I spent the time until he reappeared picking up and folding the jacket and waistcoat he had left crumpled on the chair, and the white bowtie that had ended up on the table along with the cufflinks and studs from his shirtfront. It wasn’t my task to do, I supposed—I wasn’t his wife, mother, or maid—but I’m tidy enough that the garments offended me, discarded and rumpled on my furniture.
Then Crispin stepped into the doorway from the hall, and I looked up. And blinked. “You… you have hair on your chest.”
Crispin glanced down, to where whorls of fair hair peeped out of the deep V of the pink gown. After a second he looked back up at me, nonplussed. “Of course I have hair on my chest.”
I gaped at him. “Christopher doesn’t.”
He smirked. “I’m sure he must, Darling. Most men do. Or perhaps you don’t know that?”
“Of course I know that,” I said. “But I’m telling you that Christopher doesn’t. Since you’re supposed to look like him, I suppose you’re just going to have to shave. There’s a safety razor in?—”
“I am not shaving the hair off my chest!” Crispin said, outraged.
I put my hands on my hips. “Well, you can’t go out like that.”
“Then perhaps we shouldn’t go at all.”
When I must have looked mutinous, he added, “Or perhaps I can just go as myself. If anyone recognizes me, it’ll just look like one more stupid stunt of the usual sort.”
Well, yes. But— “I thought you and your Bright Young Set was all about the challenge,” I said. “Not afraid, are you?”
He snorted. “Of course I’m not afraid. I shave my face twice a day, Darling. I know it doesn’t hurt.”
“Then what’s the problem? What would it take for you to agree to this?”
“To shave my chest? Quite a lot more than you’re willing to bargain, Darling. I have a reputation to uphold, you know.”
“A reputation?” I repeated. “For what?”
“Virility,” Crispin said with an eyeroll, “what else? What do you think would happen if, the next time I take a woman to bed, there’s nothing but stubble on my chest? What would she think of me?”
“Certainly not that the neckline of your borrowed gown was too low to allow you to keep your chest hair.” My lips twitched. “I was right, you know. Pink is very becoming on you.”
“I’m sure the apple green would have looked better,” Crispin grumbled.
“I’m not. If you want to keep the hair, feel free to do so. I’m going to find you a pair of Christopher’s gloves and shoes, and then we’ll see about an evening cloak of some sort, since you certainly can’t walk around outside like that…”
We’d both be arrested before we’d crossed the street if he did. Indecent exposure, indeed.
His eyes narrowed. “And you, Darling? You’ll be wearing the apple green, I assume? Or perhaps the savage banana yellow?”
“I was thinking I might borrow your evening suit,” I said, and had the pleasure of seeing his jaw drop. “It’ll be too big on me, of course. You’re a few inches taller than I am, and rather wider across the chest and shoulders. But it seems the least I can do after making you put on… that.”
Although perhaps I ought to make it Christopher’s suit instead. That way I wouldn’t have to strip off to give Crispin back his clothes at the end of the evening.
Yes, perhaps just a bit too intimate, that exchange.
“On second thought,” I said, “I’ll just go find what I need in Christopher’s wardrobe. While I do that, feel free to use my makeup table to do your face. You’ll need some rouge and rice powder, and lipstick, and some kohl around your eyes. Eyelash enhancer, if you feel brave.”
He blinked at me. I left him standing there while I sashayed down to Christopher’s room and dug what I needed out of the wardrobe.
Fifteen minutes later we were ready. I looked rather like a young boy trying on his father’s dinner suit, I imagined, while Crispin had somehow managed to put on a more than credible face. The kohl around his eyes brought out the silvery gray of his irises, and he’d had the sense to pick a pink lipstick instead of the red or coral. He’d even been brave enough to darken his eyelashes and brows—and had done it without poking himself in the eye—and it was astonishing the difference it made.
The dress helped, of course, and the silk stockings, and Christopher’s second-best pair of pumps, and the elbow-length gloves that hid more muscular development than any woman is likely to have. There was nothing to be done about his shoulders or upper arms. I shoved an evening wrap at him and hoped for the best.
Evans’s eyebrows rose high enough to give him the look of a surprised rabbit when we arrived in the lobby, but he opened the door without quibbling and pocketed the coin Crispin gave him. “Good evening, Miss Darling. Lord St George.”
“Good evening, Evans,” Crispin said with all the dignity befitting his elevated status. His voice—still recognizably male—sounded ridiculous coming from a man in a pink dress with rouged cheeks and a colorful scarf tied around his head.
