Octavius and the Perfect Governess: Pryor Cousins #1 Read online

  Octavius and the Perfect Governess

  Pryor Cousins #1

  Emily Larkin

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Afterwards

  Claim your free books

  Author’s Note

  Thank You

  Primrose and the Dreadful Duke

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Emily Larkin

  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that Faerie godmothers do not exist.

  Chapter One

  Octavius Pryor should have won the race. It wasn’t difficult. The empty ballroom at his grandfather-the-duke’s house was eighty yards long, he’d lined one hundred and twenty chairs up in a row across the polished wooden floorboards, and making his way from one side of the room to the other without touching the floor was easy. His cousin Nonus Pryor—Ned—also had one hundred and twenty chairs to scramble over, but Ned was as clumsy as an ox and Octavius knew he could make it across the ballroom first, which was exactly what he was doing—until his foot went right through the seat of one of the delicate giltwood chairs. He was going too fast to catch his balance. Both he and the chair crashed to the floor. And that was him out of the race.

  His cousin Dex—Decimus Pryor—hooted loudly.

  Octavius ignored the hooting and sat up. The good news was that he didn’t appear to have broken anything except the chair. The bad news was that Ned, who’d been at least twenty chairs behind him, was now almost guaranteed to win.

  Ned slowed to a swagger—as best as a man could swagger while clambering along a row of giltwood chairs.

  Octavius gritted his teeth and watched his cousin navigate the last few dozen chairs. Ned glanced back at Octavius, smirked, and then slowly reached out and touched the wall with one fingertip.

  Dex hooted again.

  Octavius bent his attention to extracting his leg from the chair. Fortunately, he hadn’t ruined his stockings. He climbed to his feet and watched warily as Ned stepped down from the final chair and sauntered towards him.

  “Well?” Dex said. “What’s Otto’s forfeit to be?”

  Ned’s smirk widened. “His forfeit is that he goes to Vauxhall Gardens tomorrow night . . . as a woman.”

  There was a moment’s silence. The game they had of creating embarrassing forfeits for each other was long-established, but this forfeit was unprecedented.

  Dex gave a loud whoop. “Excellent!” he said, his face alight with glee. “I can’t wait to see this.”

  When Ned said that Octavius was going to Vauxhall Gardens as a woman, he meant it quite literally. Not as a man dressed in woman’s clothing, but as a woman dressed in woman’s clothing. Because Octavius could change his shape. That was the gift he’d chosen when his Faerie godmother had visited him on his twenty-fifth birthday.

  Ned had chosen invisibility when it was his turn, which was the stupidest use of a wish that Octavius could think of. Ned was the loudest, clumsiest brute in all England. He walked with the stealth of a rampaging elephant. He was terrible at being invisible. So terrible, in fact, that their grandfather-the-duke had placed strict conditions on Ned’s use of his gift.

  Ned had grumbled, but he’d obeyed. He might be a blockhead, but he wasn’t such a blockhead as to risk revealing the family secret. No one wanted to find out what would happen if it became common knowledge that one of England’s most aristocratic families actually had a Faerie godmother.

  Octavius, who could walk stealthily when he wanted to, hadn’t chosen invisibility; he’d chosen metamorphosis, which meant that he could become any creature he wished. In the two years he’d had this ability, he’d been pretty much every animal he could think of. He’d even taken the shape of another person a few times. Once, he’d pretended to be his cousin, Dex. There he’d sat, drinking brandy and discussing horseflesh with his brother and his cousins, all of them thinking he was Dex—and then Dex had walked into the room. The expressions on everyone’s faces had been priceless. Lord, the expression on Dex’s face . . .

  Octavius had laughed so hard that he’d cried.

  But one shape he’d never been tempted to try was that of a woman.

  Why would he want to?

  He was a man. And not just any man, but a good-looking, wealthy, and extremely well-born man. Why, when he had all those advantages, would he want to see what it was like to be a woman?

  But that was the forfeit Ned had chosen and so here Octavius was, in his bedchamber, eyeing a pile of women’s clothing, while far too many people clustered around him—not just Ned and Dex, but his own brother, Quintus, and Ned’s brother, Sextus.

  Quintus and Sextus usually held themselves distant from high jinks and tomfoolery, Quintus because he was an earl and he took his responsibilities extremely seriously and Sextus because he was an aloof sort of fellow—and yet here they both were in Octavius’s bedchamber.

  Octavius didn’t mind making a fool of himself in front of a muttonhead like Ned and a rattle like Dex, but in front of his oh-so-sober brother and his stand-offish older cousin? He felt more self-conscious than he had in years, even a little embarrassed.

  “Whose clothes are they?” he asked.

  “Lydia’s,” Ned said.

  Octavius tried to look as if it didn’t bother him that he was going to be wearing Ned’s mistress’s clothes, but it did. Lydia was extremely buxom, which meant that he was going to have to be extremely buxom or the gown would fall right off him.

