Unmasked by the Marquess (Regency Imposters #1)

by Cat Sebastian

“Was he really that bad?” Charity put her hand over her heart, as if taking an oath. “I tell you, if he had a quizzing glass he would have examined me under it.

Wulfric Bedwyn ass!

“Oh, and something about how the hallowed halls of Pembroke House would be defiled by the spawn of sin.” Alistair was stunned. “She actually said that? Hallowed halls and whatnot?” “Hand to God.” Gilbert’s eyes were shining with merriment.

are the shades of pemberly to be thus polluted

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. When she absolutely had to dress as a woman—those visits home from Cambridge when Robbie was still alive—she usually borrowed one of Louisa’s shabbiest and most faded gowns. She felt like a mummer, like an actor in a farce, and longed for the next chance she’d have to resume her breeches and waistcoats. But this proximity to a man she desired was very hard to manage. And there was no denying that she did desire Lord Pembroke, despite all his arrogance and hauteur.

He knew that what he felt for young Selby was a kind of desire. And he knew himself well enough to understand that he felt this kind of desire for men as well as women. Thus far, he had been able—for the most part—to ignore this inconvenient urge when it applied to men. And so he would ignore his desire for Robin.

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.

Gilbert had to know what was going on, but he went on eating his soup, pretending to be deaf and dumb.

Hugh Furnival, who had known Robin since Cambridge, seemed only minorly discomfited. “Well, I knew you weren’t quite in the ordinary way of things,” he said after a mere moment of stunned silence. “I wondered if you might be French.”