Free Will Starling by Ian Weir

fear Annie Smollet was no better than she should be. But then, how many of us are?
    She was on the corner of Russell Street as I arrived: a slender figure amidst the milling crowd, with roses in a wicker basket. A bright green dress — it set off her eyes — and red-blonde ringlets tumbling from a straw bonnet. I don’t know that you’d call her beautiful, exactly. Perhaps more pretty than beautiful; the girl who lived just down the road. But she had a way of carrying herself — as she would, wouldn’t she? An actress. And that spirit of hopefulness, shining.
    â€œH’lo, Miss Smollet,” I said.
    She looked over my head at first, as people did. Finding me, she was blank for just a moment, before warming into a smile of recognition.
    â€œYou again,” she said, most amiable.
    I’d seen her here last night. On eight of the ten nights previous, in fact. I’d bought a flower each time.
    â€œA rose, sir?”
    â€œBy any other name.”
    â€œâ€™Scuze me?”
    â€œWould smell as sweet.”
    I’d been rehearsing that in my head, assuming she’d recognize the reference. She looked at me oddly.
    â€œYes,” I said hastily. “A rose.”
    It had been wilted at eight o’clock this morning when she bought a bucket-full from a stall at Covent Garden, and the intervening hours had not improved its prospects. But it was a rose nonetheless, from Miss Annie Smollet. She shook it free from the basket, and was already scanning the crowd as I handed her a penny — looking for the next customer, or better yet for a theatre manager heaving into view with arms flung wide. She smelled of oranges.
    â€œDid I tell you that I saw you act, at the Thespis Theatre?”
    I’d told her so on eight of the past ten evenings. But I had at least half of her attention back.
    â€œI’m grateful you’d remember me, sir.”
    â€œRemember you? Miss Smollet, you are seared .”
    The odd look. “’Scuze me?”
    â€œInto my recollection. When I close my eyes, Miss Smollet, you are there.”
    She had to weigh this for a moment, deciding. Then she dimpled in a smile.
    â€œI don’t s’pose I was that good, was I?”
    â€œMiss Smollet, you were a radiance, glowing like the dawn.”
    Let’s be honest: it was laughable. The likes of Your Wery Umble, aspiring to Miss Smollet? She wasn’t much taller than I — this wasn’t the problem. But look at her, and then look at me: a counterfeit Rainbow with a wilted rose, and a dark phizog that was all sharp points and triangles. Still. It wasn’t completely unhandsome, that phiz. There were girls who had thought so, and a few who had even said it. And I had my smile, and I always had words, and — look at this — I’d made Miss Smollet beam.
    Her play had been a burletta of Antony and Cleopatra , which is to say Mr Shakespeare’s drama with songs and rhymes instead of spoken lines. Like the rest of the minor theatres, the Thespis was not licensed for dialogue. This was reserved by law for the two patent theatres, the fear being that spoken dialogue would incite sedition and inflame the weak-minded, and send the Pit rampaging into the night to burn down the Houses of Parliament. Annie Smollet had appeared as an Egyptian handmaiden, and had done so thrillingly, in a black wig and a dizzying gossamer gown. She wore a look of such plaintive distress when the asp clamped onto Cleopatra that the queen was entirely redundant to the drama.
    I believed that Miss Smollet should be on the stage at Drury Lane tonight, and said so. Or at Covent Garden, playing Juliet and Rosalind.
    â€œBoth of ’em at once?” she exclaimed, feigning to misunderstand.
    â€œAnd Cleopatra as well, all in the same play. I believe you are the one actress in London who could pull it off.”
    â€œPull ’im off, more like, is wot ’ee’s angling for,”