Love's a Stage Read Online Free

source of continual amazement to your tutor.”
    The man leaned back against the newel post, crossing his finely muscled legs at the ankles. The searching hand of the soft evening breeze stroked through his hair. He smiled at Frances in his odd, affectionate way.
    “I never had a tutor. My parents held that public school was superior for the development of character.”
    “Did they? How do you know I come from a remote village?”
    “Your clothes are twenty years out of fashion.”
    Frances frowned at the serviceable gray cape that her own mother had worn at Frances’ age. Then she looked at the stranger in his beautifully cut blue jacket, tight buckskins, and shiny Hessians. “It’s wasteful to throw out perfectly good clothing simply because the style is no longer the current thing. I don’t care a fig about being fashionable.”
    “Very proper,” he said affably. “Frills and furbelows won’t get you into heaven.”
    She stood, emphatically brushing at the mud on her cape. “Going to heaven is nothing to joke about,” she said primly.
    The gentleman did not appear in the least chastened. “And I knew you were hungry,” he said, “because you’re so cross. Let me take you somewhere and feed you.”
    Miss Atherton ignored the wheedling of her stomach. “Absolutely not! I don’t know you. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’ll have to think of a plan.”
    “I believe you could.” Smiling, he came to stand close to her. “But you won’t have to, I know where Sophie Isles lives.”
    “You . . . how could you know that?”
    “She lives in an apartment above a young male relative of mine, on Long Acre, about ten blocks from here. How would you prefer to travel?” Green devils danced in his eyes. “Shall I call a hack for you?”
    “For ten blocks? I should say not. Although I can see you are funning. If you would be so kind as to give me directions,” she said formally, “I shall do very well on foot.”
    “You will, if Miss Sophie doesn’t go to bed before two A.M . I’m afraid that’s how long it will take you to drag your case there.”
    She looked at her boot tops and kicked at the caked mud on the hem of her cape, so that a tiny piece fell off and crumbled on the sidewalk. Pride had carried her case down Charles Street. She wondered if a miracle might give her the strength to carry it another ten blocks. Her arms and legs ached miserably. Mayhap the Lord had provided this stranger to carry her traveling case, although any virtuous young lady would have wished that the Lord had provided someone a little less spectacular.
    “I’m not weak,” she said. “It’s just that this case is very heavy.”
    He reached for her bag and lifted it with irritating ease. “A Herculean weight,” he agreed. “What’s in here?” He started walking toward Russell Street, carrying the case, and she went beside him.
    “Lots of things. But mostly, a brass bed warmer.”
    “I wouldn’t have thought you would need that to keep you warm in bed.”
    “I didn’t think so either, but then Grandma said she wouldn’t sleep nights if she wasn’t sure I had it with me.”
    “Grandma Sweetsteeple?”
    This time she laughed, a musical rippling sound that caused a boy pushing a cart heaped with broccoli to stare after the girl who was lighting the evening with laughter. “No, Atherton. That’s my name as well. What’s yours?”
    “David,” he said easily. “So you were named after your grandmother. My felicitations. Atherton is an unusual name for a girl.” He was pleased to hear her laugh again.
    “How can you be so absurd? Atherton is my surname . And you were very bad to joke me by not saying immediately that you know where Miss Isles lives.”
    Privately, the man with the golden hair marveled at the relative ease with which he had won her trust. It spoke volumes for the depth of her naïveté that she so readily accepted his word that he was taking her to the residence of Miss Sophia Isles.
    “I admit