Octavius and the Perfect Governess

Chapter 1-2

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.”