Chapter Eight #2
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” I said, though the intense scrutiny was making me uneasy.
He shot me a shy smile. “It was meant as one. I do mean it sincerely, my lady. Your cousin was kind to me when he had no reason to be. I was not doing well at Trinity. Not everyone is like him.” His voice lowered.
“Even here. I can see the way that people look at me as though I’m something scraped from the bottom of their shoes.
” As if he’d admitted something atrocious, Will’s mouth snapped shut and his skin went mottled with mortification.
“Bloody hell, I shouldn’t have said that to a lady.
Or sworn. I beg your pardon. Again. God, I’m ruining it. ”
He sounded so furious with himself that I wanted to hug him, but that would give me away. “Breathe, Viscount Humbolt. The biggest trick is to pretend that nothing is above you. Nothing and no one. Say something silly? Laugh it off as though you meant it all along.”
“It’s that easy?” he muttered.
“No. But it’s much better than berating yourself for being authentic. People are going to think what they’re going to think. Their opinions are none of your business.”
He bit out a chuckle. “That sounds like something your cousin would say.” I froze, realizing that it was true—I didn’t disguise my inner self.
“Are you sure that you and Lord Ansel are not twins? I have two mates who are twins, and they practically finish each other’s sentences. It’s a little eerie.”
I had to agree. The way that Klaus and Kristof sometimes had silent conversations was a bit unnerving. I shook my head. “No, we’re not.”
“Compassion and intelligence must run in the family, then.”
My lips curled, but I lifted my fan to hide them.
I liked Will, with his natural lack of artifice, but to fit in here, he would have to play the part, or he’d be ridiculed or ostracized and discarded like a country bumpkin.
I didn’t want that for him, but I would have to be careful to watch my step and not give away something that only the male version of Roz would know.
Lady Rosalin wasn’t properly acquainted with Viscount William Humbolt.
And based on his conclusions thus far that my cousin and I were rather alike in face and manner, I would also have to make sure that our personalities were vastly different. I needed to sell the performance of a flippant, featherbrained Lady Rosalin—the opposite of Will’s version of her cousin.
“How long have you been at university? I do find it quite a useless endeavor.” I forced a high-pitched giggle that made me want to roll my own eyes.
“All that time and knowledge for what? A gentleman’s job is to oversee his estate, to make the right social connections, and to marry well.
University is a complete waste of time, if you ask me. ”
Will’s jaw slackened in a strange sort of astonishment. “I suppose formal education isn’t a requirement to be a peer, but knowledge is important.”
I sniffed disinterestedly with a bland smile.
“A title and a fortune are important, Viscount Humbolt. They are the only things that matter, at least according to most of the aristocracy. My cousin is much too foolish in thinking an interest in astronomy will amount to anything.” From his stupefied expression, I knew I was laying it on thickly, but that was the point—to detract from any obvious similarities between Lady Rosalin and Alter Ego Ansel.
The music changed, and I was inordinately grateful to see Blake barreling toward us, given the bleak alternative of further repelling poor Will, who was the kindest soul I’d known. The look of disenchantment blooming in his eyes was almost too much for me to bear.
“Who’s this, then?” Blake demanded, slinging an arm around Will’s shoulders.
It was rather uncouth, but Blake did not care in the least what anyone thought of him, which was quite contrary to the advice I’d given Will.
Everyone in our set knew Blake, however.
Throwing an arm around a boy he didn’t know would hardly register on anyone’s etiquette meter.
“Lord Blake, may I present Viscount William Humbolt, an acquaintance of my cousin at Trinity. He was new to the university and—” I cut myself off from saying that he was also new to the ton, because Viscount Humbolt hadn’t actually confided that to me…
but to Roz acting as Ansel. “And he was just saying how well he had esteemed him.”
Blake’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you mean St. John’s?”
Oh, botheration. I kept my face neutral and let out an airy laugh. “St. John’s, Trinity, it’s all the same, isn’t it?”
Goodness, this was starting to unravel rather spectacularly.
“You of all people know that they’re not at all the same,” Blake said frowning. “Didn’t you just tell me how unfair—”
Not even thinking of how it would look, I shoved Blake’s arm off Will’s shoulders and grabbed Will’s free arm even as he squawked in surprise. “Come along. It’s time for our dance.”
“Our d-dance?”
I pouted prettily as I turned, after manhandling him to the ballroom floor. “I thought we could, but I understand if you don’t wish to.” I stared at him earnestly, feeling Blake’s smirk boring into my back as if he knew I’d run away. “It will help you settle in, I promise.”
Will nodded, acknowledging the boon I was offering him. “No, of course I want to. Thank you, my lady.”
