Page 95 of Regency in Color

She didn’t think it was possible, but she’d managed to fluster Frank Creighton.

* * *

Frank milledabout downstairs after the close of the show, making small talk and checking in with the bar. Andie stayed upstairs for a time, gradually making her way back down as she tried to inconspicuously neaten her hair. Once most everyone had gone, Frank took her through the side door and walked her through the churchyard at St. Leonard’s across the street. As expected, Toussaint’s carriage was waiting on the other side.

They avoided each other’s gazes, unsure of what to say. Finally, Frank stopped in front of an enormous stone cross near the center and pivoted to face her. “I should apologize,” he said, his voice low. “I shouldn’t have…” He glanced toward the roof of the playhouse. “Well, you know. People around here tend to do what they like, but I know it’s different for the ton. I don’t want to make trouble for you.”

It was good of him to care. She probably should have, but oddly, she still didn’t. She bit her lip, still tasting him there. She wanted to kiss him again. Perhaps it was the rum talking, but she wanted to drag him behind that cross and ride him like the plaster moon.

Instead, she pulled on her gloves and straightened her jacket. “I don’t want to cause you trouble either. You or Lulu. I know if this got out…well, I’m sure you don’t need that kind of press.”

He took a step back, ashamed.

“Will I see you tomorrow?” she asked.

Frank looked up, surprised. “You want to come back?”

Andie laughed under her breath. “To be perfectly honest,” she lowered her voice and stepped closer, “I don’t want to leave.”

His mouth dropped open as understanding lit his eyes. “Why, Miss Archer, that’s a most improper thing to say,” he teased.

She looked down and smiled, oddly bashful. “May I ask…do you mind? That I’m a lady, that is?”

“Why should I mind?” he frowned.

“No one understands about the music,” she confessed, the excitement of the night making it easier to say things she usually kept inside. “They find me strange or cold or stunted in some way. I’m twenty-nine, Frank. Twenty-nine. I’ve forgone marriage and everything society expects of me so I can sing, something ladies are only meant to do in very specific places at very specific times, and then it’s usually only to capture the interest of some loathsome gentleman pretending to care, and I just can’t do it. I’ll not marry and let some useless toff take away the voice I worked so hard to find.”

Andie closed a hand over her mouth, horrified she’d said so much. Ladies were not supposed to be candid.

Ladies were not supposed to drink three measures of rum and kiss musicians on rooftops either, but in for a penny, in for a pound.

“I apologize,” she whispered.

The smile Frank gave her was so patient, so kind, the warmth of it wrapped around her like a blanket and soothed her fractured nerves. “Now, how could I ever disapprove of something like that?” He offered his arm. “I’m forty-two,” he said quietly. “I’m probably too old for you.”

Andie snorted. “There’s no such thing for men. My mother’s friends are trying to marry me off to an eighty-year-old earl in Cornwall.”

Frank stopped in his tracks. “Why on earth would they want to do that?”

“Because the ton thinks I’m past it.” Andie sighed as they continued walking. “Don’t you know women are useless after twenty-two?” She rolled her eyes.

“This is why I don’t want Lu anywhere near it,” he muttered to himself. “You are not past it. You’re not past anything. You, darling, are only just beginning.”

They stopped talking as they neared the carriage, not wanting her driver Thomas to hear. Poor Thomas had no doubt heard much worse in his time, but it wouldn’t do to put him in an awkward position.

Frank tipped his hat to Thomas, then handed her into the carriage with all the gallantry of a gentleman. He softly closed the door behind her and paused at the window, briefly taking her hand in his. “Good night, Miss Archer.”

Andie held in her sigh until the carriage turned the corner, replaying the evening in her mind a thousand times on the way home.

What on earth was she thinking? Frank was odd as anything, a good deal older than she was, and wholly inappropriate for a woman of her station. He was also a musical genius, a doting father, and so absurdly handsome that even greasepaint and kohl couldn’t hide it.

Andie clapped her hands over her mouth, erupting into giggles in the solitude of the carriage. She rarely drank, and here she was, half in love with an East End musician who made sailors laugh for money. If Lady Bodmin could see her now, she’d never recover.

For some reason that notion made her laugh harder. Lost to daydreams, the rest of the journey passed in a heartbeat. Thomas helped her from the carriage, not saying a word about her inebriated state. Once inside, Andie floated up the stairs, tiptoeing past her parents’ room. She could almost imagine their reprimand if they saw her staggering down the hallway, love drunk and merry with rum. What would your great-grandfather say?

Andie closed the door to her room behind her, leaning against it with glee. She whispered to herself, “He would probably say, ‘I know how you feel!’”

Biting back her giggles, Andie spun a few crazy circles in her room, imagining they were dancing again. She fell back into her plush bed, and the last thing she saw before she fell asleep was a spider crawling across the ceiling.

Andie smiled into her pillow. “Frank bloody Creighton.”