Page 43 of Lord Gabriel’s Undoing

Cecilia waved an imperious hand at Gabriel. “You’ll have to go and wait on the stairs while I help Phoebe into her disguise. Off you go. And don’t let anyone see you looking like that or you might get chased off by the grooms. With brooms.” She giggled, as though this prospect amused her.

Gabriel departed, hat in hand, and Cecilia, despite her youth, took capable charge. She very soon had Phoebe out of her gown, at which point it became evident the disguise was a male one.

“Trousers?” Phoebe all but gasped, as Cecilia held them up. And what was more, decidedly grubby trousers with a ragged hem to the legs.

Cecilia nodded. “Safest to go in dressed as a boy. It’s not a good place for girls our age. And it should be easier for you than it was for me, as you’re so slender. Also the clothes will be baggier on you. But that will only make you look poorer. As though you’re wearing someone else’s castoffs.”

“I will be,” Phoebe muttered under her breath.

However, pushing aside her mounting doubts, she consented to put on a tatty linen shirt with a distinct aroma of stale sweat about it, the ragged trousers, which had leather braces, and a waistcoat that was so long on her as to baggily reach her mid-thighs. On top of this ensemble went an even baggier top coat, the sleeves of which she had to fold back from her hands. Luckily the scruffy boots Cecilia produced were a good fit. However, all of this, boots included, possessed the distinct and unpleasant aroma of their last possessor. Best, perhaps, not to ask who he’d been.

As a final touch, Cecilia produced a brown, felted woolen hat into which she stuffed Phoebe’s hair out of the way.

She then stood back to admire her handiwork. “You look perfect. You make a good boy. I hadn’t realized when I wore it just how good a disguise it was. You look the part, just as Gabriel does. I already chose a name for you to fit with your new appearance. Gabriel chose mine for me—I was his brother, Tom Booth. You’re to be another brother, Will Booth. Nice and plain. He’s Joe Booth, by the way. He’s older brother to both of us now.”

A little overwhelmed by the speed at which this was happening, Phoebe nodded. Cecilia, who seemed to think her part had now been played, took one of the chairs and sat down, a book appearing in her hands from somewhere about her person. “I’ll just sit here and read until you get back. No need to worry because no one will miss us. Good luck. And remember, do everything Joe tells you. He knows best, and besides which, he’s your boss.” She winked, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

Phoebe, heart in mouth, but with it also hammering with excitement, partly due to the novelty and freedom being disguised as a boy would bring, nodded. “I’ll remember.” And pushing the door open, she stepped out into the corridor.

Chapter Fourteen

Gabriel scrambled up from where he’d been sitting on the top step. For a moment he stared at the person Phoebe had been transformed into in open admiration. Gone was the young lady born with the proverbial silver spoon in her mouth, daughter of an earl and recipient of a substantial fortune, and in her place was the rather plain and ordinary looking brother of Tom and Joe Booth. Cecilia had even managed to smear some dirt across her cheeks.

He took off his cocked hat and swept her as flamboyant a bow as was possible while standing at the top of rickety stairs and hampered with only one working arm. “Master Will, you make a fine boy, I must say.”

A pleasing touch of color rose to her pale cheeks. His heart did a little leap. Could it possibly be that she liked him, or was it just his flattery? And by like he meant more than just as someone who was offering her a touch of adventure and possibly a point to her hitherto pointless life. That he was doing both, he had no doubt at all. Of course a young woman brought up in a country stately home and then in the most fashionable and expensive part of London needed a purpose in life more than marrying and producing heirs for some pompous member of the nobility. A man who, in between siring those heirs, would most likely be carrying on with any number of mistresses, much as Ambrose was. He had it all mapped out in his head and possessed the absolute conviction that he was quite right.

About almost everything.

But the one thing he wasn’t sure of at all, and which had him doubting himself, was whether she liked him or not. In the way he wanted her to, of course, which he was beginning to realize was not just as a friend. And of course, there was the uncomfortable possibility that if he expressed his liking for her she would take him for a fortune hunter.

