Iona returned with the teapot and two cups. She set the tray down gingerly, and then looked up at Hazel and smiled.
“Do you think I’m mad, Iona?” Hazel said quietly, more a statement than a question.
Iona shook her head. “And besides, there won’t be much time for madness when you’re the Viscountess Almont. Might as well get it out of your system now.”
Hazel tried to resist the smile pulling at the corners of her lips. “And my mother—she didn’t suspect a thing?”
Iona laughed. “Course not. So worried for Percy, I think she would have left you here for looking pale at breakfast. Poor boy.”
“Poor boy? Poor Percy? He gets all the attention in the world.”
“It’s not good to be smothered like that. Boy needs fresh air and a little mud on his knees every now and again.”
“George rode every day, and look where he ended up. Oh—oh, Iona, I’m so sorry.”
Iona had been madly in love with George since he came back from Eton for summer holiday having grown a thin mustache and about six inches. She’d followed him around like a lovesick puppy, repeated his words back to the rest of the servants, and spilled tea from nerves if he was ever in the room.
“He was just so beautiful, wasn’t he?” she said now.
Hazel nodded, and she pushed away the thought that had seemed to bubble to the surface of her brain like scum on a lake every day for the past two years: Maybe it should have been him, and not me. It was a nibbling rat of a thought, illogical, terrible, and cruel. Hazel knew all of that. And yet.
Iona gazed out the window, her eyes flat and misty, some distant memory of George playing across her face.
“You know,” Hazel said, “the footman Charles has become quite handsome in the past few years, I’ve noticed. And he can’t take his eyes off you. I’ve caught him more than once lingering in the library, hoping to catch you setting up the fire. The boy is positively lovesick.”
“Charles? Truly?”
“And he won’t be a footman forever. Before my father left, I remember him mentioning to the steward that Charles would make a fine valet.”
Iona was lost in thought, or fantasy, for a moment, and Hazel watched a smile twitch at the edges of her lips. “And you say he stares at me?”
“Honest to goodness.”
The light from the window reached Iona’s cheeks beneath her cap, and Hazel would have sworn she was blushing.
“Well, enough of that nonsense. We have a task at hand,” Iona said. She stepped back and squinted one eye to get a better look at Hazel. “You do look a good deal like your brother, I think. From the side. The same nose, same eyebrows.” The two of them glanced involuntarily toward the hallway, where George’s portrait hung on the wall. Iona was being kind, Hazel knew. Hazel was pretty enough, but people had remarked on George’s striking good looks since they were children.
“The important thing,” Hazel said, “is that he wasn’t too much taller than I am.”
* * *
WITH IONA’S HELP, HAZEL WAS SOON wearing one of George’s muslin shirts, a waistcoat, a jacket, and a pair of trousers. “These britches are nice. Although perhaps they don’t look quite modern enough,” Iona had said, holding up a pair of knee-length pants while they were going through George’s clothes press. “Although I suppose they were the style a few years back.”
“No,” Hazel said. “Trousers. With braces. I’m to be a medical man, not a dandy.”
By the time they finished and dusted off a hat from a top shelf, Hazel Sinnett could easily have passed as a gentleman.
“These boots are going to be too big, I’m afraid,” Iona said, pulling out a fine black leather pair of Hessians that were meant to reach midcalf, but on Hazel would go up to her knees.
“No matter,” Hazel replied. “We’ll stuff the toes with stockings. There must be an overcoat somewhere—even one of Father’s…”
“A cravat?” Iona asked.
“No, I’m trying to be George, not Beau Brummell.”
Iona’s eyes went wide. “You can’t be telling them that you’re George. But surely they’ll know that George is d—”
“They won’t know George Sinnett from Adam, I assure you. But I think you’re right to use a false name. How about George … Hazleton?”
Iona wiped the wetness from her eyes and smiled slightly. “I think that suits you well, Mr. George Hazleton.”