“Sounds good to me,” Frederick Montrose agreed and turned his attention and his bright eyes back to me. “Sorry, Miss Darling, that I can’t get up and greet you properly, but I’m somewhat wedged in here.”
“That’s all right.” I smiled graciously. “It’s a pleasure nonetheless.”
“Don’t say that before you know who he is,” Crispin advised me. “Monty writes for The Daily Yell.”
Oh, did he really?
“I’m surprised they let you in here,” I told him. “I would have expected journalists to be asde tropas constables.”
He smirked. “Hence the getup, you know?” He waved a hand over his dress, wig, and lipstick. “Protective camouflage. I’m on the trail of a story.”
He gestured to the bench beside himself. “Have a seat. I got us a bottle of bubbly. We’ll toast your birthday, St George. How old are you today? Twenty-four, is it?”
“Twenty-three,” Crispin said, but he nudged me into the booth ahead of him and then scooted in behind me.
Montrose nodded. “That’s right. You were always younger than everyone else, weren’t you?”
“I’m not that much younger,” Crispin grumbled. “Christopher’s only two months older than I am.”
Two and a half, if you wanted to be particular, but I saw no need to point it out. Instead I watched as Montrose lifted the bottle of champagne and filled the two empty glasses. “Have I met Christopher?” he asked as he poured. “He wasn’t at Cambridge with us, was he?”
Crispin shook his head and reached for the glass. I did the same, but instead of taking a sip—I’ve become somewhat leery of drinks I haven’t poured myself—I put it down in front of me. “If you’ve seen Crispin, you’ve seen Christopher. They look very much the same.”
Crispin slanted a look my way. I was pleased to see that he, too, put his glass down without sampling the contents. We’d both learned something from our trip to Dorset in May, it seemed. “I thought you claimed we’re nothing alike and you have no problem telling us apart, Darling.”
“Idon’t,” I said. “Christopher is a lovely, kind, sensitive soul, and you’re a womanizing cad with vile habits and a string of broken hearts in your wake. I have no problem telling you apart. Other people do, however.”
Montrose sniggered. “Sounds like she has your number, St George. So is Christopher here, too? I’d like to meet him.”
“Somewhere,” Crispin said vaguely. “We’ve lost him for the moment. He looks like me, but in a black gown and wig.”
Montrose nodded, scanning the dance floor.
“So what are you really doing here?” Crispin added. “Trying to cause trouble for someone, I suppose? Do you have a photographer hidden somewhere? Can I expect to see myself on the cover of the Yell tomorrow, looking like this?”
Montrose sniggered. “Would I do that to you?”
“You’ve done worse than that already,” Crispin told him, but without sounding very troubled about it.
“It would sell rather a lot of papers,” I said thoughtfully. “The scion of the Sutherlands in a dress and makeup at a drag ball. Imagine the scandal.”
Imagine Uncle Harold’s expression. He’d go apoplectic with rage. Crispin shot me a look, one that made it seem like he was thinking the same thing.
“It would sell a lot of papers if there were any truth to it,” Montrose corrected. “But everyone knows there isn’t. There’s that string of broken hearts you mentioned, for one thing.”
“Maybe the reason for the broken hearts is the dress and makeup,” I said lightly, and Crispin winced.
“Don’t put ideas in his head, Darling, please. It’s not the dress and makeup, and you know it.”
“Of course.” It was my turn to snigger. “My apologies, Georgina.”
Montrose brayed. “Oh, Lord. That’s too good. Georgina, really?”
“For the occasion,” I told him, “I’m Phillip and he’s Georgina. What about you? You came here in disguise. Do you have anom de guerre, as well?”
Or anom de plume, perhaps, given his profession.
He chuckled. “I’ll have to be Frederica, I suppose. Or Freda. I’m not sure whether that’s better or worse than Georgina.”
