Octavius told Dex what had happened with Rumpole, but he didn’t tell him about Miss Toogood. Their meeting seemed too momentous, or perhaps too improbable. He didn’t believe in love at first sight, but that’s what it felt like: love at first sight.
Had he gone mad?
He pondered that question while Dex helped extricate him from the maidservant’s clothes. “These things as uncomfortable as they look?” Dex asked, examining the stays dubiously.
“They’re deuced unpleasant.” But the worst thing about dressing as a woman wasn’t the stays, it was the fact that women didn’t wear drawers. He felt horribly exposed with air wafting around his genitals. “Turn your back,” he told Dex, then stripped out of his chemise and wished himself into his own body. Magic crawled up and down his bones and prickled over his skin.
“What’re you going to do with these things?” Dex asked, tossing the stays onto the pile of discarded garments. “Burn them?”
“Keep them,” Octavius said. His voice was his own and his body was his own, and it was such a relief that he just stood there for a moment and gave thanks that he was himself again.
“Why?” Dex asked. “You going back to Rumpole’s?”
“Maybe.” Octavius rummaged through the clothes on the bed and found his linen drawers.
“You think he needs another lesson?”
“No.” Octavius stepped into the drawers and gave thanks for them, too. Lord, but it felt good to have his nether regions covered.
“What, then?”
Octavius hesitated. Did he really want to discuss this with his cousin? But Dex was looking at him expectantly, so Octavius shrugged and said, “I met a governess.”
“A governess?”
Octavius told him about his encounter with Miss Toogood. “I’d like to see her again.” Because either he’d gone completely mad or he was in love, and he needed to find out which it was.
Dex gave a knowing smirk. “A prime article, is she?”
Octavius considered this for a moment, then shook his head. Miss Toogood wasn’t pretty. She wasn’t really even beautiful, not with that unfashionable hair. “She has a great deal of countenance.”
Dex lost his smirk. “Countenance?”
Octavius fished his shirt out of the pile of clothes on Dex’s bed. “She’s interesting.”
“Interesting?” Dex said, a scoffing note in his voice. “You don’t know a single thing about her. You’ve exchanged all of a dozen words!”
Octavius might only have exchanged a dozen words with Miss Toogood, but he thought he had a fairly accurate estimation of her character. She was a governess; therefore she was intelligent. She hadn’t fallen into the vapors when she’d seen the blood on his apron, so she was calm and cool-headed. She’d asked if he needed help, even though he was only a maidservant, so she was compassionate. But he didn’t tell Dex that; he merely shrugged again and said, “That’s why I want to meet her properly.”
Dex picked up the chemise, folded it roughly, then stood and watched while Octavius shrugged into his shirt. “Are you certain about this, Otto? Just stop and think for a moment. She’s only a governess and your father’s a marquis—”
“Quintus has to marry well,” Octavius said. “I don’t. And anyway, she’s well born. I could tell from her voice.”
Octavius pulled on his stockings and breeches. Making Miss Toogood’s acquaintance was going to be difficult. He didn’t want to meet her as a maidservant, he wanted to meet her as a man, but he had no reason to visit Baron Rumpole’s house, let alone speak with a governess.
That problem occupied his brain while he finished dressing. Dex gave him a fresh neckcloth and helped him into his tailcoat and top boots, then he said, “If you’re really going to pursue this, Newingham might be able to help.”
“Newingham?” Octavius was unable to think how Viscount Newingham could possibly be of any assistance. “How?”
“His sister was Rumpole’s second wife. The baron’s daughters are his nieces.”
“They are?”
“As their uncle, he can invite the girls and their governess out to Richmond Park for a picnic,” Dex said.
And if Octavius were at Richmond Park at the same time, he could meet Miss Toogood as himself. “You’re a genius,” he told his cousin.
“I know,” Dex said.
Octavius strode down Clarges Street, and as he strode an idea took shape in his mind. Why settle for a picnic in Richmond when there were other options? He’d ask Newingham to invite the girls and their governess to Newingham’s estate in Wiltshire for a fortnight. And Octavius would invite himself along, too. He’d have fourteen days in Miss Toogood’s company. Time enough to decide whether he was madly in love or just mad.
