Page 6 of The Seduction of Viscount Vice

“Yes. I’m going to pose again as a footman, this time at Lord and Lady Castlereagh’s soiree. The very cream of society will be there, and I want to hear the gossip about the Midsummer Night’s ball at Fallen. What people liked, didn’t like, what they are envious about, wouldn’t go near, that sort of thing.”

Her employer’s forehead creased. “Breeches again? Ugh. That is dangerous, Mairi. The home of the Foreign Secretary and his very proper Almack’s patroness wife is not a place you want to be caught. I cannot pay to free you from prison if you are.”

“I won’t get caught. This will be much easier than getting into Fallen. The Castlereaghs hire temporary staff and make them wear a very plain uniform. Besides, I won’t stay long. Just until I get the information I need to finalize plans for the grand opening of Worldly. That I will take the lead in.”

Yvette shrugged. “Perhaps, chère, perhaps. You certainly did quite well at Fallen. It’s just such a pity you are so lacking in curves. Men, they love them well.”

Shame burned, but apart from stuffing padding into her stays, there wasn’t much she could do about her lackluster front. “I will talk to you tomorrow morning.”

Dashing back to her sparsely furnished chamber, Mairi gave herself a swift sponge bath, then began the process of transforming into a footman. Binding her breasts with a long length of linen was an easy, if uncomfortably hot and sticky task. A crisp white shirt, waistcoat, black jacket, and white cravat followed. Gray breeches, stockings, and heeled shoes with silver buckles completed her uniform. Then came the difficult part—taming her hair into a tight coiled braid to fit under an old-fashioned white wig. Her long black curls were about the only part of herself she loved, so she refused to cut them as Yvette often suggested. Last of all, she kohl-penciled her temples to look like short side-whiskers and thickened her eyebrows.

“Not bad,” she said softly, doing a slow turn in front of the looking glass.

There was something altogether magical about putting on a costume and becoming somebody else. It was so…liberating. Like all the bad could be put aside, all the mistakes and failures, and she could strut out into the night as someone with a wonderful life of excitement and happiness ahead. This was freedom. Not trapped and stifled in harsh society as a lady, or in a corner with thread and needle mending costumes. Being as bold and wicked as her imagination dared, anytime, at any place.

Perhaps that is how Iain feels when he does his performances.

The unbidden thought lodged in her head, and she scowled at the looking glass. Iain had overseen that magnificent event last night; he was responsible for all the shows at Fallen. Not only were they pleasure club rivals, but production rivals as well. The thought was aggravating. And nerve-wracking. “I am not thinking about Iain tonight…No, Vice, damn it, his name is Vice. I am a professional with a job to do. I am Murray the footman, and that is that.”

Poking her tongue out at her reflection, Mairi straightened her jacket, smoothed her cravat, and pulled her shoulders back. If she succeeded tonight, Yvette would surely agree to a lead role in the grand opening. Then she could turn her back on thimbles and hems and reddened eyes and swollen, aching fingers forever.

She could not—would not—fail.

…

“Goddamned English torture device!”

Tugging too hard on his cravat, Vice glared at his reflection in the looking glass. Usually his valet did a sterling job, but today the man had arranged the silken folds so intricately he could hardly breathe, and one fold was slightly puffier than the other. At this point, he was tempted to discard his rarely used gentleman finery and attend the Castlereagh’s soiree half-naked in his favorite short kilt, but it was always prudent to toe the line with the Foreign Secretary. Besides, he liked Robert and his rather eccentric wife, Emily, a great deal. And of course, tonight he would be doing his filial duty and escorting his mother and younger half-sister.

Usually, wearing respectable clothing and attending a soiree didn’t bother him overmuch. He could play the gentleman for one night and smile, sip champagne, converse about the weather, and ignore matchmakers with the best of them. But when Mairi MacNair had just cannonballed her way into his life again, that was an entirely different matter.

It was still difficult to grasp the fact she was alive after mourning her for so many goddamned years. When Mairi’s parents, Lord and Lady Leithbridge, had told him the news, he’d shut himself away, broken beyond repair. All that grief, regret, and self-loathing he’d felt over not defying them and storming every house in Paris until he’d fetched her back had been wasted on a scheming liar.

A fist pounding on his chamber door was his only warning before it crashed open to reveal Sin and Devil with faces like thunder.

Shit. They knew.

“Hello,” Vice said pleasantly, as he calculated the likelihood of injury should he leap from his balcony to avoid interrogation. “Something I can assist you two with?”

“I’m going to put a bullet in you,” growled Sin. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell us we had a security breach? We had to find out from Nell!”

Nell! The bloody traitor.

Vice sighed. “It was, and it wasn’t.”

“No riddles, Scot.” Devil glared at him over his spectacles in a very evil Etonian headmaster manner. “The truth about the man who had a fake uniform and wandered about Fallen. Was he from a newspaper? A do-gooder? Spying for a rival establishment?”

On another occasion the questions would have been perfectly sensible. Right now, the only thing that halted an eye roll was that his friends looked ready to commit murder. Slowly.

“No, no, and no.” Vice rubbed a hand across his jaw. “And it wasn’t a young man, it was a lady.”

“You mean,” Sin bit out, “that it was a woman dressed up as a footman?”

“No, definitely a lady.”

“Who?” barked Devil. “Who would dare?”

Vice folded his arms and tilted his head. “Mairi MacNair.”