My Lady Notorious

by Jo Beverley

  What was he to make of her, bold at one moment, prudish the next?

  “Tell me,” he asked lightly, “are you a virgin, young Charles?”

  “Yes!” Her color flared again, even deepened. “Not that it’s any business of yours!”

  “Of course not,” he soothed. “I merely thought to offer my services to amend the matter.”

  She gaped. He knew she had temporarily forgotten her disguise, but was all too aware of the state of his body. “What on earth can you mean?”

  He smiled kindly. “Just that an older man often takes a younger under his wings and shows him how to go on. Introduces him to the right kind of female. If we’re going adventuring…”

  He watched her come back to reality with a bump and, he hoped, a soupçon of disappointment. A layer of frost settled. “We are engaged in a very serious business, my lord. It will not allow time for visits to brothels.”

  “But if it does?”

  He saw the mischievous gleam before she hid it. “I might be interested. But for now, we are supposed to be readying you.”

  Cyn loved the touch of naughtiness. She was too sober, and he knew it wasn’t her true nature. She was surely a wild creature at heart, kin to himself, but for some reason afraid. He really must stop tormenting her.

  “How do I look?” he asked, twirling before her.

  She grimaced. “Flat, top and bottom.”

  Cyn looked down. The skirts hung limp, and the bodice sagged away from his flat chest. It had clearly been made for a lady of generous endowments. No one would ever think this gown had been made for him.

  “The gray petticoat will serve to fill out the skirts,” he said, “but I don’t know what to do about the bodice. Could it be altered?”

  “Undoubtedly, but not in an hour. Wait a moment.”

  She left, and Cyn took the time to force control onto his body. He took some calming breaths and thought cold, unlustful thoughts.

  As his body returned to a more passive state he reflected with satisfaction upon the encounter with his damsel. They progressed, indeed they did. Was she really a virgin? That would present problems, but not insuperable ones. She was clearly no conventional miss.

  It was perhaps a little unsporting to let her think him unaware of her gender, but she had just shown she wasn’t above trying to exploit the situation too, the hussy. He grinned with admiration and anticipated her return.

  He began to struggle into the gray quilted petticoats. By the time he’d tied the laces he felt smothered in all this material. He kicked the skirts out of his way as he tried to pace, thinking that perhaps hoops were preferable after all. They’d keep the material from tangling about his legs.

  He had no intention of trying to wear secondhand shoes, and so he slipped on a pair of his own. They were his evening shoes—black kid with high red heels and silver buckles. Though ladies rarely wore such shoes anymore he would merely be thought old-fashioned.

  He walked a bit more, growing accustomed to the garments, to the way they moved as he walked, and the way to walk within them. Had Charles had to go through this performance when she first put on men’s garments? She’d certainly learned to move with manly confidence.

  His damsel returned with a big basket and held out a neckerchief. “Put this on.”

  It was a coarse, plain triangle of material, not at all like the filmy, ruffled ones his sisters wore. He obediently draped it around his shoulders, wondering what to do with the loose ends.

  She clucked with exasperation. “Oh, sit down.” When he sat in a chair, she deftly tucked it into his neckline at the back, crossed the front points at his collarbone, and tucked them behind the stomacher. He refrained from commenting on this expertise and simply enjoyed her touch.

  When she’d finished, he looked down. The bodice still hung loose. “What do you suggest? Handkerchiefs? I’m not sure I have enough for this vast cavern.”

  “No. They would be too lumpy anyway.”

  “My dear Charles,” said Cyn coyly, “who precisely do you think will be feeling my bosom?”

  She cast him a disgusted look. “Everyone, if you behave as a woman like you do as a man. You’re a bold piece, Milord Cyn, and aptly named. Look.” She indicated her basket which contained unspun wool. “Nana’s next blanket,” she explained, and passed him a handful. “Push it behind the stomacher.”

  He sat down and pulled out the bodice. “I think it will have to go inside the shift to be secure.” After a couple of handfuls he said, “It would work better if you stuffed it in and shaped it. You’ll be able to see what you’re doing.”

