Chapter Eleven
This experiment was ridiculous even for him.
If a whisper of his endeavor ever made its way to Polite Society, he would be a pariah for life. Despite years of indolent behavior, all doors would surely close to him for this one day of his life.
And yet, something in his aunt’s words stuck with him: to consider Petra’s perspective. All he could envision after that was the image of Petra weaving through Covent Garden in her gray cloak. Of the Italian woman who had put him in his place, then turned and fled in her threadbare cloak.
The Italian woman’s words strangely recalled that night in the library. There was something in their last meeting, not only betrayal but utter disappointment in Petra’s eyes. The knowledge that he would truly never know what it meant to be trapped as she had. To be a woman alone in the world.
And so he decided to correct that extraordinary gap in his knowledge.
If only for a day. After calling on several actresses he had known over the years, he found himself walking away from Drury Lane, his face veiled beneath a hat, wearing the outward clothing of a very tall woman.
Earlier, Yvette and Barbara found the task of locating anything in the theatre that would fit him quite amusing as they wheezed at his surprisingly innocent request. Perhaps another man, one not quite as secure in himself, would feel emasculated.
Yet Wolf strode from Suffolk Street in the largest boots the women could locate yearning only to understand Petra’s experience of the world.
Mayhap experiencing the world from this perspective for only one day would not make up for his horrible actions. But it was a start.
A deuced uncomfortable start. How women made it a block down the street, he did not know.
The corset he wore cut into his skin and the crinolines forced him toward a newfound awareness of his proximity to all those traversing the street.
As a man, he could take up whatever space he wanted.
His attire was always relatively comfortable and he did not have to calculate the space between him and others.
Did women have to think about their proximity or distance from others every hour of every day?
Shaking his head, on which he wore a thickly veiled bonnet, he peered through the veil to survey his surroundings.
In his simultaneous wonder and discomfort, he had lost track of where he was going.
Now he was close to…the intersection he had seen Petra that day when he was coming back from the docks.
Wolf warred with himself. On one hand, he wanted to respect her wishes and not seek her out, particularly if it could risk bringing her father to her door. But on the other, how could he make amends if he could not find her?
Head in his thoughts rather than before him, Wolf was jolted backward as he ran into two tall men.
“Excuse me,” he gasped, quickly remembering to disguise his voice. While he would never excuse his presence as a man, he was trying to do what he thought a lady might do in his situation.
“What do we have here? A little ladybird, trying to hide her face. Do you think she’s an ugly one, mates?” Wolf sensed the warm, ale-soaked breath of the man to his right, who had just spoken.
“I’m more interested in what’s in that fancy reticule.
” Wolf glanced down at the reticule he carried.
Although the reticule bore the deceptive character of an adornment befitting an opulently dowered gentlewoman of the ton, it remained, in actuality, a hollow artifact of the theatre, a discarded prop of no true consequence.
Upon redirecting his gaze, the men he had run into now stood close enough to constrict his movements.
From the voice speaking about the reticule, he knew at least one man was behind him.
Even in his usual attire, he could not easily best three men.
A voice reminded him that in his usual attire, it would have been unlikely that these men would have approached him.
From the all-encompassing scent of whiskey on the man’s breath, the one on Wolf’s right was obviously in his cups. Perhaps if he…
With much greater force than he hit John, Wolf delivered a punishing blow to the assailant at his left, propelling him into the path of the man’s companion. He made to pivot with a predatory swiftness, yet a searing agony erupted somewhere between his back and his thigh.
Blast, he hadn’t considered that the man behind him would have a blade. The cold metal cut into his flesh, then pulled out.
“Stop!” a woman’s voice cried.
The blade scratched his shoulder blade but then he heard a great battering behind him as the man grunted and he heard a body drop to the ground, he sank to his knees.
“I have you,” said the accented voice, and a tall, familiar woman put her hand around his shoulders. “You are safe now.”
As Wolf felt the blood drain from his body, his mind began to float into an inky darkness, his last thought that there was something oddly familiar about his savior…
* * *
Two weeks of independence.
A fortnight earlier, Petra had set out on her own, her destination the sanctuary she secretly created over the years. She had never thought that she had been one to need sanctuary, it had been intended for others. But then, she should never have underestimated her father. Not since that day…
Petra bit her finger nail as she put the finishing touches on a letter to Jillian at her desk.
She longed to tell Jillian about the sanctuary.
How she had met with her grandfather’s solicitor and trustee to understand how her inheritance was independent of her father, though it would not be independent of a husband, and how she had secretly used it since she reached majority to build this empire.
A place of safety for domestics to escape the threat of abuse and no references as well as a place to learn skills to support themselves should they wish to leave.
Using a former theatre allowed for space for self-defense lessons but Petra wished there was a better space to learn secretarial skills in the crumbling, nondescript building, purchased discreetly via her grandfather’s estate.
Her father would likely work that out now that she had fled. He was probably already searching for the asset he had so recently lost. But she hazarded a guess that he was looking amongst the ton as he believed it was the only world she knew.
While she had underestimated his reach in using Lord Wolfridge to trap her, her father had always severely underestimated her.
For all his brilliant manipulation and reading of human weakness, Petra doubted her father would have ever expected this of her.
Setting aside her letter for Jillian, Petra was about to begin a new list of tasks for herself when a commotion at the back entrance gave her pause.
The sound was far away from the areas converted for living quarters that had once belonged to actors years earlier.
