EXCERPT from THE ARRANGEMENT

In the green-draped tiring room where the actresses changed their costumes, Diana Cresswell peeled off her stockings one at a time, smiling to herself. She always felt exhilarated after a performance, but this afternoon had gone especially well. Her new role was her best yet, and the audience loved her. Her smile widened as she savoured the laughs and cheers that had echoed through the hall when her boyish disguise was revealed. Already her mind was at work on how she might improve her performance tomorrow. Quickly she shed the daring breeches and handed her costume to the assistant dresser, standing at last in the relative comfort of her shift. Loose at the neck, this garment covered her to the knee, and in this heat wearing anything more was a torment.

She sighed and lifted her hair off her damp neck. The tiring room was noisy, stuffy, and hot, the situation exasperated by the gentlemen who crowded in to enjoy the actresses' other talents.
Reaching for a comb amid the clutter on the dressing table, she slanted a look at one shameless couple towsing and mowsing in a dim corner. The man pressed up against his lady love, kissing her face and with eager fingers roving the expanse of neck, shoulder, and breast left bare by her shift. Diana curved her lips downward in tight disapproval and forced herself to look away. A giggle from the corner, however, drew her eyes like a magnet. The cavalier had managed to free one plump breast of its frail covering and was lowering his mouth to the pink tip.

Diana, flushing hotly, turned away ... and looked straight into the face of a man staring at her. Embarrassed to be caught spying on another couple's intimacies, she flushed again but could not make herself look away from the tall stranger. Instead she tilted her head in what she hoped would be taken as a gesture of defiance, and stared back.