“Humiliation is a sign either of poor judgment or poor timing. Or, in your case, both.” —The Dowager Marchioness of Wallingham to her nephew, upon his premature departure from Oxford for activities of a highly inappropriate nature.
May 5, 1817
London
Jane Huxley fervently hoped she had the correct address. To be caught with one’s backside hanging out of the wrong house’s window—clad in men’s breeches, no less—would be most unfortunate.
She wanted to laugh at her own predicament, but at the moment, air was in short supply. In truth, she was stuck: folded double, her right half inside a stranger’s London town house, her left half outside that stranger’s ground-floor window, and her generous middle squeezed until she could scarcely afford a shallow breath. She fancied she was beginning to see spots, but the darkness made it hard to say for certain.
Perhaps this is a bad idea, she thought, not for the first time.
Bracing her hands on the sill in front of her, she thrust her shoulders upward with all her strength. The window dug painfully into her upper back, but it did not budge. She took a breath, panting weakly. Brilliant. Suffocated by one’s own corpulence. If she had forty years and forty thousand sheaves of paper, she could not invent a more humiliating demise. Earlier, assessing the window from outside, she’d been sure she could fit through the opening—simply climb a short ladder retrieved from the stable, step through one leg at a time, and there you have it. She’d been mistaken.
It doesn’t matter. You must get through, Jane. If you are caught here, ruination shall be the least of your worries. She could almost hear her mother’s sobs upon witnessing one of her daughters being carted off to Newgate for burglary. Or, worse yet, Bedlam. The thought was shudder-inducing. Even injury would be better, and Jane was emphatically opposed to pain.
She leaned forward until her face brushed the opposite casing. The new position completely closed off her air and threatened to scrape off her spectacles, but it flattened her enough that she could feel her shoulders slide an inch or two farther into the room. Bending her neck sideways at an unnatural angle, she grasped the wall on either side and gave a mighty shove.
After her backside hit the wooden floor with a bruising thud, and her spectacles flew off to ping into a shadowy piece of furniture, Jane allowed herself to lie with one ankle still propped on the sill, pausing to wheeze air back into her burning lungs and let the pain throbbing in her cheek and ear subside. Heart pounding, she listened for sounds of an uproar in the house, signs that a servant had heard her grunting, graceless entrance into Lord Milton’s house.
All was quiet—for now. But the night was far from over.
Shaking her head and laughing silently at her own stupidity, she reached up to adjust her mask. It was a simple piece of cloth, cut from one of her brother’s old coats. An old woolen coat. The thing had been itchy when she’d first put it on, but after an hour of nervous sweat, it had grown unbearable. It was one of many reasons she could now reasonably declare herself the Worst Burglar in the History of Man. Or Woman. Could women be burglars?
She glanced down at her present ensemble—her brother’s boyhood breeches, a stable lad’s castoff coat, and a worn pair of riding boots she’d discovered in an attic trunk. Aside from the mask, it was all rather comfortable, the breeches in particular. The freedom of movement was something of a revelation. She arched a brow and sighed. Yes, she supposed women could be burglars, but in Jane’s considered opinion, it was not so much a daring profession as a daft one.
She rolled over and felt around the floor for her spectacles. Oak floors, plush carpet, the leg of a chair. Dash it all, they could not have gone far. Now on her hands and knees, she scuttled to her right, running her hands in wide sweeping motions. “Ow!” she hissed as her knuckles whapped into something hard, probably a table leg. Shaking her fingers vigorously against the sharp pain, she soon resumed her sweep.
There! Feeling the familiar curve of the wire rims against her fingertips did much to settle her thumping heart. She tested the lenses. Intact, thank heavens. Returning the spectacles to their rightful place, she pushed to her feet and struggled to get her bearings. It had been a full moon only a few nights past, but London’s thick layer of coal smoke and clouds made the darkness inside the room nearly impenetrable. Again, she wondered how she had allowed herself to be persuaded into this foolishness.
She shook her head. Now was not the time.
Slowly, as her eyes adjusted, she made out the bulky forms of a large desk, several chairs, three bookcases, and a small table near the window where she had entered. This must be Lord Milton’s library. “Hmmph,” she grunted, recalling her recent observations of the simpering fribble. Not precisely a scholar, that one. She’d be surprised if this room was used for more than enjoying the occasional brandy. As a book lover, she found it an appalling waste, but in this case, a reliably empty library worked in her favor.
She crept toward the opposite end of the room where she imagined the door must be, skirting around the edge of the desk and only slightly bruising her hip on the arm of a stout chair. Rubbing the spot absently, she felt along the wall until she reached a series of raised panels. Ah, yes. The door. She paused, listening for any noise. Nothing. Aside from her thunderously loud heart, that was. Hand slick with sweat, she struggled to turn the knob, managing to crack the door an inch and peek out at a dimly lit corridor. Empty. No footsteps. Of course, it was past midnight, and Jane had been assured Lord Milton was away for several days, so finding servants wandering about would have been surprising.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the door wider and stepped out into the hall. Fine tremors shook her arms and threatened to buckle her knees. A bit of moonlight from a window at the end of the long corridor allowed her to count the doors. The one she sought was the third on the right. Or was it the left? Her stomach dropped as nerves made her doubt herself. No, it was the right. She scratched at her mask and adjusted her spectacles.
You are a dashed fool, she scolded, carefully sidling along the wall. This is it. No more reaching beyond yourself. Those days are over. O-V-E-R. You are Plain Jane Huxley, and that is that. It was sound advice. However, it did nothing to get her out of her current illicit act. That had been a promise made to a friend. And Jane Huxley always kept her promises, even when it was hard.
Deep breath. Door two.
A few more feet. There, now, door three.
