Lady in disguise

by Amanda McCabe

  He gave her a crooked little half-smile. “I hope the food isn’t the only thing you have found to enjoy in England,” he said.

  Scarcely, she thought. The people, especially the men—especially one man—also had great appeal. “Oh, no. I have enjoyed many things. It’s very different from St. Petersburg.”

  “Is this your first visit to this country?”

  “No. I was here once before, when I was a very small child. I—I had family here.” She closed her eyes for a moment to try to recall those long-ago days. Somehow, she had hoped that being here again, after so many years, might bring back those memories again. It had not, of course. She had only those same very few, very precious memories that she had possessed before. The deep laugh of her father, the rose perfume of her mother, the wide twining staircase of their country estate. That was all.

  But now she had some new ones to add to them.

  “Really?” Jack said, his tone revealing only mild curiosity. “Are you going to see them while you are here?”

  “No.” Emma opened her eyes back to the sunny day. “No, they are dead.”

  He touched her arm. His fingers were light, but the warmth spread through the cloth of her sleeve, into her very skin. “I’m sorry.”

  “I still have family,” she said. “I have been happy.” Then she added, more softly, “I have.” She turned slightly to him, looking up at him, as if somehow seeking his reassurance. “Have you?”

  He looked at her, a small frown between his extraordinary eyes. “Have I what?”

  Emma wasn’t sure what they were talking about, what she was seeking from him. She felt dizzy, confused.

  She reached out to hold onto his sleeve, to try to right herself. “I hardly know,” she said with a laugh. “I only know I would like to know you better, Jack.”

  His frown cleared, and he drew her closer. “I would like to know you, too, Tonya. I have a feeling there is something quite fascinating about you that is hidden away.”

  Emma startled. His words were all too close to the truth. She stepped back a bit. His clasp on her loosened, but they were still close. “Hidden?”

  Before he could answer, Emma felt an object strike against her legs and was pushed closer to Jack. She caught at his jacket to steady herself and had to resist the strong urge to lay her cheek against his chest. Instead, she looked down and stepped back. A small child, whose hoop had been run into Emma’s skirts, smiled up at her shyly.

  “I’m sorry, miss,” he said.

  “That’s quite all right,” Emma answered breathlessly. As lovely as it had been to be held by Jack, she was rather grateful for the interruption. She did not want to talk about what was “hidden,” either in her life or his.

  And it would not have been a fine idea for her to give in to her urge to throw her arms around him and kiss him, either.

  She bent down to pick up the hoop, which she handed back to the child.

  “Thank you, miss,” he said, and continued on the pathway.

  Emma turned to the view of the pond and ran her hand over her warm face. Despite the temperate day, she felt warm all over. The greenish-bluish water looked so very cool. She wished she could walk into it, could swim through it and feel it lapping at her hair and skin.

  That would never do, of course. No one went swimming in a public park, not even ladies who had thrown off propriety for the day!

  But perhaps they could do the next best thing.

  She looked back at Jack. His frown, the glow of his blue eyes as he asked about her “hidden” life, had faded. He looked merely affable and good-humored.

  “Could we take one of those boats out on the water?” she asked.

  “Of course,” he answered. “Whatever you like, Tonya. I think we can hire one over at that boathouse.”

  He held his arm out to her, and she slid her hand into the crook of his elbow. It felt natural and ordinary, as if they were a true couple, one who promenaded like this so often it was second nature.

  It felt—right.

  ———

  Jack watched Lady Emma—no, Tonya, even though she could not always seem to remember that name—as he rowed them to the center of the pond, carefully avoiding the other merrymakers in their boats and punts. She stared around her, her dark eyes wide with wonder, her head swiveling to and fro to take in everything around her. She laughed in delight at the sun-dappled scene, clasping a hand to her lips as the giggles bubbled and flowed from her.

