But there she’d stood, wearing little more than a shift, and that coming undone, and her hair tumbling loose while she waved her arms about, and other parts of her body moved along with them.
He’d seen Cairo’s dancing girls. Even in public, fully dressed, they moved suggestively. At private parties, he’d watched them go well beyond that, baring their breasts and bellies sometimes, or dancing in nothing more than a fringe or a sash. In spite of what those amazingly limber bodies could do, he’d kept his head.
Olivia had stood before him, angry, not trying to entice him. She’d been fully covered, technically—and he’d lost his mind.
If Nichols had not come to the door. . .
“What time is it?” he said. What day was it? Was he dreaming, still?
“Half past six o’clock,” she said.
“In the morning?”
Her smile was dazzling, dangerous. “If we leave now, we can reach York by sundown.”
“Leave?” he said. “Now?”
“We’ll easily beat the Royal Mail to York,” she said.
“I’ve had three hours’ sleep,” he said. “What is the matter with you?”
“I should like to reach Gorewood as soon as possible,” she said. “The sooner we get there, the sooner we can complete our mission and the sooner you can go back to Egypt.” She eyed him up and down. “You don’t seem to be ready.”
“Of course I’m not ready!”
Another dazzling smile. “Well, then, you’ll get to York when you get there, I daresay.”
She turned and walked away.
He stood in the doorway, watching in disbelief as she sauntered down the corridor, hips swaying.
He backed into the room and closed the door.
A moment later, the door opened.
“I know what this is,” he said. “It’s revenge.”
“Sir?”
Nichols entered, carrying a tray. “I noticed that the ladies were preparing to depart,” he said. “I thought you’d want your coffee.”
Chapter 8
York
That evening
As a boy, Lisle had once watched the mail coach set out at sunset from the York Tavern in St. Helen’s Square.
He doubted Olivia had seen it today. She and her coven might have arrived in time, but they would travel only as far as the George in Coney Street. It was a large old hostelry whose quaint gabled and plastered exterior, with its curious figures, dated to the sixteenth century.
When Lisle arrived, night had fallen, and the Royal Mail was long gone. He’d traveled more than a hundred miles this day. He’d ridden hard, trying not to think about last night, and he’d kept the stops short for the same reason. At present he ought to be too tired and hungry to think, but he had a conscience, and it wouldn’t stay quiet in the back of his mind.
He trudged up the stairs and along the corridor. He heard the hurried footsteps, but it was a distant awareness.
Olivia came around the corner so quickly and unexpectedly that he barely had time to brace himself before she crashed into him. As it was, he swayed a little at the impact, but his arms promptly came up and went around her to stop her from toppling.
“I knew you’d miss me,” he said.
It wasn’t the wisest thing to say and, in light of what had happened last night, not letting go of her immediately wasn’t the wisest thing to do. But he was a man before he was a wise man, and he did what a man did when a bundle of frothy femininity fell into his arms.
She was dressed in mile upon mile of some heavy, silky stuff and lace and ruffles—with at least six miles of material in the great, ballooning sleeves. She was dressed, that is, except for where coverage would do the most good: the milky expanse of shoulder and bosom abundantly on display. She was warm and shapely and soft, and for one giddy moment he couldn’t remember why he ought to let go of her.
She gazed up at him, her deeply blue eyes soulful. “I missed you dreadfully,” she said with a catch in her voice. “The hours passed like eons. How I bore the separation, I cannot say, but it depleted the last stores of my strength.”
She sagged. He was tired enough and the rampant femininity in his arms made him stupid enough to believe, for exactly three seconds, that she’d fainted.
Then he remembered that this was Olivia.
“I’ve been riding since early morning,” he said. “My arms are tired, along with everything else, and I’m very likely to drop you. Very likely.”
She straightened and gave him a little shove.
He let go and stepped two paces away. “Is it me,” he said, “or are you not wearing as much in the way of clothing as you used to do?”
“It’s a dinner dress,” she said.
“But you’re not at dinner,” he said. “You’re running about a public hostelry in a frenzy.”
“Because they’ve escaped,” she said. “The ladies. When I wasn’t looking, they bolted.”
“Considering the punishing drive they endured this day, I’m not surprised,” he said. “Really, Olivia, you know antiques need gentle handling.”
“They’re not antiques!” she said. “They’re two wicked women who aren’t nearly decrepit enough, and they’ve gone out roving in the night.” She waved her arms about, in that way of hers, making the soft flesh on display undulate in a highly provocative manner.
He tried to look away but he was tired, and his intestinal fortitude wasn’t up to the job.
“They took it into their heads to visit the Minster,” she said, “because they haven’t been there since the fire, and they wanted to see the crypt.”
Lisle called his mind away from the satanic flesh. He remembered that a madman had set fire to the York Minster two years ago. The wreckage had revealed a large crypt under the choir.
“They wanted to crawl about the bowels of a burnt-out cathedral,” he said. “At night. That’s mad even by your standards.”
