Netta peeled off the wax nose and warts and tossed them onto her dressing table.
“Is something the matter?” Cerise asked. She belted her silk wrapper about her trim waist and sat next to Netta at a matching dressing table.
Netta slathered face cream over her skin and wiped her face paint off with a small cloth. “No. Why do you ask?” Brown streaks remained on her cheek and she scrubbed at them.
“Because you throw your costume at the floor like it is on fire.” Cerise bobbed her chin at Netta’s dressing table. “You toss your wax bits at the mirror in disgust. You”—Cerise jabbed her index finger at Netta—“are in a fine temper.”
Netta stared at her reflection. She’d removed the jacket and padding from her costume and sat slumped in her chair in her breeches and chemisette. Her bare shoulders were tense blocks, her lips a twisted scowl.
Her friend had a point.
She flipped the chair sideways to face Cerise and straddled it, hooking her elbows over the back. “Do you ever feel discontent, even when life has finally dealt you a good hand?”
Cerise leaned towards the mirror and wiped the kohl from her eyes. “That is not enough information for me to respond to. Tell me what zis ‘good hand’ is and then I will tell you whether you should feel happy or not.”
Netta sighed. There her friend went, always wanting a full accounting of facts before making any decisions. Her logic could be quite annoying at times.
“There’s a man I’ve agreed to help recover some of his property.” She pondered how much she should reveal. She trusted Cerise, but had learned to keep information closely guarded. “I’m to act as a lure, attracting another man to place that property up as a stake for a game.”
Cerise pursed her full lips. “With you as the other stake?”
Netta nodded. “Somehow I am supposed to intrigue this man enough to gamble away thousands of pounds.” She’d never played the seductress before. She enjoyed teasing John, but turning her wiles on another man could prove challenging. She dropped her chin to her crossed arms and sighed.
“And if you lose? Will you let zis man claim you as his prize?”
“Of course not. And my employer has the annoying habit of never losing. But…”
“But what?”
Netta scratched the toe of her boot along the seam of a floorboard. “The man I’m working for. I’m growing rather fond of him. I wonder if I should tell him who I truly am. Stop with the lies.” Well, some of them. Others would have to remain.
Cerise stood and leaned against her dressing table. “Do you intend to have a relationship with zis man where honesty would be important?”
The backs of Netta’s eyes burned. “No. We have no future.”
“Then why tell him?” A wrinkle creased Cerise’s forehead. “We are trained in deception here. And façades provide protection to us women. Do not go making trouble for yourself where none is needed.”
“Of course, you’re right.” Netta chewed on her bottom lip. She gave her friend a half-hearted smile and repeated back one of Cerise’s favorite sayings. “Men are but useful instruments; they are never our friends.”
“Truly, that wounds me.”
Netta whipped her head around, her heart clogging her throat at the sight of John filling the doorway.
He pressed a hand dramatically to his chest. “Such a bloodless sentiment about men is enough to give me the wrong impression of the fairer sex.”
Cerise unfolded from her chair. “And you are?” She stood so half of her body blocked Netta from John.
Netta grabbed the belt of her friend’s wrapper and tugged her back. “It’s all right. He’s…a friend.”
John slowly arched an eyebrow, and every dirty thing they’d done together flashed through her mind.
She flushed. Truly, she was an experienced woman. She should be past such embarrassments. She cleared her throat. “Cerise, this is John, Earl of Summerset. Summerset, this is Miss Cerise DuBois.” She cocked her head. “Did Wilberforce finally betray me?”
There was a sharp inhale of air from the hall.
John pushed the door wider, revealing a flinty-eyed Wilberforce.
He sniffed. “I am not in the habit of revealing confidences, miss.”
