She smiled. “My heart is ever resilient, Ralston.”
He tipped his head, acknowledging her surrender.
“You know, of course, that a girl like that knows nothing of the world in which you and I live.”
He could not resist. “What does that mean?”
“Only that she will want love, Ralston. Girls like her always do.”
“I have little interest in whatever fairy tales the girl believes in, Nastasia. She is nothing to me but a chaperone to my sister.”
“Perhaps,” Nastasia said thoughtfully. “But what are you to her?” When he did not respond, one side of her mouth curved in a wry smile. “You forget that the best seat in the theatre is mine.”
Ralston stood from his chair, making a production of straightening his cravat and smoothing his sleeves before gathering his hat, gloves, and greatcoat from the chaise where he had tossed them upon entering the room. He withdrew Nastasia’s note and set it on the dressing table before turning back to the singer. Bowing low, he took his leave.
And he did it all without saying a word.
Twelve
How dare he call me a coward!”
Callie paced the floor of her bedchamber, livid at the events of the evening. She had arrived home an hour before but hadn’t stopped moving long enough to allow Anne to help her undress.
Instead, the maid had taken up residence on the end of Callie’s bed, watching her mistress walk up and down the room as though she were watching a tennis match. “I’m not sure,” Anne said dryly, “particularly considering the fact that you attempted to strike him in a public theatre.”
Callie missed Anne’s amusement, instead grasping the maid’s words, throwing her hands into the air in frustration, and saying, “Exactly! There’s nothing cowardly about that!”
“Nothing ladylike about it either.”
“Yes, well, that’s beside the point,” Callie said. “What is the point is that Gabriel St. John, Marquess of Ralston, accosted me in a public theatre on the way to meet his mistress, and somehow contrived to place me in the wrong!” She stamped her foot. “How dare he call me a coward!”
Anne couldn’t keep the smile from her face. “To be fair, it does sound like you provoked him.”
Callie stopped pacing, turning to the maid incredulously. “For someone who, mere days ago, was concerned about my reputation being ruined for sneaking out to a tavern, you seem awfully quick to take Ralston’s side in this! You are supposed to defend me!”
“And I shall do so until the end of time, Callie. But you’ve set out to find yourself some adventure, and you have to admit that Ralston seems to have given you exactly the kind you were looking for.”
“I most certainly was not looking for him to haul off and kiss me in public!”
One of Anne’s eyebrows raised in a disbelieving gesture. “I suppose you didn’t enjoy it?”
“No!”
“Not at all?”
“Not a bit.”
“Mmm-hmm.” The maid’s response was rife with disbelief.
“I didn’t!”
“So you’ve said.” Anne stood, turning Callie toward the dressing table and setting to work unhooking the long row of buttons on the back of Callie’s dress.
They stood in silence for several long minutes before Callie spoke again. “All right, I may have liked it a little.”
“Ah, just a little.”
Callie sighed, turning in spite of Anne’s still working on the fastenings of her dress. The maid resumed her place on the bed as Callie began pacing again.
“Fine. More than a little. I enjoyed it immensely, just as I have all the other times he’s kissed me.” She caught the maid’s surprised look before saying, “Yes, there have been other times. And why wouldn’t I enjoy it? The man is clearly an expert kisser.”
Anne cleared her throat. “Clearly.”
Callie snapped her head around to look at her maid. “He is! Anne, you’ve never been kissed like that.”
“I shall have to take your word for it.”
Callie nodded seriously. “You shall. Ralston’s everything you’d imagine he would be…one moment he’s all tempting words and wicked glances, then his arms are around you, and you can’t quite understand how it all happened…”
She trailed off dreamily, looking up at the ceiling and clasping her gown to herself. Anne stood, thinking to take the opportunity to finish helping Callie undress, but before she could step away from the bed, Callie’s look had gone from dreamy to irritated, and she was at it again. “And then the rounder pulls away and looks at you with all the smug satisfaction of a complete and utter cad! And when you try to defend yourself—”
“By striking him?”
