Sixty feet was a long way to fall.
But here on her wire sixty feet above the ground—here and nowhere else on earth—Poppy feared nothing. Here, she ruled a world of her own.
When she looked down, her eyes dazzled from the thick scatter of lamps brightening the twilight-dark sky. But Poppy didn’t need sharp sight to keep her footing. Though the rope was little more than a shadow before her, she knew it by feel. Her white and gold balance pole served as an extra set of arms, fully eight yards long, and flexible and strong as sinew. It drooped gently, grounding her to earth, even as she walked high above. Above the owners of Vauxhall, who tinkered with her show almost on a weekly basis. Make the rope longer. Make the mast taller. Shorten your skirts. Run as quickly as you can. Pause at the middle of the rope to dance.
Sixty feet in the air, she could forget all of that—except for the payment. A week on the wire paid the same wages a housemaid received in a year. And one season at Vauxhall? Why, it would pay almost enough for a new beginning. Because the war had ended in June, she could escape to the south of France and live in a cottage among lavender and olive trees.
The orchestra played at a distance, the lilting beat of a comic song floating through the air. Poppy let it carry her forward, one step, another and another, in time with the faint music. Beneath her knee-length skirts, long pantalettes protected her modesty and left her legs wonderfully unencumbered. Letting her balance pole hold her steady, she stepped back, a quick dancing beat, then took a hop forward that made the people far below her gasp. A crowd loved nothing so much as thinking she was about to fall.
But Penelope Hayworth—known here as Madame Haut and everywhere else as Poppy—never set a foot wrong anymore. Not in her daily life, and certainly not on a tightrope.
She stepped forward again, a quick shift of her weight, then darted forward—racing, as she’d so often done along the fences and rails of the Duke of Westfair’s lands. Applause followed her, a ripple of sound that swelled until she reached the end of the long rope. Here a pair of posts tilted together to clasp the rope tight, leaving a vee at the top and a rope end that trailed to the ground below.
She notched her balancing pole into the vee. Lord Bexley—the run-ragged viscount overseeing the coming celebrations in honor of Waterloo and the Prince Regent’s birthday—would see it hooked safely down and stored for her next performance. For tonight, she was done. She slid down the trailing rope to the small cordoned-off area at its base, gritting her teeth against the familiar collision of feet with earth.
It didn’t come. Instead, hands caught her about the waist from behind, gentling her landing.
Her panicked reflex was instant: Poppy flung out an elbow and stomped backward, seeking the arch of the assailant’s foot. “Do not touch me! My contract states quite clearly that I am not to be touched.”
The hands lifted. “My apologies. I haven’t read your contract.”
That voice. Nothing else could have stilled her attack at once. She knew that voice, though she had not heard it for six years. She would have recognized it if sixty years had passed.
Her voice quavered as she spoke through shallow breaths. “You are not the guard who is supposed to keep the crowd away.”
“I am not, no.” A flicker of laughter brightened the words.
Tottering, she put a steadying hand on the rope she’d just slid down, then ventured a slow, cautious turn. “Leo.”
It was him. It was really him.
“Hullo, Poppy.” He lifted his hands, that sweet, saucy grin on his face. “Thank the Lord you’re on solid ground again. I was all in knots watching you.”
“You never did like climbing anything higher than the staircase in your family’s town house.” She hardly knew what she was saying. Here was Leonidas Billingsley, tall and handsome as ever. Her old friend Leo, who’d had her heart in his pocket along with half the Westfair money when he left England six years before. Now, with the death of his older brother Richard, he had become the Duke of Westfair.
And now he was home.
And he was laughing. “Do you have to remember that about me? Couldn’t you remember something more heroic?”
“Who says I don’t?”
Wait. That wasn’t right, was it? Ought she to be pleased to see him or not? At some point in the last six years she had retrieved her heart from his keeping. She knew, because it was pounding heartily in her chest.
She shook her head. Tried again. “What are you doing here, Leo?”
