Lady in disguise

by Amanda McCabe

  Emma turned to see Natasha sitting by the bed, crying into her apron. Next to her, straight-backed and stern in a thronelike velvet chair, was—Aunt Lydia.

  ———

  Jack stood in the street, staring at the door Emma had disappeared through, for a long while. People moved past him, a few even giving him curious looks, but he noticed this only in a peripheral way. He looked at the door, and all he really saw was her standing there, bidding him farewell.

  What had come over him, telling her he wanted to see her again, almost giving the charade away? He would almost have said he was foxed, yet he had drunk nothing stronger than ale, and that hours ago. They had spent only a day together, shared a few dances, one innocent kiss, and he had felt in that moment as she slipped away that he was losing something precious. Something vital to his life.

  He had never, ever felt this way before. His work demanded that he be clearheaded, free of emotional encumbrances. There had been women he was fond of before but never one who made him feel as completely off-balance as he did now. He did not understand it. It must be simply the enchantment of this strange day, the mummery they had both indulged in. If he saw her in her own conventional surroundings again, gowned and jeweled at a ball, it would not feel this way.

  He rubbed at his eyes and turned away from the hotel, walking off into the crowd. What he needed now was his bed, sleep. All would be clear in the bright light of morning.

  But Emma was wrong when she said they were parting forever. They would meet again, and soon.

  If only she did not hate him when the truth was revealed.

  Chapter Eleven

  Oh, no. She was really in trouble now. Aunt Lydia was still wearing her ballgown of stiff gold satin and her necklace, earrings and tiara of diamonds and topaz. Her long kid gloves had been removed and folded across her lap, beneath her hands. She was so still and pale and glittering, so rich after Emma’s day among ordinariness, that she could almost have been a mirage.

  Except for the way her lips pursed and flattened.

  Emma looked wildly from her aunt to Natasha, who sobbed even harder into her apron. “It was not Natasha’s fault!” Emma cried. She wanted to throw herself on her knees before Aunt Lydia, but she feared that might appear too dramatic. She contented herself with clasping her hands before her. “I—I forced her into it. I made her do this!”

  Lydia drew in a deep breath, her nostrils flaring delicately. “I am perfectly aware whose doing this was, Emma. Just as I knew whose idea it was to let the kitchen milk goat into the house during the supper party for Prince Yulanov.”

  Emma gaped at her aunt, completely taken aback by this seeming change of topic. The goat? “That was when I was nine years old, Aunt Lydia.”

  “Yes, and you see how little things have changed. You are still persuading people to assist you in wild schemes.” Lydia relented just a bit and relaxed her shoulders before she said, “Natasha, you may retire now. I will help my niece into her nightdress. We will talk about your penalty tomorrow.”

  Natasha peeped cautiously over the edge of her apron, her gaze darting between Lydia and Emma. “Do—do you mean I’m not to be dismissed, Countess?”

  “Certainly not. You are a fine lady’s maid, and I would hate to have to instruct someone else now. But I will have Madame Ana keep stricter vigilance over the two of you from now on,” Lydia said, and waved Natasha away.

  Natasha bobbed a curtsy and rushed from the room with great alacrity, shutting the door behind her.

  Emma was not sure what to do in the fresh silence. She folded her arms over her suddenly queasy stomach and stared at the carpet beneath her feet. She had been so scared of what might happen if she was discovered, had braced herself for tears and shouts. She hated this disappointed smile more than any recriminations.

  Of course, she should never have expected shouts. Aunt Lydia had never once raised her voice, not even after the incident with the goat.

  Lydia sighed. “Sit down, Emma. Tell me where you have been.”

  Emma moved to the nearest chair, feeling like her feet were moving through thick water. She had forgotten how tired she was until she sat down, tucking her weary feet beneath her. She wove her fingers through her loosened hair, freeing the hairpins to scatter onto the floor. She still didn’t look at her aunt. “I wanted to see the celebrations.”

