Anna Campbell - Regency Rogues and Rakes

In their midst stood the explanation.

Instead of her usual camouflage, Sophy this evening flaunted the latest in insane styles from Maison Noirot. The color of her dress was a muted lilac. Nothing else about it was muted. A wide collar spread out over her shoulders. Under that was another collar or cape sort of thing that reached to her elbows. Beneath it bulged sleeves the size of ale casks. Yards of black lace dripped from the collars of the dress and along the front. Green stuff meant to look like sprouting leaves sprang up from the crown of her white hat. Green bows and white lace lined the brim’s interior front, framing her face—or what you could see of it, past the alluringly draped black veil.

It was completely ridiculous.

It was oddly fetching.

“By gad,” he said. “By gad.”

She spotted him then, and walked unhurriedly toward his carriage, hips swaying more, he thought, than altogether necessary amongst this rowdy crew. An inn servant followed, carrying her portmanteaux.

“That’s her,” Fenwick said from his place in the back.

“So I see,” Longmore said. Before he could get down to help her, a herd of men surged toward the vehicle. One, who’d managed to shove ahead of the others into prime position, held out a hand to help her up, but Longmore leaned out and offered his. She grasped it, and his big, gloved hand nearly swallowed up her smaller one, encased in soft kid. There was the slightest pause before she sprang up into the carriage seat.

The men stood silent during this process, admiring the rear view. A sigh went up when she settled—with a great deal of tantalizing rustling—into the left section of the divided seat, and more or less disappeared under the hood.

Then two men tried to wrestle her bags from the inn servant, but he quickly heaved them up into the back, where Fenwick stowed them alongside Longmore’s.

Since a riot seemed imminent, and Longmore hadn’t time for one, he gave the horses leave to start. He had no choice but to fall in line behind the mail coaches.

“Not the ideal time to depart London,” he said. “All the western mail coaches take the same route at the same time through Piccadilly to Hyde Park Corner. We’ll have to follow them until we reach the Brompton Road. The Portsmouth coach turns off there, as we’ll do.”

“I prefer leaving in the middle of a busy throng,” she said. “With so much going on, one set of travelers attracts less attention.”

“And how did you propose not to attract attention in that rig?” he said, nodding at her attire. “Is this supposed to be a disguise?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m your newest light o’ love.”

He wasn’t sure he’d heard aright. They were traveling on granite stones, following a long and noisy parade of vehicles. Scores of hooves clacked against the stones, chains tinkled, and wheels clattered and hummed.

He looked at her. “You’re my what?”

“I’m a demirep,” she said. “My sisters and I agreed that no one who knows you would think twice if they saw you with a female of dubious morals—and I’m much less likely to be recognized than you. Even the women who shop at Maison Noirot don’t take much notice of our faces.”

She was out of her head. No one with working vision could fail to recognize her deceptively angelic face—the very slight uptilt of her shockingly blue eyes—the pert nose—the invitingly full lips.

“We’re not quite as invisible as servants, but nearly so,” the lunatic went on. “Too, people tend not to recognize a person when she’s outside her usual sphere. I chose this dress especially, because it makes me look very expensive—and it’s more dashing than respectable Englishwomen wear. I’m a merry widow, you see.” She touched the alluring veil. “And no one would find it odd if the woman with you chose to veil her face in public.”

“You’ve appointed yourself my mistress,” he said, swallowing a smile. “That’s sporting of you.”

“It’s no sacrifice,” she said. “Most of my other guises are uncomfortable and not at all pretty. Even my usual clothes aren’t terribly exciting.”

“By whose standards, I wonder,” he said. “I recall a hat with some sort of windmill arrangement at the back and ribbons and flowers and feathers and who knew what else exploding from it.”

“One can be more dashing with hats,” she said. “But one can’t wear this sort of ensemble in London. It frightens the customers. Marcelline’s the only one who gets to wear her most daring creations, usually, because she’s the one who goes to Paris. And don’t forget, married women are allowed more leeway, here as well as there.”

He was well aware of this fact. Men were allowed more leeway with them, too.

She wasn’t a married woman, but she was a slightly French milliner. Practically the same thing.

“Even if I went to Paris, I couldn’t wear quite what she does,” she went on. “Unwed women there make even more of being virginal than they do here, you know. Simple frocks. Hair pulled back tight. I’m not sure what the men find appealing about that—but then …” She trailed off and gave a short laugh. “What do you care? What matters is, this way, no one will get over-curious about you or about me and what we’re doing. The added advantage is, people will be so busy staring at my clothes, they won’t pay close attention to my face.”

A virgin?

She could not be a virgin.

It was completely impossible. With that body and that walk and—and she was a milliner !

“Speaking of virgins,” he said, “let’s talk about my sister.”

According to the note she’d sent with Fenwick, Sophy had good reason to believe Clara was traveling the Portsmouth Road. Now she gave him the details. Some of Fenwick’s associates had spotted the cabriolet at Hyde Park Corner. After that, the vehicle had been noticed on the Knightsbridge Road, heading for Kensington. But according to a post boy, some time later, at an inn in Fulham, a woman who looked like a bulldog had asked for the best route to Richmond Park.

“She made it appear that she was traveling to her great-aunt’s house, then turned about and headed, apparently, southwest,” she said. “Does Richmond Park hold any significance for her?”

“None I know of,” he said. “If I’d had to guess, the only place I’d have thought of would be Bath. As a girl, Clara traveled with our paternal grandmother to Bath sometimes. The were very close. Grandmother Warford died some three years ago, and Clara took it hard. She’d always liked the old ladies, my grandmother’s friends.” He shook his head. “I can’t think of anybody she might take refuge with in Richmond Park.”

“Maybe she doesn’t know where she’s going,” Sophy said. “Something happened and she couldn’t bear whatever it was, and so she ran away. Blindly. She simply ran away.”

They’d reached the Hyde Park turnpike. Unlike the mail coaches, their vehicle had to stop, and he had to pay.

He took advantage of the pause to check on Fenwick. The boy sat in the rear seat, arms folded in the approved posture for tigers, looking up at the rapidly darkening sky.

Longmore looked up, too. Thick clouds swarmed overhead. He wasn’t concerned. The hood was up, and if they faced a heavy rain, he could put up the apron. The back seat hadn’t a hood, but Fenwick would be all right. Olney had packed an umbrella, and Reade—deeply unhappy about being left behind—had been made to donate one of his older cloaks.

Longmore drove on, through the turnpike. They passed the White Horse Inn and the Foot Barracks.

“I don’t understand what’s got into my sister,” he said. “She always used to be so sensible.”

“Sensible but ignorant,” Sophy said.