handed them to his mother. “I won’t have time.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because I’ve business to attend to.”
    “But surely, Lucien, you have time to say bonsoir? ”
    “There will be hordes of men clambering to say bonsoir to Liliane Chevalier. I’m sure I won’t be missed in such a crush.”
    “All the more reason why you should go. Do you want to lose your lovely lady to someone else?”
    Lucien paused and pondered his mother’s question. He didn’t suppose he had any hope at all of preventing Anne Weston from getting romantically involved with any one of the numerous men who might pursue her. He had no right, no business even wishing he could pursue her for himself. But that didn’t stop him from wanting to be near her. And now that he’d seen her again, he didn’t think he could help himself from spending just a few precious moments in her presence. Even if she hated him for it.
    The ponderous velvet curtain fell at the end of the first act. He got up, kissed his mother good-bye, exchanged brief stilted pleasantries with his father and siblings, then excused himself just as Renee’s first admirers stepped through the curtained entryway. He walked quickly around the opera house and up the stairs till he found Katherine Grimms’s box. Muttering “Caution be damned” under his breath, he stepped inside.

Chapter 5
    “M r. Wycliff, I believe you’ve managed to make me talk about myself through the entire first act!” Anne said gaily. “I’m embarrassed, and Uncle Reggie is looking very disapproving.”
    “I hope he doesn’t lecture you on my account. I don’t believe I’ve ever enjoyed the Barber of Seville quite so much.”
    Anne smiled. “Do you always know exactly what to say?”
    Jeffrey Wycliff smiled back, his brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m a writer, you know. I’m never at a loss for words. At the opera I’d always rather converse with someone than watch the dramatics on stage, but I’ve never been fortunate enough before to sit next to a good-looking female who goes after a subject with the same relish that you do, Miss Weston.”
    Anne laughed. “What? Don’t you like the opera, Mr. Wycliff? How gauche of you to admit it! And how very much I like you for being so unfashionably honest. But if you don’t enjoy the drama and the music, why do you come?”
    Anne was aware that behind her someone had entered the box, but she was enjoying her talk with Mr. Wycliff so much, she was determined to avoid the inevitable callers as long as politely possible. Since Katherine had been away several months, Anne hoped that her aunt would be the center of their attention for a few more moments while she enjoyed a rather stimulating conversation.
    “I come to the opera because everyone comes, and it amuses me to watch society all tricked out in their finery and playing their circumscribed parts. I have the natural curiosity of a journalist.”
    “And the natural cynicism, I see.” Anne gave him a sagacious once-over. In his black evening trousers and jacket, complete with the usual white gardenia at the lapel, she thought he looked a little too formally rigged out to suit her overall impression of him. With his straight sandy-brown hair, his attractive, square-jawed, wholly American face, he looked as if he’d be much more at home in a suit of buckskin and fringed boots. “But you are dressed as finely as the others, Mr. Wycliff … What part are you playing?”
    His tone was low and playfully conspiring. “I’m a chameleon, Miss Weston, very adaptable to my surroundings. Wherever I go, I manage to fit in. But I don’t play a part. I’m always intrinsically myself.”
    “And who are you?”
    “No one special. Just an orphan from Baltimore with the lucky knack of putting pen to paper.”
    “Why did you leave Baltimore?”
    Jeffrey shrugged his wide shoulders. “There was