“Better,” I managed, sneaking another glance. “You look ... clean.”
“Thank you,” he said with a laugh. “Shaving wasn’t as painful as I thought it would be. I might get a few stares, but I think I am healing nicely.”
“Perhaps you will blend in after all.”
“Believe it or not, I am capable.” He gave me his hand and a playful look, then helped me inside the waiting carriage. Then he offered Liza a hand, and she scooted in after.
“I could hardly believe it when I woke up this morning to Charlie fully dressed and shaved and ready to repent of his wrongdoings. What did you do to get him so excited about your list?” She narrowed her eyes as Mr. Winston entered the carriage.
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” I said.
“He’s kept watch over your painting like a mother to her pups.”
I noticed a long cylinder in the carriage. My painting? Why was my painting here? No one had said anything about needing it for tonight.
“Are you nervous?” Liza asked, moving closer.
Mr. Winston took his seat opposite us and placed a hand upon the cylinder casing.
My hands fidgeted with the fingers of my gloves. I had the distinct impression that, like Ben and our morning in the grove, the most important details of this outing were being kept from me. “Why should I be nervous?”
A servant closed the carriage door, and Mr. Winston knocked twice on the roof before stretching out his back against the taupe-cushioned wall. “That’s the spirit. We shall be in and out before anyone notices, and then we can do whatever we please.”
I quirked a brow, and Liza furrowed hers. Whatever Mr. Winston had planned, he’d done so alone. “I do not understand. Why are you bringing my painting to the opera?”
I could barely make out his half smile through the dim light. “I am lending it to the opera house.”
I sat up painfully straight as the air in the carriage grew as stale as a stable.
“I did not know the opera house took amateur pieces on loan,” Liza mused, tilting her head. “Whom did you speak to?”
“They haveneversought amateur pieces,” I said. If there was one thing about the opera house I appreciated, it was her artwork.
Mr. Winston looked questioningly between us, neither answering Liza’s question nor accepting blame for leading us into a proverbial lion’s den.
“I made you a promise,” he said, turning toward me. “And after reviewing your list, I thought this item was one you’d have the most difficulty completing on your own. You cannot market yourself as a working artist, nor can you gift a work of art and expect the recipient to hang it in public. My plan is the best you’ve got.”
I crossed my arms. “What exactlyisyour plan?”
“If I tell you now, neither of you will go through with it. But I assure you, we will be perfectly invisible in the crush. No harm shall come to either of you. And by the end of the night, Miss Newbury will have a third item crossed off her list.”
Liza reared back. “Third? What have I missed?”
My eyes flicked to Mr. Winston, who mouthed “Sorry” with a feigned grimace and sat back, all too happy to have vindicated himself for a time. He knew we could not tell Lizathosedetails either.
I cleared my throat, avoiding her gaze, and with feigned nonchalance said, “Numbers one and five on my list.”
She waited, watching me with growing impatience. “Which are?”
I wanted to swipe that happy look right off Mr. Winston’s face. I forced a laugh and waved my hand carelessly in the air. “For number five, I followed Benjamin on some silly adventure, and the other is of such little consequence, really. So silly. I went for a quick swim in the pond.”
“Where she nearly drowned,” Mr. Winston added. “Isaved her life.”
I shot him an exasperated look. Every attempt on his part to clear his name indicted me.
Liza’s chest rose and fell, her jaw dropped as she stared at her cousin, and she went pale.
“You didwhat?”