  She made him want to laugh, too, despite the true seriousness of the situation. As he looked at her, he forgot that she was a fine lady on the loose, the cherished niece of important foreign nobility. For one fleeting, precious moment, she was just a pretty girl, seated so close to him in the tiny boat that their knees almost touched. And he was just a secretary having a day out, enjoying a flirtation.

  Even if the object of that flirtation evaded all his attempts to ask questions of even a vaguely personal nature.

  He decided that for the time they were in this boat, stranded on the water, he would cease trying to discover what had driven her from the Pulteney Hotel and just be with her.

  She leaned her elbows back on the cushioned seat and smiled across at him. “It is wonderful out here! The loveliest thing I have ever seen.”

  Jack rested on the oars and grinned at her in return. “You are very easy to please, Tonya.”

  “Easy to please?”

  “You seem as happy about a row on a park pond as most women would be if presented with rubies. This, and a chicken pie, appears to make your day complete.” He remembered her as she had been at the grand reception, all ice and diamonds and pearls. Then he saw her as she was now, strands of dark hair loosening from the simple knot, sunlight casting color on her alabaster cheeks.

  He much preferred this laughing girl, he decided. Much.

  She twisted her head a bit to one side, as if considering his words. “Life was not easy at my home in Russia these last years. Not easy at all.”

  Jack grew somber as he recalled the horrors he himself had seen in the last few years. “The war has been terrible. I cannot imagine what it must have been like in Russia, an invaded land.”

  “I was away from most of the worst of it. I lived in the country. But it was lonely there in the quiet, sometimes even frightening. We had only vague rumors and wild, horrible stories to tell us what was happening.” She turned her face to watch the people around them again, turning to the warmth of the sun as if seeking its protection from the coldness of her memories. “I like rubies as much as the next woman, I am sure, but this is far finer. People and laughter, so much happiness—it makes me feel all that is behind me now. There are only fine days ahead.”

  Only fine days. Jack hoped she was right, that all the war and death were behind them now. When he .was with her, he could almost believe it. Almost believe that the days of battle, of heart-stopping suspense, of pretending he was something he was not, could be over.

  Almost.

  She turned back to look at him and smiled. “Oh, but here I have made you solemn! That will never do. Today is a day of celebration!”

  “The best day of your life?” he teased, echoing her words back to her.

  “Yes!” she cried. “Indeed it is. Even better since I have met you.” Then, as if she feared she had been too bold, rose pink color flooded over her high cheekbones.

  “And my day has assuredly improved since I met you. I’ve seldom been graced with such lovely company on my days off.”

  She laughed again, easily, as if familiar with such honeyed words. “Flatterer!”

  “No, indeed!” he protested. “I am always the soul of honesty.”

  One raven brow arched. “Always?”

  He grinned at her again. It felt rueful even to himself. “Almost always.”

  “I thought so.” She rested her hand on the edge of the boat as he turned them around a narrow bend. “Where did you learn to row this way? Were you in the navy?”

  “T
he navy?” he exclaimed, one hand releasing the oar and covering on his heart in mock horror. “No, madam! His Majesty’s army. I learned to row at school, many years ago. It has been so long since I’ve been on the water that I feared I had forgotten how.”

  “Some skills never leave us, yes?”

  “Important ones do not.”

  “Ones such as rowing?”

  He laughed. “Among others! There are many more important skills than rowing, you know.” Of its own volition, his gaze went to her soft, pink bow of a mouth and could not seem to move for several long moments.

  She blushed again but did not look away. “Oh, yes. I do know.” She leaned back and stretched her feet out along

  5#

  Amanda McCabe

  the bottom of the boat until they barely touched the edge of his boots. “Do secretaries always go to school, Jack?”

  He really had no idea if they did or not. The only secretary he really knew was his father’s, and he had never had much conversation with him. But since the die was cast, he nodded decisively and said, “Of course. How else do we learn to be secretaries?”

