My Lady, My Lord (4 page)

“Ouch!” His voice came forth light. Rich.
Familiar
.

No. Oh, no.

Not a dream.

A nightmare
.

Leaping from the bed, legs tangled in the ruined nightshirt, he tripped toward the dressing table. The mirror, gilt-edged but not showy, was long and narrow, an oval that captured nearly his entire image as he stumbled to a halt before it.

No!

Ian squeezed his eyes shut.

Nightmare. Nightmare. Nightmare.

It had to be a horrible nightmare. Or a wretched jest his friends were playing. Stoopie was wealthy enough to fund something this elaborate, and immoral enough to invent it. They’d dosed him with a strong drug to put him into some sort of reverie, a terrifyingly real reverie, designed to make his stomach heave and his legs shake.

He didn’t feel the thick pull of the poppy seed in his blood, though, nor the heavy stupor. But he’d only indulged in that messy pursuit a handful of times, and years ago. He preferred brandy. Perhaps there was something new he hadn’t yet heard of. Another drug much stronger than opium. Something imported from the Orient. It must be. He cracked his eyes open and peeked at the mirror again.

The eyes that stared back at him in horror were not Chance blue, passed through nearly every male in his family since the time of King Harry. Instead they were muddy. Greenish-brown with a hint of gold if a man had to be decent about it.

But Ian didn’t have to be decent about it. He’d never been decent to the bearer of those pond-colored eyes. And his anger was mounting. This was going too far. Drake and he had traded pranks since their school days, but neither of them had ever stooped so outrageously low. Ian’s friend could not have chosen a more painful torment to impose upon him, a worse penance for the wrong Drake obviously imagined he’d committed—whatever it was.

He would exact retribution. As soon as the effects of this wretched drug wore off and he had his proper senses back, he would see to it right away. He’d no doubt that when he was in his right mind again he would remember the ruse. A man didn’t recover from this level of terror so readily.

Stoopie would pay. And pay.

Staggering back to the frothy bed, he fell upon it on his face, releasing a shuddering breath into the feather quilt.

A scratch came at the door. This time another maid entered. He couldn’t summon the enthusiasm to examine her breasts.

“Milady.” Glancing swiftly at his torn garment, then away, the girl extended a silver dish bearing an envelope.

Ian reached for the envelope but his hand stalled. He leaned toward the tray. On the face of the paper, his monogram—the Chance crest—showed bold and clear. The address read
The Honble. Corinna Mowbray
.

This was wrong. He had never, ever sent Corinna Mowbray a letter. Categorically never.

Trying to still the shaking of his hand, he took up the envelope, nodded to the maid, and waited until she left. He unsnapped the wax seal—the Chance seal, stored in his dressing chamber table, to which only he possessed the key—and withdrew a single, folded sheet of his finest foolscap. Vaguely aware that his nostrils were flaring like a spooked horse, he opened it.

The writing was not his own, scrawled swiftly beneath the monogram, though with the weight of his hand and the angle of his script. Ian read the words, and his entire female body went cold.

You thorough scoundrel! What have you done?

S
WEAT DRENCHED CORINNA FROM THE
mass of wiry hair beneath her arms stuffed into the skin-tight coat to her neck trapped in a snug collar and elaborately arranged cravat. The late October day was cool, but she had not donned the greatcoat the butler proffered for her as she clomped out the front door. She’d known the man for years; during her girlhood he’d been first footman at Dashbourne, the Chance family’s estate. Somehow she imagined he would recognize her.

But she did not recognize herself.

She did not recognize herself.

A groan of sheer confusion arose from her chest. The rumble of distress sounded low and alarming. The birds in the trees and hedges on the green chirped cheerily, the crisp and unusually clean breeze swirled around her head, teasing her short locks, and she begged God for a return to reality.

This simply could not be happening. She simply could not have woken up four interminable hours ago in Ian Chance’s house.

In Ian Chance’s bed.

In Ian Chance’s
body
.

Corinna prided herself on her liberality of thought. She believed that even the most outlandish theorists should have their moment on the stage. Persons of true elevation of mind could learn something from every area of science, religion, literature, philosophy, as well as the other faculties of study. She might not believe in reincarnation, alchemy, ghosts, transcendentalism, and the Loch Ness Monster, but she respected them as avenues of human inquiry.

But this...
this
could not be. From her studies and discussions with experts she knew that ghosts inhabited only willing hosts. Demons, on the other hand, simply did not exist. And of course, neither Ian Chance nor she was dead—unfortunately, in the case of Ian.

Which left only insanity.

But if she were insane, he was as well, unless the note he had sent in response to her panicked missive also comprised part of this imaginary horror. He had demanded to meet here in the green rather than at her home. Their houses were only four doors apart, a misfortune she had been happy to entirely ignore and easily did, since he kept scoundrel’s hours and she lived more attuned to the polite world’s schedule. But at least he had finally replied to her note.

The hedge was thick along the fence and she could not see to the door of her house. Finally the gate opened and a lady wearing a black walking dress stepped through it, closed it behind her, and turned.

Corinna’s heart fell into her stomach, then her stomach into her feet.

