Free St. Raven by Jo Beverley

India.
    If only he hadn’t taken to gambling.
    If only she had noticed and done something!
    That was the knife that turned in her. She’d been distracted by London. Society events had soon bored her, but London had fascinated. She’d begun to think that she might like to marry a man of that world. Not an idle aristocrat, but an active, involved man. A member of Parliament, perhaps, even a member of the government. That would be wonderful.
    Or a merchant. She wasn’t drawn by profit, but by the wonder of supplying masts to one country, wool to another, and spices to a third. Her friend Lavinia was engaged to marry a sea captain, and she looked forward to traveling to far ports. That was too much for Cressida, but she would like to be involved in the workings of the world.
    All that was over now, unless she retrieved the jewels. It had been obvious during her season that she wouldn’t achieve a fashionable marriage on her face alone, even with false curls.
    She glared at them, still stupidly attached to the turban.
    Fashionable circles were so stupid! Cruel, petty, and vicious, too. When her father had his wealth, many lords and ladies had visited, but since his loss and illness, they’d evaporated. Of course, it was summer now, when London largely emptied, but still, it showed their lack of heart.
    Someone knocked, “It’s Harry, miss.” Cressida opened the door and he carried in a pile of books and some cloth. He put the books down and, blushing, offered white cotton stockings, plain garters, and a piece of thin cloth. “Me mam sent these, miss. She hopes they’ll do.”
    Cressida took them as if they were jewels. “Indeed they will. Do thank her for me.”
    He piled the remains of breakfast on the huge tray. “You just ring if you want anything, miss.”
    When he’d left, Cressida took off her slippers and put on the solid, comforting stockings, tying them firmly with the garters. Then she sat before the mirror and arranged the triangle of fine cotton around her shoulders and tucked the ends down the front of her gown. She pushed the edges under the neckline all around and at last was decent.
    Decency was a strange thing. She’d not minded wearing this dress to a ball, but what was decent for night was not decent for day. She considered the bed. Trousers were not decent for anything.
    St. Raven had offered to retrieve the jewels alone. With every passing moment, it became more sensible.
    She hadn’t been making feeble objections, however. Some of the ivory statuettes were similar. They all showed people… having sexual congress in strange positions. Five showed standing couples, and one of those was the one with the jewels.
    She truly hadn’t noted some precise detail that she could pass on, but she believed she could spot the right one when she saw it. And she did know the house.
    She pulled a face. Truth was, she wanted to go. She’d keyed herself up to be the heroine of this adventure, and she didn’t want to back out now.
    Think of it as a masquerade party, Cressida
. She had attended a quite proper one in London, where some of the ladies and gentlemen had been outrageously dressed. There had been one woman dressed in similar Eastern garb.
    She picked up the trousers and stood in front of the mirror, holding them against her. “Are you Cressida Mandeville, or Cressida Mouse?”
    She was, she decided, Cressida Mandeville.
    Having made up her mind, she sat in a chair by the window and went through the books. Had St. Raven chosen them? They were a careful assortment—poetry, history, a three-volume novel, and, she noted with a smile, an account of travel in Arabia.
    A hint that she study for her part? She settled to it. She’d always loved accounts of travel to exotic lands. She’d sometimes thought that she was like her father and would thrive under foreign skies, but she had a strong streak of her mother’s conservatism. Small adventures such as the move to London were enough adventure for