  “Hm. I wish / could have gone to school.” Her mouth twisted wistfully.

  “Do lady’s maids not go to school in Russia?”

  The sudden widening of her eyes was most telling. She had spoken without thinking, just as he had. “Of course not. That is why we are still lady’s maids.”

  She shot him a long glance, as if challenging him to question her. The slight tilt of her chin was most regal.

  Not like that of any maid he had ever seen.

  His gaze was trapped by hers, by the golden tinge to its brown depths, the uncertainty and the hauteur that shimmered there. So enthralled by watching her was he that he did not even realize his grip had loosened on one of the oars. Not until it had slipped its casing and fallen with a splash into the water.

  “Oh!” Emma cried, and leaned over the side to watch it float on the green-blue surface. “Are we stranded? Can you row with only one oar? Or did they not teach you that in the school?” The last was said with a distinct laugh.

  “Very clever, miss,” he retorted. He also leaned over to peer at the oar, as it drifted leisurely away from them. In fact, he did not know how to row with only one oar. He was doing well to remember how to row at all. “I will get it.”

  “What?” she said, looking from the oar to him and back again. “How?”

  “By reaching for it, of course.” He took off his coat and handed it to her.

  “Are you certain?” she said, taking the garment and holding it against her. “It is quite far away.”

  “It has hardly floated off to China! It is right there.”

  She pursed her lips, still looking doubtful. “Very well.” She sat back and looked at him, waiting like the ice princess she had once been for him to perform his chore.

  He had done far more perilous things on the Peninsula, Jack thought. Things like slipping documents past the French lines and rescuing English prisoners. Retrieving a little oar was nothing.

  He leaned over the side of the boat, rising up on his knees and reaching for the errant slab of wood. Unfortunately, while he was arguing with Lady Emma, the blasted oar had drifted even farther, and he misjudged his reach. For one brief instant, he felt the center of his balance shift, but it was not long enough for him to right himself.

  He pitched headfirst into the pond. As the murky waters closed over his head, he heard Emma scream and call his name.

  The pond was not very deep at all. Indeed, he could almost have stood on the slimy floor of it and peeked his head above water. He quickly surfaced to grasp the boat and looked up into her shocked face.

  All the happy color had faded from her cheeks, leaving her as snow-pale as she had been at the reception. As pale as a marble angel.

  She saw him and screamed again.

  Jack winced. “For heaven’s sake, woman! Don’t shout in my ear. I hardly fell into the great Atlantic. Help me up.”

  “Oh, yes! Of course.” Muttering strange Russian words, she reached for the remaining oar and held it out.

  For such a tiny thing, she was surpassingly strong. Jack used the oar she held to brace himself and hauled his body up over the gunnel and back into the boat.

  Only when he was solidly seated again did he become aware of the people in the other vessels watching him. Some laughed; some looked away politely. One child, the one who had earlier run his hoop into Emma, rudely pointed. Jack scowled at them all until they turned away, leaving him alone again.

  Alone with Emma, who leaned over him, cooing and murmuring and wiping ineffectually at his grimy self with her apron. She was grace personified, while he—well, he probably looked like a muddy water gnome. In front of the only woman he had truly wanted to impress in such a very long time.

  He laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it all. Emma gaped at him as if he had suddenly gone delirious, which, he supposed, he really had.

  “You will catch such a chill!” she said, wrapping his discarded jacket around his shoulders. “You should not be wearing these wet clothes.”

  He laughed even harder. “Do you suggest I strip down right here? Shocking, madam! Shocking.”

  “Jack!” she protested, sputtering. “Of course not. There must be someplace we can go where you could get dry garments.”

  “Or I could escort you home, and we could call it a day,” he suggested, even as all his senses screamed a protest. He did not want this time to be over—not at all. They were only just beginning.

  She looked as horrified as he felt. She could never be the diplomat her uncle was. “No! That is, not yet. I do not want to go home yet. Surely there must be some place. You cannot walk about with wet clothes, and I cannot go home.”