  He almost balked, but he’d never backed down from a forfeit before, so he gritted his teeth and unwound his neckcloth.

  Octavius stripped to his drawers, made them all turn their backs, then removed the drawers, too. He pictured what he wanted to look like: Lydia’s figure, but not Lydia’s face—brown ringlets instead of blonde, and brown eyes, too—and with a silent God damn it, he changed shape. Magic tickled across his skin and itched inside his bones. He gave an involuntary shiver—and then it was done. He was a woman.

  Octavius didn’t examine his new body. He hastily dragged on the chemise, keeping his gaze averted from the mirror. “All right,” he said, in a voice that was light and feminine and sounded utterly wrong coming from his mouth. “You can turn around.”

  His brother and cousins turned around and stared at him. It was oddly unsettling to be standing in front of them in the shape of a woman, wearing only a thin chemise. In fact, it was almost intimidating. Octavius crossed his arms defensively over his ample bosom, then uncrossed them and put his hands on his hips, another defensive stance,
made himself stop doing that, too, and gestured at the pile of women’s clothing on the bed. “Well, who’s going to help me with the stays?”

  No one volunteered. No one cracked any jokes, either. It appeared that he wasn’t the only one who was unsettled. His brother, Quintus, had a particularly stuffed expression on his face, Sextus looked faintly pained, and Ned and Dex, both of whom he expected to be smirking, weren’t.

  “The stays,” Octavius said again. “Come on, you clods. Help me to dress.” And then, because he was damned if he was going to let them see how uncomfortable he felt, he fluttered his eyelashes coquettishly.

  Quintus winced, and turned his back. “Curse it, Otto, don’t do that.”

  Octavius laughed. The feeling of being almost intimidated disappeared. In its place was the realization that if he played this right, he could make them all so uncomfortable that none of them would ever repeat this forfeit. He picked up the stays and dangled the garment in front of Ned. “You chose this forfeit; you help me dress.”

  It took quite a while to dress, because Ned was the world’s worst lady’s maid. He wrestled with the stays for almost a quarter of an hour, then put the petticoat on back to front. The gown consisted of a long sarcenet slip with a shorter lace robe on top of that. Ned flatly refused to arrange the decorative ribbons at Octavius’s bosom or to help him fasten the silk stockings above his knees. Octavius hid his amusement. Oh, yes, Ned was never going to repeat this forfeit.

  Lydia had provided several pretty ribbons, but after Ned had failed three times to thread them through Octavius’s ringlets, Dex stepped forward. His attempt at styling hair wasn’t sophisticated, but it was passable.

  Finally, Octavius was fully dressed—and the oddest thing was that he actually felt undressed. His throat was bare. He had no high shirt-points, no snug, starched neckcloth. His upper chest was bare, too, as were his upper arms. But worst of all, he was wearing no drawers, and that made him feel uncomfortably naked. True, most women didn’t wear drawers and he was a woman tonight, but if his own drawers had fitted him he would have insisted on wearing them.

  Octavius smoothed the gloves over his wrists and stared at himself in the mirror. He didn’t like what he saw. It didn’t just feel a little bit wrong, it felt a lot wrong. He wasn’t a woman. This wasn’t him. He didn’t have those soft, pouting lips or those rounded hips and that slender waist, and he most definitely did not have those full, ripe breasts.

  Octavius smoothed the gloves again, trying not to let the others see how uncomfortable he was.

  Ned nudged his older brother, Sextus. “He’s even prettier than you, Narcissus.”

  Everybody laughed, and Sextus gave that reserved, coolly amused smile that he always gave when his brother called him Narcissus.

  Octavius looked at them in the mirror, himself and Sextus, and it was true: he was prettier than Sextus.

  Funny, Sextus’s smile no longer looked coolly amused. In fact, his expression, seen in the mirror, was the exact opposite of amused.

  “Here.” Dex draped a silk shawl around Octavius’s shoulders. “And a fan. Ready?”

  Octavius looked at himself in the mirror and felt the wrongness of the shape he was inhabiting. He took a deep breath and said, “Yes.”

  They went to Vauxhall by carriage rather than crossing the Thames in a scull, to Octavius’s relief. He wasn’t sure he would have been able to get into and out of a boat wearing a gown. As it was, even climbing into the carriage was a challenge. He nearly tripped on his hem.

  The drive across town, over Westminster Bridge and down Kennington Lane, gave him ample time to torment his brother and cousins. If there was one lesson he wanted them to learn tonight—even Quintus and Sextus, who rarely played the forfeit game—it was to never choose this forfeit for him again.

  Although, to tell the truth, he was rather enjoying himself now. It was wonderful to watch Ned squirm whenever Octavius fluttered his eyelashes and flirted at him with the pretty brisé fan. Even more wonderful was that when he uttered a coquettish laugh and said, “Oh, Nonny, you are so droll,” Ned didn’t thump him, as he ordinarily would have done, but instead went red and glowered at him.