  She gave him a suspicious look, but dutifully came over to push the soft gray wool down against his skin, handful after handful. She stopped every now and then to ease and adjust it to the shape of the bodice.

  Cyn knew it was unwise to have her touch him like this, but being unwise in such matters was second nature to him. He relaxed back in the chair, studying her serious features.

  Gad, but she was beautiful. Her skin was as smooth as cream satin, and the lines of her nose and jaw were as perfect as a marble statue. Her lashes were not as thick or long as his, but the purity to their dark curve was the only possible frame for her clear gray eyes.

  He felt a cad for having lustful thoughts about such a pristine being, such a madonna.

  Then she was concentrating. Her lips parted. Her tongue came out to touch her upper lip with moistness. He caught his breath.

  She looked at him. “Did I hurt you?”

  “No,” he said, swallowing. “It tickled.”

  She considered him warily. He caught the revealing flicker of her eyes toward his crotch, but any physical response was safely concealed beneath quilted silk and heavy cloth. He smiled blandly, and she went back to work.

  Cyn didn’t know why he was hell-bent on having this torture continue. He’d be a wreck before they finished.

  Chastity watched nervously for a return of Cyn Malloren’s lust, but then she realized it was not him she should be wary of. Each touch of his skin against her hands was like fire to her nerves. Each breath she took carried a musky smell that dried her mouth and made her lick her lips…

  This couldn’t be happening to her! Men were animal creatures, easily stirred to lust. Women were more refined. They didn’t come into heat just from stroking a man’s chest!

  She sternly commanded her foolish senses to behave, and pummeled his bosom into shape.

  Cyn worked at appearing bored. It wasn’t easy. His damsel was pressed against him, breathing unsteadily, lips full and moist with the need to be kissed.

  And he’d go odds she didn’t even know it.

  Her hands trembled against him, and she looked into his eyes for one lost, revealing moment…

  Then she caught herself and moved away. “There. I think that looks true to life.”

  Cyn sighed for what might have been, then he looked down. “‘Struth!” he exclaimed. “I’ll cause a riot!”

  Chastity’s mind was fogged by unruly longings, but his remark dragged a laugh from her. “Not if you thrust it forward and glare,” she said. “Then they’ll call you a battle-ax. And you better had. If anyone does feel your tits, they’ll know they’re not real.”

  He looked at her with a wicked glint. “I think you’ve been leading me on, young Charles. How do you know what tits feel like?”

  Chastity could not think of a clever answer. “You know the problem with this?” she said quickly.

  “No.”

  “We’ll have it all to do again tomorrow.”

  She saw the hilarity in his eyes before he stood. “Il faut suffrir pour etre femme,” he drawled, and twirled again. “Now. Will I do?”

  And, heaven help her, she too would enjoy playing this game again tomorrow. She was undoubtedly mad.

  She pulled her mind back to work and looked him over.

  “Somewhat,” she said with a frown. “But I don’t think you make as pretty a woman as you thought you would.”
>
  “Want to change roles?”

  She remained silent and he smiled.

  Cyn peered into the small mirror. “I forgot to buy a cap. A matron should have a cap.”

  “I’ll get one,” she said, and left.

  Not pretty? Cyn realized she was correct. His jaw was a little too square, his cheeks too lean. He carefully applied rouge to them, and was heartened to realize that for once he looked too masculine.

  He dusted his tanned neck, chest, and face with the pale powder, then rubbed some rouge onto his lips and pouted into the glass. He pulled the ribbon from his hair and combed the russet waves so they hung about his face. He teased curls out around his temples as he’d seen his sisters do.

  Then he took up the perfume and dabbed a little by his ears. It was a musky, sultry fragrance that would distract the senses of any man who came close. That, along with his tremendous bosom, would have him defending his honor ten times a day.

