No Proper Lady (12 page)

London was huge.

Joan had been in a city before. She didn’t know its name, but scavenging had been good there for those who could defend themselves, so she’d taken a squad through a couple times a year. The place had been mostly empty, though—empty of anything living, at least. The Traitor Lords, or the Dark Ones themselves, owned the cities with people in them. You didn’t go there much, not if you wanted your skin to stay on.

She’d stuck to the abandoned cities. Now she realized that they hadn’t been cities at all. They’d been shells. Sometimes you got gangs of cultists or packs of beasts there, but at the most they’d taken up a couple streets. They’d talked big and
fought
big, but the space had dwarfed them. In the end, there’d been rusting buildings, old cars, bones, and the wind blowing down empty streets. Those were the big things. People were tiny.

Not here.

There were people everywhere in London: rushing down the narrow, winding streets; pouring in and out of the redbrick buildings; forming clumps on the street corners by the flickering gaslights. At first, Joan hadn’t even been able to see individual figures, just one flowing mob. Now, looking out of the carriage on the way to the dressmaker’s shop, she could make out individuals but only for a moment each.

“How many people live here?”

Eleanor looked up from her book, blinking. “I’m afraid I couldn’t really say. Perhaps a million. It’s difficult to tell because so many people come and go.”

“A million.”

Joan wanted to laugh.
Come on, Eleanor. You aren’t fooling anyone. How many really?
Except that Eleanor didn’t lie, and she wouldn’t joke like that. Plus, she’d sounded sincere, even casual.

A million.

Maybe a couple hundred people had lived in the caves. More in the past, when the casualties hadn’t been as bad and people had had more babies. More in the controlled cities, of course. There had to be, since the Traitor Lords and their masters bred people like cows. They’d said there were ten thousand in Chicago. Joan hadn’t believed it.

There might have been a million people in the whole world back home. Maybe. If you went to Asia and South America and a bunch of places nobody Joan knew had ever seen.

She swallowed. “Oh. Got it.”

Eleanor was looking at her with kind surprise. “I suppose it is a little, um, intimidating. I’ve never been very good with crowds myself.”

“Intimidating.” That wasn’t the word Joan would have used.
Rich
, maybe. Or
vital.
Maybe just
alive
. She’d never have used the word about a city before. Cities were bunches of buildings. They didn’t live.

Outside, people flickered past: short women with elaborate hats, tall men with mustaches, men in military uniform, women dressed as servants. Some strode down the street in a hurry to get somewhere. Others waved through the crowds, hailing friends, and stopped to talk. Everyone was moving. Everyone was speaking.

Alive
.

She’d read books. She’d heard about cities before. But she hadn’t been prepared. She didn’t think there was any way she could have been. It was the difference between seeing a picture of a tiger and then coming face-to-face with one. The picture didn’t show the play of muscles under the beast’s skin as it moved—or the razor points of its teeth when it yawned.

A thousand thousand people in one city, crowding the streets and packing themselves into buildings. A thousand thousand eyes that could be watching. A thousand thousand hands, and each could be holding a knife. You’d never see it coming. A single person could get lost in this city. He could slip out of sight, submerge himself in the mass of people, and then surface behind you.

Any one of the people on the street could be a killer.

Or all of them could. Get them angry enough or scared enough to rise, and this many people could be a wave that drowned anyone standing before them. There’d been hangings after the end, and riots. Joan had never been able to picture them until now.

Intimidating
, Eleanor had said. She didn’t know half of it.

How did you live in a place like that? How did you walk down the street without watching your back, without jumping at every movement? How did you not wonder if the man beside you was going to pull a knife? You didn’t know him. You couldn’t trust him.

But the people on the street, most of them, just walked. Some of them were worried, sure, but about other things. They didn’t look around, and they didn’t flinch when someone jostled them. They weren’t all worried either. Plenty looked angry, happy, or even bored.

Some of them were kids. Grimy, some of them, and clearly on their own. Others were out with adults, though: girls in frilly dresses with big bows in their hair, boys in short pants and flat caps, and infants in carriages with fussy blankets and awnings. Most walked with older women who wore severe clothes and held the children tightly by the hand, but those women looked pretty frail, and none of them were armed. Civilians.