“I came to see you, obviously. I arrived in London yesterday and am staying at the Westfair town house. My uncle told me you were performing at Vauxhall tonight. As a ropedancer! It was truly impressive, at least what I could bear to watch of it.”
Poppy smiled. “I called on Ubie last week. I suppose he couldn’t help but share all my gossip.” Uncle Bernard, Leo’s mother’s brother, had lived in the Westfair household since the death of the old duke. When Leo and Poppy had run tame across their families’ adjoining lands, Poppy had grown fond of Ubie and had given him the nickname he grudgingly tolerated.
Poppy’s call on Ubie at the Westfair town house had been an ordinary visit, with ordinary tea and biscuits and chat. They hadn’t spoken of Leo. What would have been the point? Though he had been summoned from abroad after his elder brother’s death months before, no one knew when—or whether—he would return.
She eyed him closely. No, he wasn’t the same Leo who had left, after all. At twenty-one, he’d been wiry and quicksilver. Now twenty-seven, he seemed more solid. His shoulders were broader, with a confident set to them.
“So you came to see me,” Poppy said. “That’s all you wanted? To avert your eyes and greet me?” She sank to the worn grass to unlace her slippers.
“By no means. I’m not averting my eyes now. What are you doing?” Leo was instantly crouching before her, curious as ever.
“I always change my shoes after a performance.” Might as well cling to this shred of normalcy. She wiggled one foot free, her bare toes chilled despite the sultriness of the evening, then held up the slipper. “See? I can’t go walking around in these.”
Her laced performance shoes fitted to her feet, tight as second skins. Their thin leather soles were waxy with the same resin that heavily coated the high wire.
As she removed the second shoe, Leo regarded the first with fascination. “Special shoes for walking on a rope. I’d never have thought of it. Didn’t you used to walk every rail barefoot?”
“I did.” She turned away to retrieve the small case she kept at the end of the rope, then exchanged her slippers for a pair of half boots she stored in there. “But the owners of Vauxhall, the Barrett brothers, informed me that my bare feet were too provocative. So I had to fashion something else.”
Leo’s eyes fastened on her feet, pale against the dark earth and worn grass. Her toes curled shyly, as if trying to hide their nakedness.
“Very provocative,” he agreed with mock graveness. “As opposed to the skirts that show off your knees, which are sedate as a nun’s.”
“Ah, well, those are just good business sense,” she replied. “Or so the Barretts explained to me. If I wore a long dress and tripped over the train, the performance would be over far too quickly.”
“I imagine ropedancers toppling to earth would lead to poor ticket sales.”
“Indeed. Which is why I shall probably have to have a net next time I perform.” She eased on one half-boot, then the next, acutely aware of the crowd around them. Not that a woman changing her shoes was the most scandalous sight at Vauxhall by far—but still, Poppy was used to the shield of her guard.
Whom, she now saw, was holding a tankard in one hand and a plump woman’s derriere in the other. Leo must have given the guard a coin to leave his post. Nice to know he was so easily bribed.
“Why a net?” Leo rose to his feet, then extended a hand to her.
She placed hers in his, glad for his gloves that kept her bare hands from touching his skin. “The Prince Regent,” she explained, hopping to her feet, “has arranged for a series of celebrations in his own honor. Oh, and also in the honor of the victory at Waterloo this past June. Lord Bexley is trying to make sense of the budget and keep dramatics to a minimum. Which means if I am so foolish as to fall from the wire, it must be into a net. Once a net can be procured, that is.”
She released his hand, brushing dry blades of grass off her skirts. “Are you planning to stay at the gardens for a while? Or do you want to accompany me home?”
Leo smirked. “Why, Poppy, we've only just got reacquainted.”
Her cheeks heated. “I didn’t mean like that,” she blurted. “I just wondered if you wanted to walk with me. Since you came here to see me. I live in a very proper room, not far from here. I rent from a widow who defines respectability, so you couldn’t try…anything. Even if you wanted to.”