  He’d mainly bought the perfume, however, in the hopes that eventually his damsel would wear it for him. He indulged briefly in thoughts of her, naked and damp with lusty sweat, her body perfumes mingled with this artificial one…

  When he heard her return, he turned and pouted his reddened lips. “Kiss me, sailor?”

  Chastity was startled by how feminine he looked. He’d fluffed out his hair and rouged his cheeks, but it wasn’t simply the cosmetics and the figure. It was something in he way he stood, in the slight droop of his neck, and the coy use of his lashes. He was a gifted mimic.

  Again, she knew he was dangerous. As she handed him the plain cotton cap, she swore off all future skirmishes.

  He took it between two fingers and considered it as a disdainful lady would. “No frills? No lace? How terribly dull,” he drawled in a husky but feminine voice. “I suppose it does match the equally dull neckerchief, however. To whom do these drab items belong?”

  Chastity didn’t want to answer that question. “That’s all there is,” she said bluntly. “Verity has scarcely the clothes she stands up in. If its plainness bothers you,” she added sweetly, “you can embroider it in the coach. ‘Twill be a suitably matronly occupation.”

  “ ‘Twould be disastrous,” he said, matching her tone. “I’m sure even you could wield a needle better than I, sir.” He turned away to put on the cap in front of the mirror. It was designed to cover all the hair, but he managed to set it back on his head so the front hair showed. When he’d tied the strings under his right ear, even that dismal headgear looked almost fetching.

  Chastity discovered that high-minded resolutions didn’t always work. She had sworn off skirmishes, but was still under assault. She and Cyn weren’t touching, they weren’t even looking at each other, he seemed more like a woman by the moment, and still she felt light-headed.

  It was impossible that she feel like this. She had never in her life reacted to a man in such a way, and these days she hated all men. She wondered if women could come into season, like horses. That was what it felt like. As if she were a giddy mare scenting her first stallion.

  But he was hardly the first male she’d met.

  She’d encountered all kinds of men, especially in London. There had been ones who quoted poetry, and ones who made sly, unseemly suggestions. Ones who reverently kissed her hands, and ones who groped at her body under the concealment of the dance. Then there had been Henry Vernham, who had thought he had the right to put his chilly hands all over her until she’d shown him his error by stabbing him with a pair of needle-sharp scissors.

  None of these men had made her feel at all as Cynric Malloren did, and he wasn’t even trying.

  It was unreasonable.

  It was impossible.

  It was incredibly dangerous and could not be allowed.

  For heaven’s sake, she’d even enjoyed a brief flirtation with Rothgar without this effect, and he was the kind of man mothers warned their daughters about. As handsome as Cyn was beautiful, he carried an aura of dark power which had its own magnetic quality.

  She remembered one encounter in a dim arbor of a garden during a ball. She’d known it was bold to go apart with him, and had been curious as to what he would do.

  Smiling, he’d put a finger under her chin and merely touched his lips to hers. She’d felt singed—wickedly, deliriously singed, in a far more potent way than during the few groping full kisses she had permitted from other men.

  Chastity had enjoyed the excitement of touching on something so dangerous, and yet she had felt nothing in particular for Rothgar, and had been secure in the knowledge that he felt nothing in particular for her. There had been none of this obsessive awareness of the man’s every move, this dizzying vibration from the slightest touch.

  She made a silent prayer that Cyn never find out she was female, for then he might unleash the full power of his wiles against her, and she’d surely be lost.

  Cyn grimaced as he put on the plain, coarse cap. He guessed cap and kerchief must belong to his damsel, but what could possess her to choose such ugly pieces? They were more suitable to the inmate of a house of correction.

  When he put these garments together with her masculine dress, he wondered if she hated her very femininity. Look at her now. Her face had all the warmth of a marble deathmask.

  Why on earth was he drawn to such an oddity? Why was he stirred by her more than he’d been stirred by the most skillful whore, or the most fetching lady? It must be abstinence. He’d not had a woman since before he became ill. Perhaps this reaction proved he was fully recovered.

