He wants a grand distraction? Fine. I’ll give him a grand distraction—so grand he’ll have to listen to my hours-long apology. I ignore the stabbing pain in my stomach from the few bites of banquet food and bunch up my hem to tear it—an easy enough feat, considering how fine and old the fabric is. Lucien watches me with deadpan boredom as I smear cobblestone dirt on my face, but when I start pinching and twisting my cheeks, he quirks one eyebrow.

“Not the dirty beggar act, then?” he asks.

“Nay.” I rummage in a nearby garbage pile for the glinting empty bottle I’d spotted there. I shake it at him slightly and smirk. “Something far better.”

Before he can ask, I stand up from our hiding place and start staggering wildly toward the men, a bawdy song I’d heard a drunkard singing last night from the carriage brewing in my throat.

“Seven men they caught the baker’s eye, and seven men they made her sigh, then seven men they came to play, and seven men ate pie that day—”

The barrel line goes quiet, pauses in its motion, and all the men look me up and down suspiciously. The lawguards descend, knitting around me in a tight circle.

“Whoa there, this area is off-limits!” one of them insists.

I squint up at him. “Whaddaya sayin’? This…” I gesture wildly at the house they’re going into. “This iz my house! You…you tin men are telling me I can’t go in muh own house?”

The lawguards give one another a look, the “better deal with this quick before our superiors hear about it” look. The men unloading the barrels are still, wary, as if they’re unsure they should keep working.

“Turn around now, miss, and leave,” another lawguard insists, his bushy mustache twitching as I lurch toward him.

“Miss? Miss? Do I look like a miss to ya?” I stagger into the lawguard on my left. He reflexively pushes me away, and I throw a sloppy punch with no power to it, nearly falling over with the momentum. The lawguards push me back, away from the house. “I’m a ma’am! I’m married…I’m married, you shiny bastards! To a pig of a man! An’ he’s in that house, waitin’ for his stew! He’s as big as a badger and as mean as a mountain, and if he doesn’t get his stew I’m gone for. A doner.” I sniff dramatically, blearing my eyes. “If he hits me, you’re his fault!”

Lucien’s dark outline appears from between the carriage railings, his eyes searching the barrel labels. The working men are beginning to get antsy.

“Ma’am.” The lawguard to my right looks thoroughly chastened. “You’re drunk, and you’ve got the wrong house—”