Page 83 of Regency in Color
Bracing for a slap, he handed her the sheet music.
Andie looked over it quickly, focused on the notes. “This looks simple enough…” Then she read the lyrics. “There was a young girl from Regina, who had an oyster shell for a—” Her mouth dropped open in shock. “I’m not singing that!”
Frank shrugged. “It’s a different audience. The humor’s coarser, and everything’s a double entendre, if not a single one. Is that a thing? If you can get past that, there’s a lot of love in it. We work at it every day, try to make people laugh and forget for a few hours. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
Andie considered him, unconvinced.
“Come to the show tomorrow at seven,” he offered. “Be my guest. I’ll give you the best seat in the house. You can watch what we do and decide then. Can’t say fairer than that.”
She held his gaze for a long moment, and he could only guess what she was thinking. Reserved but determined, Andie didn’t look away or back down. She wasn’t intimidated by him. Despite her girlish attire, he rather suspected she was older than he’d first thought. But why would a dazzlingly beautiful woman dress like an incognito society miss?
The answer was too simple. She was an incognito society miss.
Oh, well. No one was perfect.
Andie was unreasonably close, however, or would be until her father or brother or aristocratic cousin called him out for letting her sing in public. Well and good, that was a risk he was willing to take. If he succeeded, the theater’s future would be secured. If he was shot, he’d go down having accompanied a classically trained soprano on a nine-verse ballad about shagging nuns.
Few men were able to choose the manner of their deaths, but Frank reckoned he could do worse.
He blinked first, his gaze briefly flitting lower. “Dear God, you have freckles,” he mumbled, forgetting himself and his surroundings as he noticed the constellations across her cheeks, only a shade or two deeper than her golden-brown skin.
Andie’s eyebrows drew together in an annoyed frown. “Is that a problem?”
“No,” Frank blurted. Only for my sanity. “No problem at all.”
She wasn’t sure about him. He couldn’t exactly blame her. Who he was and how he lived his life was unusual, to say the least, and kindred spirits were getting harder to find as the years went by. She could still say no—and likely would if she sat through the entirety of his Phantasmagoria—but if there was any chance of having her on his stage, he’d give the performance of his life.
Finally, she nodded. “Seven it is.”
