Callie felt the color rush up into her cheeks. She lowered her face quickly, but he lifted her chin on his fingers. "Magnifique, I must agree," he said softly. He also used French, which only reminded her more strongly of those long-ago days of ardent secrets between them. "Hold your head up, ma chérie. You're beautiful."

She raised her chin. She wasn't, of course, but she supposed that behind a dark veil she could play the part. As he stood close to her, he bent his head and let his lips drift over hers, with the gauze between them, while the dressmaker made little clucks of approving delight. Callie's heart felt as if it were beating too fast for her to breathe.

He took her arm and nodded to the modiste as he escorted Callie from the shop. Once on the street, she said, "Am I meant to be your… your—" She could not quite put into words the scandalous role it seemed she was to play.

"You are my wife, and I am so much in love with you that I can't keep my eyes away," he said, still insisting on French. "Do you object?"

She really felt quite unable to reply. She managed to shake her head and give a small shrug.

"We're come over from a small corner of Belgium near Luxembourg. You need not say much, as you have little English. Are you comfortable in the French?"

"I will do my best." Her spoken French was only fair, she felt, but she could understand it quite well after years of listening to Madame de Monceaux and her late daughter.

"Good," he said, as they strolled leisurely along. "I think it's safest. I wouldn't suppose too many of your stockmen and farmers would understand us."

"No," Callie agreed. "But of course the gentry will. And I'm afraid Colonel Davenport will know you by your face."

"I'll take care to avoid Colonel Davenport," he assured her. He paused to allow a carriage to go by, the sleek team of matched bays swinging in under the sign of Gerard's Hotel. "I've taken rooms here in the High Town. You'll be with me most of the day while the show is on, but from time to time we'll see that you make an appearance as yourself with your cattle. And at night, of course, you'll go back to the Green Dragon with Lilly."

This plan sounded both extremely alarming and enormously attractive at the same time. She was not at all looking forward to impersonating a Belgian lady, but the thought of three entire days in Trev's company, cast in the role of his adored wife, was… impossibly wonderful, to put a point on it.

"We are newly wed," he said, as he touched her waist, guiding her up the marble steps of Gerard's. "That will excuse a good deal."