  “You wanted to see the celebrations? Whatever do you mean? Your uncle and I would have taken you to see anything you liked. Why, we rode in an open carriage through the park just this afternoon. The celebrations were all around us!”

  “I don’t mean like that! With everyone staring and bowing. I wanted to see what it was really like. Just this once,” Emma cried out. Much to her chagrin, she burst into tears. The emotions of parting with Jack, her exhaustion and probably all the food she had eaten that day all flooded into those tears. She could not stop. She buried her face in her hands and wished she had an apron like Natasha.

  A soft hand touched her shoulder, and she looked up to see Aunt Lydia holding out a handkerchief.

  “Oh, Emma,” she said, in a gentle, tired voice. “My poor child. Stop crying and wipe your eyes.”

  Emma obeyed her, mopping away tears and blowing her nose most inelegantly as her aunt sat back down. “I am truly sorry if I disappointed you, Aunt Lydia,” she said soggily. “I never wanted to hurt you. I just…”

  “You just wanted some fun,” said Lydia. “And who could blame you? You are young, and you have always been so spirited. This visit cannot have been very exciting for you. But I was very worried when I found you gone, and Natasha did not know where you were. Anything could have happened, Emma! You are a sheltered young lady. You cannot know what waits out there. You should never, ever have gone out by yourself.”

  Emma thought of the cutpurse Jack had rescued her from and shuddered. Her aunt was right. She could never have imagined that either of those things—the thief or Jack—waited out there for her.

  “Yes, Aunt Lydia,” she said.

  Lydia shook her head. “I promised your dear mother faithfully that I would look after you as my own if anything happened to her. I have certainly loved you as my own daughter, but I have not given you an easy life.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper, an uncertain murmur that Emma had never heard from her before. “Did I fail my dear Lizzie? Do you hate your life with us, Emma?”

  This caused a fresh flood of tears. Emma slid off her chair onto the floor next to Lydia and buried her head in the satin of her aunt’s skirt. “No, no! I love you and Uncle Nicholas. No one could have been better parents to me than you have been. I do not know what came over me today. I just wanted to see something different.”

  “My dear child.” Lydia laid her hand against Emma’s hair, smoothing the long strands back. “We will only be here for a few more days, and I am sure we can make those days more interesting for you. Tomorrow, for instance. We must take tea at the embassy with Countess Lieven, but afterwards that young Sir Jeremy Ashbey would like to take you for a drive. You would be free of us old folk for an hour or so. Would that not be nice?”

  No! Emma wanted to shout. She did not want to see Sir Jeremy—or any other man—after knowing Jack. She did not want to sit next to him in a carriage, making polite conversation. Knowing that, for whatever reason, her aunt and uncle had “expectations” of Sir Jeremy. She couldn’t, not while her dreams of Jack were so fresh and clear.

  But she couldn’t bear to disappoint Aunt Lydia any further. She nodded against the gold satin, then immediately felt terrible for smearing tears on the expensive fabric.

  Lydia didn’t seem to notice, though. She patted Emma’s head and said, with smiling relief in her voice, “Good. You will enjoy that. But you must promise me that you will not go slipping away again.”

  “I promise.”

  Lydia leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “You must be so tired, dear. Let me help you into your nightdress so you can go to bed. Unless you are hungry? I could send
to the kitchen for some supper.”

  Emma’s stomach lurched. “No, I am not hungry.” She would probably never be hungry again after all she had eaten today.

  Feeling as if she was in a trance or a dream, Emma let her aunt help her out of her borrowed dress and into one of her embroidered nightgowns and tuck her into bed. It reminded her of her childhood days, when Lydia, if she was not off on official duties with Uncle Nicholas, would brush Emma’s hair and read to her before she went to sleep. It was comforting, after all the tumultuous emotions of the day, soft like an eiderdown quilt tucked around her shoulders on a cold day. Yet, at the same time, it made her feel like she was a child again, thrust back into her cocooned world when she had only just had a glimpse of what it was like to be a free woman.

  She turned her face into the pillow, so weary that her entire body ached with it.

