And then he brought all his rough, silky hair into the curve of her shoulder, and she wound her arms around him.

Chapter 33

A Chapter Including a Performance… or Two

It wasn't that Rafe strutted into the theater. He would never do such a thing, even after dispatching his future wife back to her bedchamber for a nap (and carefully waiting a good period of time before stepping out of the priest's hole himself, so that she didn't catch sight of him).

He'd done it. She was his, bought, signed, and paid for. She had sighed, there in the warm dark, after they lay together a few minutes, and said, "I never even thought." That was all, but it was enough.

She might not think to marry Rafe, but she was intoxicated by Gabe. Or by who she thought Gabe was. All he had to do was reveal his true self, and she would say yes.

The stage was teeming with people. Gillian Pythian-

Adams was darting everywhere at once. "There you are!" she cried, when she saw Rafe. "Where's Imogen?"

"Terrible headache," he said promptly. "She'll be here as soon as she can."

She hesitated for a moment, and then nodded, turning to answer a burly groundsman who wanted to know where to place the potted shrubs.

Rafe strolled onto the stage with a remarkable sense of well-being. All he had to do was get through the weekend's performance of Man of Mode, kick the guests out of his house, and then tell Imogen that she was marrying him.

I never… He could hear her soft voice in his mind, and the very memory made him stiff as a board.

"Mr. Dorimant, Mr. Medley," Miss Pythian-Adams said.

"Here!"

"We'll start now, if you please."

Rafe dropped into the seat before a dressing table taken from the old green chamber on the third floor. Miss Pythian-Adams was pushing Mr. Medley, otherwise known as Gabe, into place beside him. Rafe was to sit next to his dressing table, lazily leafing through a book, while his friend Mr. Medley sprawled in a chair.

Gabe wasn't much of a sprawler; Rafe could have told Miss Pythian-Adams that.

Two minutes later, he could have told the world that Gabe was a terrible actor as well. He sounded like a scholar, reciting the lines of a rake. It was almost humorous. Rafe amused himself by wondering if he could play Medley, as Gabe playing Medley. After all, he did a good job of stealing Gabe's voice.

"No, no," Miss Pythian-Adams said with anguish, for the fortieth time. "Mr. Spenser, you really must try to relax."

Rafe narrowed his eyes. Gabe was laughing at Miss Pythian-Adams… they… they couldn't! If Imogen caught the glance that just passed between those two, she would think Gabe was truly a Dorimant—sleeping with Belinda while he courted a young lady—or she would know instantly that he, Rafe, had tricked her.

And he wasn't ready to tell that yet.

Suddenly he realized that he had to make love to her… oh perhaps once or twice more. Enough so that he was absolutely certain that she wouldn't refuse him, once she found out who was under the mustache.

Miss Pythian-Adams ran off to talk to Griselda, who had a query about Act Three, instructing Rafe and Gabe over her shoulder to practice their lines. "Please, teach your brother how to relax," she told Rafe.

"Relax," Rafe growled, and then bent over, pulling Gabe by the sleeve. "What the devil are you doing, smiling at Miss Pythian-Adams like that?"

Gabe didn't pretend to misunderstand him. "I'm going to marry her," he said simply. "Even though I shouldn't—"

Rafe cut him off. "You can't go around looking at her like that! Imogen will see you."

Gabe looked at him.

"Yes, I am still wearing the mustache," Rafe hissed.

"And that means that you, dear brother, are engaged in an affaire at the same time that you are courting Miss Pythian-Adams! If you weren't such an appalling actor, I'd say you should be Dorimant, not I."

"Ah, but it is in fact you who are Dorimant," Gabe pointed out. "After all, you are having an affaire. And you are courting a young lady at the same time. If Imogen doesn't happen to know that she is the object of both kinds of attention, it would be hardly polite for me to point it out."

"Exactly! So you must stop looking at our stage manager in such a besotted fashion."

"I will do my best," Gabe said tranquilly. "Would you like to run through the rest of the scene?"

"No. I know the play, and no amount of practice is going to turn you into anything but a professor masquerading as a rake."

"Whereas you are a rake masquerading as a professor?"

Rafe scowled at him.

"When do you think to reveal the truth of your charade?"

Miss Pythian-Adams flitted back to them, and Rafe almost groaned aloud. So much for Gabe keeping his secrets to himself. His eyes said everything, and what's more, Miss Pythian-Adams got a little pink every time she looked at him.

"It's not a charade," he said the moment Miss Pythian-Adams was called away again. "I shall tell her—soon."

"Why not immediately?"

Rafe opened his mouth, and stopped. He couldn't tell her. Didn't Gabe see that? She wasn't entranced enough yet, not enough to look over what he was… what he had been. "I'm not ready," he said shortly.

"Are you afraid that she will refuse to marry you?"

"Any sane woman would."

Gabe's eyebrow went up. "A duke with an estate and—"

"Imogen knows me. She's seen me drunk time and again. She knows precisely what a hopeless excuse of a duke I am."

Miss Pythian-Adams darted up, and somehow they found themselves launching into Act Two. They bumbled through the play. Rafe didn't fool himself that it was going to be a wonderful performance. That actress of Gabe's, Loretta Hawes, was brilliant. When she was on the stage, the play took flight.

After an hour or so, Imogen walked in, with apologies for her delay. A while later, Rafe had to say that the little barbed exchanges between Dorimant (himself) and the pert young lady he was courting (Imogen) went pretty well too.

Miss Pythian-Adams seemed happy. It was dark before they finished the rehearsal, and she looked flushed and exhausted, but triumphant.

Gabe turned to him, just as the cast was leaving the stage. "You're quite good at playing someone else. Anyone would think you were making a practice of it."

Rafe's eyes narrowed. He seemed to be thinking about fratricide quite often.

"It's quite wonderful," Miss Pythian-Adams's mother declared from the front row, where she had been knit-ting all afternoon. "You're far better than that mingle-mangle of a Shakespeare play Lady Bedfordshire put on last season."

Of course, Miss Pythian-Adams couldn't stop herself from smiling at Gabe when she heard this, but luckily Rafe nipped Imogen around and had her out of the room before she noticed.

The theater was bursting with guests who'd come from London and the surrounding counties. They sounded like a crowd of self-important bees, more curious about who didn't receive an invitation than the performance itself.

"This young actress," Lady Blechschmidt said to her companion, Mrs. Fulgens. "Is she that red-haired piece who made such a remarkable hash of Lady Macbeth at the Olympic Theater last year?"