The Bride who Loved_A Marriage of Convenience Regency Romance by Bianca Bloom

Author:Bianca Bloom [Bloom, Bianca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-22T05:00:00+00:00

39

As soon as I got to the house, I took unsteady steps through the threshold and declared myself cured. And it was true enough – as soon as I was there, I thought of a thousand things that needed to be done, and gained a burst of energy with which to deal with those tasks.

This time, Esther was the one to banish me. “You’ll be in your bedchamber, and Frances will read to you,” she insisted. “She has done little else, being at your bedside and Grace’s.”

This prompted me to draw Gracie to me again, and I managed to get one kiss in before my daughter said, “Mama, stop. Really.”

I let Grace go to her own room, though I hardly thought that she would sleep. In my own, I intended to do a great deal of work, though one Frances came by and forced me into my bed I dozed off for a moment.

When I awoke, Fran was plowing through a good bit of Henry V, which had never been one of my favorite plays, as I hated it when the English glorified all of their worst impulses. But Frances, if she learned nothing else from Gilbert, had absorbed his imperialist tendencies, and she loved the play. Though she was just as good as the French king, managing an accent that was not at all affected. When I woke, she was one of the king’s men, chastising the ruler to take care.

“Good my sovereign,” she said, her voice deepening, “Take up the English short, and let them know / Of what a monarchy you are the head. / Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin / As self-neglecting.”

Her face while she said it was rapt, transformed, and for the first time in my entire life I understood why she wished to act onstage. And I felt a pang that both she and I had been guilty of self-neglect. I had been too busy running after Flora and her young man to give a fig about my own happiness, and Frances had been so lost in a theatrical dream that I wondered if her feet ever touched the hard ground below us.

“Oh, Frannie,” I told her. “You certainly always do justice to old Bill Shakespeare. I know you only wish that you wish you could perform it.”

Her only response was to smile and take my hand. “Oh, mum, you needn’t worry about that. I am going to perform it.”

Doubt began to stir in my stomach. “And where would that be?”

“In New York City.”

“What, is that a theatre?”

“No, mum. New York City. It is the very best place in the New World to be an actress.”

My stomach was now fully revolting, and I wondered if I should pull a basin to me. “You would cross the ocean, Frances? For what, some theatre?”

She sat straighter, clearly already imagining the hot stage lights. “Not just one theatre, mama. It could be any theatre, really. Across the pond, there are no limits on who may perform Shakespeare.

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