Molly pulled back and regarded Alice carefully, her mouth twisted in that crooked, rakish smile. “That’ll do very nicely.” She gestured to the looking glass, and Alice saw that her lips were pink, as if she had used the dreaded rouge.
Something about her rosy lips made her look more closely at herself, really examine her gown and hair. It was her own best gown, worn at least half a dozen times already, but with Molly’s alterations it looked almost fashionable. Had she seen another woman wearing such a dress, she might even have called it elegant. And her hair, even though it was dressed simply, was different enough from her usual style to make her gaze at her face in an entirely different way.
It was the face of someone who had just been kissed.
No, that was the least of what she saw in the mirror. What she saw was someone who wanted something, and who was allowed to have it. Not a person who had to pay rent for her place on earth by keeping busy, by serving others.
She could want something, and she could take it.
Chapter Five
The clock had already chimed two before Molly returned to the bedroom, her feet sore and her eyes stinging with fatigue. Mrs. Wraxhall had needed to be undressed, her hair put in curling papers, her face anointed with French creams. Then Molly had to see about a claret stain on her ladyship’s green satin gown and set out tomorrow’s many changes of clothing, from shoes to ear bobs and everything in between.
When she quietly pushed open the bedroom door, she expected to find Alice fast asleep, as she had been the previous night when Molly had finally collapsed into bed.
But there she was, sitting at the cramped table, pen in hand, writing by the light of a candle that had nearly burnt down. She looked up as Molly shut the door, her face arranged in an expression that gave nothing away. That, Molly guessed, was the face she used when dealing with her whoreson relations, like some poor little creature rolling up into a ball to look less interesting to a hawk.
“How was dinner?” Molly kept her voice low in case there were sleeping guests nearby, but it came out too husky and intimate.
The mask of nothingness dropped, and even in the sparse light Molly could tell that Alice was glowing. She was the brightest thing in this room, and Molly’s heart skipped a beat with relief and something else entirely. “I didn’t pay him the least bit of attention. Or at least I pretended not to, which amounts to much the same thing. I had other things on my mind. I suppose that was what you meant by kissing me, to provide a distraction—”
“Like hell it was,” Molly protested, her hands on her hips.
“I meant that if your intention was to take my mind off the matter of Mr. Tenpenny, you succeeded.”
Molly raised an eyebrow. “It wasn’t that either.” Alice had to know that, but if she needed reassurance, well, that didn’t cost Molly a thing. “What are you writing?” Sitting up late to write a letter made no sense if you had nobody to write to.
“Oh.” A faint flush crept up Alice’s neck. “I wrote another fairy story for your little girl. She seemed to like the one you read her last week.”
One of the reasons Molly was not only alive but also in possession of clean clothes and a full belly was that she knew how to keep a weather eye out for all possibilities. She hadn’t thought there was such thing as taking Molly Wilkins by surprise.
She was surprised now.
“Thank you.” She had gotten out of the habit of gratitude. What she had, she either earned or stole, and there was precious little difference between the two as far as she cared. But this, this was a gift. “Thank you,” she repeated. “She’ll enjoy it very much.”
“I always liked making up the stories, and without my nieces...” Her voice trailed off.
Those bastards. “Katie and I will be glad for any of your stories. Tell me more about dinner while I help you out of that gown.” It was a dirty trick and Molly knew it, even though there was scarcely any other way out of a gown like this one. Alice automatically turned her back for Molly to unwork the fastenings. Molly kept her movements brisk and efficient, flicking open buttons, unpinning hair. That much was no more than what she did for Mrs. Wraxhall. What was different was that she wasn’t doing this as a servant for a master, but as a service to a friend.
As Molly performed all these familiar tasks, she asked about dinner—who sat where, how that shiteating Tenpenny bastard reacted to seeing her, whether their suspicions about Mrs. Wraxhall having a lover were founded. Alice gloried in her triumph, and a sorry thing it was that for her a triumph was breathing the same air as the man who had gotten her tossed out of her home. Molly would dearly have liked to serve him up a nasty trick.
And right as she took the last pin from Alice’s hair, a plan began to form in Molly’s crooked, warped brain. Oh, she really oughtn’t think of anything like this, not with her position on the line, but it was just too excellent an opportunity to pass up.
But then Alice raised her arms for Molly to whisk the gown over her head, and all her thoughts went up in a cloud of smoke.
Molly was no stranger to ladies in their chemises. Ladies in their chemises, and sometimes in nothing at all, earned Molly her daily bread.
Alice was just another lady in her chemise.
Except for the look on her face. There wasn’t a hint of that bland, harmless mask. Alice’s jaw was set, her chin tilted up almost defiantly.
“What’s that about?” she asked, tracing Alice’s jaw with her finger.
“You were right.”
“It happens. What about?”
“I do like to look at you.” The words came out in a jumble, Alice’s voice higher than it usually was. She opened her mouth as if to say something more—Molly would have bet it was an apology—but she slammed her mouth shut. There was nothing to apologize for, and they both knew it.