  In that case, all he needed was a lusty, willing wench and his obsession with his damsel would disappear.

  But he found he had difficulty imagining being aroused by any woman other than this one. That was alarming in the extreme.

  He sifted through the pathetic collection of trinkets and clipped a pair of earrings of painted tin on his lobes. He dismissed the rest and demanded his own jewels. He sprinkled them about the sober garments, then turned his attention to the flat straw hat.

  He wound the yards of fawn ribbon around the low crown and then formed a great deal of it into a loveknot at the front, anchoring it with the pearl-and-diamond pin. He passed the remaining ribbon through the two slits at either side, popped the confection on his head, and tied the ribbons in a large bow.

  Chastity was astonished by his nimble expertise. “Dress like this frequently, do you?”

  He turned and smiled, disconcertingly female. “No, but I’ve dressed, and undressed, a number of females in my time.” He fluttered his outrageous lashes. “Don’t worry, young Charles. Your turn will come.”

  Chastity’s body responded to a meaning he could not possibly intend. For a moment a vision of his long brown fingers slipping off her clothes swamped her reason.

  He touched her arm and she flinched. He appeared not to notice and just pushed her gently ahead of him out of the door. “Let’s see what Verity thinks of this transformation.

  When they entered the parlor Verity looked up and stared. “My goodness! If I didn’t know, I’d never guess.”

  “Let’s hope that is true for everyone.” Cyn looked over Verity in turn.

  She was the picture of a rather slatternly maid. She still wore the plain, sleeved chemise, a skirt of cheap striped cloth, and a sleeveless laced bodice in a practical and ugly mud color. She’d added an apron, and a neckerchief, knotted in front. A cap covered almost all her hair. Cap, neckerchief, and apron looked suspiciously kin to the ones he wore. Unpleasant suspicions stirred in his head.

  “I fear,” he said, probing gently, “that people will think me a harsh mistress to dress my maid in the cast-off clothes from the local foundling home.”

  Verity’s revealing face told him he was close to the truth. But what truth?

  “It’s the best we can do,” said Charles sharply. “Do you think her looks are changed enough?”

  Verity’s hair had been darkened by grease rather than dye, and it straggled out of the front of her cap. T
he change was remarkable.

  “It will do, I think,” he said. “If we come face-to-face with someone who knows Verity well, it won’t work, but the main danger surely is that bills have been posted, and the authorities alerted. They’ll be looking for a young blond lady with a child. I’m darker, and must look considerably older as a woman than my true twenty-four. What? Thirty-odd?”

  Verity nodded and smiled. “We’ll do it, won’t we?”

  He smiled back at her as if she were one of his raw recruits needing encouragement before the first battle. “Assuredly we will.”

  Spontaneously she held out her hands. When he took them she kissed him lightly on the lips. “Thank you. I’m so glad we found you.”

  “Captured him,” corrected Charles sharply.

  Cyn turned to his glowering damsel. He grasped her by the shoulders, and before she could react, kissed her as Verity had kissed him. She jerked back and scrubbed at her lips.

  “My dear sir,” said Cyn, tremulously, which was easy since he was fighting laughter, “a thousand apologies. I became carried away by my part!”

  “Get carried away like that again,” snapped his damsel, “and I’ll gut you.” She picked up a portmanteau and stalked off toward the coach.

  By noon, Cyn had decided this adventure was a dead bore. Where was the challenge? Where were the dangers? Where were the dragons for him to fight?

  All he was experiencing was the familiar swaying motion of the coach, the chill of a sharp November day, and the discomfort of his disguise. His legs felt smothered in skirts, the wool stuffing itched, and the coarse strings of the cap were fretting his skin. He’d thought a stiff stock around his neck was bad enough, but this was undoubtedly worse.

  He’d removed the hat as soon as they were in the coach, but felt he had to keep the cap on in case a passing traveler looked inside the carriage. They’d already decided that to pull the curtains would make them look suspicious. Now he untied the strings of the cap and let them hang.