“And when you try to defend yourself,” Callie repeated, “do you know what he does?”
“He calls you a coward?” Anne asked wryly.
“He calls you a coward! He’s utterly infuriating!”
“It seems so,” Anne said, making her way to work on Callie’s buttons once more.
This time, Callie allowed her access, standing still as the gown came loose in her hands and she stepped out of it. Anne then set to work on the laces of her corset, and Callie sighed as the tight garment came undone. A modicum of Callie’s anger was released with the stiff confines of the stays.
Standing in her chemise, she wrapped her arms around her middle and took a deep breath. Anne guided her to sit at the dressing table and began to comb Callie’s long brown hair. The feeling was rather glorious, and Callie sighed, eyes closed.
“Of course, I enjoyed the kiss,” she muttered after a while.
“So it seems,” Anne said, matter-of-factly.
“I wish I wasn’t such a fool around Ralston.”
“You’ve always been a fool about Ralston.”
“Yes, but now I am near him far more. It’s different.”
“Why?”
“Before I merely daydreamed about Ralston. Now I find myself actually with him. Actually talking to him. Actually discovering the real Ralston. He is no longer a creature I invented. He is flesh and blood and…now I can’t help wondering…” She trailed off, unwilling to say what she was thinking. What if he were mine?
She did not have to say the words aloud; Anne heard them anyway. When Callie opened her eyes and met Anne’s gaze in the looking glass, she saw Anne’s response there. Ralston is not for you, Callie.
“I know, Anne,” Callie said quietly, as much to remind herself as to reassure her friend.
Of course, she didn’t know. Not anymore. Mere weeks ago, Callie would have laughed at the idea that Gabriel St. John even knew her name…let alone was willing to engage in conversation with her. And now…Now he was kissing her in darkened carriages and darkened hallways…and reminding her why she had been such a fool for him since the beginning.
He had been on his way to see his opera singer that evening—Callie was sure of it—and there was no question that she was no match for the Greek beauty. He could not be attracted to her.
She faced herself in the looking glass, cataloging her flaws: her brown hair, so very common and uninteresting; her too-large brown eyes; her round face, so unlike the heart-shaped faces of the beauties of the ton; her too-wide mouth, not at all the perfect bow that it should have been. With each feature, she considered the women to whom Ralston had been linked before, all Helens of Troy, with faces that stopped men in their tracks.
He had left her and gone to his mistress, who had most definitely welcomed him with open arms. What woman in her right mind wouldn’t?
And Callie had returned home to her cold, empty bed…and dreamed of the impossible.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and Callie tried to dash them away before Anne could see, but soon they were coming fast, on top of each other, and she couldn’t hide her sadness. She sniffled, drawing attention from the maid, who, with one look, stopped combing and crouched low next to her lady.
Callie allowed the older woman to put her
arms around her, and she placed her head upon Anne’s shoulder and allowed the tears to come. She sobbed into the rough wool of the maid’s gown, exposing the sadness that had consumed her for years. Through a decade of seasons, the weddings of all of her friends, Mariana’s betrothal—a decade of being moved higher and higher upon the shelf—she had hidden her sorrow, refusing to allow her regret to shadow the happiness of others.
But now, with Ralston wreaking havoc on her senses and reminding her of everything she had always wanted and would never have, it was too much. She could no longer hold it in.
She cried for long minutes, Anne murmuring soothing sounds as she stroked Callie’s back. When she was done, unable to find the energy to continue with tears, Callie sat up straight, pulling back from Anne and offering a watery smile of self-conscious thanks. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”
“Oh, Callie-mine,” Anne said, her voice taking on the tone she’d used when Callie was a little girl and crying over some injustice, “your white knight, he will come.”
