LITMIR.BIZ

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hysterical female interest in the Peacock’s identity but also an unnerving acuity which must be deflected. In other words—”

      “Don’t play the dandy with me, Kit. In plain words,” George interrupted, sensing danger, “Gabrielle Laurence is beginning to pierce your disguise—or thinks she is. Damn and blast, Kit, I told you to stay away from her. She’s not brick-stupid like Lady Ariana and the rest. And Miss Laurence is also not at all grateful to you for bringing her into fashion when she was determined to accomplish that feat on her own. I doubt she appreciates going to her bed each night wondering if the great St. Clair is going to cut her the next day, destroying her.”

      “True enough, Kit,” Sir Gladwin added. “She don’t like you above half, and anyone with a clear eye can see it. And, the way Grumble tells it, I don’t know as how I can blame her. We all warned you not to tease the chit.”

      “Ah, gentlemen,” St. Clair said, pressing his hands to his chest and raising his pitch a notch as he deftly employed the affected tones he used to such advantage in Society, “but I do so delight in her dislike.”

      “Well, there’s always that, I suppose,” Lord Osgood said, winking as he snatched the candy dish from George, obviously not bothered that he too would be abusing his palate by mixing fine port with the sugary confections. “Though I never thought I’d live to see you tumble into love, Kit.”

      “Love?” George exploded, taken totally off-guard. “Ozzie, however did you come up with such a ridiculous notion?”

      “I didn’t,” Lord Osgood answered simply as George looked up at St. Clair in an assessing manner from beneath hooded eyes. “I just now remembered my Aunt Cora once tellin’ me I was top over tail in love with m’cousin Abigail because I was always pinchin’ her. Of course, we were both little more than infants at the time, and when Abby up and married that Dutchman last year I didn’t turn a hair. Never mind, Kit. Sorry I mentioned it.”

      “Thinks nothing of it, Ozzie,” St. Clair answered, but, George noticed uneasily, for once his friend’s smile did not quite reach his eyes.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      La! Did you ever see such an unpleasant person?

      I hope when I grow old I shan’t look like that.

      Baroness Orczy

      FRAPPLE, I’M SO DAMNABLY tired. All that dashing about from here to there last night, and no less than three different parties this evening, with everyone demanding my presence…” Christian trailed off wearily, collapsing into a chair in his dressing room. “I seem to remember hearing of some equally exhausted man putting a period to his existence some years ago because he had been so defeated by this constant dressing and undressing.”

      “I shall have the kitchen staff sequester all the knives at once, my lord,” Frapple answered calmly, continuing to layout his master’s apple-green velvet evening clothes. “And don’t muss your breeches by slouching, if you please. Meg had the devil’s own time pressing them.”

      “How good of you to worry so for Meg. Do I scent a romance in the air, Frapple?”

      “Hardly, my lord. Riding herd on you at all hours, when would I find the time?” A tall, still ramrod-straight man of two and fifty, Frapple had been Christian’s trusted adviser and man-of-all-work since his lordship had been in short coats, and he did not frazzle easily. Indeed, as he was rumored to be the by-blow of the baron’s great-uncle Clarence St. Clair, he may have come by his flippant nonchalance quite naturally, just as he had come by his slowly graying blond hair and thin, aquiline nose. If it weren’t for the man’s mustache, and his more advanced years, in a dim light Frapple might even be taken for an older Christian.

      In any event, Christian loved him as he would have the older brother he’d never had, and Frapple returned this affection, although he refused to allow his lordship to forget their very disparate stations in life.

      Christian smiled now at the man he privately considered to be the best of his relatives, then yawned widely. “I won’t be returning home this evening, Frapple, if you wish to spare a moment for romance,” he said, raising his legs in front of him so that he would admire his new evening shoes. “I need to travel to Little Pillington to remind Herbert Symington of my existence. Thank God I’m known not to tarry too long at any one party, and won’t be missed. If I’m lucky, I should be in Little Pillington at least two hours before dawn.”

      “You won’t allow yourself to be caught, will you?” Frapple asked, intent on examining his lordship’s chosen lace neckpiece for wrinkles before sighing, roughly stuffing the offending thing into his pocket, and removing its twin from the cabinet.

      “Frapple!” Christian exclaimed. “Don’t tell me you’re worried about me.”

      “Not in the slightest, my lord,” the servant answered, already heading for the door to the hallway, the apple-green velvet jacket in his hand. “It’s only that I’m much too long in the tooth to have to begin again with a new employer. Why, the man might even think I’d kowtow to him. Now, I’m just going to have Meg do something with this left sleeve. It’s rather crushed. Please, my lord, as I may be detained for some minutes, I must beg that you do not change your mind about your rig-out for the evening and endeavor to dress yourself. We both, I hope, remember the disaster that befell the ecru satin.”

      Christian nodded and waved Frapple on his way, not wishing to revisit the subject of the form-fitting ecru satin jacket and the seam he had split in attempting to don it without aid, or even to think of any of his Society clothing.

      If he had his druthers, which he of course did not, he would step back in time and attempt to bring into vogue a more comfortable, less constricting fashion than he had done in reinventing flamboyant Georgian dress. Thank God he’d stopped short of powdering his hair.

      He rose from his chair and drifted into the adjoining bedchamber, seating himself at the desk he used when composing his weekly letters to the London newspapers. What would be his subject for next week? Would he tell of the mill workers he had seen who’d been crippled by faulty machinery, their thumbs mashed into useless lumps of nothingness? No. That might unduly upset the ladies, who did not appreciate detailed descriptions of gore served up with their morning chocolate.

      Starving babies were more to the ladies’ tastes, Christian had already learned. The ladies could delicately weep into their handkerchiefs between helpings of coddled eggs and bemoan the fate of the “poor, wretched darlings” without having to do more than send off a bank draft to one of the local orphanages. It was so morally uplifting, this generosity that soothed their shallow consciences and that cost them nothing but money.

      Christian propped his elbows on the desktop and rested his head on his hands. He was tired. So tired. And it had little to do with the endless social whirl, his private missions, or even the strain of keeping his two identities separate from each other.

      He was tired of the poverty, the heartache, the sad, hollow eyes and the crying mothers. He was tired of hearing about men such as Slow Dickie, being beaten merely because he could not defend himself against being beaten.

      He was exhausted by the futility of saving a few while the many still suffered. He was weary of this back-door subterfuge meant to waken his peers to the desperate plight of those they would call the “solid English citizenry.”

      But mostly, Christian was angry. How could his fellow peers be so blind, so damnably selfish, so fearful of the masses that they would be foolish enough to incite them to insurrection?

      His peers. Idiots! Jackals! The whole bloody lot of them! Christian slammed a fist against the tabletop, jarring the small lidded crystal bowl holding his supply of ink. All they cared about was the cut of their coats, the latest gossip, and clinging to their supposed superiority with all their might.

      When Christian went into Society he did it to hold up a looking glass to their foibles, showing them with his own overdressed, overly impressed-with-himself posture the folly of worshiping such cultivated shallowness and hoping they would

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