A Duchess a Day (Awakened by a Kiss #1) - Charis Michaels Page 0,45

transparent green silk.”

He stared at her, watching the fabric settle around her body.

Helena put a stiff palm over her eyes and blew out a frustrated breath. Speaking slowly, she said, “If you do not say something or plan something, I will sort it out myself.”

“Right,” he said. “Forgive me. I was unprepared for your—”

“Yes, yes, I’m only half-dressed—”

“You consider this half-dressed—”

“Declan!”

“Yes, alright,” he said, snapping to. “Here’s the plan. I’ll find a seamstress and bribe her. We’ll have her bring you something else to wear, a . . . matron’s robe or something loose and shroud-like that won’t require a corset or petticoats. The inventory in this shop should offer several choices.”

“Yes, yes. Thank you.” Her impatience was clear, but she listened.

“When you’ve changed, I’ll steal you into the alley, and you can approach the girl in the stationer’s shop, assuming she’s still there.”

“Very great assumption,” she said. “Good. Fine. Let’s give it a go. But can you really locate something else for me to wear?”

Declan could. He prowled the corridor until he game upon a seamstress. He bribed her with half a crown to produce some suitable dress. Next, he bade the same girl to stand guard at the dressing room while Declan and Helena slipped out. She was to warn any inquirers that Lady Helena was indisposed and not to disturb her for at least twenty minutes. Finally, the same girl agreed to clear the corridor when they returned and allow them to slip back inside without detection.

Every piece of the plan, from the jittery seamstress, to the heavy, gray wool dowager’s gown, to the chance that Lady Genevieve was still nearby, felt tenuous and combustible and highly, highly unlikely. In all his years of stealth and tracking, Declan had never embarked on anything so wildly extemporaneous and risky.

But Helena moved through the motions with a patient, deliberate sense of calm. Her determination was as cold and hard as steel.

Declan had not not believed her so much as hadn’t understood the lengths to which she was willing to go. Even her sprint through the rain in front of Lady Canning’s had seemed more like an elaborate show of protest than a high-stakes piece of a larger plan.

Now, as he stole her out the back door and into the muddy alley, her jaw set, her voice light and reassuring to the blotchy seamstress who watched them go, she had the bearing of someone bent on survival. It rivaled his own resolve to exonerate his name or the will of any soldier he’d ever seen fighting to the death on a field of battle.

“You can speak with her inside the stationer’s shop,” he told Helena quickly. “It’s a large shop with a maze of shelves and counters. But you’ll have more time and privacy if she can be drawn outside. Duck between shops or settle on a bench. Say the script, just as you told me. You’ll be brilliant.”

“Or I’ll be laughed from the shop,” she said, and she smiled at him, her green eyes full of excitement and hope. Declan’s heart lurched again. He experienced the strange feeling of slowly ripping in two, the old, self-serving, solitary part of himself separating from the part that was consumed with an untouchable, unattainable woman, so far out of his class.

But now she was gone. The bell on the stationer’s shop door jingled, and Helena and her pile of gray wool trailed into the dim interior.

Declan looked right and left, his adrenaline pumping as if he’d been pursuing a highwayman. He tried to peer into the shop window, but saw only his reflection. He blinked at his face, a man doing a highly reckless, improbable thing on the pretense of exoneration and family. What a liar.

Swallowing hard, he slouched into the subordinate posture of a servant. He strolled past Madame’s window and checked the showroom. The Lark women were clustered around an open box of baubles. Camille Lark looked up, catching his gaze.

Declan took a deep breath and circled back. He returned to the alley and checked the seamstress who stood guard. No one had come.

Again in the street, he made another circuit, taking the long way around, returning to the stationer’s shop from the other direction. When at last the door came into view, he faltered. He could not trust his eyes.

Helena emerged from the shop with Lady Genevieve on her arm. The two young women walked together, their heads bent in conversation. The smile on Lady Genevieve’s face had the