Page 24 of The Dueling Duchess

God, how he missed all his servants.

His gaze wandered to the dressing tables and he blanched. He knew nothing about all the tubes and tubs of face paint. And nothing about all the shoes and boots lying in various stages of disrepair since this was where the cobbler came to do the monthly mending. And then there were hats and masks and feathered headdresses and—

His harried gaze landed on a tidy stack of newspapers in the corner of the room and Guy blinked.

The stack sat on a tiny table tucked into an odd-shaped enclave that must have been a broom cupboard before somebody removed the door.

The newspapers were especially conspicuous because they were the only neat thing in the entire room.

It only took two steps to get to the table; he tilted his head so he could read the top page.

And then he squinted and leaned closer.

“No,” he murmured.

Just what were the chances?

He flicked through the first newspaper—not an entire paper, just a few pages—his gaze running over a few columns about the interminable peace negotiations in Vienna. Next there was the Court section, and finally there was the part people generally called the gossip or society column.

Guy’s name jumped out of the small print and he gave a startled laugh.

“What in the world . . . ?”

Forgetting about cleaning for a moment, he shoved a pile of garments off a nearby stool and sat, pulling the stack of papers into his lap.

He’d made it halfway through the pile, his jaw sagging lower with each new gossip section—when the door opened and he looked up to find the knife-thrower, Josephine Brown—or Blade as she was commonly called—with her pet bird, Angus, on her shoulder.

“Hallo,” she said, fixing him with her opalescent gaze.

Her raven stared at Guy as intently as his mistress, but with black, shiny eyes rather than pale gray ones.

“Oh, hello,” Guy said, feeling slightly guilty for sitting and going through newspapers when he was supposed to be working. Even though he was not getting paid for it.

He shook aside the pointless thought as she closed the door behind her.

“Do you need me to leave?” he asked hopefully.

“No.”

“Oh.”

Instead of doing . . . anything, she just stood in the middle of the cluttered room and stared, not at Guy—thankfully—but at the newspapers he was holding.

A slow smile curled her lips, which were such a pale pink they were hardly any darker than her skin.

She was, Guy realized, almost entirely colorless—like a drawing composed of whites, grays, and blacks with only the merest whisper of pale, pale pink.

“Reading about yourself?” she asked.

Guy blinked. “What?”

She chuckled and the sound was strangely rusty. “Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone about you, His Grace of Staunton, or the Honorable Elliot Wingate.”

“You know who we really are?” Guy said stupidly.

“I doubt I’m the only one to have figured it out.”

Well. That was interesting.