Lord Perfect (28 page)

But she could not accept such a gift. To do so was to
announce she was Rathbourne's whore.

"It's lovely," she said.

He smiled, and his was so boyishly pleased a smile that
it snatched away a piece of her heart and left an ache behind, fierce
enough to steal her breath away.

But that was a momentary feeling.

She was not in love, not at all.

She'd had one mad fancy at the height of passion but it
was only that: a fancy, a wild thought.

She was besotted, yes, infatuated, yes, and probably had
been since the first moment she saw him in the Egyptian Hall.

That was not love.

"The only remaining question is whether it will
fit," he said. His dark gaze slid over her, as warm and wicked
as his hands.

Now was the time to say
Thank
you but no, I cannot accept this. Thank you, but I must make do with
my own clothes… the ones I've taken apart and turned inside
out

and rest itched… the ones I've mended and
mended and mended until little remains of the original cloth…the
ones I've washed and washed until nothing remains of the original
color.

Who was she trying to fool?

She'd gone to bed with a man to whom
she was not wed. She
was
a whore.

She might as well be a happy one.

She said, "I'll
make
it fit."

She took the clothes from him and sorted out the
underthings. She would have declined his assistance but Thomas had
bought the type of garments women of the middle and upper classes
wore, the kind one couldn't manage single-handed. Her usual dresses
and corsets fastened in the front. The new corset and frock fastened
in the back.

"I shall need your help with the stays," she
said after she'd donned drawers and chemise.

"Then I had better fix my mind on sobering
thoughts," Rathbourne said. He flung aside the waistcoat he'd
been about to put on, and came to her.

"Will scandal do?" she said. "Or a pair
of missing children? Or both?"

He moved behind her and set to work. "Those will do
admirably. Let us review in an orderly fashion our possible courses
of action regarding the brats."

Orderly thinking was beyond her at
present. She was too aware of his hands at her back, of the intimacy
of this moment, the curious
domesticity
of it.

Fortunately, Rathbourne did not need any more help with
orderly thinking than he did with managing the intricacies of women's
attire.

"Here is what comes to mind," he said. "One,
we continue to do what we've done thus far. Two, we turn back to the
last place we had word of them. Three, we alert the authorities and
assemble a formal search party."

"Good grief."

"Have I pulled the stays too tight?"

"No, it was only…" She sighed. "Never
mind. It is foolish to worry about how much scandal we make."

"It is not at all foolish," he said. "There
are degrees of scandal. A formal search will assure us of the highest
possible degree. It will be fact—published fact, no less—not
mere gossip. Denial would be out of the question." While he
spoke, he wrestled her into her petticoat.

"There is one more possibility," he said. He
tossed the frock over her head. "We might proceed to Bristol—to
the end of the trail, in other words—and await them at the
gates of Throgmorton Park."

It was like trying to choose the least of four evils.

Stalling, she twitched the frock into place. "It
fits remarkably well, considering I was not present to be fitted,"
she said.

"I advised Thomas to find a maidservant of a
similar size," Rathbourne said.

"I am not sure I am altogether comfortable with the
idea of Thomas's taking such careful notice of my figure," she
said.

"Don't be absurd," he said. "Thomas is a
servant, true. He is also a man. The only men who do not take careful
notice of your figure are dead or blind. So long as they keep their
hands off, no one will have to kill them, and you need not be
uneasy."

Startled, she started to turn to read his expression.

He gave the frock a tug. "Keep still," he
said. "I'm not done."

Ah, well, she had as good a chance of reading Sanskrit
as she had of reading his thoughts from his face.

She stood obediently still.

He tied the last of the tapes and stepped away. He eyed
her up and down and frowned.

Uneasy, she moved to the dressing glass and studied her
reflection. "It does not fit perfectly," she said,
smoothing the skirt. "Still, it fits well, indeed, considering
the circumstances."

"Ah, yes, the circumstances," he said. "The
damned circumstances. We have neglected those long enough." He
pulled on his waistcoat and buttoned it. "What is your
preference, madam, regarding our course of action?"

* * *

LORD RATHBOURNE WAS not the only one who'd faced facts
and decided to make the most of the remaining time.

By ten o'clock that morning, Peregrine knew he'd never
reach Edinburgh in time to avert catastrophe. He could only assume
his uncle had somehow gone astray.

Though the idea of Lord Rathbourne making an error was
nearly unthinkable, Peregrine was obliged to think it. Had his
lordship stopped in Maidenhead and made inquiries at the inns—the
logical thing to do—he would have found them by now.

Since, therefore, catastrophe was inevitable, Peregrine
reviewed his situation while awaiting breakfast in the inn's public
dining room.

He did not want to go to Edinburgh.

He hated school and schoolteachers.

Since his parents would bar further visits with Uncle
Benedict, Peregrine's life for the next several years would be
disagreeable in the extreme.

Therefore, he had better make the most of the present.

Breakfast arrived as he reached this conclusion.

His mind at ease, he attacked his food with gusto. The
room and the meals had made enormous inroads into his limited funds,
but he would not worry about that. An explorer must be resourceful.

It might have taken him longer to achieve this state of
mental equilibrium had Olivia not continued quiet.

Peregrine was too busy thinking, then eating, to notice
this. It was only after he'd cleaned his plate that it dawned on him.
"You've hardly said a word since last night," he said. "Are
you unwell?"

