“I really wouldn’t know, Ivy,” she admitted, already somewhat overwhelmed by her lack of knowledge in regard to women’s fashion. It was much easier to shop as a man, for then she always knew what was à la mode.
“Well, then,” her companion said with an expectant grin, “let’s get you back home and see what happens.”
The Comte de Fouché slipped back around the corner as the Downing coach rolled down the street toward Berkeley Square. It seemed that Stewart Brantley had overestimated his daughter’s commitment to the cause, after all. The girl was supposed to be spying for them, not going about buying fripperies while Napoleon Bonaparte risked his life for the betterment of France. And Kit was spending coin as though she had the contents of the Bank of England at her disposal. No doubt the Earl of Everton was paying well for the services he received. The comte sneered as the carriage vanished around a corner, and motioned for his two companions to join him as he headed back in the direction of Covent Garden.
“Come, mes amis,” he muttered, “we have someone to meet.” It was just as well that he hadn’t left everything to the Brantleys. And he would teach the daughter some manners, and some proper respect for a French nobleman, before this was finished.
“Well, what do you think?” Ivy asked, as she fastened the last button of the muslin gown and stepped back.
Kit swallowed, opened her eyes, and lifted her head to look into Ivy’s full-length mirror. Huge eyes black-ringed with face paint looked back at her. She saw arms bare from the elbows down, a gown that was a little too big and kept slipping off her left shoulder, a neck untouched by sunlight, a face that had seen perhaps a little too much sun, and a mop of blond hair held up on the sides by clips and hanging unevenly around her face. And worst of all, breasts that seemed huge, completely out of proportion with the rest of her anatomy. “I am ridiculous,” she whispered, turning away, her eyes filling with tears.
“Oh, my dear,” Ivy soothed with a slight chuckle, taking her by the arm and turning her around again, “you are lovely. Don’t look at yourself as Kit Riley. You are Christine.”
Kit took a deep, despairing breath, and looked again. Nothing had changed. She backed away a few steps from the mirror, awkward and tripping in the thin slippers that covered her feet. Smoothing the muslin and squinting a little so she couldn’t distinguish her own features, she stared hard at the odd creature before her. If she pretended it was someone else she was looking at, perhaps the chit in the mirror wasn’t so ugly and ungainly as she knew her to be. Perhaps the arms and the neck were the elusive porcelain men so admired, and perhaps her figure wasn’t quite so hideous as she had thought at first sight. “The dress is too big,” she grumbled, turning sideways and looking at herself in profile.
“Yes, it is,” Ivy agreed, stepping up and tugging it down a little in the back. “But we didn’t have time to have one made for you. And I’m afraid my maid is more adept than I at doing hair, but, Kit, believe me, there is nothing lacking about you. Nothing at all.”
“I feel practically naked,” Kit continued, turning her back and trying to look over her shoulder at her reflection.
“That’s the idea,” her companion said dryly. “Do you wish me to—”
A scratch came at the door, and both women started.
“Yes?” Ivy called.
“My lady,” her maid’s voice came, “the Earl of Everton is here, looking for Mr. Riley.”
“Oh, no!” Kit squawked. She kicked off the slippers, and hoisted up her long skirt to tug at her stockings.
“Kit, whatever are you doing?”
“Help me, Ivy!” she pleaded desperately, reaching around her back to pluck at the complicated row of buttons.
“I thought you wanted Alex to see you as a female,” her companion commented, her expression amused as she stepped forward to lend her assistance.
“Oh, no, no, no. He’ll only laugh, and then he’ll be angry that I spent all of his blunt on female items.” Most of all, she didn’t want him to laugh at her. He could be amused at her as a boy, but she wouldn’t be able to stand it if he called her silly and absurd while she was wearing a gown.
“It was hardly all of his blunt, my dear.” Ivy started on the row of buttons.
This time the sound at the door was a loud, assured knock. “Ivy,” the earl called, “is my cousin ravishing you?”