“I am gratified to hear that your landlady is watching out for men who try to exercise their base instincts. They are, no doubt, the sort of men who would be given to frothing with desire at the sight of bare toes.”
Some of them didn’t even need that much. Poppy was acutely aware of the shortness of her skirts, the bareness of her arms. She folded her arms across her chest. “There is a reason why I have a guard and why my contract specifies that I am not to be touched.”
Too late by far to do any good, unfortunately. A woman couldn’t live her life protected by a contract.
“I’ll accompany you home, if you’d like to depart. I do need to talk to you.” Leo’s dark brows knit. “But you’ll be cold walking around in your costume. Here.”
Before she could protest, he shrugged out of his coat, draping the heavy wool around her shoulders. This left him in shirt-sleeves and a waistcoat, which state of undress seemed to bother him not at all. And indeed, if one were to strip off random articles of clothing without censure, Vauxhall would be the place.
The look suited him: tousled dark hair beneath a high-crowned hat; a perfectly tied neckcloth and no coat whatsoever. The lines of his arms and shoulders were hard and strong. He was unmistakably a gentleman, but every inch a rogue.
“Thank you,” she said cautiously, clutching the lapels of the coat together. It was soft and fine and dark, cloth woven and dyed and tailored with the greatest care. The faint, spicy scent of bergamot tickled her nose. Once wrapped in this dark coat, she would look like a floating head with her light hair. The notion made her smile. “I ought to tell you, though, I have a cloak. It’s in the same case where I kept my spare shoes.”
“Ah! Perfect.” Leo snapped up the case and withdrew the black cloak, shaking out its folds. With a jaunty gesture, he twirled it around his shoulders and tied it about his neck. “Now I don’t have to be cold either.”
Poppy had to laugh. “It’s much too short.”
“Nonsense. It’s my costume. You’re wearing a costume, I’m wearing a costume. It’s perfect.”
She laughed again, and he smiled. “There, that’s what I really wanted.” He removed the cloak, draping it over one forearm. “It’s good to hear you laugh, Poppy. I always did feel happy when I heard you laugh.”
You could have heard my laugh many times over the past six years, if you’d stayed in England.
But she knew why he’d left. He had only done what his family had forced him to do.
Leo latched the case and held it in one hand, beneath the folded cloak. Extending his free hand again, he hopped Poppy over the low rope that cordoned off the small guarded area. Sometimes the crowd pressed tightly around it after a performance, held back only by the guard. But at the moment, with Poppy’s costume covered by a man’s coat, no one seemed to take any notice of her at all.
“So.” She took a deep breath. “Welcome back to England, Leo. What is it you need to talk about?”
This sort of question had the potential to change a woman’s life. Of course, it could also do no more than give her a few dull minutes. Which answer she hoped it was, she could not say.
“Let me buy you a sweet first. Honey cakes? You used to love those.”
“I still do. Though you’ll be shocked at the price here.”
“Did you think the prodigal son would return with empty pockets? Well, I suppose you might have, since he did in the old story, but I have not.”
With her wearing his coat and him dignified in shirtsleeves, they made an odd pair as they set off through the milling crowd toward the park’s exit. Here the candelabra stretched as slim and tall as saplings; lamps flanked every path. The garden was ablaze, as light as noon, but with strong, sharp shadows from the night that encroached at every gap. Clothing was lit; faces were hidden. Strolling bands sang songs from different countries, mixing in quiet chaos with the faraway orchestra and the chatter of visitors. And always, people slipped away to the dark edges and corners and nooks of the park. Despite Lord Bexley’s efforts to tidy Vauxhall, it was—it would always be—a wanton place.
She unwrapped the thick slice of honey cake Leo bought her, eager for a bite. She seemed always to be hungry these days.
“Out with it,” she said through a mouthful of sticky sweetness. “What do you need to talk about?”
He cleared his throat. “Truth is, I need your help.”
“My help?” She could have laughed. “I don’t have anything to give.” If she were to be strictly truthful, she had less than nothing. Ever since that ill-fated house party three months before.
