The brothers came to Albany in the middle of the afternoon, I rather suspect because they’d been fussed over and scolded for quite long enough. My sympathy was with their mother who was having to cope with one son at constant risk of arrest or exile and the other involved with a thoroughly unsuitable woman – and both embroiled in a murder investigation.
‘I need some frivolity,’ James said, stretching out his long legs. ‘Let’s go to the theatre this evening.’
‘Opera,’ Luc said. ‘I fancy a complete absence of reality – we have too much of that just at the moment. We’ll go to the King’s Theatre. No need to book – I’ve a box, not that I’ve used it this Season so far. Garrick, do you think Mr Smith would like to join us?’
‘I’m sure he would,’ Garrick said with a grin.
Who the devil was Mr Smith? It was obviously an old joke, so I said nothing and waited to be enlightened. I had more important things to worry about – what was I going to wear to the opera?
What I would wear to the opera was, I discovered, a great deal of bling and feathers. Ostrich feathers.
Garrick told me which gown, then produced a box with a bunch of curling plumes and showed me how they fitted into the back of a diamond bandeau I would wear on my head. There were also boxes with more diamonds and even a fan with diamonds and tiny mirrors.
He brought me hot water and I took my bath and tried not to think about the sound of gunfire or anything connected with the mystery. Looking at the jewellery boxes and trying to imagine my sister Sophie’s face if she saw me decked out in that lot helped. Her eyeballs would turn green.
I fought my way into corset, stockings, garters, petticoats and gown. The gown needed some help with hooks so I looked around the edge of the door. ‘Lucian!’
‘In the bath.’ Garrick emerged from the kitchen area in his shirt sleeves.
‘Oh. Only my gown – ’
‘I’ll see to that, Miss Lawrence.’
I came out and he proceeded to deal with the hooks so efficiently that I began to wonder all over again about his past. This question of modesty was interesting, I thought as I thanked him and closed the bedchamber door again. I had any number of male friends – straight or gay – who I’d have asked to do up a few hooks without batting an eyelash. I must have been exposing about two square inches of bare back and a few more of petticoat and yet it had felt positively daring to have Garrick help me.
Garrick had given me a pot of rice powder and some rouge – goodness knows where he did his shopping – and I eyed them cautiously when I had brushed my hair. With this much jewellery I suspected that make up could b
e more obvious than I had observed as being suitable for respectable young ladies.
I used a miniscule amount of rouge, which was assertively red, on my cheeks and mixed some with the lip gloss from my bag to make lipstick. The rice powder worked fairly well for taking the shine off my nose and dusting over the little nicks from the flying glass. I used my mascara with a lavish hand and decided that I would probably do.
It took a while to get the bandeau and feathers looking right and secure enough so they wouldn’t come off if I moved my head. It felt decidedly strange, and seeing myself it the mirror with the feathers bobbing at the back was a decidedly Downton Abbey moment. Yes, I know, wrong period, but those feathers…
The earrings were gorgeous and I pulled on the long white gloves and clasped the matching bracelets – more like cuffs – on top. The necklace I left for Luc. There is something exceedingly sexy about a gorgeous man taking his time fastening a diamond necklace around your neck I had discovered, and I was going to make the most of it. In my experience life in the twenty-first century is surprisingly short of men with diamond necklaces.
I sashayed out humming Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend, channelling my inner Marilyn and firmly suppressing the little voice inside that was lecturing me on the importance of being an independent woman. Wrong century, I told it.
‘What on earth is that you’re singing?’ Luc, looking entirely edible in black and white with a silver waistcoat, was standing in the drawing room.
I gave him a rendition of the song, complete with the hip-wriggle, and his eyes glazed slightly. Very gratifying.
‘Strange music,’ he said, taking the necklace from me.
‘Nineteen forties, I think.’ I stood still and enjoyed his warm breath on my nape and the way his fingers lingered on my shoulders when the clasp was fastened.
‘You’ll have to sing it for me again,’ he began, then stepped back as someone came into the room. ‘Ah. Miss Lawrence, may I present Mr Smith?’
It was Garrick, but not as I knew him. His evening suit was almost as elegant as Lucian’s, a gold watch chain looped across his crimson brocade waistcoat, his hair was different in some subtle way I couldn’t quite define, and his entire body language had changed from tough, competent but slightly deferential, to relaxed yet assertive. I wouldn’t say he was elegant – his face still looked too tough and faintly battered for that – but he looked, unmistakeably, a gentleman.
It took all my willpower not to blurt out a demand to know exactly who and what Garrick really was. ‘Mr Smith.’ I curtsied, then asked, ‘And who exactly is Mr Smith?’
‘An acquaintance from Suffolk,’ Lucian said. ‘I buy horses from him and when he is in Town I always have him to dinner, take him around.’
As you do.
‘You have a stud, Mr Smith?’ Play the game.
‘No, but I breed horses for myself and sell to friends on occasion.’ Even Garrick’s voice had changed. He was always well-spoken, now he sounded like Luc and James.