Sins of a Wicked Duke (The Penwich School for Virtuous Girls #1)(11)

Outfitted in her new clothing, she stared hard at her reflection, gooseflesh breaking out over her skin. “I don’t know whether to be appalled or pleased.”

Evie nodded behind her, face slack with astonishment. “If I had not assisted you with the transformation, I would never believe it.

“I actuallylook like a man,” she breathed.

“Well, you canpass for one at any rate,” Evie offered. “Or rather a boy.”

“A young man,” Fallon amended, smoothing a hand over her slicked-back hair, pleased that the red-gold hue was scarcely visible. It simply looked an average brown.

“Yes. Perhaps seventeen or eighteen. Thank goodness for your height.”

Fortunately, the narrow shape of her face stopped her features from appearing too soft or delicate. She had never been an apple-cheeked maid. Her features had been too strong, her jaw a bit too square.

Evelyn cocked her head to the left side, her expression thoughtful. “Still, you are apretty man.”

“I’ve seen pretty men before.” Fallon nodded, whether to convince herself or Evie, she couldn’t say. Half the men about town aspired to look as she did—a veritable dandy. The ones who gave her grief over the past two years had certainly been prettier than herself.



For some reason, the Duke of Damon’s face floated before her. Definitelynot a dandy. The angles of his face looked carved from stone. Nothing soft orpretty about him. And he had been taller than her. Not like any gentlemen she had known before. Men of his ilk were not the sort found sipping tea in drawing rooms. Her lips twisted. He likely haunted bordellos and other unsavory establishments. Banishing the wicked man from her thoughts, she surveyed her new self.

Propping a hand on her hip, she strove for a manly pose. “And what name shall I give myself?”





Chapter 4


Sick dread curled dark fingers around her heart as she stared down at the slip of paper shaking in her hand, then back to the house before her. On the other side of an ornate, Spanish iron gate stood a three-storied townhouse of white Caen stone. Another quick glance at Mrs. Harrison’s quickly scrawled words and the bronze address plate confirmed there was no mistake. The world had stopped turning. Flown off its axis. She stood at the threshold of15 Pottingham Place. The Duke of Damon’s home. The very residence she vowed never to enter.

She hovered there for some moments, recalling the dreadful man. The wicked gleam in his eyes as his tongue laved another female’s nipple.Wretch . Did she really wish to place herself in his sphere?

Only you’re not you. He’ll never look twice at you now.



With a decided nod, she pushed open the gate and circled around to the back and knocked on the servants’ entrance. She required a roof over her head tonight. She couldn’t afford to be choosey.

Moments later she sat in the spacious kitchen, a plate of biscuits before her and the oddest-looking butler she’d ever clapped eyes on interviewing her for the position of footman.

Fallon had worked in enough households to form certain expectations. One of which included butlers looking…well, butlerish. But should she feel any surprise? His master hardly seemed concerned with propriety. Like many an aristocrat who believed himself above reproach for no other reason than the position granted him at birth. Bitterness churned inside her, tightening her chest as she thought of her father, dead on a distant island. All because of Lord Hunt’s selfish whim. Blasted blue bloods always did whatever they pleased. Rot the lot of them.

The butler looked her over critically with one good eye—a discerning blue eye as stark as the black eye patch covering the other eye.

She forced herself not to fidget, not to show the least sign of anxiety even as that single blue eye seemed to strip away her garments and see her—the real her. Or at least she imagined he did. This was the moment. If anyone sniffed out her deception it would be here, now, with this man. Ironically, the discerning one-eyed butler.

“Mrs. Harrison referred me.” Unnecessary to volunteer—as he held the letter from her in his hands—but she did so anyway, feeling the need to fill the silence. She held her breath, waiting.

After a long moment, Mr. Adams leaned forward in his chair and selected a biscuit from the plate. “Excellent biscuits,” he called over his shoulder to the cook, a thin woman who stood at the stove stirring a pot with a sinewy arm. Great stains of sweat marked the armpits of her dress. The woman grunted in response.

Mr. Adams fixed his eye on Fallon again, his expression sober, considering. “What do you think of young Francis here, Martha?”

Evie had decided on the name, thinking the closer to her own the better. Yet hearing him speak the name, she had the impulse to look behind her.

The cook gave a second grunt in response.

“My thoughts exactly,” he answered vaguely. Lifting a napkin, he dabbed at his mouth with a fastidiousness she would not credit a dangerous-looking one-eyed man. Butler or not.



Fallon looked helplessly between the butler and the cook. It had been a relatively simple matter to impress Mrs. Harrison. The woman had not questioned her too closely regarding her references—all fabricated, of course. The older lady had gushed in response to Fallon’s flirtations, happy to send her on an interview this very day, proving what Fallon had suspected all along. Men had it better.