Love's a Stage Read Online Free Page B

recall its meaning. She gasped when she remembered and said simply:
    “No.”
    “That’s quite an oversight on somebody’s part.” A crowded street corner was not the setting a man of his vast experience would have chosen to make a declaration of desire, nor was a bald statement of fact as likely to produce a successful result as were patience and attentive intimacy. To have ignored her direct appeal for an explanation, though, would have amounted to a deception alien to his nature.
    A grin touched his lips as he noted they had arrived almost at the ornamental porch that marked the entrance to Miss Isles’ apartments—at least, when she demanded the return of her case, she would have only a short space to carry it. “Miss Atherton,” he said gently, “I would like to be more than friends with you.”
    Frances’ young life had been devoted to Duty and Service. She was Assistant Mother to eight younger siblings, confidante and soul mate to her Papa and aide-de-camp to her unworldly, domestically inclined Mama. Excepting her brothers, the only young men Frances knew were the fishermen’s sons from her village, any one of whom would have been too shy to woo the Parson’s lovely, intelligent daughter. There had been no proposals, proper or improper, in Miss Atherton’s life; and while she might daydream in modesty of the former, it had never crossed her mind that she might ever be in a position to receive the latter. So unexpected was the declaration that Miss Atherton was not completely sure of his intention until he said helpfully:
    “Yes, Miss Atherton, I meant precisely what you think I meant.”
    To say that Frances was shocked would have been greatly to understate the case; in fact, she was astonished. She had never been encouraged to think of herself as pretty. As a result, she did not, and it came as a surprise to her that she could somehow have inspired those sentiments in any gentleman, particularly one who, it was quite obvious, could hardly have suffered from a lack of feminine companionship. Her incredulous surprise, however, was soon trampled by a flaming wrath.
    “I suppose you think,” she said dangerously, “that because I allowed you to talk to me on the street you can insult me!”
    Capped in her shabby brown bonnet and cloaked in her puritanical morality, she had for him the quaint charm of a delightfully apt cliché. They had reached Miss Isles’ building, so he set her case on the low porch before the door and took Miss Atherton’s flushed cheeks leisurely between his palms, forcing her to look into his sparkling green eyes.
    “Never, Prudence,” he said, with what Frances regarded as an odious tranquility, “is it an insult to tell a woman that you find her so attractive that you would like to . . .”
    Miss Atherton stopped his words by clapping her mittened hands over her ears in a gesture rendered unfortunately inefficient by the oversized contours of her bonnet. She removed her face from his hold with so forceful a back-step that if it were not for his steadying hands on her shoulders she would surely have fallen.
    “It is always, al-ways, ” she said furiously, “an insult unless preceded by a marriage vow.”
    Releasing her shoulders, he walked to the heavy oak door and held it open for her. Miss Atherton marched past and found they had entered a narrow hall lined with marble wallpaper in yellows and browns. An interior door lay to the right of the entrance, and a wooden open-newel stair lit by a single lamp led to an upper landing. He lifted her case inside the threshold and shut the outer door behind them.
    There was both rueful self-knowledge and compassion in his smile as he said, “That’s one game I don’t play, Prudence. I doubt if I’ll ever be able to make that type of commitment to a woman. Honestly, sweetheart, there’s very little chance I’d marry you.”
    Miss Atherton came to a full rolling boil. “Well, there is NO chance that I would marry you!” She