  It had been years since Octavius had dared to call Nonus anything other than Ned, so he basked in the triumph of the moment and resolved to call his cousin “Nonny” as many times as he possibly could that evening.

  Next, he turned his attention to his brother, simpering and saying, “Quinnie, darling, you look so handsome tonight.”

  It wasn’t often one saw an earl cringe.

  Dex, prick that he was, didn’t squirm or cringe or go red when Octavius tried the same trick on him; he just cackled with laughter.

  Octavius gave up on Dex for the time being and turned his attention to Sextus. He wasn’t squirming or cringing, but neither was he cackling. He lounged in the far corner of the carriage, an expression of mild amusement on his face. When Octavius fluttered the fan at him and cooed, “You look so delicious, darling. I could swoon from just looking at you,” Sextus merely raised his eyebrows fractionally and gave Octavius a look that told him he knew exactly what Octavius was trying to do. But Sextus had always been the smartest of them all.

  They reached Vauxhall, and Octavius managed to descend from the carriage without tripping over his dress. “Who’s going to pay my three shillings and sixpence?” he asked, with a flutter of both the fan and his eyelashes. His heart was beating rather fast now that they’d arrived and his hands were sweating inside the evening gloves. It was one thing to play this game with his brother and cousins, another thing entirely to act the lady in public. Especially when he wasn’t wearing drawers.

  But he wouldn’t let them see his nervousness. He turned to his brother and simpered up at him. “Quinnie, darling, you’ll pay for li’l old me, won’t you?”

  Quintus cringed with his whole body again. “God damn it, Otto, stop that,” he hissed under his breath.

  “No?” Octavius pouted, and turned his gaze to Ned. “Say you’ll be my beau tonight, Nonny.”

  Ned looked daggers at him for that “Nonny” so Octavius blew him a kiss—then nearly laughed aloud at Ned’s expression of appalled revulsion.

  Dex did laugh out loud. “Your idea, Ned; you pay,” he said, grinning.

  Ned paid for them all, and they entered the famous pleasure gardens. Octavius took Dex’s arm once they were through the gate, because Dex was enjoying this far too much and if Octavius couldn’t find a way to make his cousin squirm then he might find himself repeating this forfeit in the future—and heaven forbid that that should ever happen.

  Octavius had been to Vauxhall Gardens more times than he could remember. Nothing had changed—the pavilion, the musicians, the supper boxes, the groves of trees and the walkways—and yet it had changed, because visiting Vauxhall Gardens as a woman was a vastly different experience from visiting Vauxhall Gardens as a man. The gown undoubtedly had something to do with it. It was no demure débutante’s gown; Lydia was a courtesan—a very expensive courtesan—and the gown was cut to display her charms to best advantage. Octavius was uncomfortably aware of men ogling him—looking at his mouth, his breasts, his hips, and imagining him naked in their beds. That was bad enough, but what made it worse was that he knew some of those men. They were his friends—and now they were undressing him with their eyes.

  Octavius simpered and fluttered his fan and tried to hide his discomfit, while Ned went to see about procuring a box and supper. Quintus paused to speak with a friend, and two minutes later so did Sextus. Dex and Octavius were alone—or rather, as alone as one could be in such a public setting as Vauxhall.

  Octavius nudged Dex away from the busy walkway, towards a quieter path. Vauxhall Gardens sprawled over several acres, and for every wide and well-lit path there was a shadowy one with windings and turnings and secluded nooks.

  A trio of drunken young bucks swaggered past, clearly on the prowl for amatory adventures. One of them gave a low whistle of appreciation
and pinched Octavius on his derrière.

  Octavius swiped at him with the fan.

  The man laughed. So did his companions. So did Dex.

  “He pinched me,” Octavius said, indignantly.

  Dex, son of a bitch that he was, laughed again and made no move to reprimand the buck; he merely kept strolling.

  Octavius, perforce, kept strolling, too. Outrage seethed in his bosom. “You wouldn’t laugh if someone pinched Phoebe,” he said tartly. “You’d knock him down.”

  “You’re not my sister,” Dex said. “And besides, if you’re going to wear a gown like that one, you should expect to be pinched.”

  Octavius almost hit Dex with the fan. He gritted his teeth and resolved to make his cousin regret making that comment before the night was over. He racked his brain as they turned down an even more shadowy path, the lamps casting golden pools of light in the gloom. When was the last time he’d seen Dex embarrassed? Not faintly embarrassed, but truly, deeply embarrassed.

  A memory stirred in the recesses of his brain and he remembered, with a little jolt of recollection, that Dex had a middle name—Stallyon—and he also remembered what had happened when the other boys at school had found out.

  Dex Stallyon had become . . . Sex Stallion.

  It had taken Dex a week to shut that nickname down—Pryors were built large and they never lost a schoolyard battle—but what Octavius most remembered about that week wasn’t the fighting, it was Dex’s red-faced mortification and fuming rage.