by Jo Beverley
“No, truly. I mislaid something at the Olympian Revels and want to retrieve it.”
“Oh, miss! Are you sure that’s wise, miss? What if you’re recognized?”
“Hence the disguise,” Bella said, facing her maid and speaking firmly. “So please let me know when you discover the right place to purchase my new gown.”
Kitty ran off, which gave Bella time to rethink, but she blocked caution. For months now she’d been content to be hidden and safe, but the masquerade had cracked something, had opened a door. She could not resist walking through.
Kitty soon returned with the name of a place from a maid in a nearby house, and they went off together to explore.
They found Lowell Lane, a narrow side street, and walked along seeking Mistress Moray’s, Dressmakers, a better label than “rag shop,” and apparently the lady paid top price for fine goods and was clever at making over and refurbishing her stock. They arrived at the place, which was identified by a painted sign between the green-painted door and a narrow, rectangular window. A mobcapped woman could be seen sewing by what little light she had there.
When Bella went in, a bell tinkled on the door and the woman rose, putting aside her work and removing spectacles. She was middle-aged and solid, with shrewd eyes that noted Bella’s dull garments and speculated. She bobbed a curtsy and asked how she could help them.
Looking down the long, narrow room, which was lined with shelves of clothing and smelled of old sweat and perfumes, Bella sensed a ghostly presence of fomer owners.
Perhaps that was why she felt ill at ease. She’d not purchased anything fashionable in five years, and before then she’d gone to a mantua maker, chosen a design and fabric, returned for fittings and all such bother. She had no idea how to go on here.
“I need a fashionable day gown, ma’am. What do you have that will fit?”
The woman eyed her again, then said, “Come with me,” and led the way briskly to some shelves to the right. “This is a very nice gown, and likely in your size.”
She took down something brown and spread it on the central table. It was a gown much like the one Bella was wearing, though of finer cloth and lower in the neckline.
“My apologies, Mistress Moray. I didn’t make myself clear. I want a pretty, fashionable gown.”
Mistress Moray looked surprised, but then her eyes twinkled. “And so you should, ma’am, young as you are.”
She surveyed the shelves, then went to a different one and took down a cream dress sprigged with pink flowers to spread on the table. “Pale, I know, for London wear, ma’am, but it is made of the best cotton and can be laundered. It came to me quite soiled, but I’ve had it washed.”
Bella raised it against herself to check the length, but also to sniff at it. A very pleasant smell, thank heavens. She fingered the gown as if testing the quality of the cloth, but really because it was so pretty.
Perhaps dangerously so. What would become of her if she dressed like this again?
“That’ll look lovely on you, miss,” Kitty encouraged.
The shop owner had gone to another shelf and she returned with a deep pink cloak. “Wear this capuchin with it, ma’am, and you’ll be as pretty as could be.”
“Ooh, that’s just the right color for your skin, miss,” Kitty exclaimed. “Can my mistress try on the gown?” she demanded.
Bella hid amusement at this grand air.
“Yes, of course. Come with me.”
The dressing room was at the back of the house and lit only by a small, high window. Bella took off her gown and put on the new one. It was a little loose in the waist and a little tight in the bodice, but it would do. Except for one thing—the exposed vee from shoulder to waist in the front that exposed her jumps and shift.
Kitty immediately left to demand stays and a stomacher.
Secondhand stays?
Once she’d owned three pairs of stays, each custom-made and covered with pretty cloth. Two had been covered with fine embroidered linen, but her evening stays had been covered in silk.
During her four years of incarceration, they’d begun to wear out and she’d had to mend them, trapping whale-bone that tried to escape and putting new edging where it frayed. All part of surviving her father’s attempts to break her spirit. How it had infuriated him, as had her refusal to cover her shame with marriage.
His fury had been sweet reward on its own, but the result had been a battle of wills between two people who would never bend—and, she now realized, the forging of a new person she still didn’t fully understand.
Kitty returned, triumphant. “Here we go, miss. Now we’ll have you decent!”
“Now you’ll have me uncomfortable, you mean,” Bella grumbled, but she shed the gown and went through the tedious business of putting on stays, having to straighten her shoulders and stand taller. Had she perhaps begun to slouch?
Kitty pinned a cream stomacher on the front, and Bella put the gown on.
Bella Barstowe, she thought to her flyspecked reflection. It’s been a long time since we met.
Kitty added the pretty, hooded cloak, and a straw hat trimmed with pink apple blossoms. It suited so well, Bella wondered if clever Mistress Moray had done the trimming while they’d struggled with the stays.
“Yes,” Bella said. “It will do. It will do very well.”
She put on her own clothes again and went to pay. The sum was so modest, she almost protested, but she didn’t want to draw too much attention to herself. Instead she purchased the brown and another blue-and-white-striped gown without even trying them on. She added two more stomachers, another hat, a fur muff and a pair of silk shoes that were pure indulgence. Whatever her life was to become, she doubted she’d be dancing in fine company.
