A Golden Cage Read Free Page B

talk to you. If you will pardon me, ladies. Delightful to see you again.” He tipped his chin and strode away.
    Deanna peered at Laurette in the uneven lighting of the backstage area, but she couldn’t gauge her expression. She wondered how she knew Edwin Stevens, and if Mr. Ballard knew or minded.
    â€œYes, Deanna?”
    Deanna blushed at what she had been wondering, and answered with the other thing on her mind. “Do you think he doesn’t like your friend’s daughter? Why would he say you should take her away?”
    Laurette sighed. “You know these actors. Always onstage. I’m sure he was just being dramatic.”
    Deanna nodded but noticed that Laurette walked a little more quickly toward the last tent.
    â€œLadies?” Laurette called when they stood at the opening of the women’s dressing room tent.
    â€œWho is it?”
    â€œA friend of Amabelle’s.”
    There was silence, then a young woman opened the flap and peered out. She was blonde and pretty even with the dark kohl encircling her eyes and the rouged cheeks and her red-painted lips.
    She pursed her lips into a pretty bow. “Mrs. Ballard. I suppose my mother sent you to beg me to come back to the fold.”
    â€œOh, mainly just to see how you’re doing,” Laurette saidlightly, and swept past her into the tent. Amabelle looked sourly at Deanna and said, “I suppose you might as well come in, too.”
    Deanna entered but stood just inside the door, taking it all in. It was a tent, but there was a wooden floor and a long dressing table where several of the chorus sat taking off their makeup in front of a mirror outlined in lights.
    Amabelle sat down at an empty chair and began to apply cold cream with a cotton pad. “Thank you for your trouble, but I’m very happy doing what I’m doing.”
    â€œCertainly,” Laurette said. “I shall tell your mother so. Are you staying long in Newport?”
    Amabelle looked in the mirror and spoke to Laurette’s reflection. “The company will stay until tomorrow night’s ferry, a morning off, and we’ll arrive in New York in time to open again on Tuesday.”
    â€œAnd you’re staying where?”
    Amabelle eyed her suspiciously. “At a local boardinghouse.”
    Her expression said she was used to finer accommodations, and Deanna wondered where and how she lived when in the city. Then something on the dressing table caught her eye. A magazine.
    Deanna stepped closer. “Is that
Beadle’s Weekly
?”
    Amabelle pulled the cotton away from her face and looked from Deanna to the magazine and back to Deanna.
    â€œThe latest issue. I brought it from the city. Do you read
Beadle’s
?” she asked. “You look like someone who would consider it too trashy.” She pursed her lips. “Not edifying for a young lady.”
    â€œYou sound like my mother.”
    â€œMine, too,” Amabelle said. “And she lets you read them?”
    â€œI hide them under my bed. I read them with my maid every night, but I haven’t gotten the new issue yet.”
    â€œIt’s delicious,” Amabelle said, warming slightly. “I’d loan it to you but I haven’t finished it yet.”
    â€œOh, I’ll have to get a copy from the bookshop.”
    â€œAnd your mama—”
    â€œIs in Switzerland with my sister.”
    â€œLucky you. And you’re staying with Mrs. Ballard?”
    Deanna nodded. “Well, really with Gran Gwen, Gwendolyn Manon, Mrs. Ballard’s mother. She stays in Newport for the full season. Laurette travels quite a bit.”
    â€œAh. And what about her handsome son, what is his name?’
    â€œJoe—seph.”
    â€œHe’s staying there also?”
    Deanna wasn’t sure she understood the look in Amabelle’s eye.
    â€œNo. He lives . . . elsewhere.”
    Deanna glanced at Laurette, but she had wandered over to the