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few things less comforting than being held all night by a controlling prig like
    Andrew Beckett. With an effort, she held her tongue. "Well," she said resignedly. "It looks as if
    we'll both be prisoners of rectitude for a while."
     
    Isabel hummed in sympathy, then wagged the tips of her black kid shoes. "Merry, I was wondering,
    are you certain you don't want to marry Ernest Althorp?"
     
    "Not you, too," she groaned. "I'm glad you're content, Isabel, but surely you know that wouldn't be the case for me. Or for Ernest. Can you imagine him trying to put me on a check-rein? We'd be at each other's throats."
     
    "I suppose," Isabel conceded and rolled up onto her elbow. "I simply don't see how you're going to get your parents off your back. Of course, you could keep me company at Caerna-whatsis. Nothing much
    to do there, you understand, but Andrew's father kept a decent stable and at least you'd have a respite from your mother's scolds."
     
    "You didn't see her face. She's never going to let this go, no matter how long I stay away. What I should do is pretend to go with you, then run off to join the music hall. After that, even Mother would have to give up on marrying me."
     
    "Ha ha," said Isabel, "as if you could even sing."
     
    Merry had meant the idea as a joke, but now it sparked a thought. "Wait," she said. "I know what we need, what both of us deserve."
     
    "I'm sure I don't want to know," said her friend, but her eyes were immediately alight. She was not, apparently, a proper countess yet.
     
    "A prank," said Merry, her blood beginning to hum with anticipation, "like we used to play at school.
    One last hurrah before our families skewer us on the stake of respectability."
     
    Both she and Isabel were sitting up now, clasping each other's hands. "Nothing too dangerous," Isabel cautioned, "and nothing we'll be caught at."
     
    "Cross my heart," Merry assured her. "No one will know but you and I."
     
    *  *  *
     
    The escapade could not have gone better.
     
    The music hall in Soho had held a number of middle class families, even a few unattended females like themselves, all outfitted respectably—including the ones they suspected of being women of ill repute. Indeed, Merry and Isabel were underdressed, clad as they were in clothes borrowed from their maids.
     
    The program, too, was all they could desire: a humorous pose plastique with men dressed as Greek goddesses reenacting the Judgment of Paris, a bawdy but not indelicate skit called "The Spare Bed,"
    and a number of surprisingly talented singers, the last of whom had pretended to search the audience
    for a husband.
     
    Merry hummed the refrain about single young gentlemen, how do you do as the hired hansom cab dropped them off before Merry's house. Happily, its high brick wall shielded them from sight. The hour was late, the streets nearly empty. Wanting to make sure her friend was safe, she escorted Isabel to her carriage.
     
    The smart five-glass landau waited in the narrow lane between the Knightsbridge house and its nearest neighbor. Once inside, Isabel would pull the shades and change into her own dress, now completely
    black, while hiding any irregularities of fastening beneath her coat. Then she'd return home to her unsuspecting husband. He, bless him, was under the impression she'd been visiting an ailing friend.
     
    As she invariably did at the end of a prank, Isabel grew fearful. "Be careful," she begged as Merry
    handed her up the carriage step. "Don't linger in the lane. It's foggy tonight. I want you to go straight
    to your door."
     
    "I will," Merry promised, and kissed her friend's cheek.
     
    Chuckling to herself at Isabel's nerves—for what could go wrong now?—she pressed a gold sovereign into the coachman's palm. "Take care of her," she said, though the driver and she both knew she meant take care not to tell.
     
    With a nod and a grin, he flicked the reins across the horses' backs. Merry watched them pull away.
    From the sound