He ran up the steps to Newingham’s door two at a time, bursting with energy, but suffered a setback when he found the viscount in his study. Newingham might have been at school with Octavius, he might be a good friend, a very good friend, but that didn’t mean that he was willing to help.
“Why not?” Octavius demanded.
“Because I can’t stand Rumpole and I make a point of having as little to do with him as I can.”
“But—”
“I pay the girls a visit once every quarter,” Newingham told him. “No more, no less.”
“But—”
“And I’ve already paid this quarter’s visit.”
“But they’re your nieces,” Octavius said. “And I really must meet their governess again.”
“That brown-haired dab? Why?”
“She’s not brown-haired.”
“They have a new one? Can’t say I’m surprised. The governesses never seem to last long.”
“Why not?”
Newingham shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care.”
Octavius could think of a reason why governesses left Baron Rumpole’s household so frequently and it alarmed him.
What if he hadn’t taught the baron enough of a lesson?
“Come on, Bunny,” he said. “Be a good sport.”
“No,” Newingham said. “And that’s Lord Newingham to you.”
Octavius left before he could lose his temper. Coming to cuffs with Newingham wouldn’t further his ends, and anyway, he knew exactly what carrot to dangle in front of the viscount’s disobliging nose.
If there was one thing Newingham loved it was horses. In particular, blood bays. But the best team of blood bays in London belonged to Francis Pruitt, from whom Newingham had once stolen a mistress. Octavius knew for a fact that Newingham had offered to buy the horses—had offered Pruitt twice what the man had paid for them—but Pruitt had refused, because he was almost as much of a prick as Baron Rumpole was and he enjoyed flaunting those bays in front of his rival.
But if there was bad blood between Newingham and Pruitt, there was no bad blood between Octavius and Pruitt, so he visited Francis Pruitt that evening as the lamplighters were doing their rounds and came away considerably lighter in the pocket but the possessor of the best team of blood bays in London. And then he had the pleasure of driving those same blood bays in Hyde Park the following morning and encountering Viscount Newingham.
Newingham’s mouth literally dropped open. “Aren’t those Pruitt’s horses?”
“They’re mine now,” Octavius said, lifting the reins preparatory to driving onwards.
“Wait, Otto!”
“That would be Lord Octavius to you,” Octavius said loftily, and flicked the reins and drove off.
An hour later, Newingham was on his doorstep. “How much do you want for them?”
“They’re not for sale,” Octavius informed him.
Two hours after that, Octavius strolled around to Newingham’s.
“You’ve changed your mind?” the viscount said eagerly.
“No,” Octavius said. “Unless . . . you’ve changed yours?”
Newingham eyed him for a long moment. He looked as if he wanted to gnash his teeth. “All right,” he said with bad grace. “I’ll invite the girls to my seat.”
“As soon as possible. This month.”
Newingham grumbled, but only halfheartedly. He sat down at his desk and scrawled a note and sent it around to Baron Rumpole with a footman. After that, Octavius took the viscount to the stables where he’d quartered the blood bays and let Newingham run his hands covetously over them. They were magnificent beasts.
Their return to Newingham’s coincided with the return of the footman, bearing a missive from Baron Rumpole. “Aha!” Newingham said triumphantly, taking the note into his study and breaking the seal. His face fell as he read. “The Rumpoles are leaving town tomorrow,” he said, handing the sheet of paper to Octavius.
Octavius read swiftly. Baron Rumpole thanked Newingham for his invitation, but said that his family would summer at his estate in Hampshire, as was their custom. He went on to point out that Newingham’s household was a bachelor one and not suited for visits from schoolgirls.
“There’s nothing to be done,” Newingham said, crossing to the decanters arrayed on the sideboard.
Octavius read the note a second time. Was this an impasse? No. It might feel like an impasse, but he refused to let it be one.
“Brandy?” Newingham asked. “Madeira?”
