Read Online Love's a Stage by Laura London - Free Book Online

Lane’s leading lady. She and Landry have been lovers for years. She adores him, but so many other women do, too. No one’s been able to hold him exclusively.”
    “A reprehensible history,” said Frances with some heat. She could connect them now—the man who had helped her find her aunt’s home and Lord Landry. A playwright? Yes, she could believe it. The lively mind, the ready wit . . . she reflected bitterly that he was probably cataloguing her in his artist’s mind for some future satire. Prudence Sweetsteeple, the village bumpkin. And she would have to audition in front of him. It was no good to hope that he had forgotten her. Frances did not flatter herself that she would long hold a place in his memory, but only two days had passed. His clever mind, no matter how promiscuous, would retain her image for that long at least. She could leave the theater, nothing prevented her, yet she had not seen Kennan. Surely that was, must always be, her primary objective. The longer she could make an excuse to remain at the Drury Lane, the greater the chance she could see Kennan.
    But displaying her meager talents before Lord Landry would be a severe trial. Frances had come to London with the resolve to do whatever was necessary to restore her father’s freedom. Never had she suspected, however, that her courage would be challenged in quite so personal or humiliating a manner. Anything for Papa’s sake—but oh, how Landry’s brilliant green eyes would sparkle with laughter at her expense.
    She waited behind the veiling fire curtain, hoping Kennan would arrive, hoping she would be able to have a look at him, before she botched her audition and had no further excuse to remain at the theater. The girls before her went one by one through their paces, with each depressingly adept at comedy, tragedy, the opera. It was not easy for Frances to mount the stage when Charles Scott called her name. She had brought Juliet’s dying speech to read, the morose mood of which was well suited to her current humor. This, unfortunately, didn’t seem to help her speak the part with anything approaching realism. Perhaps it was the effort she had to make to avoid looking in Lord Landry’s direction; her voice sounded artificial and nervous, even to herself, and her emphasis seemed to fall on the wrong words.
    It came as no surprise fifteen minutes later when the name Scott announced as having won the part was not her own; it went to Theresa Sea, as he had predicted earlier.
    There was a chattering commotion. A spindle-legged buck dressed with foppish extravagance left his seat in the pit and came to give Theresa a congratulatory toss in the air. Disappointed hopefuls donned redingotes and bonnets, leaving the stage in groups of twos and threes. Taking what she prayed was an inconspicuous glance at the pit, Frances saw no Kennan. She was careful to take no interest in the fact that Lord Landry was no longer there.
    She took as much time as she dared putting on her cape, tying the ribbons of her new pink and pine-green Breath o’ Life bonnet, watching the pit, hoping that Kennan would come. Soon though, even the group in the pit began to break up, its occupants drifting away chatting. It was apparent that Kennan was not coming to the theater today.
    Theresa, standing with her waist cuddled by her skinny beau, finished a consultation with Charles Scott, who strode off to a portable desk in the opposite wing. A woolly-haired boy in his early teens appeared with a cup of steaming coffee. Scott flipped the boy a coin and stood sipping at the contents of the cup while thumbing moodily through the small mountain of papers strewn about on his desk. Hard coffee smell mixed with the odor of fresh wood shavings that were falling beneath the saw of a stage carpenter as Frances approached Scott.
    “I beg your pardon, Mr. Scott,” said Frances, at once wishing that she thought of another way than that prissily correct formality to begin the conversation.