Page 89 of One Night with a Rake

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The way the maid clutched that hatbox told Roger it didn’t contain something for her mistress. Lady Georgette had been as foolishly indulgent as he suspected she was and had bought something brand new for her servant.

Gobberd was right on that score. Such unnecessary generosity did nothing but create a soft underclass that would soon begin to feel itself ill-used if it wasn’t coddled and pandered to.

But Lady Georgette’s largesse played right into Roger’s hand, so he couldn’t find too much fault.

As soon as Lady Georgette and her maid disappeared around the corner, Roger ducked into the milliner’s shop they’d just exited. Festooned with lace and feathers and a rainbow of ribbons, the place positively reeked of femininity. Scents of linen and talc, with an undernote of glue and the faint metallic tang of mercury, tickled his nostrils.

“My lord,” the shopkeeper said with a deferential curtsy.

She was a fine-boned, swan-necked woman, and ordinarily he’d be very much interested in her. However, just now he had another woman in his sights. He could always return to this shop on a later date to further his acquaintance with the milliner.

“How may I assist you this day?” she said.

“I require a bonnet,” he said, looking at those he thought might fit in the hatbox he’d seen Georgette’s abigail carrying. “A special one. One very like the bonnet you just sold. Do you by chance make duplicates of your designs?”

“Oh, no, milord,” the shopkeeper said, her wing-shaped brows arched in scandalized surprise. “All my creations are originals. Think how horrified a lady would be to discover another woman had the same bonnet as she.”

Not to mention that the lady would never buy so much as a fichu from that particular milliner’s shop again.

He picked up a simple bonnet. “Yes, quite. But I have in mind a harmless little joke between friends. What if I offered you a ridiculous sum?” He named a price that was easily five times the going rate for ladies’ headgear. “Could you fashion an exact duplicate of the one you just sold? And it must be exactly the same, mind.”

The milliner nibbled her bottom lip, clearly tempted.

“I promise that your customer will never know you did it,” Roger said, holding a handful of coins before him in an open palm.

“How can you promise that, milord?”

“Because by the time Lady Georgette sees the bonnet, it will be flat as a flitter. This is part of a jest, you see,” he said. “A harmless prank. But the bonnets must start out identical or the joke will fall”—he gave her his most winning smile and a self-deprecating shrug—“flat. Come. Take my blunt.”

Her eyes flared with longing as she gazed at the handful of gleaming coins. Most shops traded on credit. They were constantly cash-strapped, even if they served the most exclusive clientele, because they had to wait for their wellborn customers to deign to pay their bills.

The milliner snatched the money from him. “Return in three hours,” she said as she escorted him to the door and flipped over the sign, indicating that her shop was closed. “I’ll have it ready by then.”

Thirty-three

By eight o’clock that evening, Georgette was fretting like a colt on a lunge line. She fidgeted in the upstairs parlor while the guests were being announced one by one in the ballroom below. Her mother had decided it would create a grander moment if Georgette descended the curving staircase and processed into the ballroom accompanied by a fanfare of strings and brass. She was even supposed to make her entrance after the Duke of Cambridge arrived.

“That will probably upset all sorts of precedence,” Georgette had argued. What she really wanted to do was find a quiet alcove in the ballroom and hide till the whole thing was over. The way her mother was arranging matters, every eye would be upon them when she and the royal duke met for the first time.

“That’s as may be, dearest, and I’ll admit it’s a calculated risk, but we want the duke to see you at your regal best,” her mother had insisted. “What’s more imperious than being the last to arrive?”

Since Lady Yorkingham had given in on the matter of the red gown and reluctantly admitted the shimmering pale pink was the better choice, Georgette decided to allow her mother this small victory. Besides, the fact that she was about to upstage the duke might just irk him enough that he’d cast his royal eyes elsewhere.

She wished for that with all her heart.

As much as she wanted to please her parents, she was beginning to realize she could never accept the royal duke’s suit. Court life would suffocate her. She wasn’t cut out to be a princess, but she’d be powdered and pressed and squeezed into the mold of one.

If she said “yes” to His Royal Highness, she’d be forever saying “no” to her real self.

Her parents would be devastated, but however much she loved them, she couldn’t live for them. The ton would consider her addlepated. She didn’t care. Even if she lived out her years as an eccentric spinster, at least she’d still be Georgette.

She might not have Nathaniel, but she’d still be herself.

Georgette parted the curtain and gazed down on the street where carriages lined up past the corner. The queue of equipages curved around the bend in the street beyond. Bejeweled women swathed in fur-trimmed capes and men with starched neckcloths and silver-headed walking sticks disembarked and made their stately way into burgeoning Yorkingham House.

If she were ever going to make a break for it, now was the time. But where would she go?