Joan stared for a long time as the carriage rumbled through the London streets. She watched the crowds moving and the people moving through them. None of them looked to the sky. Nobody carried weapons. They went where they needed to go, and whatever might wait for them when they got there, they knew they’d arrive.

Another word rose up in her mind:
free
.

“Um,” Eleanor said. “I hope this isn’t too…I mean, perhaps we should have had Mr. Allen come to the house instead. We didn’t think a great deal about it, but I know this isn’t what you’re used to.”

“It isn’t.” Joan realized that she was smiling, fierce and hot. “It’s not what I’m used to at all. But I’m glad I saw it.”

***

Joan had been expecting another dressmaker to be like Mrs. Simmons, brisk and businesslike. Mr. Allen, though, was old and plump, with a long white mustache and a sleepy smile. He welcomed them to the shop and offered them tea and biscuits with the same dreamy amiability. “I had your measurements already, of course, Miss Grenville, and as you were kind enough to send Mrs. MacArthur’s, there’s nothing left but the selection. But then, that’s the best part, isn’t it?”

He chuckled at his own joke and poured out the tea, while a woman about twenty years his junior came out with a thick book and set it down on the little table.

It was full of pictures of women with their hair curled high on their heads and their chins lifted, staring flirtatiously out of the pages. They wore frothy dresses that someone had colored in by hand using bright contrasting shades. Joan looked over at Eleanor, asking silently for help.

Eleanor met her eyes and nodded. A small crease appeared between her eyebrows as she thought, and her fingers tapped slowly against the creamy china of her teacup. “Two ball gowns to start, I think,” she said, “and an evening dress. I won’t speak to colors—besides, I’m sure that Mr. Allen has a number of lovely new fabrics I haven’t seen yet.”

“You’re too kind, Miss Grenville,” Mr. Allen said absently from behind them. “Please do excuse me for a moment.”

He drifted off toward the back room. Joan took that opportunity to lean across the table toward Eleanor. “What about money?”

“Oh—I shouldn’t worry about it.” Eleanor looked awkward. “We don’t really talk about that sort of thing, you know. But I can’t imagine you’d spend enough here to worry Simon at all.”

“Anything I should avoid?”

“Bright red, of course. Otherwise, you’re a widow so you don’t have the same rules I do, but I’d take a pale color for at least one. And nothing terribly heavy. Ballrooms are quite warm, generally, and you’ll be dancing a great deal.”

“You’re pretty optimistic.”

Eleanor smiled and shook her head. “You made your mark quite admirably at the lecture. I shouldn’t think you’ll want for partners.”

“Thanks,” Joan said, looking through the book. Nothing low in the back and sleeves long enough to cover the scar on her arm. Gloves would cover the place where she attached the flashgun, at least. The skirt was probably a lost cause, but if she had to run or fight, she could always cut it off.

“You’re quite pretty,” Eleanor said matter-of-factly. “And, well, I don’t mean any offense, but more importantly you’re new and foreign and a little bit mysterious.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“The
ton
is dreadfully fond of novelty. That’s why scandal goes around so fast,” said Eleanor. A flush crept up her face. “And why it ideally gets forgotten quickly. They do grow bored.”

Eleanor was reassuring herself, Joan knew. “People forget things. We’re good at that.” She smiled and gestured to one of the pictures. “Do you think this would work all right?”

By the time they’d picked out the requisite three dresses, Mr. Allen and the woman—who turned out to be his wife—had made several trips to and from the back room, bringing out cloth and trimmings. There were silk and satin that caught even the gray sunlight from the windows, and there were spools of lace and ribbon, papers of buttons, and bunches of feathers. All of it went on a long table, into a heap like dragon’s gold. Joan tried not to stare too much.

For herself, Eleanor had picked out a relatively modest dress with few of the frills and bows that were on the other ones. “I’d like it in something not very bright, please,” she said, and looked down at her teacup again.

“Lovely,” said Mr. Allen, but with a less sleepy look than usual. He looked over at Joan again and then nodded once in vague approval. “If you ladies are done, then, we can get started.”