  Jack tipped back his head to look at her. There were his own rooms, of course, not far from here. They were a bachelor’s lodgings, dark, temporary, shabby. Nothing there to betray that he was a viscount, not a secretary. - He could change quickly and then sweep her back out into the celebratory day.

  It would be highly improper, quite unthinkable to take Lady Emma Weston to his rooms. Foolish in the very extreme.

  But, of course, she was not Lady Emma Weston. Not today. And he was not a viscount.

  “There is some place,” he said. “Yet I fear we are still trapped here with just one oar.”

  She laughed, the sound like silver bells in the warm air. “Oh, never fear! I have rowed before. There was a lake on the country estate where I lived. I’ll get us to shore.”

  Jack also laughed, laughed until his sides ached. He wasn’t sure how many more surprises he could survive with this woman. “Minx! You are the veriest Russian minx.”

  She smiled blissfully and settled back with the oar balanced carefully in her hands. The boat smoothly turned back to shore. “Oh, Jack. That is the nicest compliment anyone has ever given me.”

  Chapter Seven

  Emma looked about avidly as she followed Jack up a narrow staircase, which no doubt led to his lodgings. They passed two landings, both with doors leading off them to the right. The faint scent of sugary baking drifted through the air, and the scratch of a violin played behind one of the doors.

  It was all very mysterious and illicit-feeling, everything about it from the dim light to the faded red carpet under their feet. Emma felt breathless, her stomach aching with a mix of excitement, trepidation, too much ale and, above all, astonishment at herself. She had never been alone like this with an unmarried, unrelated young man. Not ever, and yet she had wanted to come here with Jack, had wanted to see if her attraction to him could possibly grow stronger if they were alone, or if it was merely a product of the day’s party atmosphere.

  But now that they were really here, in the quiet of a rooming house, it seemed as if a thousand trepidations overtook her. What if she was wrong about Jack? What if he became like that awful man in the alleyway? Was she being a terrible fool? Was she becoming a “wicked woman,”
like the ones she sometimes read about in novels? They always met terrible ends to pay for their sins.

  Her steps slowed as she stared at Jack, who led onward, oblivious to her lagging. His dark hair was a bit overlong, waving over his damp, dirty tweed collar, and omehow that gave him a boyish touch of vulnerability despite the strong width of his shoulders. He hummed some low, carefree tune under his breath. He was obviously completely at ease.

  No, she thought. Jack might be mysterious, but he was not like the man in the alleyway. He would not hurt her. She could not have said why she felt so very certain about that, but she did.

  He stopped at a door on the third landing and dug a key out from inside his coat. He glanced back at her, and one brow arched when he saw her hovering at the head of the staircase.

  “Would you like to wait out here?” he asked her quietly. “I will only be a few moments.”

  Emma smiled at him and hurried across the landing to his side. “Oh, no. I would feel so awkward if one of your neighbors came out and saw me.”

  He smiled in return, yet she could see a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes. Could there be something in there he did not want her to see, something he had just recollected?

  “They are probably all at the celebration,” he said. “All but Mr. Bright, the violin player. But if you are sure you want to come in…”

  “I do.”

  Jack turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open, holding it for her to walk in ahead of him. Emma pulled her shawl closer about her shoulders and slid past him. She wondered what she would see. Red satin cushions? Silk-draped walls and low tables, as in a drawing she had once seen of a sultan’s palace? Surely a bachelor’s residence could hold any number of exotic items!

  To her great disappointment, she found herself in an ordinary sitting room. Plain brown draperies hung at the windows, drawn back so the light came in and illuminated the sturdy, simple furnishings. More brown upholstered the chairs and settee, and books were piled on the two round tables. The only spot of ornamentation was a vase of some Oriental design in rich, deep green and blue porcelain, which sat in solitary splendor on the fireplace mantel.