The Kiss of Folly

In 1747, sixteen-year-old Ravenna Beaufort is becoming too tall to continue dancing at London's Theatre-Royal Drury-Lane. As she practices to become an actress who wears male disguises, she borrows a gentleman's costume and accepts a friend's challenge that she cannot successfully masquerade on the streets of nighttime London. A young tenor's song that praises highwayman Gentleman Jack Folly seizes her attention. When the music ends, a tall, handsome traveler picks Ravenna's pocket to teach her to remain on her guard. After returning her money, the traveler pretends not to see past Ravenna's costume and accompanies her to the cockpit, where brighter lights show him a face he has seen before...in a more elegant place. Sickened by the cock fight, Ravenna leaves. After relieving herself in an alley, she runs into the traveler, who has followed her. As they stroll, the traveler questions Ravenna about family. She says her dead parents were both theater people, but he senses she has a richer story. Before they kiss good night, Ravenna tells him her name, but he claims that revealing his name would be "Folly to tell." Haunted by the memory of Folly's kiss, Ravenna soon learns the truth of her mother's birth and enters a new world of wealth, wonder, and worry.