  Lydia kissed her gently on the cheek. “You do look so tired, dear. Sleep now. Perhaps tomorrow you will want to tell me everything that you did today?”

  Despite the gentle words, there was a certain steel in that last sentence. It was an order, disguised as a question.

  Tell everything that she had done today? Emma feared she could not ever find a way to begin. She was not sure herself what had happened to her. But she could tell her aunt an abbreviated version, excised of ale, thieves, Lottie and her red gown and the most important part of all—Jack.

  She would never speak of Jack, not to anyone. He was hers now, hers alone, or at least his memory was. She would keep him safely locked away in her heart for the rest of her life.

  “Yes,” she said. “We can talk about it tomorrow.”

  Aunt Lydia nodded and stood up to leave. She extinguished all the candles in the room, save one on the dressing table. “Good night, Emma,” she said, and shut the door softly behind her.

  Emma waited until her aunt’s footsteps faded away down the corridor, then she slid out of bed and padded over to the window in her bare feet. She pulled back the draperies and looked down onto the street.

  Despite the lateness of the hour, crowds still gathered there, as noisy and boisterous as ever. Behind the thickness of the glass, they moved in seeming silence, but Emma knew how they really sounded in the mad cacophony of unbridled joy.

  For a brief time, she had been part of it.

  She laid her hand flat against the window in farewell.

  There was a click behind her as the bedroom door opened again. She looked back, expecting to see her aunt returned and braced for a scolding about being out of bed. But it was Natasha. The maid had washed her tear-stained face and smoothed her hair, leaving no trace of earlier storms and quarrels. She held a pot of tea and a dainty china cup on a tray.

  Emma couldn’t help but smile. It was as if nothing at all had happened.

  “I thought you might like some tea, my lady,” Natasha said, with a tentative smile of her own.

  “Thank you, Natasha. It seems just the thing to help steady my stomach.” Emma took one more long look at the crowd outside before pulling the draperies closed. “Natasha, I want to say how very sorry I am I got you into trouble. I never would have stayed out so long if I thought that Aunt Lydia and Uncle Nicholas would come back early. I wish…”

  “No, my lady. I didn’t get into very much trouble. The countess was stern, but kind enough. I just feared what might happen to you.”

  “Aunt Lydia was kind to me as well,” Emma murmured. She sat down and took the cup of tea Natasha offered. The sweet, milky liquid did help to settle her stomach a bit and was warm to her suddenly chilled heart. “So, we can begin again? I promise you I will never ask you to help me in such a prank again. From now on, I will be perfectly ladylike.”

  Natasha giggled. “I hope not perfectly, my lady! It would make my job so much more dull.” She picked up Emma’s discarded “Tonya” costume, shook it out and folded it neatly. “Tell me, my lady, did you see the illuminations?”

  “Mm, oh, yes.” Emma smiled at the memory, closing her eyes and seeing the sparkling multitude of lights as if they were still there before her. “And it was as you said—just like heaven.”

  ———

  Lydia expected only her maid and maybe Madame Ana to be waiting for her when she returned wearily to her own suite, her head aching beneath the weight of her tiara. But Olga was not there to help her out of her gown, nor was Madame Ana there to take notes on the next day’s engagements. Only her husband waited in the sitting room.

  Nicholas sat slumped in an armchair by the fireplace, the white and gold tunic of his uniform half-unfastened, as if he had been too tired to go any further. Almost always he looked as young and dashing as he had on the evening when he, a young officer visiting London from Russia, had swept her off her feet at a ball. Tonight, though, he looked weary, pale even, his dark hair iced with gray, purple shadows beneath his eyes.

  Well, she was no longer the young miss who had danced all night with him at that long-ago ball, either.

  We are getting old, she thought, with some surprise. Too old to be all of Emma’s family, perhaps. She needed young people around her, a social circle of her own.

  A family of her own?

  When the door clicked shut behind her, Nicholas looked up and smiled. It was the same roguish smile as ever.

  Perhaps they were not so old, after all.

  “Lydia, my darling,” he said, rising from his chair. He came across the room and kissed her cheek. “Is Emma still ill?”