“Not crawl about,” she said. “It isn’t like you and your tombs. They only want to have their blood curdled. A burnt-out ruin at night is irresistible. And it’s convenient—a few minutes’ walk from here. They should have returned hours ago.”
“I’ll go collect them,” he said. Curse them. He was famished. He was nearly delirious from lack of sleep. And now he must go out into the streets of York hunting for two lunatic crones.
“I’ll go,” she said. “They’re my problem, and this is my fault, for letting them pull the wool over my eyes. ‘A nice bathe and a nap, that’s all I want,’ ” She mimicked Lady Cooper. “The wicked deceivers. They knew that was what I wanted to do. I should have realized. They napped through the stages until breakfast. And again in the afternoon. They were well rested, brimful of energy. I should have realized they’d get up to something. I blame myself. I’ll take a pair of servants and hunt them down.”
“You’re not going into a burnt-out church in the middle of the night without me,” he said. “I’m used to crawling about tombs and temples in the dark. You’re not.”
“You need a bath,” she said. “You smell like a stable yard.”
“I want to bathe in peace,” he said. “I want to eat my dinner in peace. I should like a night’s uninterrupted sleep. I can’t do any of those things while that pair’s out running loose.”
“I’m perfectly capable—”
“I know, I know,” he said. “We’ll go together—but you have to change into sensible clothes.”
“There isn’t time!”
“If they’re dead, they’ll still be dead when we get there,” he said. “If they’re merely in trouble—”
“Merely!”
“—or up to trouble, which is far more likely, I daresay they’ll survive an extra quarter hour. They’re about as delicate as wild boar.”
“Lisle.”
“You can’t crawl about the charred debris looking for corpses in that dress,” he said. “Let Bailey stuff you into something less—less—” He gestured at her exposed bosom. “Airy. But make haste. I’ll give you a quarter hour, no more. If you’re not ready, I’m going without you.”
Fifteen and a half minutes later
“Trousers,” Lisle said grimly.
She’d burst through the door in the nick of time. He was already on the pavement, ready to leave—without her. Exactly as she’d suspected.
“You told me to wear something sensible,” she said, still breathless from the mad race to get ready. “I should never be able to get into tight spaces in a dress.”
“You’re not going into any tight spaces,” he said.
“For women, most spaces are tighter these days,” she said. “In case you haven’t noticed, our fashions are a great deal wider than they used to be. Most of my sleeves are the size of butter churns. I’m sure Great-Grandmama had an easier time getting about in hoop petticoats.”
“If you would stay put and let me do the searching, you wouldn’t have to squeeze yourself into garments that were never designed to accommodate a woman’s shape.”
“I see,” she said. “You think my bottom’s too big.”
“That isn’t what I said,” he said. “You’re not shaped like a man. No one would ever mistake you for one. Gad, I don’t have time for this nonsense.”
He turned away and started walking.
Olivia went with him.
He was in a horrible mood, and that, she knew, was at least partly thanks to her. She’d woken him at a cruel hour after a long and wearying day and night . . . after an exceedingly emotional episode . . . which she didn’t want to think about. She’d been angry with him, and upset in ways she could scarcely explain even to herself.
What she’d done this morning was the equivalent of slapping him and running away. Very mature. But she was at a loss—a rare state for her—and she hated it.
“Passing for a man isn’t the point,” she said. “I dressed for comfort and convenience. You said to wear something sensible, and women’s garments simply aren’t sensible. They grow less so every year. Furthermore, a reasonable man would have understood that it’s impossible for a woman to change out of one dress into another in a quarter hour. It would serve you right if I’d come down in my shift.”
“It isn’t as though I haven’t already seen you in your shift,” he said.
“If you’re referring to last night, that was my nightdress,” she said. And don’t let’s talk about last night. I’m not ready.
“It looked like a shift to me.”
“You can’t have seen very many, if you can’t tell the difference.”
“I’m a man,” he said. “We don’t go in for the fine details of women’s dress. We notice how much or how little they’re wearing. I’ve noticed that you seem to wear very little.”
“Compared to what?” she said. “Egyptian women? They seem to go to extremes. Either they’re completely covered except for their eyes, or they’re dancing about wearing a few small bells. The point is—”
“This way,” he said, and turned into St. Helen’s Square.
The square, broader than Coney Street, wasn’t as gloomy.
As they passed the York Tavern, she looked up. The dark buildings were silhouetted against a sky lit by a great blur of stars.
In another moment they’d crossed the square. They turned briefly into Blake Street, then into Stonegate, another narrow York lane.
“The point is,” she said, “women ought to be allowed to wear trousers in cases like this.”
“The point is,” he said, “women ought not to be getting into situations requiring them to wear trousers.”
“Don’t be stuffy. Aunt Daphne wears them.”
“In Egypt,” he said. “Where women do wear a sort of trouserlike attire. But they’re not as form fitting, and they wear layers of other garments over them. Were you to wear those trousers in Cairo, you’d be arrested for public lewdness and flogged.”
