Wrapped (20 page)

I bounded across the room, kissed her cheek lightly, and promised her I would. She laughed, muttered something about love, and disappeared into the hall.

I waited until nine before dousing my reading lamp, drawing the window shutters, and creeping to my door. A pair of my softest boots in hand, I peeked into the hallway. Clarisse was nowhere to be seen, and the only other upstairs maid was likely taking her dinner with the other servants below at this hour.

I took a deep breath and slipped from my room, gently pulling the door shut, taking care to avoid allowing the latch to sound. I hurried across the eight feet or so of carpet to David’s door. As quietly and calmly as I could with my heart threatening to thump its way from beneath my nightgown, I opened his door and shut myself in silently.

David’s room looked as abandoned as ever despite his recent surprise visit. The lamps were unlit and the windows shut, so I scrounged for a nub of candle in the bedside drawer and a tinderbox to light it with. I had to risk it, hoping that no one would even think to look in his room. Carrying the small candle, I opened his wardrobe, jumping when the door squeaked on its hinge. I froze a moment before breathing and moving again, this time working with haste. I reached into the wardrobe and withdrew what I suspected was the oldest suit of clothing yet remaining in the house. Mother had left David’s room almost exactly as it had been when he’d entered the navy four years ago. This suit wouldn’t have fit him now by any stretch, and the fabric was not only the wrong season, but also favored a style—the collar too high and the cut of the coat too long—that was now terribly out of fashion.

But for once dressing fashionably was not my duty.

Dressing as someone else
was
.

A young woman unescorted on the streets of London at night would prove a target for both the sinister and the noble. Either I’d be harassed by someone who’d had too much drink and too little sense, or some well-meaning soul would show concern and make sure I was safely escorted to whatever destination I was bound for.

But a young man in a secondhand suit could blend in easily. Tonight I’d be just another fellow looking for cheap ale or a long, lonely walk.

I rolled the waistband of my brother’s trousers twice to make them sit at approximately the right height. They were meant to fit snugly, and I merely hoped in the darkness no one would pay attention. Just in case, I closed the jacket over them, buttoning down as far as it would go. It gapped at the shoulder and strained across the chest, but I found that if I slouched forward just so, I could persuade myself that no one would notice. The sleeves were just about right, and all in all the effect was not altogether unconvincing. There were no shoes in the wardrobe to complete the ensemble, but the ones I’d brought were the least feminine of the several pairs I owned. Going about barefoot seemed neither comfortable nor inconspicuous, even in the London heat.

I studied my reflection in the glass. It jarred me to see two legs in place of the long skirt, to see the waist of the trousers so near where my actual waist was. But I told myself that no one would see female where they expected male.

I reached for the only hat in the wardrobe, snapping the dust from it before lowering it onto my hair, and was shocked to find it snug.

Blast.

I removed it quickly and set about the task of tucking the length of my hair up into the cavity between my scalp and the top of the hat. When gravity seemed to get the better of my efforts—each time I tugged the band loose to slide a handful more hair up, another curl cascaded down—I bent over, removed the hat, and tried to coil my hair into the bowl before seating it on my head. After several attempts, I stood and saw that I was successful save for one small lock trailing over my left shoulder. Too afraid that I would never get this close again and worried that I was already running late to meet Caedmon, I retrieved a dull, forgotten shaving razor from the drawer.

“For England,” I muttered, sawing through the stubborn tendril.

David’s room opened onto the back garden. A tangle of ivy climbed the trellis. I stepped onto the wide ledge and pulled the sash almost shut behind me, careful to leave enough room to assure that my entry point remained upon my return. My hands grasped the weathered wooden slats as if they belonged to someone else. I swung one leg out, reaching as far as it would go, surprised by the freedom the pants allowed. Then I took a deep breath and shifted my weight to the toe now lodged in among the vines, placing the other on the trellis as I left the ledge.

Now it was a simple matter of descending the latticework like a ladder. Despite the fact that this was something I’d done only a handful of times as a child (young ladies of a certain age do not climb ladders), I told myself that it was nothing more than a very steep stile over an exceptionally tall country fence. Lizzie Bennet, I was sure, would have been proud.

I picked my way carefully down, and in a matter of moments, I was close enough to drop safely to the ground, where I landed squarely in a bed of day lilies. I whispered an apology to the broken stems, then gathered what I could and tossed them behind the shrubbery for fear that they’d be noticed and questions raised.

“Gardener’s the only one who’ll see,” slurred a voice.

I shrieked—a scream completely incongruous with my apparel—and flattened myself against the wall. The sound of a glass bottle thudding gently to the earth preceded my brother’s emergence from the shadow of a magnolia.

“For heaven’s sake, Rupert,” I muttered, scarcely able to believe I’d run into him again—me going out and him coming in.

He looked me up and down drunkenly. “Wot you s’posed to be?”

“Lower your voice,” I hissed at him, adjusting my coat.

“You’re up to no good, Aggie,” he said, adding, “Naughty, naughty, naughty.”

“Rupert, I think you’d better be in bed,” I said. “And perhaps use the front door?” I worried about him climbing up his own trellis in this condition. And then worried a little at what might have caused him to be so far gone at so early an hour.

He collapsed into a squat and finally sat, without saying anything.

“Rupert?”

“She won’t have me,” he said.

I was confused. “Julia?”

“Not Julia. Julia’s keen for it,” he said, his voice again too loud.

“Rupert—”

“And the thing of it is, I know she loves me,” he said.

“Julia will be all right—”

“Not Julia! Didn’t I say that before?”

I took a cautious step toward him, “Rupert, you really—”

“She says just because she’s so much older and a widow and all that, she can’t give me what I need. That people won’t stand for it. That Julia will be much better for me.”

