She found herself telling Mr. Briggs about her parents, American circus performers, who had died not because of their hazardous acts—Maggie’s mother had been an aerialist, her father a lion tamer—but in a train crash high in the mountains of Switzerland. She even told him about her schooling in the States, how she’d been dropped off at a different orphanage every autumn and picked up again in the spring, when the circus came through town.

“You were adopted by your own parents, then?” Philip prompted when the story had ended.

Maggie smiled—oddly, she was both relaxed and excited. She decided at that moment that she loved Mr. Philip Briggs even though she knew next to nothing about him. “At least eight times,” she answered. “I hated those winters, but boarding school was out of the question—it cost too much—so I pretended to be an orphan once a year.”

Just then another performer peered around the dressing room door, and snapped, “We’re on, Chamberlin!”

Now, after spilling virtually every intimate detail of her unconventional life, Maggie became strangely shy. She averted her eyes as she removed her wrap again, revealing the scanty sequin-covered costume, and started for the door.

Gently, Philip caught Maggie’s arm. A tingle jolted along her bare limb and, traveling by way of her heart, lodged itself in her throat.

“You’ll have dinner with me? After the show?”

Maggie nodded and dashed out of the dressing room into the long, shadowy hallway leading to the wings.

A courtship of the sort only dreamed about by girls of Maggie’s station was to follow. Every night Philip took Maggie to supper. He told her about Australia, where he managed several theaters, and, after a few whirlwind weeks, he offered her the two things she wanted most in all the world: marriage and a leading role in Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. She was entirely too sweet and too pretty for the part of Kate, he assured her, suavely kissing her hand as he made his promises. No, no, she must play Bianca, the gentle sister.

Maggie would have preferred the part of Kate—Bianca seemed to her a dull and dumdazzle character—but she was nobody’s fool and she knew how rare it was for a man to offer not only his name but a real job too.

“Say you’ll do it, Maggie,” Philip pleaded that last evening in a glamorous London supper club she had never expected to enter. “Say you’ll come to Australia. I’ll meet you in Brisbane—the ship docks there first—and we’ll be married the minute you step ashore. We’ll honeymoon in Queensland—they have white beaches there, Maggie, and shells as colorful as jewels—and then we’ll be off to Sydney—”