“Aye.”
“And you decided to stop them.”
What next emerged from his mouth wouldn’t show him in the best light, but it was the truth, so it must be spoken. “I didn’t.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why is that?”
Since he was being honest… “I thought it would serve you right.”
She gasped. “You…you knave!”
Sebastian took the appellation in stride. He likely deserved it. “Archie is a good friend, but you Windermeres—generally speaking—could stand to have your flaunting of Society’s conventions checked every so often. In fact…” If he was proceeding with honesty, he might as well out with it. “I decided to stay around for the performance, just to see it in person.”
She let that settle into the air before saying, at last, “But it was you, Ravensworth.Youexposed me.” She wasn’t relenting on the point. “If I was about to receive what was coming to me, why didyouinterfere?”
A fair question—and the one that struck to the heart of the matter. “It was what they said next.” Sebastian still remembered how the blood had turned to ice in his veins. “Now, explain again how we undress her?”
As the words sank in, the outraged expression on Delilah’s face froze, and she paled. “Pardon?”
Sebastian didn’t need to repeat the words. “They decided that since you would be wearing a robe, it would be easy.” He would leave it at that.
“Toundressme?” she asked, as if for confirmation of what her ears surely couldn’t be hearing.
“Yes.”
“On the stage?”
“Yes.”
“In front of an audience?”
“Yes.”
A slow beat of time ticked by as all the facts came together in Delilah’s mind. “Those scoundrels!” Her face brightened with a sudden idea. “Dorie claims to have some Romani blood. Perhaps she can be convinced to invoke a curse upon their heads and all their destined-to-be perfidious offspring.”
“No need,” said Sebastian. “I handled it.”
Delilah went stone still. “You…youhandled it.”
“Once I decided that the only way anyone would be undressing you was over my dead body, it was easy to come up with a plan of my own.”
Sudden realization flew across Delilah’s face. “To expose me before they could.”
“Simple and effective.”
She exhaled a gusty, annoyed breath. “It didn’t occur to you to inform me of the plot and let me manage it?”
He’d expected that question. “I did try to find you, Delilah.”
Another realization passed behind her eyes. She really did have the most expressive face. “Ah.”
“Ah?”
“I was a bit nervous about my first real performance,” she began sheepishly. “So, I locked myself in the privy for three hours.”
“Surely, there were other ways to achieve privacy—less odiferous ones.” It had to be said.
“Not at a boys’ school when you’re a woman pretending to be a boy pretending to be a girl.”
