Confessions of a Little Black Gown by Elizabeth Boyle

the rake inside him had slipped into the night like the most expert of thieves, or most deadly of…
    Spies.
    A spy? Oh, now her imagination was getting the better of her. Though what was it her father had always said? The best veneer is one of congenial blandness.
    No one suspects the happy fool…or perhaps, Tally thought, a vicar.
    She glanced up at her window, the one he’d been studying, and then back at Mr. Ryder. Could he be a…? Oh, such a notion was ridiculous. He wasHollindrake’s cousin. A vicar, for goodness sakes!
    Or was he?
    Startled by her own question, she pasted a smile on her face and did her best to still her trembling heart.
    “Oh, how fortuitous! We found you,” she said, trying to sound exactly like the other debutantes in London, as if nothing ever entered her head other than gossip or fashions or polite comments about…well, the weather.
    And not what he was doing spying on her rooms.
    “I daresay you should be honored,” she continued, beaming down at her dog as if he were the most brilliant of creatures. “Brutus doesn’t chew on just anyone. He obviously likes you.”
    “He needn’t,” Mr. Ryder said, in that soft, mild-mannered voice he’d used to answer Felicity’s barrage of questions at dinner.
    But to Tally, his dull tone sounded forced, and she imagined his real voice coming forth in the deep rich tones of a man used to being in command of his own destiny.
    He shook his boot, but Brutus clung to him with all the tenacity of his terrier forebears.
    Tally smiled apologetically and reached down and tugged the dog off. “At least your boots don’t look as if they are very dear. As a puppy, Brutus ruined the archduke’s best riding boots. Papa always said that was why the good man gave Brutus to me and Felicity as a birthday present.”
    “Yes, a most gracious gift,” he replied, glancing down at the now pitted heel of his boot.
    Tally blithely went on not caring that she soundedutterly vapid. “Hollindrake avers that Napoleon should have considered the same course, and just shipped crates of these little devils to England, and infested us all with them.” She laughed, tousling Brutus’s head and tickling the little fellow’s ears. “I hardly see what he means, for truly I think the breed adorable and a most excellent lady’s companion.”
    When she glanced up, she found him studying her, much as he had when they’d first been introduced. His scrutiny coiled into her belly like a smoldering fire. Oh, heavens, what should she do?
    A dangerous part of her wanted to nudge the rake she’d spied moments before back out from behind that dull collar. Brutus squirmed in her arms—as if to remind her that this was no game she was playing—that is, if her instincts were correct. She took another furtive glance up at her windows. No, there was only one way to determine what Mr. Ryder was about.
    And so she continued, “Brutus’s grandsire belonged to Marie Antoinette. I don’t like to brag about his royal connections, but I think it gives him a certain distinction over other dogs.”
    He stared at her for a moment, then replied, “So you said earlier.”
    “Did I? Well, yes, I suppose I did,” she said, smiling up at him as if such a thing happened all the time.
    But she shouldn’t have looked at him, for she found herself caught again by his measuring gaze—one that now said she was being dismissed as hardly worthy of any further scrutiny.
    And that ruffled at her far more than the fear of discovery.
    Dismiss me, will you? her injured feminine wiles railed.
    Remember, Tally, you want him to underestimate you , a more sensible voice argued.
    But not to dismiss me entirely… that wicked part of her whispered, the part that found this gown, these shoes utterly irresistible.
    That desired a man as rakish and devilish as the one she swore she’d seen before.
    Meanwhile, an uneasy silence lingered on as she searched for something else to natter about. Oh, if only she were as