One side of Callie’s mouth kicked up in a wry smile. Anne had said the words countless times over the last two decades. “Forgive me, Anne, but I’m not so certain that he will.”
“Oh, he will,” Anne said firmly. “And when you least expect.”
“I find I’m rather tired of waiting.” Callie laughed halfheartedly. “Which is probably why I’ve turned my attentions to such a dark knight.”
Anne cupped Callie’s cheek in her hand with a smile. “I think I’d rather see you ticking off items on your ridiculous list than keeping company with Ralston. I should steer clear of him if I were you.”
“Easier said than done,” Callie said. There was something so very compelling about the man—it didn’t seem to matter that he infuriated her. To the contrary, his arrogance only served to make him more attractive. She sighed. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I should steer clear of Ralston and focus on my list again.” She lifted the list from the dressing table, where she’d set it earlier that evening. “Of course, it appears I’m rather out of simple tasks.”
Anne gave a little grunt of disbelief before saying dryly, “Of course, because drinking at a tavern makes for a perfectly simple outing. What’s left?”
“Fencing, attending a duel, firing a pistol, gambling at a gentlemen’s club, and riding astride,” she said, leaving off the rest of the items—the items that she was embarrassed to share with even her closest confidant.
“Hmm. That is a challenge.”
“Indeed,” Callie said distractedly, biting her bottom lip and considering the paper.
“One thing is for sure, however,” Anne said.
“What’s that?”
“No matter which of those things you tackle next, no one will call you a coward for doing them.”
Callie met Anne’s eyes at the words, and, after a beat of surprised silence, the two women laughed.
“Oof!” Callie grasped the bedpost firmly as Anne tugged on the length of linen that she was wrapping around Callie’s torso. “I think you could be slightly more gentle, Anne.”
“Likely so,” the maid said, passing the fabric under Callie’s arms and arranging it flat against her breasts, “but I am not feeling very gentle at the moment.”
Callie looked down at her fast-reducing bosom and smiled through the discomfort. “Yes, well, I appreciate your putting those feelings aside to assist me.”
Anne responded with a grunt of displeasure and a harsh yank on the linen. She shook her head as she worked. “Binding your breasts and dressing like a man…I think you’ve gone mad.”
“Nonsense. I’m simply trying something new.”
“Something that would give your mother the vapors if she knew.”
Callie turned her head sharply toward the maid. “Which she won’t.”
“You cannot be thinking I would tell her,” Anne said, outraged, “I’d lose my position before the words were out!”
“Not if she had a fit of the vapors beforehand,” Callie teased.
It was late in the afternoon, and Callie and Anne had sequestered themselves in Callie’s bedchamber to prepare her to tackle the next item on her list—fencing.
Callie had worked out an elaborate plan to gain entrance to Benedick’s fencing club, disguised as a young dandy, just out of university, and looking for a new sporting ground. She had practiced deepening her voice and developed a background story for her character—Sir Marcus Breton, a baronet from the Lake District. She’d had Anne pilfer some old clothes from Benedick’s wardrobe, including a fencing suit that would not be missed, and the two women had spent a week altering the clothes to fit Callie.
She was already wearing a newly tailored pair of men’s breeches, which, she had to admit, were surprisingly comfortable despite her feeling thoroughly indecent wearing them. Underneath, she wore thick stockings and a pair of boots that they had bribed from a stable boy.
As her stomach tumbled with nerves and Anne swaddled her in linen, Callie refused to consider the absolute humiliation that would come of her being discovered dressed as a man in one of London’s most male of establishments. She had come too far to quit now.
Taking a deep breath as Anne tucked the tail of the fabric under her arm, Callie lifted her list from the bed and inserted it between the linen bindings and her skin, unwilling to leave the house on this particular mission without the talisman. She then took up a billowing linen shirt and slipped it over her head, tucking it into the waistband of her breeches. Turning to Anne, she asked, “Well? Can you tell I’m a lady?”