***

Fittings, as always, involved standing very still. This time Mr. Allen and his wife draped bolts of fabric over Joan, eyed them, took them away, put others on, and eyed
them
. Then, more often than not, they brought the first bolt back. Sometimes they muttered things. Very rarely, they asked Joan her opinion.

In the end, she thought they decided on silk, ice blue and dark rose-pink, for the ball gowns and dark green satin for the evening dress. There were dark blue ribbons and white ribbons and lace, but Joan didn’t really know which went with what.

Then there were a few more measurements, this time with her corset laced more tightly than was really comfortable—though Joan drew the line well before the Allens wanted her to and held firm there—and a bit of discussion. And then they were out.

Back in the carriage, Joan finally relaxed. Eleanor saw it and bit her lip. “Was it…bad…for you?”

“Huh? No. They were very nice. It just makes me nervous. Undressing.”

“Oh.” Eleanor didn’t ask. Nice girls, shy girls, didn’t ask about that. But her eyes went to Joan’s arm, and Joan knew she’d noticed the scar.

“Because of that. I have others, but they’re easier to hide. Don’t worry,” she said, seeing Eleanor blush and look away, about to apologize. “I don’t expect you not to notice. Noticing things is good.”

At least it was good for Eleanor to notice things. Eleanor was on her side, and Eleanor was quiet. Hopefully, nobody else would be so observant, but then, Joan wasn’t planning to undress in front of anyone else. If she did, she could always turn the lights out. Maidenly modesty was a pretty believable cover here. Nothing to worry about.

Except that Joan couldn’t help wondering what Simon would think if he saw her naked. She remembered the way he’d looked in the library and when she’d come in for her dancing lesson. Would his eyes widen the same way? Would his lips part and his breath come faster? Or would he draw back, revolted by her scars and tattoos, used to the unmarred white skin of the women here?

It didn’t matter. She was never going to sleep with him. They’d decided all that already. If Joan woke up hot and aching from dreams where they’d gone further, where she’d opened his pants and he’d taken her against the wall—well, that didn’t matter either.

And she didn’t want to punch walls over it.

Nope.

“So,” she said, yanking her mind back to the carriage and Eleanor. “What happens next?”

“Do you people ever talk about anything but the weather?” Joan dropped, with a deep and exasperated sigh, into one of the chairs by the study’s fireplace.

Simon closed his book and studied her face. She looked irritated but not badly so. He flattered himself he was familiar enough with her real anger to recognize it. So he answered lightly, “I take it your visitors haven’t been to your liking.”

“Oh, not at all,” Joan said. “They’re very informative. If you want to know that it’s been unexpectedly fine this year. I’m very well aware of that right now. And it’s been nice of them to ask how I am so frequently. Next time, I’m going to tell them I’ve broken something. Or cut my own toes off with a carving knife. It’ll make a nice change.”

“You’re going to cut your own toes off? Lord, Joan, don’t you think that’s a bit extreme?” Simon smiled over at her.

Joan rolled her eyes. “You don’t have to sit through it.”

“Thank God for that. I’ve danced with Miss Thomson—there’s only so much suffering one man can endure in this life.”

“Which one is she?”

“The pale little thing who called on Monday. Spiritual girl. Poetic. Or likes to think she is.”

“Oh. Her.” Joan closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the chair. “She expressed her ‘unutterable sorrow’ about my husband. I always thought that ‘unutterable’ meant you couldn’t talk about something at all, let alone for five minutes straight. But I also thought it wasn’t in good taste to say you don’t know how you’d live if you lost a husband, the implication being that I should’ve jumped off a building.”

“Oh, I don’t think she meant to imply that. Suicides are such messy things.”

Joan snorted and then opened one eye to look at Simon. “And how do you know she was here on Monday? The butler said you weren’t here.”

“I hid,” Simon confessed, looking down at the cover of his book.

“How manly of you.”

When Joan grinned, Simon wanted to forget everything he’d said at Englefield and kiss her again. Now that he was in town, without the reminders that he was supposed to play the responsible country gentleman, stopping that night in the library seemed more and more like a bad idea. Their mission was going well, and Eleanor was looking much better. At times like these, sober responsibility began to chafe.

