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said with an eagerness that raised
Tristan’s hackles. “My father is a barber; I know something of the trade.”
Prying the shears from Tristan’s rigid fingers, he proceeded to whack off the
lustrous tresses just below the lady’s ears with a few swift strokes.
    Tristan
stared at Madelaine Harcourt’s white face and tightly closed eyes, then at the
mound of dark brown silk curled around the base of the stool and felt a
terrible urge to throttle the little man who was busily snipping away at what
was left of her once glorious head of hair.
    “ C’est
fini! ” Forli stepped back to admire his work as Madelaine Harcourt’s eyes
opened and instantly sought Tristan’s, asking his opinion of the results. Coward
that he was, he turned away, loath to face her lest she read the truth—that
with her butchered hair jutting out in every direction, she looked remarkably
like a porcupine about to throw its quills.
    “Perfect,”
Forli declared, reaching for the pan of warm water he’d demanded earlier.
Wetting his fingers thoroughly, he ruffled them through the spikey hair, then
toweled it briskly with the square of rough linen provided by the housekeeper.
As if by magic, the ugly spikes softened into a becoming cap of silken curls.
    Forli
grinned. “Voilà, milord. Your handsome boy!”
    Tristan
felt a smile creep across his face that was echoed by the priest and the
housekeeper, and even Madelaine Harcourt lost a touch of her grimness when
Forli handed her a mirror.
    She
ran her fingers through the soft curls framing her face. “My head feels so
light,” she said wonderingly. Her gaze lingered for one brief moment on the
tresses at her feet; then she squared her shoulders and raised her chin in the
same haughty gesture that had intimidated her Bonapartist neighbors. “It looks
much better than I had anticipated. Perhaps playing the part of a boy will not
be so unpleasant after all. Je vous remercie , Monsieur Forli.”
    Forli’s
gargoyle grin widened until it spread from ear to ear. “You are welcome,
mademoiselle. But I feel I must warn you that if you wish to successfully
impersonate a paysan , you will have to relinquish the more formal speech
of the aristocracy in favor of the simple merci of the lower classes.”
    “A
point well taken, monsieur,” Madelaine said gravely and with a dignity Tristan
could not help but admire, she gathered up the homespun shirt and sturdy pants
and jacket the housekeeper had found for her and retired to the adjoining room.
A few minutes later she emerged, the picture of a handsome young paysan .
    Tristan
donned the cassock provided him, and slipped the accompanying chain and cross
over his head and his pistol into his pocket. He looked up to find Forli
watching him, a thoughtful frown puckering his brow. “What is wrong?” he asked,
raising a quizzical eyebrow.
    “Nothing
is wrong…exactly. But I must admit to having second thoughts about this
disguise of yours. You might fool some men, but I doubt any woman who views you
will be taken in. Yours are not the eyes of a priest, milord.”
    “And
yours is not the mouth of a prudent man,” Tristan said, dryly, leveling a look
on the diminutive Italian that had been known to reduce men twice his size to
quivering blobs of blancmange.
    Forli
merely shrugged it off. “Ah well, the church has survived the Spanish
Inquisition and the excesses of a Borgia pope; it will undoubtedly survive a
priest with the eyes of Lucifer.”
    Tristan
gritted his teeth. The little Italian’s raillery over his “devil’s eyes” was no
worse than what he’d encountered time and again in the years since he’d been
old enough to be noticed by the opposite sex. He’d grown accustomed to the
stares and the giggles and the lewd comments his odd-colored eyes evoked. He’d
even managed to live up to the reputation they’d earned him in both Paris and
Vienna.
    But
Forli’s timing was unfortunate if Madelaine Harcourt had taken note of it.
Spending