As the strains of music started, I let out a slow exhale. That was close. Too close.
Blake was going to be a problem. I could feel it.
“Your cousin is delightful.”
Distractedly, I glanced up from the book I was trying to finish reading in the next hour before my meeting with St. Clair while simultaneously stuffing my face with food and squinted at Will. Sadly, I hadn’t won the wager for our race, which meant no reprieve from reading. “My who?”
“The beautiful Lady Rosalin,” Will announced, plopping down into the chair beside me in the dining hall. “She was at a ball that I was invited to, one you missed, might I add. Was everything well with your uncle? It was a pity you had to miss the fun.”
The twins immediately perked up. “You met the cousin?” Klaus demanded in a loud whisper. “Do tell, Will! What’s she like, and more importantly, what does she look like?”
“Yes,” Kristof urged, his wide smile much too devious for my liking. “Give us specifics,” he said, moving his hands in an hourglass shape. “Dimensions. How are her—?”
I cleared my throat and narrowed my eyes. “Oy! She’s a lady, and I’ll thank you to keep your unflattering misogyny to yourselves.”
“We don’t hate them,” Klaus cried in affront. “We love all ladies.”
Kristof nodded sagely. “We are devoted philogynists.”
“Admiration and lust are two different things,” Harold pointed out, cramming his mouth with a piece of roasted chicken. “You don’t even know her, so how could you admire her?”
Klaus rolled his eyes. “That’s why we are asking Will his opinion.”
Will flushed when the curious focus of four pairs of eyes, not including mine, was back upon him.
“She was fine,” he muttered. A chorus of boos from the twins had him shaking his head.
“Long black hair, dark eyes. Nicely dressed. Pretty. Looks a bit like him”—he cleared his throat, with a jerk of his chin in my direction—“but without the excellent brain.”
I almost chortled at that but kept my head buried in my book. At least my tactics were working to keep my identities separate.
“The best kind!” Klaus remarked and pretended to swoon. “Beautiful but brainless.”
I scowled at him. “Did you just call my cousin stupid?”
“I didn’t. Will did.”
Will chose that moment to choke on his mouthful of split pea soup, the contents flying everywhere.
Staring at the splotch of green sludge on the corner of my sleeve, I made a gagging noise and reached for my napkin.
But when I glanced up, both the twins, who were sitting directly opposite Will, had pea spatter all over their faces, looking equally sickened and speechless.
I couldn’t help it—I started laughing. And then everyone else burst into laughter, even poor Will, who seemed mortified and could not stop stammering his apologies between snickers. The amusement died down as a long shadow cut across the table.
“Lord Ansel, you’re late.”
Still swiping at my stained cuffs, I blinked up at St. Clair owlishly and craned my neck to peer around him at the clock along the far wall at the end of the dining room. He was right. It was past two o’clock! How had that last hour disappeared so quickly?
His lips tightened at my lack of movement. “Library. Now.”
He was already marching out when I opened my mouth to apologize even as I jumped up, sloppily gathering the book and the rest of my things. My stomach growled as if protesting the fact that it hadn’t been fed enough, so I stole a fresh roll off James’s plate and shoved it into my mouth.
“Hey, that was mine!” he snapped. “Get your own!”
I sketched a theatrical bow. That was one of the things I loved about being a boy—absolutely no one sitting in my vicinity cared about whether one was being a mannerless swine or not.
Will could spit half his soup over the table, and we would laugh uproariously about it.
But I could not even imagine Lady Rosalin or any ladies of her acquaintance behaving similarly.
My mother would have a coronary if she saw her precious, perfect daughter with half a bread roll sticking uncouthly out of her mouth, crumbs falling everywhere.
And yet, I had never been happier to defy the rules that governed my alter ego.
“Thanks, mate! I owe you one,” I told a seething James—who seemed much too angry over a trifling piece of bread—as I hurried behind St. Clair toward the library. “See you later, lads,” I said to the others. “Duty calls.”
“More like penance,” I heard Harold mutter.
I bit back a chuckle. He wasn’t wrong.
Despite our unexpected moment of bonding last week, I had a feeling St. Clair was going to put me through the wringer, and while I had gotten some refreshed reading of Principia done during the carriage ride to and from London, I wasn’t close to being finished.
St. Clair didn’t seem like the type to accept or appreciate any excuses…not even wildly inventive ones that involved juggling secret identities and switching lives between Cambridge and London, which required the patience and planning of a master engineer.
I sighed and braced myself. This was what I’d signed up for, and the only thing to do was to keep moving forward even if I wasn’t prepared. It was written in the very book I carried—one could only stay in motion if one kept in motion.
If I stopped…the game would be over.