“You’ll have to wait a moment, Alex!” Ivy returned. “Do go back downstairs before Gerald returns, and has to decide who to call out to defend my honor.”
“I’ll be right down, Everton!” Kit hissed, frantically shrugging out of the gown as the last fastening opened.
There was a pause. “No worries. I’m not in any hurry. But whatever are you two doing in there?”
“Nothing!” she snapped, yanking on her breeches. “Go back downstairs!”
“I am, I am.” He chuckled, and after a moment his footsteps retreated toward the staircase.
“Damnation,” Kit grumbled, snatching up her wrap and tying it tightly across her breasts. The only excuse she’d been able to make to herself for spending time playing dress-up was that with the House in session, following Alex or Augustus or Reg about would have been pointless. And it was still a very poor excuse. She was a complete half-wit, donning dresses when she should be assisting her father.
“How can you stand that, Kit?” Ivy asked, gesturing at the snug band. “It would drive me mad.”
Lately it had been driving her mad, as well. “I’m used to it, I suppose,” she said, pulling her shirt on over her head and swiftly tucking it in.
At the last moment she remembered the face paint, and frantically wiped it away with a cloth. Regretfully she looked down at the heap of discarded gown.
Ivy must have read her expression. “Take it with you,” she suggested. “If you can’t take a moment to wear it at Alex’s, perhaps in Paris, when no one else is about.”
Impulsively Kit hugged the smaller woman. “Thank you, Ivy. It was fun today.”
Ivy chuckled. “Yes, it was.”
Kit dumped everything into a satchel and fastened it shut. When she made her way downstairs, Alex was in the game room idly rolling billiard balls across the table with his fingers. She paused in the doorway for a moment to watch him, wishing that she had possessed the courage to step out of Ivy’s room in her gown and ask him what he thought of it.
“I’m ready,” she said, and he straightened and turned around.
“What did you purchase today?” he asked, dropping the last ball back onto the table and strolling toward her.
“Nothing really.” She sighed, hoping with all her might that she would be gone before he received the bills. “Just something to carry my things in back to Paris. Not much else I could purchase in Mayfair would do me well in Saint-Marcel.”
His smile faded, and he nodded. “Quite right, and rather foolish of me. My apologies.”
“It was a very nice gesture,” she stated.
His smile returned as he lazily laid his arm across her shoulder, his fingers dangling carelessly over her chest. “Quite the gentleman you are, my boy,” he drawled. “Shall we be off?”
Kit was surprised he didn’t feel the bolt of lightning that ran down her spine at his casual touch. With difficulty she stifled the urge to lean into his half embrace, and instead turned to lead the way out into the hallway. Ivy stood at the foot of the stairs, a slight smile on her face. “Alex, may I speak to you a moment? I need your assistance with Gerald’s birthday gift.”
“Of course,” he said, motioning Kit to wait for him. “What is it?” he murmured as he reached Ivy’s side. “Gerald’s birthday is in February.”
His cousin-in-law took him by the arm and led him farther down the hall. With a glance back at where Kit stood lounging in the entryway, she looked up at him. “Can you truly let her go back to Paris?” she asked quietly.
Alex looked down at her, an abrupt ache of trepidation and keen yearning in his chest. “Her father is returning f
or her,” he whispered. “There is little I can do.”
“If her father sent her here to keep her safe, how can he take her back to Paris in the middle of a war? And don’t tell me that she made it through Napoleon’s last rampage all right. She was a child then, Alex, who probably thought it all a great romp. She’s a grown woman now. Something terrible might happen to her.”
“I know that,” he snapped, flicking his eyes in Kit’s direction as she glanced curiously at him. Something equally terrible might happen to her here, if she stayed long enough for him to gather proof against her father, and perhaps even against her. He would have to see her arrested. And he was no longer certain that he could do such a thing. “How much longer do you think she can go about without someone realizing what she is? Do you think that would be better for her? For everyone to think the Earl of Everton’s latest light-skirt has been playing games with them all Season?”