Careful, he told himself, but careful was the last thing he wanted to be just then. He wanted to pull Joan onto his lap. He wanted to undo her blouse and take her small, firm breasts in his hands again, this time with nothing between his fingers and her skin.

But the bonds were still his to bear. “She hasn’t set her cap for you.”

Joan needed a moment to figure out the slang. Then she started laughing. “Oh. Oh, God. Poor guy. I take it back. But can’t you just tell her you’re not into her?”

“A gentleman doesn’t do that sort of thing. Not if he has any sense of honor at all.”

Joan stared at him. “You can’t even tell her gently? You know, ‘I like you as a sister’ or something?”

“Not unless she confesses her feelings openly. And no lady would do such a thing. Certainly not Miss Thomson.”

“What do you do, then?”

“Suffer.”

That made Joan laugh again. She did it quietly, Simon noticed, one hand over her mouth. Not like Society ladies did, but rather like a woman used to close quarters and the need for stealth. Would she cry out, he wondered, when she made love? Or stifle her sounds in a pillow—or a man’s shoulder? He quickly crossed one leg over the other, hiding his growing erection.

Then he cleared his throat. “It’s, ah, a little easier for a lady, if only because a gentleman will declare himself at some point. And there are so many ways by which a gentleman may be made to declare himself without meaning to.”

“And then you’re stuck with a girl for life? Even if she’s a vapor with eyelashes like the Thomson chick?” Joan shuddered. “This place screws men over almost as well as it does women, doesn’t it?”

“Worse, I’d say.” Simon ignored the way she’d put it. These days, in fact, he found it absurdly flattering that she did say such things in front of him. She trusted him enough, at least, to drop the façade when they were alone. “We protect ladies. Which means they can take shocking advantage of us if they’re so inclined and we’re unwary.”

Joan’s mouth quirked again. “When you chain a dog, you shouldn’t be surprised if it barks.”

“You do have a flattering opinion of your own sex.”

“Women are people,” she said calmly and cheerfully. “People are bastards. And someone who’s caged—no matter how pretty the bars are—is going to get bored and restless and go for the only entertainment she can. Even if that’s catching men.”

“‘Confined, then, in cages like the feathered race, they have nothing to do but to plume themselves and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch,’” Simon quoted Wollstonecraft absently. The firelight played over Joan’s face, casting her eyes into shadow. “I’ve heard the arguments before. I even sympathize, though they make me no more willing to play the fox. But most women don’t seem unhappy.”

“Most women don’t know what they’re missing. And I don’t think you’ve exactly taken a survey.”

She said it with enough good humor, but she was good at hiding her emotions.
It was a shitty world…but I had a place there. I wasn’t wrong.

“Are you unhappy?” he asked. “Really unhappy, I mean? I know the calls can get tedious.”

“Not really. Frustrated, mostly.”

The word had several meanings. Simon couldn’t keep from thinking of the others. From the way Joan’s color rose and her eyes widened, he didn’t think she could either. She swallowed once and then slowly licked her lower lip, drawing it into her mouth slightly. Simon watched, hypnotized.

Absurd, really. He’d asked a serious question, and she’d given a serious answer. But he couldn’t even talk to her in private without being distracted by other things. It was like being a schoolboy again, with all consciousness centered on one thing.

He could see the pulse in her throat, a rapid flutter. If he set his lips there—

Unwise
, Simon thought, and at first the word was without meaning. His cock pulsed, aching pleasurably. He needed every iota of the control he’d learned as a magician to ignore the sensation and meet Joan’s eyes again.

When he did, he thought that might have been an equally bad idea. Her eyes were golden hazel in this light, and her gaze was knowing, warm, even eager. Simon had to swallow hard and clench his fists on the chair. Even that gave him only momentary control. In a second, he’d move toward her—

Then Joan looked off to the side and took a deep breath. “What I mean,” she said roughly, “is that I haven’t even met Reynell yet.”

Her comment was cold water to the face. They’d both needed it, but that made it no less of an unpleasant shock. “It’ll happen. We don’t receive him these days, of course, but you’ll meet someone who does. Will you be happy then?”

She lifted her eyebrows. “I wouldn’t say happy, exactly. I have a mission. It’s something to do. If I wasn’t working on that? Yeah, I might be unhappy.”

