The Captain's Christmas Bride. Annie Burrows

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СКАЧАТЬ from having held her breath for so long. ‘But it was worth it.’

      ‘Lawks,’ said Marianne, her eyes widening as she peeped over Lady Julia’s shoulder.

      Lawks indeed. The peacock-blue silk gown was a lot more daring than even she’d suspected it might be. On the Neapolitan Nightingale—the opera singer from whom she’d borrowed it—it hadn’t looked any more daring than any of her other gowns. But with Lady Julia’s bosom hitched up like that, and overflowing the straining bodice, it was teetering on the verge of scandalous.

      ‘Lawks,’ she echoed faintly, staring with astonishment at the impressive cleavage which had never before had a public airing.

      ‘Well, that puts paid to any worries that people might recognise you,’ said Marianne tartly. ‘Once you put the mask on, not one single man there will be able to raise his eyes from the front of your gown.’

      ‘And don’t forget the wig,’ came a muffled voice from behind the screen where the Neapolitan Nightingale herself was changing into the costume supposedly made for Lady Julia.

      Marianne and Lady Julia exchanged a guilty look. Just how much might she have heard? They’d been whispering to start with, but the sight of that cleavage had shocked them both into indiscretion.

      ‘Goodness,’ said the Neapolitan Nightingale when she came out from behind the screen—in a voice that betrayed her far-from-Italian origins—and saw the way the two young ladies were gaping at Lady Julia’s extremely risqué décolletage.

      ‘You look far more delicious in that than I ever did,’ she said, with a wry twist to her lips. ‘You can keep it if you like, after the party is over.’

      ‘Oh, no, really, I couldn’t...’

      ‘Well, I shan’t want it back. It’s been my favourite this season, but it’s about time I got a new look.’

      Julia took another look at herself in the mirror. The idea had been to make herself look irresistible and completely unlike her rather demure self. Well, she’d certainly done that!

      She stroked the shimmering blue-green silk lovingly. She couldn’t imagine ever having the nerve to wear such a revealing gown again. But she would rather like to keep it as a memento. Of this party, and the woman who’d lent it to her, and, she hoped, the successful conclusion to her campaign to make David propose.

      ‘Then, thank you. Thank you very much.’

      ‘Now, the best way to trick everyone,’ said the Nightingale briskly, ‘is to let me do all the work. I’ve got that rather mannish stride of yours down pat. And some of your other little mannerisms. And your stock phrases.’

      ‘Stock phrases? I don’t use stock phrases,’ Lady Julia objected.

      ‘Everyone uses stock phrases. Marianne is always saying, “Oh, dear me, no. Really, I couldn’t,”’ said the Nightingale in a voice uncannily like Marianne’s. ‘And you are always saying, “Stuff!”, and then sniffing, and tossing your head.’

      ‘I don’t toss my head.’

      ‘You do,’ said Marianne, trying not to giggle. ‘Really, Nellie has you down to a T.’

      Lady Julia was on the verge of saying stuff before recollecting that she’d objected to having it pointed out that she was always doing so. Her neck muscles clamped up as she resisted the urge to toss her head, or sniff, or do anything else to express her irritation at learning she was so predictable. It was a funny business seeing someone as talented as the Nightingale learn to impersonate you. She’d had Marianne in stitches over the past couple of afternoons, aping attitudes Lady Julia had no idea she affected. Like the way she shrugged just one shoulder, apparently, and made a little moue with her lips when she was struggling to be polite to some crashing bore.

      ‘Now, Marianne,’ said the Nightingale briskly. ‘Your part is to stick close by me all night, the way you usually do with Lady Julia. And you mustn’t forget to call me Cuz now and then, just to reinforce the idea that it is Lady Julia in this modest white gown.’

      ‘I know,’ said Marianne in a resigned tone of voice. They’d been over all this dozens of times. And spent several hours, on the pretext of working on their costumes for tonight’s masquerade, rehearsing.

      ‘Now for the wigs!’

      Nellie the Neapolitan Nightingale lifted a glossy blue-black wig from its stand, and placed it on Lady Julia’s head.

      ‘I wish my hair was really this colour,’ said Julia, fingering one of the rather coarse-feeling ringlets. Her own was that depressingly dull shade of brown that, were she not the daughter of an earl, people would decry as mousey.

      ‘Nobody really has hair that colour,’ said the Nightingale prosaically as she tied Lady Julia’s mask over her face. ‘Not unless they get it out of a bottle. There.’

      Marianne and the Nightingale stood staring at her, while she stared at her own reflection in the mirror. The mask was made of the same silk as the dress, with just the hint of a beak to disguise the shape of her nose, and was topped off with a plume of peacock feathers that made her look several inches taller.

      Actually, she was several inches taller anyway, thanks to the heels of the shoes Nellie had lent her.

      ‘Now for the finishing touch,’ said Nellie, reaching for a pot of blacking.

      With a little brush, she dabbed at the upswell of Julia’s left breast, recreating the distinctive diamond-shaped mole that nestled provocatively upon the Nightingale’s own bosom.

      ‘There, all done,’ said Nellie. ‘If anyone can tell that we’ve swapped places under these costumes, I’ll eat my hat. But look,’ she said, turning to Julia with a frown. ‘If you find any of the men behave a bit too free, thinking you are just me, then we’ll stop the charade at once. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if you got into trouble.’

      Julia and Marianne looked anywhere but at each other. The whole purpose of swapping identities was so she could get into trouble. Naturally, they hadn’t let Nellie into the whole of the plan, else she’d never have agreed to go along with it, or been so helpful coaching them. As far as she knew, they’d just thought it would be a lark to try to get everyone thinking that Nellie, the opera singer who’d been hired to entertain her guests, was Lady Julia Whitney, daughter of their host, the Earl of Mountnessing, and vice versa. They’d reminded her of the tradition of having a Lord of Misrule at Christmas, who upset the social order by taking a crown and ordering his betters about, and how everyone thought it a huge joke.

      They’d neglected to tell her that the Earl of Mountnessing had never unbent enough to permit a Lord of Misrule to form any part of the Christmas festivities.

      ‘I shall be fine,’ she said, to Marianne and Nellie, who were both looking at her with a touch of concern. ‘You go off now, together, and I shall come down to the ballroom in a moment or two.’

      ‘By the backstairs,’ Nellie reminded her, before tying on her own white-satin mask, which sported a set of cat’s whiskers, and pulling up her velvet hood, which was topped with a pair of pointy ears.

      Marianne was the only one of them not in costume. She’d agreed to don a plain black-silk mask, but that was as far СКАЧАТЬ