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replied in awed tones.
    He nodded back at her.
    Cousin Felicity sighed. “Oh, how Freddie’s dear girlsdo need those lessons. If only they possessed a bit more deportment, knew when to use their sweet smiles, or how to do the latest dance steps. ’Tis a terrible shame. I know our girls could be the talk of the town, what with the proper instruction and all. Imagine it, Mason, they would be able to make their entrance into a room and all eyes would turn on them. Why, with the right teacher they would be the most tempting creatures, the envy of…” The lady’s voice trailed off as her bespectacled gaze fluttered, then turned slowly toward Riley.
    The weight of the woman’s last words hung in the room, until not only the lady’s gaze, but the Earl’s as well, had swung in her direction.
    Cousin Felicity, for Riley couldn’t think of her as anything other than that, was beaming again as if Riley had just deposited the Crown jewels in their study, rather than an odd sum of coins.
    Lord Ashlin, on the other hand, was shaking his head, his face a mask of disbelief, as if his cousin had just proposed stealing the royal treasures in broad daylight.
    Riley shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
    “It’s perfect, Mason,” Cousin Felicity announced. “She is perfect. There isn’t a man in London who can resist her, and who better to bestow a measure of charm and grace on our dear girls?”
    Mason’s head shook faster. “You are not proposing that I…that I let her …?”
    “Proposing what?” Riley interrupted, having the strange notion she was about to agree with the prickly Earl.
    “Oh, Madame Fontaine,” Cousin Felicity bubbled. “You’re about to render a service to our family that will be remembered for generations.”

Chapter 2
    “R iley, my love, whatever took you so long? While you were out dilly-dallying with our dear patron, I’ve been working my fingers to the bone.” Agamemnon Bartholomew Morpheus Pettibone the Third held up his smooth white hands, which had never borne a callus, let alone a hangnail, in their sixty-some years of avoiding manual labor. “Ah, what you’ve missed! I’ve been inspired, divinely so.”
    Riley took a deep breath. Whenever Aggie uttered the words “divine” and “inspiration” in the same breath, disaster soon followed.
    “I heard him speak to me. I vow he guided my hand as I wrote,” Aggie called out from his dressing table. “What lines he gave me! ’Twas like he stood right where you are, dictating to me. Ah, to be guided by the great Bard’s spirit.” He smiled at the memory of it. “And you off and about on that fool’s errand of yours, missing it as you did.”
    Not more revelations from Shakespeare! Riley counted to ten and stepped further into the apartment they shared above the Queen’s Gate Theatre. From the discarded costumes and scattered drawings of sets and sheets of scripts,Aggie was obviously going through a “character renewal,” as he liked to call them.
    Character chaos, Riley knew from experience.
    Nor did it appear that her troop had completed their daily rehearsals, which Aggie had assured her he would direct in her absence. No, her friend was settled in front of his mirror, working on his makeup for his upcoming role as the humble woodcutter in their production of The Envious Moon .
    Wrapped in a striped green silk dressing gown, a gift from an aging marchioness or some other rich elderly patroness Aggie had managed to bamboozle with his repertoire of false credentials, he was in the process of tucking his iron gray hair underneath a skullcap.
    “Where is Nan?” she asked, looking about for their émigré maid.
    “ Petite Nanette?” He affected a phony French diction, all the while peering at his reflection in the mirror. “I fired her. Such an ineffective wench. No depth in her delivery. No joie de vivre . No presence. I’m starting to doubt she’s French.”
    Riley groaned. “Aggie, she’s a servant, not an actress.”