  Lydia leaned against his shoulder, grateful for his strength. “No, she is better.” She had seen no reason to worry Nicholas with Emma’s little escapade, not unless it had proved necessary to call out a search party, which mercifully it had not. “She will be able to join us for tea at the embassy tomorrow.”

  “That is excellent news!” he said, his tone most relieved. “I fear we had exhausted our little koshka with this journey.”

  “She was tired, I think. But a day of rest has done her a world of good.”

  “You look as if you are in need of rest as well, my darling. Come, sit down. I will ring for Olga.”

  “Thank you, dearest.” Lydia sat down on the settee near the fire, sighing as she tucked her aching feet up on a footstool. It had been a very long night indeed.

  She watched as her husband went to ring the bell. It was so nice to have this quiet time together, and such a rare luxury. She did love Nicholas and had never regretted marrying him. None of her English suitors could have held a candle to him. Truly, though, she could have wished for more time together. They had spent perhaps three months together in every one of the twenty-five years they had been married.

  It was the price she paid for being married to a diplomat. Did she really want Emma to pay that price, as well?

  Lydia looked into the crackling flames, mesmerized by the red and gold dance. She had hoped that on this visit Emma would make a match. It would have pleased Lydia’s sister so much to see her daughter marry an Englishman, perhaps even return to her own English estate. Despite the pangs Lydia felt at the thought of losing Emma, she had thought it the best thing. Despite how very Russian Emma so often seemed, the truth was that she was an English lady.

  Sir Jeremy Ashbey appeared to be the answer. He was well spoken of, young and handsome, with lands near Emma’s own. And he seemed to greatly admire Emma. Nicholas liked him. But—Sir Jeremy was embarking on a diplomatic career of his own.

  What was the right answer? Lydia feared she did not know.

  She rubbed her hand over her eyes. “I thought you would still be with the Tsar,” she said, as her husband rejoined her. He held two glasses of sherry, one of which he pressed into her hand.

  “I was, until a short time ago,” Nicholas said. “He went on to another ball. Can you imagine?” He laughed. “Were we ever that young?”

  Lydia sipped at the deep golden liquid, savoring its bracing warmth. “Tonight I feel as if I was never young.”

  Nicholas frowned in concern. “Are you feel
ing unwell, darling?”

  “I am quite well. Just a bit tired. Certainly not up to dancing all night!” She drained the glass. “1 have been thinking about Sir Jeremy Ashbey.”

  “Yes. He seems a most admirable young man, and so admiring of our Emma. But there is something about his family, his mother perhaps, that is not quite right.”

  “Something alarming?”

  “I am not sure. I have not yet discovered the details.” Nicholas’s quiet, hard tone promised that he soon would. “In the meantime, I see no reason why he should not spend time with Emma. Properly chaperoned, of course.”

  “Of course. She has agreed to go driving with him tomorrow after the tea.”

  Nicholas nodded. “That would be an excellent time for them to get to know one another better.”

  “Yes,” Lydia murmured, staring down into the empty depths of her glass. “An excellent time.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Tell me, Lady Emma, how are you enjoying your time in London?” Countess Lieven asked.

  Emma watched as the countess sat down next to her on the settee, a china cup and saucer balanced perfectly in her hand. Just as at the reception, Countess Lieven looked elegant and poised, her salmon-colored gown and embroidered spencer in the first stare of fashion. And just as at the reception, Emma felt like a little mouse next to her. She put down the plate of cake she held and carefully smoothed the skirt of her own blue-sprigged muslin afternoon gown.

  “I am enjoying it very much, thank you, Countess Lieven,” Emma answered politely. “London is a lovely city.”

  “But not as lovely as St. Petersburg, is it?” The countess gave a wistful sigh and made an adorable little moue with her red lips. Emma wished she could learn how to do that without looking ridiculous. “I do so miss my home sometimes. But that is why I am so happy all of you are here! It is almost like being in Russia again. I so seldom get to talk with my own countrywomen.”