"I've been thinking," she said.

He had much rather Olivia didn't think, but he had no
idea how to stop her.

He nodded and tried not to hold his breath.

"How are we to get rides to Bristol if people don't
feel sorry for us?" she said, lowering her voice. "If it's
unsporting to have a dying mother, what are we to say? You can't
expect us to tell the truth. You know we'll be taken straight back to
London."

Peregrine considered. Last night his goal had been
London, not Bristol. This morning his goal had changed. But she
didn't know that.

"It wouldn't be unsporting to
tell something
like
the truth," he said. "We could say we're going to Bristol
to seek our fortune."

"That's not unsporting?" She raised one pale
eyebrow.

"Well, it's true of you, certainly," he said.
"And it won't make people cry—the way that old lady did
who gave us the money for Twyford. That was shameful. For all we
knew, she needed the money worse than we did. How do we know she
wasn't poor, living on her widow's mite? Maybe she'll have to go
without her bit of chop this week, because of us."

Olivia stared at him for a while. Then she looked at the
table. Then she looked about the crowded dining room.

"Oh, very well," she said with a shrug. "We'll
seek our fortune. But you'd better leave the talking to me, your
nibs. Your accent gives you away."

He couldn't help his upper-class accent. Unlike her, he
couldn't change his speech at will, mimicking the style of whomever
he spoke to. "You'd better come with me to settle up with the
innkeeper, then," he said.

The innkeeper, who studied them more carefully than made
Peregrine comfortable, asked whether they wanted a horse.

Olivia looked at Peregrine. He shook his head.

When they left the inn he said, "I've only three
shillings left. I'd like to save it in case of an emergency."

She stood on the pavement, looking down the High Street.
"It's market day in Reading, I heard people say," she said.
"We might have some luck there. But it's twelve miles. Have you
ever walked twelve miles, m'lord?"

"Don't call me that," he said, looking about
him. But no one stood in hearing range. "I can walk twelve
miles. Easily." He'd never done so in his life, but he'd die
before he admitted that to her.

In any case, he didn't have to prove his hardihood that
day. Four miles down the road, a young couple in a dogcart offered
them a ride.

Like the innkeeper, the lady seemed mightily curious
about them. She kept turning to look at Peregrine. Though he had his
back to her as they rode and he said as little as possible, he grew
increasingly uneasy. As soon as they reached Reading, he was wild to
get away from them.

Luckily, Olivia had noticed or sensed trouble of some
kind, and when the couple offered to treat them to tea and biscuits,
she suddenly remembered errands that couldn't be postponed.

It was midafternoon, and Reading was bustling. It was
easy enough to lose their brand-new friends in the crowd.

Olivia led Peregrine to a large group gathered in front
of a bench from which a grizzled peddler sold trimmings, laces,
buttons, and other such articles indispensable to the feminine sex.

"We must do something about you," Olivia told
Peregrine in a low voice. "You look too aristocratic." She
squinted at him critically. "It's the profile. We shall have to
find you a large cap—or perhaps a scarf would be better. We
could wrap up your face and pretend you have the toothache."

Without appearing to push, she somehow made her way to
the front of the crowd, towing Peregrine along.

A large woman was haggling with the peddler over a
length of lace.

"Oh, my," said Olivia, "I
can hardly believe my eyes. Is that the
Santiamondo
lace—made only in the one small village in Spain—and the
pattern passed down through one family? But where did you get it?"
she asked the peddler. "You can't find that lace in London for
love or money, you know, because it's all the rage with the ladies.
The Duchess of Trenton wore it to a ball at Carlton House. I read
about it in the newspaper. She wore Santiamondo lace, and her famous
diamonds."

The woman snatched up the lace, thrust the coins into
the peddler's hands, and hurried away.

The peddler looked at Olivia. She looked back at him.

Another customer asked about a ribbon. Olivia spouted
off some piece of nonsense about the ribbon. Every button and bauble
had a story. By late afternoon, little stock remained.

When the peddler took down his bench and packed up
everything in his cart, Peregrine and Olivia helped him. He invited
them to dine with him.

They ate at an inn frequented by other peddlers and
itinerants. The place was dark and smoky, the food plain and
overcooked, but Peregrine was too fascinated by the company to
notice.

He had never been in the midst of such people before.

He could barely understand some of them. It was like
visiting a foreign country.

The peddler's name was Gaffy Tipton. "Now, I know
you're no boy," he said, pointing his pipe at Olivia. "What
I don't know is why you was so helpful."

She crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward and
said in a low voice, "My brother and me, we're going to Bristol
to seek our fortune. It's a good ways from here, though, and all we
got is three shillings. We don't know any trades, except that I used
to help a pawnbroker sometimes, and I know about dress trimmings and
such. I know the names of all the great nobs, and I read about the
parties and operas and plays they go to. I come and helped you today
to show what I can do. I heard someone say you always come on
Saturdays from Bristol. If you'd let us go back with you, we'd make
ourselves useful."

Gaffy looked at Peregrine.

"He's very shy," she said.

"Is he now?" said Gaffy skeptically.

"I'm a good liar but we don't neither of us steal,"
she said. "If you let us go with you, I can be a girl again. If
we go with you, people won't trouble us."

Peregrine blinked. It had never occurred to him that she
might be worried about their safety. It had not occurred to him,
either, that she could be as effective even when she told almost the
whole truth.