“Oh, merciful heaven.” She fought back a scream, then a thick roll of nausea. Ten feet away from her stood...
Corinna Mowbray
. Or a near perfect twin.

Corinna was not a foolish woman, but a person of rational thought. There was nothing whatsoever rational about her present circumstance, of course. But she could not deny the fact that her body stood across from her, staring at her. Just as she was no doubt staring at it from clear blue eyes. Ian Chance’s eyes.

“Is it you?” Her voice came forth deep and smooth. Ian’s voice.

The woman stood immobile, her features more astonished than Corinna had ever seen her own face in the glass.

Corinna took a step forward. Her boots dragged on the pebbled walkway. They were astoundingly heavy. The valet had put them on for her. She wouldn’t have known the first thing about doing it herself, not to mention the cravat and coat. And of course, the shaving. She’d sat silent as the man rattled on about “my lord’s” plans for the day, in shock and entirely unable to form words. When she finally did speak after the boot donning—”Thank you”—she’d started back, nearly knocking the poor fellow off his stool. Since her shock at hearing Ian Chance’s voice emanate from her throat wasn’t nearly as great as the shock of waking up in an unfamiliar bed in the body of a naked man, she’d recovered quickly enough to apologize.

“Is it?” Her baritone quavered.

The woman nodded.

Corinna took another step forward. Then another. The woman that looked like her did not back away. But she still didn’t speak.

“Well,” Corinna put her hands on her hips. “Say something.”

Her—
his
gaze shifted to her fists on her narrow male hips. It seemed to jolt him out of his reverie.

“What would you have me say?” The woman’s lips—her lips—
his
—barely moved. The voice was a bit higher than it should be, and clearer.

“Who are you?” Corinna ventured.

“You know who I am.” The hazel eyes seemed bemused. But the tone was unmistakably, horridly familiar.

Cold fear lodged in Corinna’s belly. “Ian Chance,” she whispered.

The woman nodded.
He
nodded.

“Then this is not a horrible dream?”

“Apparently not.”

Really, her voice was quite nice from a distance, not nearly as severe as she imagined it, though the set of her features was unquestionably displeased. Corinna’s perspiration had gone cold. The ramblings of madmen began this way.

“This cannot be,” she said, the cravat tightening around her neck. “This is irrational. Impossible.”

“And yet here we are.” Toneless this time.

“You are playing a prank on me.”

“How, I wonder, do you imagine that
this
would amuse me in the slightest?”

“Can’t you lay off insulting me for even one moment?” Her voice broke. It sounded very strange, at once strong and rough. She tried to form rational words. “Why were you so long in meeting me?”

“Your blasted toilette takes more time to complete than an entire hunt.”

“You’ve been dressing for
four hours
?”

“Four hours? No, probably three quarters of one.”

“Then why did you delay replying to my note?”

“I replied the instant the maid put it beneath my nose. I only just awoke,” he said stiffly, though she couldn’t imagine why he thought he could be on his high ropes with her.

“Just now? Three-quarters of an hour ago?” she exclaimed with a full measure of indignation in her masculine voice. “I have been awake since eleven o’clock. If not for your apparent debauchery last night it would have been earlier. I would have sent another note, but frankly I barely knew if I should. Why did you wish to meet here?”

“I didn’t want anyone to see me”—he gestured toward her, toward his body that she inhabited—”entering your house.”

Corinna’s stomach twisted. “And you think this public quarrel a better alternative?”

“I thought you enjoyed quarreling. You and your prosy friends do it all day and night.”

“We do not quarrel. We discuss.”

“Oh, well, forgive my eternal ignorance.” He made a mocking bow, which looked absolutely ridiculous of her body.

“Perhaps you can endeavor to not impose it upon me with such regularity. And ladies do not bow. They curtsy. You
are
a cretin, aren’t you?”

“I may be a cretin, but I’m not a lady.”

“You are now!” She put her hands to her face—her large, strong man’s hands. She stared at the palms in horror. “Oh, God. What are we talking about? This is insane. What am I going to do?”

“Good God, what are you doing?” He moved forward swiftly, grabbed her hand, and yanked it away from her face.
His
hand.
His
face. Her own face staring back at her with wide, panicked eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re about to cry,” he said in her warning tone.

A sob shook Corinna’s chest, thick and tight, like there was considerably more chest to sob from and it wasn’t much accustomed to it.

“I will cry if I must,” she said upon a quaver, the likes of which she had only ever heard once in her life, and so long ago the memory was vague. There had been an oak tree and a ten-year-old boy lying on the ground before her in the rain. She snatched her hand away. “Do not touch me again. I cannot be seen touching you.”

“Afraid your sterling reputation for uncompromising virginity might be tarnished, Corrie dear?” His familiar leer on her face turned Corinna’s stomach. But this time he was not scanning her body to find faults, as usual. He was looking into her eyes. Which she supposed was reasonable, since it was his body after all.

“Be quiet. You are horrid and wretched and I cannot think straight.”

“Ah.”

Her gaze snapped to his. “What?”

“You cannot think.” He folded her arms across her chest in a gesture she never in a thousand years would have made. He had absolutely no gentility. “That must be a first,” he said. “What will you do then? Feel? Act?” Her eyes—
his
now—glinted. “Do you actually know how to do either?”