Anne raised a solitary brow at the question, at which point Callie added, “Fine. Can you tell I am female?”
“Yes.”
“Anne!” Callie rushed to the mirror. “Really?”
“Let’s finish the transformation, then see where we are,” the maid said, matter-of-factly.
“Fair enough.” Callie allowed Anne access to her neck as the maid worked to tie a cravat in some approximation of one of the elaborate knots that were the current style. Then, she put on a beige waistcoat and slipped into a dark green topcoat before sitting at the dressing table and allowing Anne to hide her hair. “It’s a pity that I shan’t have you on the way home, Anne. How will I remember it all?”
“Oh, you’ll remember. You’ll have to.”
Callie swallowed, watching as the maid placed a hat upon her head, working diligently to tuck any stray tendrils inside the cap. “You cannot take this off until you put your fencing mask on.”
“Believe me, I shan’t.” Callie shook her head tentatively, testing the stability of the hat. “Will it stay?”
Anne opened her mouth to respond as a knock sounded and the door to the room opened.
“Callie? Mother said you were feeling ill? Is there something—” Mariana’s question ended on a scream as she registered the man sitting in her sister’s bedchamber.
The sound spurred Callie and Anne into motion, both spinning away from the dressing table and toward Mariana. Anne closed the door to the room firmly, pressing her back against the wood and spreading her arms out to block Mari’s exit. Callie headed for her sister, who was frantically shaking her head at the image that Callie made, dressed head to toe in men’s clothing.
“Shh! Mariana! You’ll bring the house running!”
Mari cocked her head at her sister’s words, and Callie waited as understanding dawned. “What are you doing dressed like that?” the younger girl whispered.
“It’s rather complicated,” Callie hedged.
“My Lord!” Mari went on, eyes wide. “It’s incredible! I actually thought you a man when I entered!”
“I noticed! I suppose I have that to be thankful for, at least!” Callie turned her attention to Anne. “Is anyone out there?”
Anne shook her head. “I think it is too late in the day for there to be many people above stairs.”
Mari could not contain her curiosity, “Callie, why are you dressed as a man?”
/> “I—I—” Callie looked to Anne for help. The maid crossed her arms defiantly and raised both eyebrows, leaving Callie with no aid. “Mari—I’ll tell you—but you must keep my secret.”
“Of course!” Mari’s eyes lit up with excitement. “I love secrets!” She hopped up on the bed and waved a hand at Callie. “Turn around so I can see the whole disguise!” Callie did as she was told.
“Amazing! What did you do to your…” Mari waved her hand in the general direction of Callie’s chest.
Callie sighed. “We bound them.”
Mari turned to Anne. “Excellent work!” The maid nodded in acknowledgment of the praise. Mari turned a bright smile on Callie. “Now, go on.”
Taking a deep breath, Callie began, “Several weeks ago, I made a list of the things I would do if I had the courage to risk my reputation.” Mariana’s jaw dropped, and Callie discovered that was the hardest part of the tale—once it was out, the rest seemed rather easy to tell. Skipping the visit to Ralston’s home, she told her sister about her visit to the Dog and Dove.
“What was it like?”
“The tavern?” At Mari’s eager nod, Callie said, “Fascinating.”
“And the scotch?”
“Horrid. But not as horrid as the cheroot.”
“The cheroot?” Mari’s mouth gaped again.
Callie blushed. “After the tavern, I came home and Benedick and I smoked a cheroot.”
“Benedick let you smoke a cheroot?” Mari’s response was incredulous.
“Shh! Yes, but you cannot tell him you know.”
“Oh, I won’t.” Mari paused, an impish grin crossing her face. “At least, not yet, not until I need something from him.”
“So,” Callie pushed on, “I decided that this afternoon is the time for the next item on the list.”
“Which is?”
“Fencing.”
Mariana blinked, absorbing Callie’s words. “Fencing!” She looked Callie up and down. “You can’t wear that fencing.”