“And if he sees you?” Jane’s voice intensified, not with reproach, but with fear disguised as practicality. “If someone recognizes you, what will you do then?”
“They will not,” Elise replied, though she was not as certain as she wished to sound. “Not if you help me.”
Jane’s gaze narrowed. “Help you? How?”
Elise held up a plain brown gown, coarser than anything she would ordinarily wear, and a white apron with the stains half-laundered but never quite erased.
Jane stared. “Surely you are not serious?”
“I am always serious,” Elise said, with the faintest edge of humour. “It is one of my most tiresome qualities.”
Jane crossed her arms. “You intend to dress as a barmaid? It is a foolish notion—and perilous.”
“I have done so before,” Elise said evenly.
Jane’s eyes widened. “Before?”
Elise’s mouth tightened, remembering nights of whispered messages and Charles’s careful, troubled instruction. “In the past, when Charles was alive, there were occasions when… information did not come neatly sealed in letters.”
Jane looked at her for a long moment, then very slowly nodded, as if placing Elise into a category she had always suspected existed but had never been forced to define.
“You mean to go alone?” she asked at last.
Elise met her gaze. “You cannot come. The risk of discovery is too high. You are more distinctive, and someone must watch over the girls.”
Jane released a quiet breath.
“I am known as Mrs. Larkin,” Elise said, “not as a girl who carries ale.”
Jane shook her head, still unconvinced. “A woman cannot simply put on an apron and become invisible.”
Elise lifted the gown and held it against herself. “Men will see what they expect. The tavern keeper will see help as before. The sailors will see a pair of hands. If any man sees more than that?—”
Jane’s voice cut in. “—then you will be in danger.”
“Yes,” Elise said plainly.
Jane’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “You should not go.”
Elise’s own temper—usually disciplined, usually restrained—rose for a moment like a wave. “What would you have me do? Sit quietly and wait for danger to come to my door? Wait until Blake or I draw someone to Belair House and then discover too late that I might have prevented it?”
Jane flinched, but Elise knew the reaction was not at her anger, but at its truth. After a moment the housekeeper said softly, “You believe it is already happening, do you not?”
“I believe,” Elise said, forcing her voice back to steadiness, “that something has been set in motion, and I would rather meet it with open eyes than with blinds drawn.”
Jane’s shoulders sagged slightly. “Very well.”
Elise blinked. “Very well?”
Jane pointed toward the gown. “If you insist on doing something reckless, you will at least do it competently. Put that on, and let me adjust your hair.”
Elise’s breath left her in something like relief. Jane might scold and argue, but she did not abandon one.
They moved to Elise’s chamber. Jane shut the door, lit a single candle, and turned Elise toward the mirror as if preparing her for battle rather than subterfuge.
“You cannot go with your hair like that,” Jane muttered, tugging at Elise’s neat arrangement. “You look like a headmistress about to inspect slates.”
“That is precisely what I am,” Elise protested.