Her head was awhirl. Perhaps if she simply went back to sleep she would wake up in her own body. With a sane mind. That was it. Sleep would heal everything.

“I am going back to bed. This is undoubtedly a mistake and tomorrow we will both awake as we ought to.” Dear God. Oh, dear God.

She swung around and made for the gate.

“Damn and blast,” she heard, and looked over her shoulder. The skirt of her favorite muslin gown was caught on a rose bush. He twitched it free and stormed toward her in broad strides that flipped up the skirts. He looked absolutely comical. A giggle arose in her throat, her terrifying tension desperate to break free. She choked it back jerkily.

“Where do you think you’re going, missy?” he demanded.

“Do not call me missy. I am nine and twenty. No one calls me missy.”

“You are two and thirty now, and if you weep here I will personally see to it that you can never show your face again in this town.
This
face.” He pointed impatiently to his face—
hers
.

She wrung her hands. Hands with true strength in them. Sinews, even. She shook her head. “I want myself back!”

“I do too!”

“What are we going to do?”

“You’re the scholar. Think of something.”

“I told you, I cannot think.”

He paused, his brows scrunching. “Perhaps it’s a temporary situation. As you said, it will pass by tomorrow.” His attention shifted to the street, and he spoke quickly. “Until then, we must go along as naturally as possible. The Marquess of Drake has just now arrived to drive me to a boxing match at Gentleman Jackson’s.”

“Boxing?” Corinna exclaimed. “Me? No. It is a heathen sport. I won’t go.”

“You’d better, or I will.” The tone was uncompromising.

She dug her heels into the pebbles. “No.”

“Yes.”

“You are bluffing.”

“Try me.” Hazel flashed with anger she’d only ever witnessed before in his crystal blue eyes.

Corinna blinked. She had no idea she could appear so menacing. But perhaps she couldn’t. Perhaps that was just
him,
odious, imperious Ian Chance, the man she hated with a singular passion and whose body she currently inhabited.

This
could not
be happening
.

She moved stiffly toward the gate. He remained inside the green.

“Aren’t you coming?”

“And have Stoopie see me with you? Absolutely not.”

“You are a troll.” Moist heat prickled at the backs of her eyes.

Panic stole into his face. “Don’t cry. Dear God, don’t cry, foolish woman.”

She sucked back the tears. “I would not give you the satisfaction of it.” She squared her shoulders, the coat pulling tight across her chest, and turned to the street.

He did not reply.

~o0o~

Excessive opulence characterized the inside of the Marquess of Drake’s town carriage. Gold cord piped along velvet squabs, ending in showy tassels, all of it reflected in the high shine of the walls. A carriage fit for the wastrel heir to a dukedom.

Bumping her head on the doorframe, Corinna managed to fold all of her lengthy body into the conveyance and perch awkwardly on the edge of the seat. The marquess did not spare her a glance. He sat in the opposite corner, his face turned to the wall. He groaned, then sighed, his chin wiggling and his round belly rising with a dramatic heave.

“I’m done for, Chance.” He sighed again, this time louder. “Nothing of consequence can touch me now, neither ill nor good.”

She frowned. In her limited experience of him, he was a cheerful, confident dandy. What would the earl say if presented with this picture of thorough dejection?

“What is amiss?” she ventured, and added, “Stoopie?” Ridiculous. She felt embarrassed just mouthing the word. And why didn’t Ian’s friends call him by a foolish nickname as well?

The marquess swiveled his head around and proclaimed like a poorly trained opera singer, “Ivakina left me.”

Ivakina? Who was that? Russian, certainly. A Russian woman? A mistress.

“She did?” Corinna gambled.

Marquess Drake’s eyes popped wide. “Is that all you can say? After two years?”

“Well, I—”

“Last night after you left the club,” the marquess interrupted, returning his tragical gaze to the closed window covering, “I went to her house, and before I’d even crossed the threshold she told me I was out.”

“You don’t say.”

“I do say,” he sighed. “Like day-old blancmange.”

“Extraordinary.” The woman couldn’t have possibly said that.
Really
.

“She said Matthews offered her a better arrangement.”

A tickle of nausea stirred in the back of Corinna’s throat. She emphatically did
not
wish to hear the particulars. She had no interest in the immoral doings of men of low character. Lord Matthews had a wife and four young children. Corinna knew perfectly well that gentlemen of fashion kept mistresses. Still, she would cut Lord Matthews the next time she saw him. His wife, though not terribly bright, seemed a kind person.

“Then you are no doubt better off without her,” she replied.

“That’s not the worst of it.”

She should not ask. “There is worse?”

Marquess Drake spoke to the wall. “Ivakina told me that if you left the Widow Weston
,
she would leave Matthews for you.”

Oh, good heavens. What sort of friends were these men, poaching off each other’s mistresses? The marquess was right; this was much worse. Worse than she had ever imagined. Ian Chance and his cronies were not only immoral and lecherous, they were cruel to each other. But Marquess Drake looked wretched, as though he truly cared that this woman with stone for a heart had thrown him over.