Page 9 of Enticed By an Earl
“Absolutely,” Wilkes said. He gestured toward a table filled with fashion plates and other drawings. “Come and tell me if anything suits your fancy.”
As Kit stepped over to the table of drawings, the anxiety and tension that had followed him for God only knew how long began to roll away. There was something about Mr. Wilkes’s shop that always set him at ease. He felt as though he were in good company there, as if he did not have to hold himself so tightly or pretend so strongly that he was anyoneother than himself. He suspected Wilkes was like him, though perhaps not as tragically.
“Do you see anything you like?” Wilkes asked as Kit pored through the drawings.
Kit did not answer at first. Truth be told, every sketch or printed plate in front of him looked foreign, like he was a cat being asked to dress in dog’s clothes.
It was not until he caught sight of a series of drawings of the latest women’s fashions that his heart sped up. He picked up those drawings, looking over them with eager eyes and longing pulling at his chest. Styles had already begun changing since Victoria had come to the throne. He rather liked the wider skirts and swooping necklines.
Absently, he touched his breastbone where the illustration before him showed the scoop of the bodice. He sighed heavily at the puffed sleeves and the cinched waist of the new style. He would have given anything if he could try a gown such as the one he was looking at, if only once.
“Jeremy, have you seen the new silk that was supposed to arrive yesterday,” a woman’s voice sounded from the back room moments before a short, slightly plump woman with a rosy complexion and a commanding air walked into the room. “Oh. I beg your pardon,” she said when she spotted Kit. “I did not realize you were with a customer.”
“Not at all,” Wilkes said, a strange look in his eyes as he turned from watching Kit. “Lord Castleton, this is my friend and business partner, Miss Clarissa Jones.”
Kit moved quickly away from the table of drawings, certain that Wilkes knew what he’d been looking at and what he’d been thinking. “How do you do, Miss Jones?” he greeted the woman.
A moment too late, he realized he still held the drawings of gowns in his hand. Both Wilkes and Miss Jones had most definitely noticed.
“I am quite well, Lord Castleton,” Miss Jones replied with a small curtsy. She had the spark of understanding in her eyes as she looked at Kit. “Are you?”
It was an impertinent question, but those two words struck Kit to the quick. Whomever this Miss Jones was, she was a keen judge of character it seemed. The way she stared at Kit made him feel as though she could see right into his soul, even though the two of them had only just met.
“I…I do not know,” Kit answered breathlessly, feeling as though he were suddenly on the spot.
“Lord Castleton has come to commission a suit for the many balls that are to take place this week and next,” Wilkes explained to Miss Jones. “I thought I would begin by having him choose a style.”
“Is this what you’ve chosen?” Miss Jones asked, stepping forward and taking the gown drawings from him.
Kit flinched, his face pinching. Something about the way she asked the question and the frankness with which she glanced from the drawings to him stirred a mad idea within him. There was no judgement in either her eyes or in Wilkes’s. The two of them looked at him with deepest kindness and with anticipation. It was as if they wished to assist him in ways that actually mattered.
“Forgive my impertinence,” Kit asked, keeping his voice far softer and his manner gentler than he would ever dare anywhere that he did not feel completely protected, “but have you ever constructed a…a gown for…for…someone like me?” By the time he reached the end of his question he was whispering.
“You wish for me, or rather Miss Jones, to make you a ballgown?” Wilkes asked just as quietly.
The three of them stood still, holding their breaths as though they were on sacred ground. Kit’s heart beat so wildly that he thought it might leap out of his chest. He’dnever seriously considered doing anything like what was screaming at him now. He’d tried on his sisters’ clothing when he was a boy, when it was still something to joke about instead of something serious. He powdered his face and rouged his lips and cheeks when he was in private with his friends as well. But he’d never considered anything half as daring as commissioning a ballgown for himself.
Miss Jones grinned at him, mischief lighting her entire expression. She stepped forward, hooking her hand around Kit’s elbow and tugging him toward the back room. “I believe that you and I should become friends, Lord Castleton,” she said, smiling up at him. “It seems to me as though we have a great deal to discuss.”
“We do?” Kit asked tremulously, allowing himself to be taken from the front of the shop into the back, which consisted of a large workshop piled with fabrics and notions of every kind and various suits and dresses in different stages of completion.
“Oh, yes,” Miss Jones said. She glanced over her shoulder at Wilkes, who followed them, before continuing with, “I suspect we could be great friends. I feel as though you may need to unburden your soul about some things, and I can assure you, I am precisely the friend you need for that.”
“You are?” Kit’s heart raced as much as it had when Lord Deveraux had rescued him the night before.
“I am,” Miss Jones said. “And I would be more than happy to construct the perfect ballgown for you, as long as you tell meeverything.”
Kit gulped for breath. He was terrified to reveal everything, but at the same time, he felt to the core of his soul that he had just made a friend who might save him as much as Lord Deveraux had.
Four
All Dev had been able to think about in the days leading up to his mother’s ball was Lord Castleton and whether the alluring young earl was safe. He’d reviewed the attack and their subsequent walk to Bedminster House a dozen times in his mind as he’d returned to his family’s home and put himself to bed. Part of him believed he should have gone after the attacker to discover the man’s identity and reasons for assaulting someone as gentle and harmless as Castleton, but in the end, he decided he had been right to stay by Castleton’s side.
The man needed a friend. No, he needed a protector. Something about the situation, about the fear and wariness that had seemed to envelop Castleton and about how he had not once questioned the attack or suggested they call a constable, did not sit right with Dev. It was as if Castleton already knew why he was being attacked and had deemed it pointless to do anything about it.
He contemplated calling on Castleton in the days before the ball, but his mother kept him far too busy with errandsand preparations. It fell on Dev’s shoulders to find the money that his mother would need to pay for all the things she believed would make her event stand out in the sea of balls and soirees that had packed London’s social calendar.
But still, as he pored over the family accounts and repositioned money so that it could go to the right tradesmen at the right time, his thoughts continually drifted to Castleton. His new friend had not been happy to arrive home. He had grown more anxious instead of less as he’d entered his house. Was the danger that haunted him located within his own home?