“If you weren’t risking your neck?”

“If I didn’t have a purpose.” Joan shrugged and lifted her chin. “Life kills you sooner or later. You might as well go out doing something worthwhile. Otherwise, you’re just meat.”

Whether she knew it or not, she’d come into the library out of more than simple boredom. And out of more than the desire for his company, much as Simon would have preferred otherwise. He heard the thwarted energy in her voice. “You should ride,” he said. “In the mornings, I mean.”

“To work off my…tension?”

“To meet more people. You can say that I sleep late,” he added regretfully, realizing his absence would be necessary, “and take a groom with you. It’s a public place, so your reputation should survive well enough.”

***

Even at nine in the morning—well before most wealthy city-dwellers got up, Simon had said—there were plenty of people in Hyde Park. “Hardly anyone around” meant something very different here.

But Joan could see why Simon had said it. There was room out here. The park stretched brilliant and green around her, the road was wide, and there was plenty of space between her sedate gelding and the agitated horse of the man in front of her.

She could probably pass him, Joan thought, tempted to nudge her horse into a trot. It would have been great to feel herself moving with some speed again. She was still too new to riding, though. With people around, speeding up would’ve been asking for an accident. Besides, she was here to see and be seen, and walking would serve that purpose best.

So Joan kept her horse to a sedate walk. It was still more exercise than she’d had in a while except for what little practice she’d been able to do in her room. She could feel the play of muscles in her thighs and the effort it took to keep her back straight. Not great effort, not anything Joan would have noticed if she hadn’t been used to paying attention to her body, but it was there.

Strange that she could miss something after only two weeks, but she had—and she hadn’t realized it until now. Part of it was being outside, she thought, and on her own. There was pale morning light out here, and there were bright flowers against thick green grass. She could lose herself in these things, away from the crowds and the endless fussing, chattering callers.

Not entirely, though.

A high, feminine voice called her name, and Joan turned quickly. She saw Thomson standing a little way off with another girl and two men. “Mrs. MacArthur!” she repeated, waving a hand.

She had come here to meet people. Joan reined in her horse and moved slowly toward the little crowd, looking them over as she approached.

Both girls were blonde, Thomson ashy and her friend almost silver. Both wore white, like most girls did around here, with their hair done loosely. It was probably supposed to make them look romantic. It did make them look ineffectual, which was the same thing as far as Joan could tell.

One of the men was tall, slender, and blond. The other was shorter and dark, with a well-groomed mustache. Joan did a quick mental flip through the people she’d met in the last few days and couldn’t place either of them or the second woman.

“Morning,” she said, smiling as she reached them. “Miss Thomson, it’s good to see you again.”

“Divinest chance,” said Thomson, wide eyed as always. “I was just telling my friends about you, and they’re all very eager to make your acquaintance.”

“Desperately so,” said the blond man. You could hear sincerity in his voice if you were looking for that. You could also hear sarcasm, if you wanted, or lust.

This one is good.

“Must be destiny, then.” Joan dismounted, hitting the ground even as the men were stepping forward to help her. She saw the blond’s eyebrows go up but not, she thought, disapprovingly. “I was looking for company myself.”

That was even true, in its own way.

“Please permit me to introduce you.” Thomson stepped back a little and gestured to the dark-haired man, who smiled and bowed. “Mr. Cunningham.”

“Mrs. Cole.” That was the other woman. Up close, Joan could see that she was five years or so older than Thomson. Probably a chaperon, then, whatever else she was.

The blond man was watching her during the introductions, undressing her with his eyes and then evaluating what he saw. He was subtle enough—anyone else would’ve missed it—but Joan felt his gaze like she hadn’t felt anyone else’s in this time. Simon’s had come close, but that had been simple lust. The way this guy sized her up was predatory.

Joan met his eyes, narrowed her own, and lifted her chin even as she smiled. There was no reason to make a scene, but she’d be damned if she’d let some overdressed primitive get away with looking at her like she was meat for grilling.

He smiled back, looking a little surprised but mostly interested.

Well,
thought Joan,
we can deal with that too.

“Mr. Reynell,” said Thomson.