He sat down on a stool and looked at her stockings instead. They were of the practical sort, plain white, knitted with warmth and not style in mind. But they hung over a wooden rack, along with her petticoats, and showed the shape and outline of a feminine leg very well. He gazed at them, indulging himself in some highly provocative thoughts, until his imagina tion was stimulated beyond the point of comfort.
It wouldn't be easy remaining here. At first, when his mother had seized on the idea, he'd mocked it, but on finding that he had to make a quick escape he'd snatched at the first opportunity that presented itself-a pair of postboys from the Antlers who were more than willing to indulge in a lark for a few coins. That had taken him as far as Shelford Hall. Once here, the scheme had shown some advantages.
He was, for the moment, as safe in Callie's rooms as anywhere else. With a little care, he could come and go by the branches of the ancient yew to Dove House. He wanted to look into his suspicions regarding her fortune, and a glance at any account books he could manage to find might be illuminating. That would require some prowling about the house and offices in the wee hours, and perhaps a lock picking or two-not a harmless prospect, but it would give him something to do besides sit here and bleat to himself about the torture of sleeping a few feet away from her.
It would keep other thoughts at bay too. Thoughts about how he'd deserted her after he'd made love to her and about killing Sturgeon for any excuse he could come up with. The sort of thoughts that had kept him drinking in a gin house until he'd missed his ship sailing. He surprised himself. Usually he was more successful at such things as leaving his past and all its strings behind him.
The same old argument began to play in his mind. What was best for her against what he wanted, which was to be with her, even if it was just hiding out in her dressing room while she was engaged to another man. When he got to the part about smuggling her aboard a ship with him while they left the country for France, where he would show her conclusively that he'd lied about everything from the evil Buzot to the coach and six and the restored château-at that point, when he was wishing heartily for another bottle of gin, his unpleasant ref lections were interrupted by a soft rap on the closet door and Callie's hissed warning to him to stay concealed.
He grew still, listening to the sounds of a girlish voice begging entry to Callie's bedroom. Trev laid his ear to the door. After the thumps and creaks of entry-she did have an inconveniently creaky f loor, he noted with exasperation-he heard Lady Hermione say, "Are you feeling better? Can you let Anne make her measures? Because she'll be sewing half the night as it is, you know, to have a costume ready for you by tomorrow."
"Oh dear," Callie said, her voice muff led, "I'd forgot about the masquerade. Really, I-"
"Don't say you won't appear!" her sister said plead ingly. "Please. It will be great fun, you'll see. And Sir Thomas has had the greatest news! Lord Sidmouth himself is to come! Right here to Shelford Hall to attend the masquerade."
"Lord Sidmouth?" Callie asked in a blank voice. "Why is he to come?"
"Callie." Hermione took on the tone of a patient but prodded teacher. "He's the Lord Secretary of the Home Office," she explained, as if speaking to a dull but beloved child. "And it's the greatest honor, because he's frightfully busy with convicts and laws and the king and all that, so he almost never leaves London. I daresay he'll bring a hundred undersecre taries with him. Sir Thomas is in alt!"
"Oh," Callie said. Then she seemed to catch on to the matter. "Oh, these are his colleagues from the Home Office?"
"Yes, so you see what an honor it is. He says that it almost certainly means he'll be advanced in the next election."
"That's excellent news," Callie said. "A hundred undersecretaries."
Lady Hermione giggled. She dropped her voice confidingly, though it still came through clear enough as she moved closer to the dressing room. "Major Sturgeon is going to come as a sultan; he told me so. And here, I've just the thing to make you into a veiled sultana from a harem! See this blue and green gauze? Even Dolly agreed it would be perfect. Will wonders never cease?"
Trev moved back quickly, seeing the dressing room knob turn. He was just contemplating how fast he could open the window and leap out when Callie said in a hurried voice, "Yes, of course, that's lovely! Is Anne in your room? Let's go there and measure. It's half dusk with this weather, and the light is so much better on your side."
"You'll wear it, then?" Lady Hermione let go of the door knob with a gay laugh. "Come, it won't take a moment, and then you may go back to dreaming of how you'll arrange the cattle sheds on your new home farm. I vow, I can't think for wonder at it all. Sir Thomas has said I may fit up his town house just as I please. We'll have our own homes, and I can bring the children to visit you in the country, and…" Her naïvely happy voice faded as the outer door closed behind them.
Callie didn't speak to him or acknowledge his presence when she returned from her sister's bedchamber. Trev stayed discreetly out of sight in the dressing room, brushing up on animal husbandry in the unlikely event he should ever have reason to deliver a calf or cure the gripes, and wondering how he had allowed his life to sink to this point. He did not care for the idea of costumes of veiled harem girls and Callie playing sultana to Sturgeon's sultan. For one thing, it made him imagine her wrapped in sparkling blue gauze that grew more and more transparent the more he thought about it, until he was strongly in the mood to visit a harem himself. For another, he was going to strangle Sturgeon with his own turban.
And now Sidmouth of all people would be in the house, along with some army of undersecretaries, any one of whom might have seen Trev at his trial. Not that he wouldn't mind having a few pointed words with the Lord Secretary. He'd understood the deal to be that he'd receive a full pardon in return for putting up no defense-but when the royal pardon came down from the king's council, signed by Sidmouth, it was conditional and made an explicit point that he'd leave the country or hang. Trev had never met the Home Secretary, but he wondered if the fellow had something in for him. A bad bet, perhaps, or a fixed match that he blamed on Trev or the Rooster. Or perhaps he simply believed Trev was guilty.
It would have been gratifying to have the answer to this burning question, but confronting Sidmouth with a complaint about his pardon didn't seem the wisest course. He'd lived for a fortnight in Newgate under a sentence of death before any sort of pardon at all had come down; an experience he did not care to repeat. As a condemned felon, one got rapidly off the scaffold at the first opportunity and didn't look a gift horse in the mouth.
He sat glumly in the dimming room, propped against the wall. He couldn't even pace, because the damned f loor creaked. He heard her take supper on a tray in her room and noted that she didn't invite him to join her. She was turned against him, looking forward to starting a family with Sturgeon, which was precisely what Trev had wanted, of course. He was perfectly delighted.
Boston was too close. It would have to be Shanghai.
They spent the evening hours in mutually ignoring one another while the incessant rain rumbled in the gutters. As it neared full dark, he finally opened the dressing room door, stood for a moment without precisely looking at her, and announced to the air in general that he was going to take supper with his mother. She bade him a chilly good evening from her seat by the fire, in a tone that suggested that he need not hurry back. Trev stalked to the window. He opened the inner shutters. Even in the dark, he could see that the rain was beating against the glass in sheets. If he raised it, the window seat-not to mention himself-would be deluged.