“Oh, no, it’s not like that. All I need is you.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t have stayed away for six years.”
She hadn’t meant to say it, but once the words were out, she was glad. She took another bite of honey cake, snapping her teeth together.
His smile fell. “You are angry with me?”
“Not angry. I know you left because of your brother.” She frowned. “I am only…disenchanted.”
His green eyes searched hers. “Right,” he said quietly. “You’re not the only one to feel that way, as I have been informed. I should have been more clear: It’s not help for me. It’s for Uncle Bernard. I need him to sign some financial papers, and he doesn’t trust me. He never has. But he does trust you.”
She struggled to swallow; the cake seemed dry in her throat. “I don’t understand,” she finally managed, shouldering past a stilt walker and a woman dressed like a French courtesan. “You want me to trick your uncle for you? That’s not right, Leo.”
“Not at all, not at all. I want…” He tipped his head back, as though searching the velvety evening sky for words. “I want him to associate you with the dukedom, so he will think as well of it as he does of you.”
She and Ubie had always got along rather well. She reminded him, he had once told her, of the daughter he had lost at a young age.
But. Wait. “Why would he associate me with the dukedom? I never return to the lands in Sussex. I’m a ropedancer, at least for now. I’ve nothing to do with the gentry or the nobility anymore.” And never would again, if she could help the matter.
“I was thinking”—he was still carefully not looking at her—“that we could pretend to be engaged.”
She dropped the honey cake.
He evidently took this as a sign that she needed only to be persuaded, for he halted in his tracks. “Do you see? It makes perfect sense. We can say that we just worked it out. He knows I was coming to see you tonight.” Leo tipped his head. “Is that right? ‘He knows’? ‘He knew I was’? The verb tenses are confounding.”
This had always been Leo’s way: a quick, darting sort of energy, three sentences ahead in the conversation and more vivid than anyone else.
To a man of rules and order like Ubie, it was intolerable. Poppy had always enjoyed his Leo-ishness. Right now, though…
“I follow your meaning,” she said shortly. She picked up the honey cake, glared at it for being covered with dirt, and let it fall again with a sigh.
“I am sure the ruse would work,” Leo added. “I informed him that I was prepared to be slain at the sight of you.” He eyed her up and down. “Which wasn’t a good figure of speech, was it? Because to look at you—why, Poppy, I can’t remember the last time I felt so alive.”
I can. It was six years ago, and you had given me a kiss I would never forget.
She pressed her legs together, the pantalettes strangely intimate, and retreated behind humor and the expensive folds of his coat.
“Oh, Leo. You say such pretty things,” she said lightly. “I will go home and write this one down. ‘Dear Diary, today I saw Leo for the first time since I was eighteen years old, and he asked me to pretend to be engaged to him because he expected to die when he saw me.’ Have I got the essence of it?”
He snorted. “You have. But you must take this seriously, Poppy. It’s for his good. It’s not just an impulsive idea, like—”
“When you brought a pig indoors for a bath?”
“This is definitely not like that, and not only because we don’t keep a pig at the town house.”
“What about when you pulled me into the pond so we could count trout, but we almost drowned?”
“Not a single pond will be involved. I swear it.”
She eyed him narrowly. “You sound serious. What are these papers? You must want them signed very badly.”
Yet everything left to the dukedom was his, fairly and squarely. He needn’t turn Ubie up sweet to get his hands on its remaining funds.
“It’s not for revenge, if that’s what you’re thinking. I mean to give him an independent income for as long as he lives.”
“And he won’t accept that?”
Leo cleared his throat. “He sees an ulterior motive. He believes that I want to get rid of him and pack him off to the country—”
“Perceptive man.”
“—so that I may lay waste to everything left of the Westfair fortune. Not that Richard left much behind.”
He sounded so sincere, so certain, that she hated to puncture his scheme. But she had to. “I understand what you want. But Leo, I can’t help you with this plan. You see—I’m pregnant.”