Octavius didn’t reply. He was thinking.
Newingham sprawled in a wingbacked leather armchair, glass in hand. “So, about those bays—”
“Write back and invite yourself to Hampshire,” Octavius said.
“What?”
“Tell Rumpole that instead of the girls visiting you, you’ll visit them in Hampshire. Tell him you’re going into Wiltshire next week and you’ll spend a few days at Rumpole Hall en route. And tell him you’ll be bringing a friend with you.”
“Dash it, Otto, I can’t do that! It’s damnably rude.”
“Do you want those bays or not?”
Newingham did gnash his teeth, then. “All right,” he said crossly. “I’ll try. But he’ll say no, I’m certain of it.”
“Word it so that he can’t refuse.”
The viscount grumbled, but obeyed. It took half an hour and three glasses of brandy, but eventually he produced the perfect letter. In a stroke of genius, he even credited Rumpole with the idea of a visit to Hampshire and thanked the baron in advance for his hospitality. “Now, about those bays,” he said, when the letter had been signed, sealed, and sent round to Brook Street.
“They’re yours, once we’re in Hampshire.”
An hour later, Baron Rumpole’s reply came. He said, grudgingly, that he would be pleased to offer hospitality to the viscount and his friend for a night.
Octavius laughed when he saw it. “A week,” he said. ‘We’re staying a whole week, Bunny—or you don’t get those bays.”
Newingham curled his upper lip at him, but made no protest.
“And I think . . .” Octavius leaned back in his chair, sipped his brandy, and swung one foot to and fro. “I think . . . one of my cousins will come with us. Or perhaps my brother.”
“What?” Newingham said. “Why?”
Because Octavius wanted to make certain that Rumpole had learned his lesson—and for that, he needed someone to help him dress in female clothes. He shrugged. “Because.”
“Dash it, Otto! I can’t be so rude as to bring two guests.”
“You want those blood bays? In fact . . .” He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. “Would you like to drive them in Hyde Park right now? The Grand Strut’s about to start.”
Newingham stopped protesting. He climbed to his feet with alacrity.
That evening, Octavius headed for his brother’s house in Curzon Street, where he found not only Quintus, but also Ned and Dex.
He expected a barrage of questions about his foray into Rumpole’s house, but they didn’t come. Ned was fully occupied ribbing Dex.
Octavius tried to follow Ned’s jokes and Dex’s increasingly prickly responses while he poured himself a glass of claret, but they made little sense. He sat down beside Ned on one of the sofas—the philistine had his boots on the rosewood sofa table again—and said, when his cousin paused to quaff a mouthful of wine, “What’s happened?”
“Dex and his latest widow have parted ways,” Ned informed him.
There was nothing unusual about that. Dex was a rake. He liked aristocratic young widows and they liked him. He bounced from bed to bed, a few weeks here, a few months there—an arrangement that left both Dex and the widows happy.
Except that Dex didn’t look happy tonight. He was scowling into his wine.
“What of it?” Octavius said, and then: “Get your feet off the damned table.”
Ned stayed exactly as he was, except that he grinned more widely. “Not your house, Otto. Not your table.”
Octavius resisted the urge to cuff his cousin around the ears. “What of it?” he asked again.
Ned glanced at Dex and then leaned close. “The widow has put it about that Dex has vigor but no finesse.”
Octavius uttered an astonished laugh.
Dex noticed. “It’s not funny,” he said, with a flare of temper.
Octavius held up a placatory hand. “Sorry.”
He sipped his claret. Vigor but no finesse? The widow had said that about Dex, in public?
He winced. Ouch.
Octavius drank some more claret and spared Dex a moment’s sympathy—then he set thought of his cousin aside, because Miss Toogood was more important than Dex right now. Not merely because he might be in love with her, but because she resided in Baron Rumpole’s household and the baron was a danger to women.
Octavius put his glass down and leaned forward. “I’m going into Hampshire shortly. I need one of you to come with me.” And then he explained about Baron Rumpole and the risk he posed to governesses.