Unexpected tears came to Ivy’s eyes. “It will break my heart to see her go.”
Alex took a deep breath. “I am not unsympathetic to your sentiments,” he murmured, and while she looked up at him, surprised, he turned back to collect his charge.
“Finished gossiping?” the chit queried, pushing herself upright.
“I believe so,” he replied. Noticing something, he put a hand on her shoulder. “Just a moment,” he said, turning her to face him.
“What is it?” she asked, a soft blush touching her cheeks.
He took her chin in his fingers and gently turned her head sideways. If the butler hadn’t been standing there holding the door for them, he would have kissed her. Instead he reached out and touched the corner of her eye with the side of his thumb. Her eyes closed, and his breath caught. “What’s this?” he asked after a moment, indicating the dark smudge on his finger.
Her flush deepened. “Ivy was…trying out a new eye paint, and asked me to assist her,” she offered.
“Kit, you must be careful,” he admonished, releasing her.
“I know that,” she grumbled, turning away to head past Fender, the butler.
“It is a good color on you, though,” Alex added with a slight smile, wiping it away on his breeches and wishing he’d seen her in it properly.
She whipped back around, grinning. “Do you think so?”
“Indeed, brat. Come on.”
Chapter 11
Five days remained. It was the first thought in her mind when Kit awoke. A pair of robins squabbled noisily outside her window, the sound echoed by a pair of rag and bone men in the street below. She lay there, listening to the sounds of the house, already well awake, around her.
Five days remained, and she didn’t know what to do. Only in a dire emergency was she supposed to try to contact Stewart Brantley at anywhere other than the tavern before he came to retrieve her. And her father would hardly consider the dilemmas of her heart to be life-threatening. But still, with three peers involved, if even one of them couldn’t be bribed or threatened to leave off, her information would have gained him nothing. He would find another way, of course; he always did. But somewhere deep inside was the fear that his solution would be something she wouldn’t like—or worse, something she wouldn’t be able to allow.
“Cousin?” a soft voice spoke through her door, and she started and sat upright.
“Yes?” she returned, angry that his voice had set her heart fluttering like a bird’s wings.
“May I come in?”
With a quick look around her, Kit pulled the sheets up to her neck. “All right.”
The handle turned, and Alex stuck his head in through the door. “Apologies.” He smiled. “I didn’t mean to wake you.” He started to back out again.
“Wait,” she called, afraid he’d leave for more of his blasted meetings and she’d lose track of him and his cronies again. “I was awake. Just being lazy.”
He nodded and came into the room, taking a moment to shut the door behind him. Her eyes followed him as he strolled over to the window and pushed the curtains open, then wandered over to her dressing table. His long fingers lifted her hair band, then set it aside to uncover the wrap she used beneath her shirt. He raised it up, examining it curiously, while she began to fume.
“I don’t recall this being part of a gentleman’s wardrobe,” he stated, fingering the cloth and holding it up before his own blue and cream striped waistcoat as though trying to find a match.
“It’s not. And put it down, if you please.”
Instead he draped it over his hand, taking it back to the window with him. “It seems to me I’ve never seen a woman wearing anything like this, either,” he continued, glancing at her sideways, his eyes amused.
“You know very well what it’s for, or you wouldn’t be pestering me about it. Put it down at once, sir,” she demanded, torn between wishing to snatch it out of his hands, and reluctance to leave the scant protection the sheets afforded her.
“Ah, so now you address me with respect,” he commented, lifting a sardonic eyebrow. “Tell me what it’s for, and I shall return it to you.”
Kit clenched her jaw. Things were difficult enough without him tormenting her. “Do not tease,” she ordered, color touching her cheeks.
“I do not tease,” he protested, stepping forward and actually seating himself on the end of her bed. “Mere days ago you were dazzling me with ‘deuced’ this and ‘bloody’ that. Don’t tell me you’ve become fainthearted. I merely wish to hear you explain to me what this apparatus is for.”
