"I applaud the self-sacrifice," he said. "Would you like me to make a third?"

"No." Chloe shook her head. "I am determined to do penance and will play backgammon all evening. Besides, Mrs. Herridge needs some time to herself and I can hold the fort for the evening. You're very dusty… shouldn't you change your boots before nuncheon?"

"Should I?" Hugo regarded his boots with a quizzical frown. "I've not come across a household where riding clothes were forbidden at any table but the dinner table. Do I offend you, my ward?"

"Not exactly," she said. "But judging from the rather pungent odor in the room, I suspect you have more than dust on your boots."

"I don't smell anything. However…" He left his perch on the desk. "I'd hate to offend that pretty little nose." He pinched it lightly as he passed… a carelessly affectionate guardian's gesture with no hint of a lover's fierce desire.

The clothes did not make her look like a boy, Chloe decided, examining herself in the mirror late that night. Nankeen trousers buttoned onto a white lawn shirt with a frilled collar. A short fitted jacket with a double row of buttons marching from the shoulder to the waist went over the shirt. Denis had even provided white stockings and a pair of flat black shoes. The shoes needed to be stuffed with paper in the toes, but apart from that ever/thing fitted very well… or at least, it seemed to. But something wasn't quite as it should be.

She frowned, turning this way and that in front of the mirror in the quiet house. Dante lay watching her through one eye while Falstaff cackled softly on his perch. The fitted jacket seemed to accentuate the swell of her breasts rather than disguise them, and her hips and backside in the trousers were much more noticeable than in skirts.

In fact, she decided, the whole effect was grossly improper. Lady Smallwood would probably fall into a dead faint from which she'd never recover, and Hugo… well, she'd discover Hugo's reaction soon enough She crammed the black velvet cap on her head, pulling the brim down over her forehead. It didn't seem to make much difference to the overall impression.

The clock on the mantelpiece struck two, and she went to the door, opening it quietly. Dante whined but was now accustomed to being left behind for long periods of the night and merely sighed and curled up into a tight ball when she slipped out into the dark corridor.

Hugo was still out and Samuel would be waiting up for him in the kitchen as usual. So long as Hugo didn't return in the next five minutes, the plan would work. She sped down the stairs, across the hall, and pushed through the swing door into the kitchen.

"Samuel, I'm going out with some friends," she said cheerfully. "Tell Hugo not to worry."

"Wh-wh-what the 'ell…?" Samuel woke from his doze with a start and blinked at the apparition half in and half out of the doorway. "What's that you say?"

"I'm going out," she said. "Tell Hugo I'll be back in a couple of hours. If you don't lock the front door, I won't wake anyone."

Before Samuel could get the blood moving sufficiently to bring him to his feet, she had gone. It took a minute for that unbelievable image to reform in his mind's eye, and when it did, he swore vigorously and ran out of the kitchen. The front door was closed but not locked. He hauled it open and was in time to see Chloe, in her outrageous costume, climbing into a hackney carriage with the help of a young man.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," Samuel muttered, closing the door again. The fat was going to be in the fire over this one. He returned to the kitchen, scratching his head, in no doubt that Chloe had her reasons for this madcap flight.

He put the kettle on the range and was making tea when he heard Hugo's step in the hall. "Still awake, Samuel?" Hugo came in. "There's no need to wait up for me, you know."

"I know, but I choose to," Samuel said. "But I'll leave you to wait up for the lass." He put a mug on the table. "There's your tea."

"Wait up for her?" Hugo inquired, alarm bells ringing in his head.

"She's up and gone out," Samuel said, returning to his seat by the fire. "About 'alf an hour ago, cool as you please she comes in 'ere an' says, 'Samuel, I'm goin' out. Tell 'Ugo I'll be back in a couple of hours… don't lock the door,' she says, so she won't wake anyone."

"Gone where, for God's sake? It's two-thirty in the morning!"

"I dunno… and dressed like she was I wouldn't want to guess." He gulped his tea and compressed his lips.

Hugo groaned. "Spit it out, Samuel. I can't bear the suspense."

"Dressed like a lad, she was… although she didn't look like no lad… bumps in all the wrong places," he added.

"What?"

"You 'eard. Got into a 'ackney with some of those lads that're always 'angin' around 'er."

"I knew she was up to something," Hugo muttered. "For some reason, I have signally failed to get her attention over this hoydenish behavior. It's high time I did, it seems to me."

"I must say, Chloe, those clothes don't seem to make you look like a boy at all," Julian said with a hiccup, his slightly glazed eyes staring at the slim figure on the seat opposite him. He grabbed the strap as the hackney swung around a corner, iron wheels rattling over the cobbles.

"I know they don't," Chloe said. "Are you all foxed?"

"Denis isn't," Frank told her with a skewed grin. "Sober as a judge, aren't you, Denis? While we were drinking blue ruin in Cribb's Parlor, our Denis here was doing the pretty in his mama's drawing room."

"It seems fortunate one of us is sober," Denis declared. "Otherwise, we'd never get where we're going."

He could hardly take his eyes off Chloe. Once he'd been in the crypt when they'd had girls dressed as boys. The memories sent a jolt of lust through his loins, and he shifted on the seat, thankful for the gloom within the carriage. He turned his head away from the arousing sight opposite, struggling to contain the rioting images. If he wanted Chloe in that way as reward for his success, he knew Stephen would give him permission…

The carriage came to a halt, rescuing him from a train of thought that couldn't be in the least helpful to present circumstances.

"Here we are." Frank stumbled out, lost his footing on the step, and fell to one knee. Laughing immoderately, as if it were the funniest thing imaginable, he stood up again and weaved to the front to pay the jarvey.

Denis descended with an agile jump and reached up to help Chloe down. She sprang down beside him, observing cheerfully that trousers certainly made some things easier. Julian didn't appear for a few minutes; he was searching through the gloomy interior for a glove that seemed to have gone missing. Finally, however, they were all safe on the ground and the hackney pulled away.

The scene under the flickering orange and red glow of pitch flambeaux, oil lamps, and braziers seethed with life as wagons rolled across the cobbles and men and women ran to unload the wicker baskets of still-wriggling fish. The ground was wet and mired, slippery with fish scales, and Chloe wrinkled her nose at the stench of fish, both fresh and rotting.

The air was filled with a cacophony of shouts as wagon drivers urged their horses on; screams of laughter or violent oaths from women running through the crowd with laden baskets on their heads; the calls of the costermongers as they offered their wares.

"Heavens," Chloe said, listening to a particularly ripe exchange between two massive women with rocklike forearms. "They could give Falstaff a lesson."

"Who's he?" Julian asked fuzzily.

"One of those fellows in Shakespeare," Frank informed him with a knowledgeable nod. "Don't you remember?"

Julian shook his head. "Can't say as I do."