At first Arista had protested. She didn’t need fancy clothing to do what Bones needed done. She could conduct business in the shadows, dressed like a boy as usual.
Only once had Arista refused to let Becky dress her—Lady A’s first meeting. Bones got wind of Arista’s complaints, and Becky still bore the scars from that act of defiance. It had been a dark warning to Arista, and she had listened. Now she let Becky do what she must, if only to keep her safe from Bones’s heavy hand.
Lady A became a familiar shadow at the masquerades with her raven-feather mask, but though people knew who she was, no one dared to think of turning her in to the Watch. Not with so many of society’s best indebted to Bones. Their secrets gave her a small measure of safety, and Nic watched her back.
And so far, Arista had avoided harm.
“Did you dance, miss?” Becky’s nimble fingers made short work of the task, and soon the blessedly cool air caressed Arista’s hot, itchy scalp.
Becky’s question abruptly brought back images of a highwayman. Specifically, his eyes. Had she really let a stranger put his hands on her like that? As Becky unlaced her stays, Arista reached for the spot on her neck that the highwayman had touched. Her own fingers traced the path from her shoulder to just below her ear.
It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t even the same feeling as when Nic had touched her in the hallway.
Arista’s mind flew in a million directions. She wanted to get her trousers on, pull the dark wool cap down over her head, and go for a walk. She needed to try and sort out what had happened at the masquerade so it wouldn’t happen again.
“Did you remember everything I taught you, then?” Becky interrupted her thoughts, and a prickle of irritation swept over Arista. The girl loved to talk, especially after Arista had gone to a party.
Arista wanted to snap back that yes, she had remembered her rehearsed dialect and subdued graces after they’d been pounded into her head for years, but she held her tongue. Becky didn’t deserve abuse for her show of concern.
Arista glanced over at the girl who had become her friend. She flitted about the room, seemingly wrapped up in her own thoughts. Becky might have been pretty once, but now she walked with her head down and turned away from anyone who might look too closely. From the left, she appeared normal; but on the right, her skin was misshapen and lumpy from her temple to her chin.
The deep burns had not been tended to properly, and as the skin healed, that whole side of her face had been left horribly disfigured. No one but Arista knew the circumstances behind the injury. After two years of teaching Arista the finer graces, Becky had reluctantly told Arista the story.
Becky had worked as a lady’s maid for a family in Piccadilly. Becky and the lord of the house had had a disagreement over her young charge’s future husband, and he had beaten her. As she lay on the floor cowering from him, he had taken a candelabra and tipped the hot wax over her face. There were smaller, matching scars on her arms where she’d tried to protect herself from the burning wax, but her sleeves usually hid those.
Her employer had then turned her out with nothing. Arista wanted to gut the bastard, but Becky refused to name who had done it.
“Yes, I remembered everything you taught me.”
Becky beamed as she shook out the black silk dress and carefully hung it away, to be brushed down later for the next time it would be needed.
Arista exhaled, her first real breath without the constraint of the corset, and pulled a ratty, stained chemise over her head, followed by a plain brown shirt. It had grown threadbare in several spots, but Becky’s nimble fingers had patched the holes as if they were never there. Not that it mattered. Arista always wore the shirt under an even darker brown coat that hid it, and her shape, effectively.
Black wool trousers covered her legs, rough and familiar. She strapped her knife to the outside of her thigh, in plain view now for anyone thinking of trying his luck. She slipped bare feet into an old pair of Nic’s boots that now fit her perfectly.
“I’ll be back by morning.” Arista grabbed her wool cap off a peg that was wedged into the cracked wall and clicked the lock to their room open.
Before she left the room, her glance slid to the crude charcoal drawing on the boards lining the far wall. Nic had made it for her when she was barely eleven. They were supposed to be picking pockets at the market, but instead, Nic had wanted to show her something. They’d spent an entire day at the docks watching the ships arrive and depart.
There had been a ship there unloading goods from India. She recognized the same smells that used to come from Nalia’s tea. A man in a turban and clothes unlike anything she’d ever seen before stepped off the ship, and when he reached the dock Arista saw a monkey perched on his shoulder. A real, live monkey. He must have seen her staring, because he smiled and approached them.