Duchess By Night (Desperate Duchesses #3)

Chapter Ten

In Which Plans are Made for Lord Strange’s Enticement

H arriet looked at herself in the glass and felt as if she’d drunk too much champagne. Staring back at her was a beautiful young man. Really. Beautiful. He was wearing a velvet jacket of a dark lilac, over which spilled the finest cream-colored lace. Little epaulets at the shoulders gave him form, and the jacket laced in the front in a manner which (incidentally) concealed the so-called man’s breasts.

But what Harriet kept staring at was her face. She never felt beautiful as a woman. She always felt overpowered by the huge hair styles demanded by fashion, by her panniers and multiple petticoats, by the way her corset pushed up her breasts and made them seem plumper than they were in truth.

But in a simple pair of pantaloons and a velvet jacket, with her hair pulled back in a ribbon, you could see her face.

Harriet just kept looking at it. Without all those powdered curls towering over her forehead, her face looked both delicate and strong. Her mouth was actually quite a nice shape, though she shouldn’t be the one to say so. The way the valet had colored her eyebrows showed that their arch was a graceful wing that emphasized her eyes. She’d always liked her eye color, but thought they looked faded to the same tired brown as the rest of her. But now they picked up the color of her coat, and her eyes seemed almost purple. Exotic. Utterly unlike her in every way.

The only problem was…her rear. Harriet turned around and peered back there again.

She could hardly believe that she was even contemplating walking through the door like this. Her breeches fit her body like a glove. That was one thing from the front, but when she craned her neck to see her behind, she felt palpitations coming on. Her bottom…her bottom was exposed. Very exposed.

It was round. She had a very round bottom, as it turned out. Who knew that? With all the petticoats, and panniers, she’d never given her bottom a second glance. But there it was.

She tried to think about men’s bottoms but couldn’t remember that she’d ever seen any that were quite as—as curvy as hers appeared to be.

Would everyone know the moment she walked into the dining room? If they discovered her secret, she’d have to go back to wearing a huge wig and panniers. The very idea struck ice to her backbone. She couldn’t do that yet. Not when she felt beautiful and powerful and free—for the first time in her life.

Harriet pulled back her shoulders. If anyone suggested she was a woman, she would deny it with her last breath. She hesitated for one moment, wondering whether to add a bit more padding down there, in front.

She couldn’t bring an image of the front of a man’s breeches to mind either. Had she ever really looked at a man’s body?

Apparently not. Likely it was better to be discreet about the size of her pizzle, then, at least until she had a chance to investigate male breeches.

She marched out of her room, hesitating when she reached the top of the stairs and realized that Lord Strange was lounging at the bottom, almost as if he were waiting for her.

Of course he wasn’t waiting for her. He probably greeted all his guests there. He had remarkably broad shoulders for a man who was so lean through the hips. What she’d really like to see was his bottom, but he was leaning against the railing, staring intently at a sheet of foolscap.

She walked down the stairs as solidly as she could, squaring her shoulders. At the bottom, she swept an acceptable bow, flourishing a hand before her forward knee, just as Villiers had taught her.

“Good evening, my lord,” she said, deepening her voice.

Lord Strange looked up. “Mr. Cope.” He folded the sheet.

“If you’ll point the direction to your drawing room, I’ll join your other guests.” She could hear a clatter of laughter and voices coming from the other end of the corridor.

“I’ll escort you,” he said, looking irritated for some reason. But he didn’t look as if he suspected her of being a woman, so Harriet felt a surge of triumph. She automatically reached out to take his arm, and then quickly dropped her hand. Thankfully, he didn’t see her error as he was tucking the paper away in his waistcoat pocket.

“What are you studying?” she asked, moving to the side so that their shoulders wouldn’t touch.

“An auction catalogue I just received from London. A man named Bullock is selling off his collection of hummingbirds.”

“What a lovely name, hummingbirds,” Harriet said, before realizing that men didn’t use the word lovely. “I mean, the name is enjoyable…the hum and so on.” She sounded like a fool.

“Hummingbirds are small birds from the Americas,” Lord Strange replied, ignoring her stupid comment about hums. “I am curious about them.”

“How many are there?”

“Two hundred and thirty-two.”

“That many birds! Dead?”

He glanced at her. “Quite dead. Stuffed.”

She managed not to shudder. Men liked to kill things and stuff them. Even Benjamin had given up the chess board now and then to tramp around the woods with a gun over his shoulder. “Excellent!” She said as heartily as she could. “I love to shoot partridge myself.”

The sardonic lines by his mouth deepened. He was probably laughing at her, but he didn’t say anything. They reached the door of the salon, and a footman whisked it open. He stopped her for a moment.

“Mr. Cope.”

“My lord?”

“Villiers asked me to look after you. I shall endeavor to note your whereabouts, but I must ask you to seek me out if anything happens that seems uncomfortably novel.”

Harriet was practically dancing on her toes, she was so anxious to see something novel, uncomfortable or not. “Thank you, Lord Strange,” she said. “Please—” and she gestured toward the door.

After a lifetime of sailing through doors ahead of men, she wanted him to go first. So that she could examine his bottom.

He shot her a look, and there was something curious there, something she didn’t recognize. “Don’t play the fool too exuberantly.”

“I shall endeavor to do otherwise,” she said, giving it a chilly emphasis.

“Excellent.” He turned away and walked through the doors, only to disappoint.

His coat fell lower than his bottom. True, it was a glorious coat. The sleeves were pricked out in a faint tracing of metallic embroidery. His sleeves ended in lace, lace of a dull gold color. The combination gave him the dark brilliance of a pirate king, Harriet thought with a thrill.

He was everything she would have thought a man of his reputation to be: dangerous, sullen-looking, probably tired from all the degenerate orgies in which he’d participated. He looked like someone who never found himself surprised. Even the sensual line of his mouth signaled he had experienced all the pleasures life had to offer.

It was really a shame that his coat fell so low. His breeches were quite as tight as hers, but of an even finer fabric, and his legs were far more muscular. In fact, her muscles were feeble compared to those defined in his legs. It was fascinating. How could she not have noticed men’s legs before?

He turned around, eyes indifferent. “Come on, then. Villiers says that you need to turn into a man, and my house is certainly the place to do it.”

Her mouth fell open. “He said—”