He rather regretted having revealed to her his need for money for the ever-increasing expenses of his project. If he hadn’t told her any of that, and had omitted everything about his own humble beginnings, she might be expected to view an advance from him in a more favorable light. They might have been on a more even footing had he been less precipitate in his confidences. However, he was determined not to be amongst the men who would, without a doubt, be after her fortune for their own personal gain. So really, he’d rather scotched it for himself. Hindsight was not always a good thing.

All of these jumbled thoughts shot through his head as he bowed and straightened up again, but he pasted a cheerful grin on his face and held out his left hand to her.

After a momentary hesitation, she set her own hand, now wearing brown, fingerless knitted gloves, into his, and they descended the dangerously creaking stairs together.

At the foot, before pushing open the door, he paused and looked back at her, suddenly serious, for this was important. “Are you sure you’re ready to become Will Booth? With every ounce of your being? To walk and talk like a boy from the back streets, to forget the girl inside you?”

Phoebe nodded. Her wary eyes gave away her lack of conviction, though. But then, this was her first time in disguise, her first time anywhere but in the cossetted parlors of Mayfair, and probably the first time she’d ever worn boys’ clothes.

She’d soon learn. “Welcome to my world,” he said, with a grin, and pushed open the door.

Three Kings Yard was still a hive of activity. Understandable as it comprised the service area for all the houses that fronted onto not just Hill Street but some of Brook Street and Grosvenor Street as well. The stench of ammonia wafted out of the many stables, mixed with the general smokiness of the London air. Horses whinnied, hooves clattered on the cobbles or kicked stable doors in impatience. Men shouted at one another or whistled as they worked, a wagon of hay was being unloaded into one of the buildings, someone not in view was hammering nails and singing. Tradesmen hurried past with deliveries that would be taken through back doors into the big houses so as not to offend the delicate gaze of their occupants. It looked chaotic, but he knew it was not.

He loved the vitality of it, but Phoebe’s face had paled and she shrank back against the door. He caught her hand. “Come along. No one will pay us any attention, no matter what Cecilia said about being thrown out if someone sees me. We blend in. In fact, you’ll find you’re next to invisible. Think how you didn’t notice people who look like we now do before I pointed them out. You’ll see I’m right.” And he pulled her after him out into the mêlée.

She stayed close. In all probability she’d never seen anything approaching this before. Being a boy, he’d most likely been less sheltered as a child than she had, especially after the death of his mother, and the stables at both Wentworth Castle and the townhouse had been among his favorite haunts. He’d spent long hours, when he’d managed to escape his governess, in the company of both Alf Newhouse, his parents’ head groom, and Alf’s grandson, Jed, who’d been his chosen playmate for his childhood years. Jed, who was now a groom at Wentworth under his grandfather’s command, had played a large part in encouraging him in his discovery of social injustices, if that was what he could call how he felt nowadays.

He looked back at Phoebe. She might look the part in her borrowed disguise, but her mouth was open and her eyes had gone round as saucers. He slowed and pulled her closer. “Try not to look as though you’ve never seen this side of life before. It makes you stand out.”

She shut her mouth in a hurry. “I’m sorry. I’ll try.”

He transferred his grip to her wrist, the better to keep her close, as he led the way across Davies Street, which wasn’t much different in appearance to Three Kings Yard, and into the narrow, cobbled entrance to Brooks Mews. This was less well-kept than the Yard, its central drain being clogged with wet straw and droppings and even a dead rat that he had to steer Phoebe clear of for fear of her squealing when she saw it. The least attention they drew, the better. And boys were not known for their squeamishness.

Plain brick buildings with arched entrances to stables and carriage houses opened on both sides, and an army of mostly men were busy working. A boy ran past them after a small terrier with a dead rat in its mouth, and Phoebe, as he’d feared, gave a little, muted squeal.

“You’ll see much worse than that today,” Gabriel said, feeling a certain amount of relish that he was to be the one to educate her. Much as he was discovering he liked her, the desire to open her eyes fully to the downside of London life had not departed but only grown greater.