Who would be up in the back at this hour?
“Lady Petra!” Cecile’s voice carried down the hall and Petra stood immediately. Something was wrong. At the end of the hall, Petra glimpsed Cecile and a slumped figure wearing a veil.
“Lady Petra,” Cecile’s voice grew closer as she slowly made her way down the hall with the woman. “This lady was attacked in the street. I beat back her attackers and brought her here. I hope…that is—”
“You did right, Cecile.” Petra reassured her. “Can you take her to the clinic and bring some clean linens when you can?”
“Yes, my lady.” The clinic was no more than a room with scant medical supplies, but Petra had needed them to treat the wounds of abused domestics in the past. While she was no Miss Nightingale, she had developed basic medical skills such as bandaging and stitching up wounds over the years.
Petra helped Cecile lay the woman down on the padded table on her back, but when the figure groaned, Petra rolled her to her side.
“Oh no, she was stabbed?” Cecile gave a grave nod at the evident wound. “Would you also find a nightgown for her? I am going to have to remove her clothes to treat these wounds.”
Cecile gave another nod as Petra went to the cabinet to retrieve the large set of scissors. She had been given basic tools of the medical trade by a generous doctor who often ministered to those on the streets.
“I am sorry, miss, I will do everything I can to protect your modesty.”
Starting at the back of the woman’s gown, Petra used the scissors to cut away the woman’s gown, corset, and chemise. Petra marveled at the strength of the scissors and she hoped Cecile would be swift in bringing a nightgown.
“My apologies,” she whispered to the woman, who seemed to be fading in and out of consciousness, “the linens are…”
Before she could finish that thought, she realized the woman wore no stockings or drawers as the garments fell away.
Petra furrowed her brow as she stared at the evidence before her, taking in the wounds but also the hair on the person’s back, legs, and…
This was certainly the hairiest woman she had ever seen.
As the figure began to writhe on the table, they turned again, providing Petra clear evidence that the person before her was most definitely not a female.
To confirm her conclusion, she reached up to the person’s head and loosened the bonnet and the veil.
Before her, lying naked and injured was the 7th Viscount Wolfridge. The last person she would have expected when Cecile brought someone in.
After a moment of shock, she drew a deep breath and willed her heartbeat to slow.
“I am going to save you, Wolfridge. Lord help your soul if you bring my father down upon us,” she whispered, both to him and to herself.
Petra eased his body so that he was lying on his front and she could study his wounds.
From what she could tell through all the blood, he had a shallow wound at his shoulder blade and a deep cut between his buttock and thigh.
“That will have to be first.”
Petra jumped to attention as she heard Cecile returning, and she rushed to meet her at the door. At least in this she could spare Wolf any embarrassment.
“Thank you, Cecile.” Petra took the linens from Cecile. “You can leave them to me.”
“My lady?”
“Sleep, Cecile.” Petra smiled at the woman. “You already saved one life today, you can rest on your laurels.”
Cecile looked at her for a long moment. When Petra fled her father’s residence, Cecile adamantly insisted that she come with Petra, even though Petra pointed out that Kemberley House was much nicer in accommodations.
However, Cecile had been a steadfast and loyal friend as well as an innate protector.
Petra looked the woman in the eye to convey to her all was well and that she was safe.
“Very well, my lady.”
While Cecile was the soul of discretion, Petra felt oddly protective of Lord Wolfridge. Though his presence still baffled her, she would keep his secret for him.
Turning back, she tore the loose gown into strips, then went to find the whiskey she had stored on the shelf.
Pushing aside several other bottles, she jumped when a voice croaked, “Where am I?”
Turning around slowly, Petra considered how to explain her sanctuary when Lord Wolfridge’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
“Petra?” Why did her name on his tongue cause the hairs on her neck to stand on end?
“You are safe, Lord Wolfridge.”
“Wolf, please. I am naked lying on a strange table, you should at least call me Wolf.” He paused. “Or Julian.”
Petra weighed her options for moving forward, torn between comforting him and remonstrating him for his previous behavior toward her. “You were attacked today, my l-Wolf.” She went with the middle ground, deciding she could be personable but clear about renewing their previous connection.
“Right…” Wolf’s eyes seemed to dilate as he remembered his day. “I can explain.”
“There is no need,” Petra said quickly. Everyone had a right to their own interests and time, who was she to judge how Wolfridge conducted himself?
“I wanted to understand better. To see the world as you do.” Even though his voice was faint, his words were clear.
“To see the world as I do?” Petra repeated. That was the last thing she expected him to say. She had assumed his attire that day had been some strange bedsport gone wrong, even as the thought left a sour note on her tongue. But he had been thinking of her?
“I wanted to know what it means to walk the street as a woman. When we—when I wronged you, I realized I could not understand the depths of my betrayal if I did not try to understand your perspective.”
Although rather touched, Petra was still confused. “You took that rather literally, my lord,” she corrected herself. “Wolf.”
He shrugged or shrugged as much as a naked, prone man could.
“Is that whiskey in your hand?”
Startled, Petra answered immediately, “Yes.”
“Oh good, I am dying for a finger.”
“Lord Wolfridge…” Petra began but he spoke over her.
“I haven’t touched the stuff in ages…”
“Wolf,” she tried again but he continued to prattle on.
“Not for at least a month, if not more.”
“Julian,” she said firmly and finally he looked at her.
“The whiskey is for your wound. I…I need to sew your backside back together.”