Leo’s head snapped back. “Oh! My apologies.” He looked confused. “Or congratulations? That is the first thing I ought to have said.”
She lifted her left hand and waggled her bare fingers at him. “Congratulations are not in order. I am unwed and intend to remain so.”
Leo drew her off the path into the halo of a hanging lamp. “Do you want to tell me about it? Is the father…that is, can I help you in some way?”
She had to consider both questions for a moment. “All right,” she decided. “It’s easily told. My cousin Hayworth inherited the manor house and lands after my father died last year.”
“I heard the news,” he murmured. “My condolences.”
“Thank you.” She hunched her shoulders. “My cousin and his wife are quite nice. They had a house party three months ago and invited some friends they thought might make a match with their spinster cousin.” She hadn’t minded the idea. She had given up on Leo the day he departed.
“Spinster! You are only what, twenty-four?” He shook his head. “Sorry. Not the point. I must assume one of the friends was dishonorable.”
“Extremely so.” The summer night was too hot and too cold at once. “I thought he meant to court me. He…didn’t want a courtship at all.”
“Oh, Poppy. I am very sorry for it.” In his tone was heartbreak.
She managed a shrug. “My cousin was so horrified by the way his friend had treated me that he gave me my whole dowry, plus houseroom for as long as I wished it. But I didn’t wish it. I couldn’t live there anymore. So now I dance on a wire and save every penny.”
“Good Lord.” He settled the coat more snugly about her shoulders, the silly cloak flapping over his arm. “A baby. You ought not to be up as high as a horse’s back, much less on a high wire.”
“Needs must,” she sighed. “I have another month, maybe two, to earn enough money on the wire to secure my future. Then my condition will be visible, and my balance will be off. So I’ll have to retire, and I’ll go away from England for good. I don’t ever want to see the—the man who did this—again.”
In the dazzling light of the lamp that hung above them like a great firefly, Leo’s face was sharply cut with shadow: familiar and foreign at once. His expression had followed her words, malleable as gold. First bemused, then horrified, then indignant—and now, considering.
“I think,” he said, “this could work out perfectly for us both after all. We could pretend to be engaged for a few weeks. Only until all the papers are settled. Then you may toss me over with great brutality and finality and go along your way. We need never say a word to my uncle about the baby, and I’d be more than glad to give you whatever you need to feel secure in your new life.”
Hmm. When he put the matter like that, it did make sense. “You would give me anything I need?”
“Of course.”
“A thousand pounds?” She plucked the figure from the air. Added to her dowry and savings, it ought to be plenty to purchase a French cottage for two and to set up an annuity.
“Only if you are sure you would not need more.”
She eyed him askance. “You mean that? You would give me so much money for this?” At his nod, she laughed. “You must want to get rid of Ubie very badly.”
“Very badly indeed,” he agreed. Leo and his uncle were as different as chalk and cheese, and they had never got along. “But even more badly, I want to be sure you’re all right.”
Well. If she’d kept a diary, that would go in there too.
“You were my first friend,” he said simply. “And you’re the only person who has ever lo—liked me just as I am.”
She did not miss the correction in his speech. But that was wise. Better that they both pretend there had never been anything between them, nor any hope for more.
“You are the most exhausting of companions,” she replied. “But also among the most delightful. All right, I agree.” She extended a hand. “Gentlemen shake on a bargain, do they not?”
Leo’s brows lifted. “I dare not with a lady who has a contract stating she is not to be touched.”
“Oh.” That would have gone in her imaginary diary too. “Thank you, Leo. But you’ve taken my hand twice already, and it’s really all right. When it’s you.”
His green eyes met her brown ones—and he smiled. “All right. It’s a fake short-term betrothal.” His large gloved hand caught her bare one, enfolding it in strong fingers.
“I can’t think of anyone I’d rather pretend to be engaged to before suddenly jilting him in a few weeks’ time,” Poppy said with mock solemnity. Her hand in his felt safe. Steady. It was strange, but in a pleasant way. “Shall we announce the happy news to Ubie tomorrow?”