“Perhaps Lady Perkins is right,” I said gently.

Apparently Rupert wasn’t as drunk as he looked. “Who said anything about Lady Perkins?”

I hesitated. “You did, just now,” I lied.

He started to argue, but gave it up, sighing. “Julia’s a nice enough girl, but Emmaline is . . .”

I knelt beside him and pulled one of his arms over my shoulder, then slipped my other arm around his waist.

“I’m sorry, Rupert,” I said, trying to heave him up.

“You don’t love him, either, do you?” he asked.

I stopped pulling. “What?”

“Showalter. You don’t love him. No more than I love Julia,” he said, lying back on the ground.

“Rupert, you really cannot—”

“But we’ll do our duties, won’t we? Marry the right people, go to the right parties, have the right children.”

I felt a stab of pain, knowing it wasn’t what I wanted. Wasn’t what my brother wanted either. Despite all his talk of who was worth what, my brother was far more complicated than I’d ever imagined . . . than I’d ever given him credit for.

Half a second later, Rupert was snoring softly.

I stared at him. Perhaps wearing a boy’s clothing was going to my head, but I began to think that perhaps my brother’s choices—or lack of them—were nearly as vexing as my own. He was a boy who wrote secret poems to a woman fifteen years his senior, who would one day settle for something as unsatisfying to him as my lot in life was becoming for me.

And there was nothing either of us could do about it.

I leaned over and kissed his cheek, reasoning that he was as safe in the garden for now as he would be in his own bed, and hurried away.

Chapter Sixteen

Rupert, I decided, hadn’t counted as a test of my disguise. Drunk or otherwise, he knew me well enough to spot me anywhere. I stepped from the darkness onto the sidewalk and headed toward the carriage stand.

My route took me past the darkened windows of Showalter’s house, but I kept my head down and listened for familiar voices, ready to slip from the path rather than chance recognition. The walk seemed longer, though my steps were determined, trying to outpace the urgency that seemed to pulse in my veins.

I waited to cross the street until I’d come to the last in the row of carriages. I had my hand on the door and my body halfway inside the coach before the driver stirred. I held a half crown out to him, felt his hand close around the money while I hoped he didn’t think my hand soft for a boy, and forced my voice low as I directed him toward the Tower. I didn’t wait for comment, bundling myself the rest of the way into the hack and slamming the door as the driver pulled us away from the curb and bore north.

When the shadowed profile of the Tower appeared in the carriage window, I stepped down before it had even stopped moving fully and didn’t slow at my driver’s inquiry about awaiting my return. I walked quickly, emboldened by my success thus far. I was no idle young lady of London’s elite. I was a man with a purpose.

Still, I wasn’t brave enough to hazard a safer, more circular route around the perimeter of the Tower. Instead I approached Deacon’s lodgings from the same alley Caedmon had escorted me down. I saw his silhouette pacing the street just ahead of where I knew the door lay.

I got within a few yards of him before he paid me any notice. And even that was a quick glance, a mumbled “Evening,” and he withdrew toward the door.

I looked up and smiled. “Good evening to you, Mr. Stowe.”

He froze, peering through the dim light at my face as I lifted my chin. He squinted. “Do I—”

He stopped, his eyes wide.

“Agnes?” he whispered.

“Mr.
August
Wilkins, if you please,” I said, curtsying.

He gaped at me, finally managing to speak. “Y’ought to bow next time.”

“Quite so,” I said. “I forgot myself.”

He still looked stunned. “Stampers are a giveaway,” he said, pointing to my shoes, “but in the main you made a bang-up job of it.”

I didn’t know whether to be flattered or offended that I passed so easily for my brother.

“Shall we?” I asked.

He nodded and offered his arm to me. I looked at it, wanted so much to take it, to let my hand rest there . . . but it would only confuse matters. No point in starting something that had no hope of ending well. And there was my disguise to consider. I shook my head and tugged the brim of my hat lightly.

“Right,” he said, setting off as I fell into step beside him.

We walked quickly, dodging clots of revelers spilling outside pub doors, and questionable women making even more questionable offers of service.

“I should have known you’d come dressed so,” Caedmon said as we neared our destination. “But how did you give everyone the slip?”

“Well,” I began, “there was one servant I took into my confidence.”

“Who?” he asked, alarmed.

“My lady’s maid. I didn’t tell her about the standard,” I clarified.

“And she just let you go?”

I hesitated. “She thinks I’ve come to meet a lover.”

He seemed to stumble. “A what?”

“It was the quickest way to secure her cooperation,” I said quickly. “Clarisse is a bit of a romantic.”

He was quiet a beat too long. “I see.”

Because I was too nervous to let it lie between us, I began to prattle on in painful detail about how I’d climbed out the window, found my brother, and then made my way to meet him.

Caedmon shook his head in wonder. “Pluck,” he said, smiling.

And there it was again. That feeling that bubbled up when I saw him, when he said something that made some door inside me slide open, that made me believe his admiration was genuine, spontaneous, rather than rehearsed and performed the way Showalter’s compliments sounded when he went on about how lovely I looked in a new gown. And it puzzled me that Caedmon seemed to see me more as I was, as I wished to be, even when I was dressed like this.

At the public invalid house, I allowed him to speak for us both, explaining to the porter that his godfather was within and had been asking after him earlier. After a bit of persuading, the old man admitted us and pointed toward a ward lined with beds on both sides.

I’d heard about hospitals like these, though they were still thankfully rare. My father worried that soon half of London would have no one at home to care for them—or no home at all in which to recover—and had been urging reforms to provide for the poor. He viewed these hospitals, funded largely at public expense, as a necessary evil.