Love's a Stage by Laura London Page B

forward along the curtain edge until she could see into the sunken area in front of the stage. The singer had been playing toward a group of men and women seated there. Frances could see no one among them who might have been Edward Kennan, but her attention was momentarily caught by a beautiful woman standing at the end of the row. The woman was reed-slender with gypsy-black curls lifted off a high, proud neck. A gown colored the tone of a pale alexandrite was draped off her sloping shoulders and molded carefully over her shapely form on its way to the floor. She was standing behind a seated man, her elbows resting lightly on his shoulders, her long hands loosely clasped. Even at the distance, Frances saw the sparkle of the diamonds that adorned her fingers. The man in front of her had golden hair, a uniquely rich color that caught the light from a taper burning at the stage corner. As Frances watched, the woman leaned forward and blew gently on the golden hair, sending it rippling like a rye field kissed by the summer breeze. Turning so that Frances saw his face, he shared a lover’s smile with the woman behind him. David, thought Frances, almost gasping the name aloud. David, David, Mr. David. There was no mistake. He was the man who had helped her find her way to Aunt Sophie’s house.
    Frances felt a sharp internal constriction, as though a small earthquake had lodged its epicenter in her middle. Again, as with the first time she had seen the man, Frances was forced to confront the rather frightening revelation that she, that paragon of self-command, could be susceptible to a powerful physical attraction. No one, not her silly sweet-tempered Mama, nor her dedicated, intellectual Papa, had prepared her for the possibility that a young lady of hitherto unassailable virtue could be affected in that way by a gentleman she barely knew and who, moreover, had proven himself to be undeserving of her trust and friendship. Somehow, it could be no comfort that the beautiful woman behind him was obviously a victim of the same ailment.
    The “redheaded piece” finished singing, and after exchanging a few words with Scott, came to stand near the iron fire curtain, tapping her foot impatiently as the next hopeful took the stage.
    “I beg your pardon,” Frances said to her, “I wonder if you know who that man is there, in the pit? The blond man?”
    The actress regarded Frances with an expression that Frances’ brother Joe would not have hesitated to characterize as snooty.
    “That,” she said, in a voice that informed Frances that she found it painful to have to converse with so ignorant a hayseed, “is Lord Landry. I trust you recognize the name?”
    Frances did of course. Lord Landry was the premier playwright of the modern theater. One saw his name in columns of literary review, where he was hailed as the new Molière, the new Sheridan. He was an aristocrat, a man so wealthy that it was unnecessary for him to set his hand to work to command life’s every luxury; he wrote for the sheer joy of it and donated what he earned from his writing to a charitable foundation for retired actors and actresses. It had always sounded so good, in the shallow and fawning news coverage. Frances found herself staring at Lord Landry in blank astonishment.
    “I would have thought,” she said, “that a famous playwright would be an older man.”
    “Stately, with a touch of gray at the temples?” responded the actress. Her smile was a sneer, but as she turned from Frances to look at Lord Landry, her smile became wider and more natural. “Beautiful, isn’t he?”
    Useless to deny it, Lord Landry was beautiful, or whatever its male equivalent.
    “And the lady he’s talking to?” asked Frances, promising herself this was the last question she would ask about Lord Landry. “That’s not—good heavens—that’s not his wife? ”
    “You are green, aren’t you? He hasn’t got a wife. That’s Sheila Grant. Yes, that Sheila Grant, Drury