Unmasked by the Marquess (Regency Imposters #1)

by Cat Sebastian

A wing is nothing, unless it is used.

“I feel certain both your husband and my mother were touched to discover that the two of you had such an aptitude for domestic felicity, despite all appearances to the contrary.” Mr. Allenby had been discarded as surely as Alistair’s mother had been.

He seemed so dreadfully bored and put upon, I nearly felt bad for him. But then I remembered all his money and got quite over it.”

This was the hard part of being a man. Six years ago, when she first put on Robbie’s taken-in clothes, she had felt silly, like she was in a costume. That had lasted all of five minutes, and then she felt righter than she had in her entire life. She was supposed to be wearing breeches and top boots, riding jackets and cravats. Her hair was meant to be cropped.

He looked like he wanted to touch her as much as she wanted to be touched. God, she was lonely. And a little bit drunk. Even the friendly, sisterly touches she had used to share with Louisa were now strange and rare, hampered by the civilities of London society. She wanted to feel another person’s hands on her.

still on her head. “Robin. That’s what I’ll call you.” “Like Queen Elizabeth’s Robin,” she commented, only realizing that comparing herself to a queen’s supposed lover was not perhaps quite the thing.

I am always correct, but never benevolent. Remember that.”

Sometimes he forgot that other people had crushing responsibilities and fears and expectations. He was not alone, not in his burdens, not in his life, not in this house—not tonight, at least.

“I’ve found the fears are there whether you fret or not. So I sweep them aside and try to enjoy myself while I can.”

But now she felt like she was mourning her own death, mourning the death of Robert Selby all over again. Mourning things she had no right even to think of.

A part of him, the part he had failed to silence with brandy and righteous anger, shouted that he’d be willing to call this person by any name he or she wanted as long as he got to hear that laughter, see that welter of freckles.

He found that he didn’t care terribly much whether Robin was a man or a woman. That was quite secondary, compared to the fact that Robin was a fraud and a cheat. Surely the fact that he didn’t care spoke badly of his faculties. There were men who preferred other men, and kept damned quiet about it, and there were men who preferred women. To not take a stand one way or the other seemed wanton. Greedy. Not at all like the sober, measured gentleman Alistair wanted to be.

Miss Church was a poor creature, a housemaid, with no family and no future, no possessions beyond the drab gray dress she wore to clean the floors of a house she was allowed to live in only on sufferance. Robin Selby, though, was free. Robin danced and laughed, was at ease with lords and ladies, and was able to take care of the people he loved.

Alistair remembered the first time he had been called by his title. That had been mortifying, considering the many ways the last holder of that title rendered it a byword for licentiousness and profligacy. But “Miss Church” had no such connotations. It was a blank slate. She ought to be grateful. Then, as

Shame was a luxury of the rich,

A changeling. She liked the sound of that, as silly as it was. She had been in between for so long. Neither man nor woman, neither servant nor gentlefolk. Neither fraud nor honest.

Imagine if people carried their hearts around like fragile birds’ eggs, carefully preventing the smallest crack or injury. Everybody would keep a polite distance, safe and protected and utterly alone.

She would be completely erased. It was to be as if she had never been born, as if the last twenty-four years had never happened. She had hoped that even in killing off Robert Selby, she could still be herself, but Alistair wanted to take that from her.

To be capable of grief. To be capable of having one’s heart broken. What astoundingly useless capacities.

“You’ve been nothing but trouble since I met you. And I’ve never been happier. I want a lifetime of trouble from you.”