Mistress Moray was obviously thrilled by the purchases, and Bella realized that she hadn’t used her money for charitable purposes. She’d thought Lady Fowler’s work was benevolent enough, but now that felt tainted by her doubts about the woman and her mission.
As they walked home, Bella said, “Kitty, you and Annie must visit Mistress Moray and choose an outfit each.”
“Oh, Miss Barstowe. Thank you. Such pretty things as were there.”
Bella smiled at the girl. “Consider it in lieu of the castoffs you don’t get from me.”
Kitty smiled back, but then asked, “What does ‘loo’ mean?”
“In lieu. It’s French for ‘instead.’ ”
“Oh.” Bella saw her mouth it. No doubt soon Kitty would find an excuse to use her new word. She felt a pang for her futile ambitions for the girl, for she was very clever. But what was the use of being a clever woman in this world? She’d be a clever wife and mother, which would be good, but she wouldn’t have any need of French.
Back at the house they experimented with the disguise. Kitty dressed the wig up while Bella painted her face. Then Bella put on the whole outfit and considered herself in the mirror.
No one who knew Bella Barstowe five years ago would recognize her, but…
“Could anyone recognize me as Bellona Flint?” she asked.
“I can’t see how, miss, not with the wig and paint. Truly. I think you could walk by any of them at Lady Fowler’s house and they’d not know you.”
“Excellent.” Bella took it all off, then went to her desk. Now to send a message to the goatherd.
But goats are lecherous, she remembered. She must be careful, especially with someone who called himself Orion Hunt. That meant she couldn’t allow for a reply.
She wrote: Kelano will meet Orion to retrieve her stars at noon tomorrow.
If he had any notion of a nighttime tryst, he’d be disappointed. Bella had no intention of plunging so deeply into danger, even if she couldn’t resist dipping her toe into the pool. She was deathly tired of being serious and sober, and she wanted to meet the goatherd again very, very much. To banter with him, flirt with him, and perhaps, yes, kiss him again.
To be a pretty young woman again.
To be Bell
a.
Chapter 9
Bella approached the Goat the next day with butterflies inside. Some were excitement, but others fluttered a warning. Peg might have guessed the real nature of the meeting, but if so, she’d not protested. Peg approved of anything that took Bella away from Flint and Fowler. She also completely supported Annie’s and Kitty’s marriages, and was busy planning their wedding breakfast.
Bella stopped to frown at the narrow, three-story inn, losing her nerve. Her whole life was spinning out of control again, and coming here could only make it worse. The goatherd was bound to see it as encouragement, perhaps even as her agreeing to a wicked liaison.
She couldn’t turn back now, however, without being eaten up by curiosity.
She gathered herself and walked confidently toward the Goat.
It wasn’t as large or as busy as the nearby Star and Garter, but it showed no sign of being a sink of depravity, and the people going in and out looked respectable. Bella touched her face, pointlessly trying to assure herself that her dark brows and reddened cheeks and lips were in place, and then walked through the door.
“I am here to visit Mr. Hunt,” she told a manservant, with as much sangfroid as she could muster. She saw the look he gave her, and realized that he took her for a whore. She almost protested, but that would only draw attention to herself. Instead she was grateful to hurry after him down a corridor to a door.
He knocked. A voice said, “Enter.”
The servant opened the door. Heart thundering, Bella went in. She heard the door close behind her, but was staring at the man who awaited her.
A footman. In livery and powder. A masked footman to boot. The mask was in the Venetian style and made to resemble an animal—in this case, a goat. It covered only the top half of his face, but the nose jutted out to shadow the mouth and jaw.
A footman, though?
She’d liked the idea that the goatherd wasn’t one of the elite, that he might even have been an interloper like herself, but a gentleman. To tryst with such a one was adventurous. To tryst with an upstart footman was merely tawdry.
“My stars?” she demanded coolly.
He silently gestured to a cardboard box on the table close to him.
“A mute goat?” she queried, going forward cautiously.
“Perhaps simply frugal with words.”
She paused, assessing the voice. The mask muffled it, but as at the revels, she detected no trace of a lower accent. Not a footman.
“Why the disguise?” she asked.
“I could ask the same of you.”
“I’m not in disguise,” she lied, satisfied to have scored her point. He hadn’t denied the disguise.
“You usually paint so heavily?” he asked.
“It’s fashionable. For men as well as women.”
“Most especially for those who seek to hide the ravages of time. Are you really so old, Kelano?” When she didn’t answer, he shrugged. “I grant you, court makes its demands, and both men and women wear painted masks for that performance.”
And you go to court, Bella thought. It rang through the way he spoke about it, but also, now that she thought of it, in his stance. A good footman stood tall, but this man had the easy elegance of high birth, of being trained in deportment from his first steps.
That made him especially dangerous. He was here in disguise to ruin a silly young thing.
“If you please, sir, move away from the table.”
“Why?”
“It would be foolish for me to go so close to you.”
“Then why,” he asked, amused, “are you here?”
“To retrieve my stars.”
“They are tinsel and paste and not even worth a shilling.”
“Perhaps I have a fondness for them.”
“Try another excuse.”
