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“Tell you what?” Dora had asked, lowering her script.

“Tell me what you mean to do with this role of course!”

Dora had caught her breath and stared at him before discarding her pencil and shifting around to face him head-on. “You really want to know?” she’d asked with a faint catch in her voice.

“I’m dying to know.”

A smile had slowly lit up her face and she had shuffled closer to him, staring intently into his face. “You do, don’t you?” she had breathed wonderingly. He’d nodded slowly. Then she had done one of her astonishing things and swung one of her legs over his lap until she sat fully astride him.

It had been Clem’s turn to catch his breath, his hands immediately closing over her hips in a loose clasp.

“You really want to know, Clem?” she’d asked close to his ear.

Clem had swallowed. “Yes,” he’d muttered huskily.

“Well,” she whispered, “You’ll. Just. Have. To. Wait. And. See.”

Clem had turned his head to snag her gaze. He had felt faintly outraged and very aroused. “You’re not going to tell me?” he’d asked, wanting for some goddamned reason to prolong the moment with Dora, confident and teasing. He loved it when she was like this. “Why?” he’d persisted. “Why won’t you tell me?”

Her eyes had flickered as she’d considered this, a funny look spreading over her face. “It’s almost … like a wish,” she’d said hesitantly. “As if speaking it aloud puts it into jeopardy somehow and I want it to come true, so badly.” Clem had watched her then; his gaze riveted to her face. “It almost feels like when we were engaged,” she’d admitted self-consciously, and Clem’s heart had flipped right over in his chest.

“What about our engagement?” he had asked hoarsely.

“That month and a half when we were meeting every Sunday. I kept it so close to my chest, and it made me feel so … excited and terrified all at once. It was the biggest and most wonderful secret I had ever kept in my life, and it was all mine. I didn’t even really understand what I was feeling at the time. That came later. I just knew if anyone found out it would all come to nothing, all come tumbling down like a house of cards so I had to cherish it and guard it and hope and pray it came off like I hoped it would.”

Clem had stared at her, breathing so hard she had finally noticed just how much her words had affected him. Realizing she had cherished their engagement so much, he had resolved at that very moment to buy her an engagement ring for their first anniversary.

On stage, the three suitors had sauntered into view for their first scene and Clem sat up, brought back into the present moment. The audience shifted excitedly, it was a full house and almost all the seats were taken up with fans of Piccadilly Percy.

Lil and her husband, Mother Longdon, and Peggy were all sat in the same box as Clem along with Vincent, Vincent’s special guest Mrs. Warrender, and their own housekeeper Mrs. Cherwell, with her husband Herbert in attendance. “Here she is!” Lil whispered excitedly jostling the people on either side of her.

Clem barely registered the dialogue spouted by the first and second suitors in their clipped, well-bred accents, wearing their immaculate day suits. For some reason, instead of having a new outfit made up, Theo had elected to save the money and wear the second suit Charlie Finch had made all those months previously. The day suit of yellow and brown tweed.

On stage, stood next to Greenfinch and Fitton, Clem could see the suit was all wrong somehow. It looked … too loud and brash, he realized suddenly, and Clem cursed under his breath that he had not insisted she had a new one made up. Due to budgetary constraints, they had cut corners on the production in every way that they could, but he seethed inwardly that Dora should have been the one stinted on wardrobe.

He did not even think she had any good lines in this scene, he thought, trying to remember the swathes of Felix’s “witty” dialogue, most of which had gone over his head. On stage, the Stepson sisters drifted past the actors, tricked out in their finest matching gowns. Most of the smaller roles were taken up by performers from The Eagle.

On stage, Theo pursed her lips and began to whistle loudly a popular vulgar tune mostly known by its chorus “You wouldn’t know she was a natural redhead by her temperament alooooone.” She aimed a sly, conspiring glance toward the cheap seats who convulsed instantly with delighted laughter. A few male guffaws were also heard in the balconies before.

Christ. She was so bright, so clever, Clem marveled. So quick with her wits. In that one moment, and an unscripted moment at that, she had captured the audience in the palm of her hand. Instantly Clem knew who Ralph Bixby was. He was not cut from the same cloth as suitors one and two. He was from the wrong side of the tracks. He was a bit brash, a bit knowing, and a bit of a lad.

Clem wanted to know Ralph Bixby’s story, and from the reaction of the audience, he knew he was not the only one. He trusted Dora to show them just who Ralph was and why he was there, throwing his hat into the ring for the fair Dorinda’s hand.

Over the course of the next hour, he watched entranced as Dora played Ralph to the hilt. She played him with the aggressive stance of a prizefighter, not the languorous grace of Greenfinch’s hero or Fitton’s practiced polish of the young man about town. Clem recognized a few touches of Ewell at times and even himself, but it was not a direct impression of either of them. Instead, it was a masterful and composite sketch of a character she had assembled from many different parts, all making one unique sum.

And it was glorious. When Ralph strode across the stage, he inadvertently scattered what was clearly betting slips from his pockets. When the young men awaited their lady love’s appearance in the parlor, Ralph shuffled cards with the unmistakably flair of a card sharp.

When he flirted with the heroine, though Clem thought his lines no less insipid than the ones the other two uttered, somehow, by a quirk of his eyebrows, the way his gaze dwelt on her mouth, just something about her delivery showed he was not a suitor who could be trusted to behave if no chaperone was present.

Then, too, Ralph would unconsciously tug at his collar or touch his knuckle to his nose in a casually ill-bred gesture that bought a ripple of amusement to the audience. A quick self-conscious glance about him to see if anyone had noticed his slip, would make them titter even louder.

At the dining scene, Ralph would down the drink the butler poured him in one gulp, then watch the retreat of the bottle with plain regret written across his face. The audience guffawed again. When Dora’s bored young man fidgeted with his empty glass, the actor who played Paton the butler, in a move of genius as far as Clem was concerned, retrieved the bottle and glided to Dora’s side, refilling her glass.

The audience broke out into appreciative laughter. Dora’s character gave the butler an approving nod which seemed to promise a tip later and the butler trickled back to the ice bucket, his expression benign, but somehow his eyes seemed to twinkle even from twelve feet away.

When the actor playing Dorinda’s father had finished his monologue and demanded the glasses be refilled, the butler returned and paused meaningfully next to Dora, who flourished her glass, apparently in need of replenishing once more. The audience once more broke out in mirth.

At one point, when Dora and the butler stood stage left and the main stage stood empty awaiting the heroine’s entrance, Dora deftly slipped the butler a tip. The fluid way that Paton took the money, in a blink and you’d miss it, drew another gale of laughter.