Three Nights with a Scoundrel (Stud Club #3)(39)

“Precisely.”

She clapped her hands together. “Oh, Julian. Are we going to the theater in disguise?”

“No. Absolutely not. You’re not attending the theater at all, Lady Lily Chatwick.” He gave her a crafty wink as he backed toward the door. “A common woman is going in your place.”

He bowed. And then he was gone, leaving Lily alone with the thrill of anticipation, a full afternoon to dress, and one very interesting question. If a common woman was attending the theater tonight …

Just who would her escort be?

“Mr. James Bell. At your service, ma’am.”

When Julian returned to Harcliffe House that evening, Lily met him in the entry. He doffed his hat and made a deep bow. So deep that his rain-misted spectacles slid to the end of his nose, and when he straightened, he had to push them back up with a fingertip. An appropriately clerkish touch, he thought.

Lily clapped a hand over her laughter. “No. It isn’t you.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” He pulled a serious face. “I’m a lowly clerk, as you see. An overworked one, in desperate need of an evening’s diversion at the theater.”

There was more truth to the guise than fiction, and exposing even this much made him nervous. It was an unprecedented risk, coming straight from his offices without even changing his attire. But this was important to Lily. Over the course of their friendship, he’d heard Leo lament many times that he couldn’t coax Lily to the theater anymore. Today, for the first time in years, she’d asked to go. And she wanted to watch from the seat that would best allow her to enjoy the performance. She deserved that much. As Julian Bellamy, he could never escort Lady Lily Chatwick to the pit of Drury Lane, where she would sit front and center, brushing sleeves with working men and their mistresses. They would draw too much notice. Her reputation would suffer, at best.

But as James Bell … he just might pull this off.

He cleared his throat. “If you’d care to join me, miss, I’ve two seats reserved at Drury Lane, in the second row of the pit.”

“You don’t say.” Wonderingly, she shook her head. “I can scarcely credit the transformation. Your hair’s so tame, and those clothes …” She gestured at his buff trousers and brown coat, his simple, unadorned boots. No buttons or tassels to be found. Her gaze made the slow climb back up to his face. “Those spectacles!”

He wrinkled his nose and squinted up his eyes. “Don’t I look like a nondescript mole of a man?”

“Not at all. You’re more handsome than ever.”

He waved off the remark, stepping over the threshold and into the entrance hall.

“No, I’m serious,” she said, her eyes still laughing. “Have I never told you what a penchant I have for men wearing spectacles?”

He couldn’t answer her. For he’d just peered at her through said spectacles, and the twin discs of glass might as well have been air, for all the protection they afforded him against her appearance.

Lily looked stunning. And not in an “Oh, what a pleasant surprise” sort of way, but in a “Help, I’ve been clubbed with a mallet and am suffering visions” sort of way. She wore a diaphanous creation of peach gauze, held together with … with strands of ether, apparently, and seeded with an alarming number of brilliants and pearls. And the cut of the gown … If that squared neckline edged but a half-inch lower, Julian felt certain he—and any ogling passersby—would be treated to a tawny glimpse of areola.

The prospect left him breathless.

“That,” he finally managed to croak, “is not your plainest gown. In fact, I don’t think I have ever seen you wear a gown that so completely failed to approach the definition of plain.”

“I know,” she said. “That’s the point. All my gowns are plain. The only dresses anyone’s seen me wear for months are black or gray or dark blue. Even before I entered mourning, my tastes were modest. That’s why this is the perfect disguise.” She twisted in place, and the gown threw an audacious shimmer about the room. “It’s horrid, isn’t it? It’s been in my closet for years. I never wore it anywhere.”

“This will never work. Everyone in the theater will be staring at you.”

“They might stare at the dress, but they won’t see me in it.” She flicked open an ivory fan, obscuring the lower half of her face. The mischievous quirk of her brow drew his attention up, to the cluster of overwrought ringlets piled high atop her head and tumbling loose around her ears.

“What have you done to your hair?” he asked. “Lily, you were meant to look like a commoner, not like a common—”

“Trollop? Why not?” She raised her eyebrows coquettishly. “Surely a lowly, overworked clerk like Mr. Bell deserves a treat for himself now and then?”

Oh, no. They would not play this game. They would not.

“Go upstairs and change,” he told her.

She lowered the fan, and her face fell. “Do you know how long it took me to dress? We’d miss half the play.”

Julian bent his head and raised a hand to his brow. “Holling!” he barked.

The stout, middle-aged housekeeper took her time shuffling out—presumably to belie the fact that she’d been standing just on the other side of the door.