It was obvious that he had no intention of leaving off the topic until he was satisfied. “Very well.” She scowled, taking a breath and wondering if this was another of his ways of seduction, or if he was merely amusing himself this morning. “I use it to conceal my female form so that I may more easily pass as a boy.”
He grinned and briefly lowered his eyes. “Well done. This is to say you do have breasts, after all?”
She kicked him from under the sheltering blankets. “You said you weren’t teasing,” she snapped.
“I am merely curious.” He reached over to hand her the wrap, and she snatched it out of his hand while he chuckled.
“And I am curious,” she retorted, “to know whether you consider throwing my undergarments about to be preserving my purity, Everton.”
“I believe you’re concerned enough for the both of us.”
“Are you calling me prudish?” she asked incredulously, deeply offended.
He smiled. “God strike me dead if I ever thought such a thing.” Unexpectedly he stood to wander again about the room, obviously distracted about something.
“What is it?” she queried, her curiosity overcoming her aggravation.
“Hm?” He turned to face her. “Oh. Well, I have two questions to ask you.” Surprisingly, he returned to sit beside her on the bed, even closer than before. Absently he fiddled with the corner of the sheet, the gentle tug pulling across her legs.
“I’m listening,” she murmured, her heart hammering all over again as she studied his profile.
He turned, his gaze catching and holding hers with startling seriousness. “Do you wish to return to Paris?”
For a moment she simply looked at him. “Beg pardon?” she finally asked.
“If you could do anything, anything you chose, would you wish to return to Paris? To Saint-Marcel? To Bonaparte’s blasted, nonending revolution?”
“Where else would I go?” she countered, shrugging. The sheet began to drop, and his eyes followed it downward. She was wearing a nightshirt, but his lazy, inquisitive gaze made her feel as though she were completely naked. Kit shivered a little and pulled the covering up again.
“You could stay here,” he said slowly, glancing toward the window. “In England.”
“As a boy? You’re the one who keeps warning me I’ll be found out.”
“Well,” he said after a moment, dropping his gaze to look at his restless, long-fingered hands, “I was actually thinking that you might like Everton.”
&
nbsp; It was a tempting trap. Forget her father, forget the smuggling, and forget dirty Saint-Marcel, and be with Alexander Cale. “As your mistress?” That was what he wanted, she sensed—or at least he thought he did. It would last a while, until he grew tired of her or she was found out and he decided he didn’t want the scandal.
“Of course not,” he snapped with too much force, and rubbed his fist along his thigh. “There’s no price you must pay.”
“But you would wish it,” she suggested quietly.
He looked at her. “Yes, I would.”
The question she had dreamed last night, he didn’t ask. She couldn’t have answered it, anyway. She was sunk too deep into her father’s bog for that. “Alex,” she said slowly, trying to keep her voice steady, “I don’t need anyone’s protection. I don’t need anyone to look after me. And I won’t be kept locked away somewhere.” She forced a smile. “And I certainly don’t wish to be a burden, or an annoyance, which you keep reminding me that I am.” Kit took a breath, truly regretting what she must say next. There were so many lies, when she only wanted to tell him the truth. “My father is in Paris. He is my family. I will stay with him.”
“You have family here,” he offered.
“I do not,” she returned stiffly, an image of lovely Caroline crossing her thoughts.
“Stubborn chit,” he muttered.
“So what is your second question?” she prompted, trying to change the subject.
“Not nearly as exciting. I only wished to ask what you’d like to do today.”
She eyed him curiously. “You’re giving me a choice?”
Alex shrugged. “You have yet to visit some of the more famous landmarks, I believe. A private tour of Buckingham Palace, perhaps? Or Parliament? Then there’s the Tower, or the—”
“And where will you be while I’m off sightseeing?” she interrupted, looking away and fleetingly wondering what her father would think of her, so near to shedding tears at being ignored by someone whose clear duty was to destroy them.
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