“They are a bit tight, I’ll admit,” she said. “I don’t know how men can abide them. They do chafe in a sensitive area.”
“Do not talk about your sensitive areas,” he said.
“I have to talk about something,” she said. “One of us must attempt to lighten the heavy gloom of your company.”
“Yes, well . . .” He stopped walking. “Oh, damn. Olivia . . . about last night . . . when you came to my door . . .”
She stopped, too, her heart racing.
“It was a mistake,” he said. “A very bad mistake, on about a hundred counts. I’m sorry.”
He was right, she told herself. It had been a terrible mistake, on so many counts. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it was. And not completely your fault. I’m sorry, too.”
He looked relieved.
She told herself she was relieved, too.
He nodded. “Good. That’s settled, then.”
“Yes.”
“Just to be clear, though: You’re still aggravating, and I don’t apologize for berating you,” he said.
“I understand,” she said. “I don’t apologize for anything I said, either.”
“Very well, then.”
They started walking again.
It was awkward. Lisle had never felt awkward in her company before. This was what came of crossing a line that shouldn’t have been crossed. He’d apologized to her, but he couldn’t apologize to Rathbourne, and he couldn’t shake off the sense of having betrayed him. He couldn’t shake off the sense of having done something irrevocable. He’d opened Pandora’s Box and now—
Her voice broke the lengthening silence. “Fifteen minutes,” she said. “Only a man would think that a reasonable amount of time.”
“You know perfectly well I was counting on you not to do it,” he said.
“And you know perfectly well that I’d do it or die trying,” she said. “We had a bit of a panic at first. Bailey couldn’t find my trousers and I thought we’d have to take Nichols’s.”
He looked at her. She didn’t look anything like a boy. Or did she? Was that his walk she was imitating?
“You really are ridiculous,” he said.
“Oh, I understood how difficult it would be,” she said, “but it was the first thing that leapt to my mind when we couldn’t find these clothes. Then, while Bailey was tearing off my dress and petticoats and squeezing me into my trousers, I was picturing what would have happened.”
He was picturing her maid tearing off her clothes and squeezing Olivia into narrow trousers.
Pandora’s Box.
Still, there was no harm in thinking. He was a man. Men always had lewd thoughts. It was perfectly natural and normal.
“He would make a fuss,” Olivia continued, “and I would have to distract him, while Bailey knocked him unconscious. Then we’d take the trousers. Then, after I’d gone, Bailey would bind up his wounds and tell him how sorry she was, and how it couldn’t be helped.”
“Why couldn’t you stay quietly in London and write dramas for the stage?” he said.
“Lisle, use your head,” she said. “If I had the least talent for staying quietly, I should have quietly stuck to the first gentleman I became engaged to and got married and had children and disappeared into that anonymous demi-existence other women disappear into.”
She began to wave her arms about. “Why must women stay quietly? Why must we be little moons, each of us stuck in our little orbit, revolving around a planet that is some man? Why can’t we be other planets? Why must we be moons?”
“Speaking astronomically,” he said, “those other planets all orbit about the sun.”
“Must you always be so literal??
?? she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m horribly literal and you’re appallingly imaginative. For instance, I see a cathedral rising behind some buildings ahead. What do you see?”
She looked to the end of Stonegate, where a black tower rose into the night sky.
“I see a ghostly ruin, looming through a narrow alley, a great black hulk against a star-studded night sky.”
“I’m not sure it’s a ruin,” he said. “But we’ll soon see.”
A few more steps brought them to the end of Stonegate. They crossed High Petergate, passed into an alley, and entered the darkened grounds of the ghostly ruin—or, depending on one’s point of view—the slightly burned York Minster.
Lisle supposed that the faint flickering light behind a stained-glass window would add to Olivia’s “ghostly” view of the place. To him it was merely a sign of life.
“Looks like somebody’s home,” he said. “All the same, I’d rather not stumble about getting in.” From a pocket of his great coat he took out his tinder box and a short candle.
“I’ve got lucifers,” she said.
He shook his head. “Filthy, vile-smelling things.” He took a moment to employ the tinderbox and light his stumpy candle.
“They are disgusting,” she said. “But one never knows when they’ll prove useful.”
“They’re useful to those who’re accustomed to having their servants make all the fires,” he said. “Any competent fellow can strike a spark as easily and quickly—and more safely—with a tinderbox.”
“Most people won’t practice ten thousand times, on purpose, just to prove they can do something,” she said.
“I did not practice ten— Gad, why do I let you bait me? Is it too much to ask you to stay close? We don’t know how much clearing out they’ve done.”
“Just because I’ve squeezed my gigantic bottom into men’s trousers, you needn’t assume my brains have shrunk to masculine size,” she said. “I’m perfectly aware that you’re the one holding the only candle, and I’m not longing to trip over stray bits of cathedral. It’s shockingly dark and quiet, isn’t it? London’s as busy at night as it is in the daytime. And better lit. But it’s perfectly in keeping: medieval church, medieval darkness, and tomblike silence.”