Air whooshed out of tight lungs as she realized she had arrived. Her task was nearly finished. All she had to do now was open the door, find the necklace, and return home. Simple. She reached for the knob.
The sound of whispering stopped her hand, her breath, her heart. It froze her feet to the oak parquet. She flattened herself against the wall, glancing frantically side to side. No one had entered the corridor. But she could still hear the sound, faint and undeniable. It stopped, but only for a moment. She put her ear to the door. There. Whispering and … and movement, like rustling clothing and shifting feet. Many feet.
Oh, dear heavens. Someone was in that room. More than one someone, if her ears did not deceive her. Ice bloomed beneath her skin. It should have been empty. She’d been told it would be empty. Swallowing hard, she backed slowly toward the library.
Hands grabbed her arms from behind, squeezing hard into the fleshy parts just above her elbows. “Hold there,” an effete, refined voice sounded above her head. She squawked, tried to twist against the man’s grip, but he simply shoved her forward like a bit of seaweed on the crest of a wave. The third door on the right opened, he shoved her again, and she stumbled into the room. “Light it up, gentlemen!” the voice ordered. “Let’s have a look at our intrepid intruder, shall we?”
Suddenly, two lamps were simultaneously lit, and she could see what had been awaiting her. Men. More than a dozen. She squinted at them, unable to believe the sight. Everything moved slowly, as though in a dream. Or nightmare, she thought with distant horror. For, as her mind began working again, she realized some of the men were familiar. The short, prematurely balding one was Sir Christopher Flatmouth. Another she recognized as the second son of Lord Gattingford. She glanced right. Leaning negligently against a settee wearing an elegant gray coat and an unreadable expression was the thin, inexplicably attractive Viscount Chatham. She did not have to look behind her to confirm the man who had shoved her into the room was Lord Milton; she would know that lisp anywhere. To a man, they were all sons of the aristocracy. And to a man, they were all wastrels, the dissolute, perennially bored scoundrels of the ton.
Presently, their surprise at seeing her was wearing off, because many began to laugh uproariously. She even thought she heard a few “huzzahs” amidst the glee. She did not understand it. Why were they laughing? Cheering? Her answer came moments later when one of their members was shoved to the front of the crowd.
Her eyes widened, shock moving through her with tidal force. Curling blond hair tumbled artfully above sheepish blue eyes. His boyishly handsome features did not appear pleased, despite the backslapping congratulations coming from his friends. His face was ruddy, his posture unusually slumped—he looked like a child caught in the middle of mischief.
She had done this for him. She was standing amidst this briar patch of rakes and cads, dressed as a fat, incompetent highwayman. Because of him.
Heat shimmered along her neck and cheeks, but in all other aspects, numbness settled over her, as thick and paralyzing as ten feet of snow. Please let this not be happening. Dear God, this humiliation was intolerable. Nothing made sense. She only knew she could not get enough air, could not move from where she stood.
Her breath caught as she stared into his blue eyes. All around, the others seemed to be crowding closer, their laughing chatter louder, their wild gestures intruding into her small bubble of space. I must leave. Now. Before this gets any worse. By force of will, she took a scraping, stumbling step back toward the door. Once again, hands stopped her. A lisping voice mocked, “Where are you off to, little thief? Stay a while. The entertainment has only just begun.”
The blue-eyed man she had once considered a friend shoved violently at the man next to him and charged forward. “Release her,” he barked. “The wager is won. You have what you came to see. It is done.”
“Wager?” she murmured hoarsely, but it was lost among the loud guffaws and protests of the gentlemen.
“Ballocks! Can’t let her go ’til she’s unmasked,” Sir Christopher declared sloppily. Clearly, his evening’s “entertainment” had begun early.
“Just so! How else are we to know for certain the conditions of the wager have been met?” shouted another man.
A third—Lord Gattingford’s son—replied, “Who else would wear spectacles on the outside of her mask?” That generated a new round of guffaws from the crowd. Jane reached up to touch the edge of the rims.
“Lost ten quid on this one,” another man remarked, resentment flinting his voice. “Should have known he could charm the chit. The fat ones are always so eager to please.”
The room began to rock and tilt. Heat and shame squeezed like a coiling snake around a fresh kill. She shook her head automatically, unable to stop the motion. She spun to face Lord Milton, a whey-faced, wiry man who over-plucked his eyebrows into thin, straight lines. He still had hold of her arm, but was preoccupied with amusement. Almost without thought, she lowered her shoulder and rammed it into his solar plexus. “Ooof!” She was rewarded by the shock bulging his eyes and loosening his grip.
Tearing herself free, she ran for the door, still partially open. Two steps away from freedom, it slammed shut, a lean, elegant hand braced on the panel in front of her. Slowly, she allowed her gaze to travel up the gray-clad arm to meet a hooded set of turquoise eyes. Chatham.
Without a word, he stepped in close, seemingly wrapping her in his arms. “Wh-what are you …?” she began. Clean linen and citrus and the faint odor of whisky surrounded her. He was surprisingly warm for such a cold man, she thought absently. She felt a sharp tug at the back of her head. “No!” she shouted hoarsely, suddenly realizing what he was doing. She tore at the fine wool of his sleeves, shoved at the hard bones of his chest. But it was useless.
The mask fell away, along with her spectacles and several hair pins. Her hair came down, a fall as straight and dark as her ruined pride. The chatter ceased. She pushed away from Chatham, turned to the man who had engineered her humiliation. He was a blur. A blond, deceitful blur who had made her into a laughingstock. In the silence, she could not stop what happened—the dollop of cream on the strawberry of her day. There, in the middle of Lord Milton’s London town house, surrounded by cads of every sort, wearing her brother’s breeches and a stable boy’s coat, Plain Jane Huxley did what she had sworn she would never do in public: She let the tears come.
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