Dipping his index finger into the small ceramic pot of white paint, then peering into a hand mirror his batman held up in the soft orange glow of the linkboy’s lantern, Dair painted a continuous stripe from cheekbone to cheekbone across the beak of his nose. Two stripes were added to each cheek and a single stripe from bottom lip down the center of his square heavy chin. Satisfied with his war paint, he exchanged the paint pot for a cloth dusted in charcoal. This he rubbed into his closed eyelids, then blackened under his eyes, extending the blackness out across his temples into his hairline. He then applied soot to the beefy rounded tops of his shoulders. Peering back into the mirror, he grinned. The whites of his eyes were now stark and menacing, and the paint and soot somehow also made his large white teeth brighter and sharper.
Dair turned this macabre grin on his friends, who opened wide their eyes and smiled their appreciation of his transformation. And when he threw back his head of black hair and howled at the moon Grasby joined in, infected with his friend’s enthusiasm.
With both gentlemen sufficiently decorated in war paint, soot not only applied to Lord Grasby’s face but dusted through his hair to turn it gray to disguise its blondness, Cedric Pleasant took one last look at his friends and declared they were ready to carry out their mission. Lord Grasby, however, halted proceedings with one last reservation, saying diffidently,
“You don’t think my breechcloth rather smaller than Dair’s?”
Dair and Cedric gave a practiced start and looked at each other before solemnly shaking their heads. Both suppressed smiles, but there was a light in their eyes of mischief and anticipation, seen often in schoolboys playing a prank on an unsuspecting chum. Dair had instructed Farrier to trim the length and width of his friend’s breechcloth, so that when Lord Grasby ran about, he could not help but expose himself.
“Certainly not!” Cedric Pleasant lied. “It’s all in the perspective… You and Dair have the same size tackle, I’m sure of it. Hasn’t he, Dair?”
“Don’t ask me!”
“Not that, Cedric! I don’t require your reassurance about the size of my sugar stick! The cloth. It’s the cloth I’m worried about. Its coverage is—”
“I’d be more concerned about that birthmark,” Dair interrupted with a slow shake of his head. He sucked air through his teeth, and as he let out a slow breath, let his shoulders drop. “If anyone should recognize it, they’ll recognize you, and you don’t want that.”
“Yes we do!” Cedric Pleasant hissed in his ear.
Lord Grasby clapped a hand to the left side of his exposed groin to cover a caramel-colored stain the size of a snuffbox. He put his nose in the air. “No one will recognize it except for my dear lady wife.”
Dair put up his black brows. “Are you certain?”
“What are you suggesting? That I’m an unfaithful husband?”
“Is that what I’m suggesting?”
“I take the sanctity of marriage very seriously.”
“Good for you!” Dair slapped his friend’s bare back a little too hard. “I admire a man prepared to sacrifice himself for a cause, however lost. Farrier! It’s time, if you please!”
“Now look here, Dair! I don’t appreciate—”
But Dair had turned away from Grasby to hide a smile. A wink at Cedric Pleasant, and his friend realized Dair had successfully diverted Grasby from his concern over the size of his breechcloth, and shook his head in admiration of his gift for subtle subterfuge.
While Farrier and the linkboy gathered up the gentlemen’s belongings, Dair went over the mission plan to raid the painter’s studio one last time, particularly the timing of Cedric Pleasant’s dramatic entrance with sword drawn. When his friends nodded their understanding of how events would unfold, he added,
“When Cedric threatens to stick me with his sword, that’s our signal to get the hell out of there—”
“—looking suitably terrified,” Cedric Pleasant added.
“We’ll be scared stiff, dear chap,” Grasby confirmed.
“You threaten to stick me and we make our dash for the front door. Understood, Grasby?”
“Perfectly. Cedric tries to stick you. We look petrified. I stop chasing dancing girls and dash out of the house after you. We make for the carriage across the square.”
Dair smiled. “Cedric saves the day, and the divine Consulata Baccelli has eyes only for her newfound champion. Couldn’t be easier.” He stuck out his hand. “Gentlemen, let the adventure begin!”
All three men shook hands, a gleam of mischief in their eyes, and wished each other luck before going their separate ways. Mr. Cedric Pleasant proceeded back down the laneway, a gloved hand to the hilt of his sword and a spring in his step. Major Lord Fitzstuart and Lord Grasby entered the garden of George Romney’s townhouse by stealth and the back gate.
At the very same moment, Lady Grasby, Mr. William Watkins, and Lord Grasby’s sister Miss Talbot, were being welcomed inside the townhouse by Mr. Romney’s butler.
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ABOUT LUCINDA BRANT
WHEN NOT BUMPING about 18th century London in my sedan chair or exchanging gossip with perfumed and patched courtiers in the gilded drawing rooms of Versailles, I write award-winning Georgian historical romances and mysteries (with lashings of romance). My books are set in 1700s Georgian England, with occasional crossings to continental Europe. I pull up the reins at the French Revolution where I lost a previous life at the guillotine for my unpardonably hedonistic lifestyle as a layabout aristo!
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Eternally Yours: Roxton Letters Volume 1 Page 13