“I don’t have to try anything,” she said tartly, and found the willpower to turn and walk to the door.
“Kelano.”
The word stopped her, and she turned back.
“I harbor hopes that you came in order to meet me again.”
Bella considered him. It was true, after all, and something did hum in the air between them. Something special.
“Perhaps I did,” she admitted. “But I have encountered not goatherd but goat.”
“And I have encountered not nymph but Harpy. Why the paint?”
“I could hardly come here as myself, likely to be recognized.”
“Ah. So you would be recognized in your natural form.”
“Anyone can be recognized anywhere, if only by their shoemaker.”
“I suspect shoemakers remember only feet. You’re not willing to trust me with your name?”
“No more than you are willing to trust me with yours.” But Bella was struggling not to smile. It had been so long, so long, since she’d crossed verbal swords with a quick-witted man.
“You came here to meet Orion Hunt,” he said.
“A person no more real than Kelano. Why did you seek this meeting?”
“I wished to encounter you again, but I’ve failed. This isn’t you.”
“Nor was Kelano.”
“But closer, I think.”
“What of you?” she demanded. “Which is closer to the truth, goatherd or goatish footman?”
Even in the shadow of the goat’s nose she could see the smile. “The goatherd, I assure you, but I could hardly walk through London in that costume.”
The image tempted her to smile back. “What need had you to disguise yourself?”
“What need had you?”
“I told you. A lady alone, meeting a gentleman. If it became known, I could be ruined. Would you be ruined if anyone discovered you were here with me?”
He picked up the box. “That would depend on your definition of ruined. Such a discovery could ruin my life.”
“How?”
“If you come from a respectable family, I might be compelled to marry you.”
That caused an extraordinary jolt of sensations that Bella had no time to analyze, for he came forward and offered the box.
She snatched it, feeling like a nervous bird offered a seed.
Her wariness was justified. He caught her left wrist, trapping her. Wild sensations shot along her arm, and some thrilled her, but for the most part she was afraid. She pulled back. “Let me go.”
“In a moment.”
At his tone, Bella shivered head to toe. “Don’t, please. . . .”
“I won’t hurt you. I merely want a reward. A kiss would be a fair fee for the return of your trinket, but alas, my mask means it can only be on your hand.” His voice had deepened so that it seemed to hum over her skin, making Bella aware even of the air she inhaled. “You will permit?” he asked, almost in a whisper.
He didn’t wait for her answer—she remembered that about him—but switched his hold and slowly raised her gloved fingers.
Again, she noted courtly grace, and it was as dangerous as a sword sliding out of a scabbard. Her goatherd was no footman, and had definitely not been an interloper at the Olympian Revels. He was one of the powerful. If she fled this room screaming, her clothes half torn off her, it would all be hushed up.
She had no family to protest or protect her. She was alone in the world and for the first time completely aware of the danger of that. What a fool she’d been to come here!
She tried to pull her fingers free, but he had her trapped as he brought her hand beneath the mask, into the goat’s maw.
Watching her, his eyes glittered.
Enjoying her fear?
Bella made herself relax. She even managed a slight smile. “I remember that goats don’t eat meat.”
Perhaps those eyes truly smiled, and then she felt teeth on her fingertips. The jolt was visceral, deeply disturbing.
Yes, he smiled. She could imagine his grinning mouth, her fingertips between his teeth.
His teeth released her and she felt the pressure of his lips on the back of her fingers. She
should scarcely be able to feel it through leather, but she shuddered deep inside, where she still churned.
And not with fear.
“I wish . . .” How had that escaped her?
“You wish what, bright star?”
As prosaically as she could, she said, “I wish I knew who you are.”
He lowered her hand, but kept control of it. “If you tell me, I’ll tell you.”
“Why would it be difficult for you?”
“Why would it be difficult for you?”
“Everything is more difficult for a woman.” Bella pulled her hand free and was embarrassed to find his grip had not been compelling after all. She took a step away.
“Perhaps not quite everything. Women, for example, are not required to fight.”
“But suffer just as much if caught up in warfare.”
He inclined his head. “A wife is not personally responsible for her debts. Are you married?”
The question was slid in so deftly that Bella almost answered. Instead she said, “Does it matter?”
“An angry husband might call me out. Another danger.”
“An angry husband would horsewhip a footman. Or even murder him with society’s blessing.”
“Is our world as wild as that?”
“Yes.”
“You might be correct, but a clever husband would wait a little and dispatch me secretly. He’d probably beat his errant wife. Are you an errant wife, Kelano?”
Bella frantically sought the right answer. Would claiming to be married provide protection, or would being unmarried be safer, because then she might be someone he might be forced to marry?
And why was the idea of being forced to marry this man so shockingly enticing?
“What of you?” she demanded sharply, taking another step backward toward the door. “Are you married?”
“No, but please don’t think me inexperienced in the necessary skills.”
“Not for a single moment, sir.” Bella’s face went so hot she feared her paint would melt.
He only smiled. “Thank you. I lay all my experience at your feet, my star. If not today, will you meet me again?”