Elisabeth Fairchild (26 page)

She did not track his meaning. “Whatever do you do here, Mr. Ferd? It is most improper in you to come uninvited to this masquerade. You must leave before you are discovered.”

He took up her hands, in no hurry to depart, and whirled her in time to the music. “I will not leave until we have spoken, Miss Quinby. There is something I must tell you.”

Dizzied, both by the dance movement, and by Mr. Ferd’s unexpected appearance, Nell felt more than ever like one of the moths that whirled above her head. “Mr. Ferd, please go away,” she pleaded, “For while your costume is very clever, it will not do to have you unmasked.”

The expressionless face remained unperturbed. “I am far more in control of my own destiny than you presume, Miss Quinby, and far better at disguises than you would credit me.”

“But, to what purpose?” Nell looked fearfully about, sure that they would be seen at any second by her aunt or her sister. As it was, she could see Charley Tyrrwhit frantically waving in their direction. He pushed his way, rather rudely she thought, through the crowd that separated them.

Beau did not notice his friend. “I have gone to the trouble of donning this ridiculous outfit in hopes that I might have a moment alone with you.”

“This guise of yours is the ultimate in foolhardiness. Only think of the consequence.” Nell could not take her eyes off of Charley Tyrrwhit. He plowed through the dancers now, his passage creating eddies in the regularity of the whirling sets.

Beau caught up Nell’s hand as it flew toward her throat, as lightly as he captured another moth. He drew her toward him, close enough that she alone might hear him, close enough that the sheer gossamer of her costume, fluttered against the obstacle of his cloak, close enough that she forgot all about Charlie Tyrrwhit.

“I am not who you think I am, Miss Quinby.” Beau’s voice was huskier, more urgent than ever before it had sounded in her ears. “My being here is not a whim, conducted without f-f-forethought. It is the culmination of a great many evenings contemplation, while standing in the street beside your aunt’s curricle. You have witnessed my d-desire, and would not d-d-deny the power of our mutual passion.”

“Oh, but this will not do, Mr. Ferd,” Nell felt like weeping. Why did Mr. Ferd set her mind whirling again, now that her mind was made up? Must the firmness of her resolve be tested every time they encountered one another, and with every word he uttered?

She looked about for assistance. Mr. Tyrrwhit was almost upon them. The reveler’s fell back out of his way as if compelled by some unseen hand. And suddenly it all made sense, for there was Bandit, wriggling through the feet of the people in front of Charley, on a bee-line for his master.

Bandit gave Beau away. Fate personified, in the form of a ball of black and white fur, he thrust his way through the crowd. One minute Beau was trying to explain who he was, and the next, the dancers before them were parting with hilarious alarm to allow the running dog through, with Charley, and Mellish, and the Prince of Wales hard on his furry heels.

There was no fooling Bandit with clever disguises, no fooling the Prince either, once Bandit came to Beauford’s heel and could not be shaken.

“My Lord Beauford,” the Regent boomed jovially. “What a splendid disguise. I would never have known you, but for the dog.”

In the heartbeat it took for Nell to turn and recognize the Prince, horrified realization took possession of her features. Her mouth dropped open in a little oh. She went white about the lips, her wide-eyed gaze going from Beauford, to Bandit, to the Prince, and then back again.

“You are the Duke of Heste?”

He nodded.

Her eyes closed, as though she would shut out the sight of something that pained her. Then, wings fluttering, she pushed away from him, through the growing crowd.

Beau would have followed. Indeed, he made an effort to do so, but his bow and Mr. Mellish got in the way, the former catching itself up on the raised lance of some fellow kitted out like a knight, while the latter dragged on his other arm, demanding to be informed what the great mystery was about his recent disappearance. Then both Bandit and the Prince began to bark. Bandit, because it was his nature to do so, and the Prince, because he seemed to think Bandit was expecting some sort of exchange. With the knee-weakening impression that happiness had just flit from his grasp, Lord Beauford froze, unable to move or coherently explain, a stunned moth caught in the palm of Fate.

Nell whirled through the press of costumed guests, half-blinded by the welling tears in her eyes. Directionless, she plunged by a knot of people, which included her sister and Beatrix Cowper. Aurora reached out to touch her arm.

“’Nella!”

Blinking furiously, to clear her vision, Nell looked up.

“Miss Quinby. I see you have been chatting with my brother.”

Beatrix Cowper, clad in a muli-colored robe, with a helmet on her head, also many hued, to depict her role as Iris, turned to Aurora with a smile. “Come, my dear, it is high time you met the scoundrel. He has only just returned from some sort of hunting trip this afternoon. I do not know exactly what it was he was hunting, but in chasing it, he was all over muck. A sight to behold, I assure you.”

A hunting trip? Was that how the duke described his recent activities to his sister? And had Quinbys been the quarry?

Nell took up her sister’s hands in both her own, and with a look that spoke volumes, begged a moment of Aurora’s time. Beatrix Cowper regarded her with some dismay, but she did not demur when Aurora stepped out of earshot, hissing, “Whatever is the matter? You are white as a sheet.”

“He was our coachman,” she choked.

Aurora, who had come dressed as her namesake, Eos, the dawn, flicked out her fan, which beautifully depicted a sunrise, so that she might speak to Nell behind cover of it. “What has the coachman to do with anything? Why do you interrupt to speak to me of him? You heard Bea. She is about to introduce me to her brother, the Duke.”

Nell felt like shaking her. “You have met him, Aurora.”

Aurora looked at her keenly. Nell never called her Aurora unless there was something serious afoot.

“I don’t understand,” she said, her back up.

“Lady Cowper’s dear brother, the Duke of Heste . . .” Nell said impatiently, “masqueraded as our coachman.”

Aurora’s cornflower blue eyes flew wide. “No!”

“Yes!” Nell dragged on her hand. “Come, we must be going.” Aurora tore loose from Fanella’s hold long enough to wish Beatrix a hasty good-bye. Aunt Ursula was then hailed, the services of one of her friend’s coachmen obtained, and before the evening was truly begun, the three women had put the Brighton masquerade behind them.

Chapter Nineteen

The following morning, Nell sat quite still beside Aurora in the crowded postcoach bund for Godstone, hoping her own motionless state might still the gush of tears that insisted on racing down her cheeks.

Why had he lied to her?

“Why should a Duke pretend to be a coachman?” Aurora whispered the question, for the Quinbys were not alone in the coach.

Nell glanced up. The two older women bound for London, seemed to regard she and her fair sister with haughty disdain, and with good cause, Nell thought, for she and Aurora had spent the better part of the journey so far, heads bent together, whispering, and here she was, weeping in public.

Aurora had a great deal on her mind, and all of it must be discussed
sotto voice
.

Nell was too stunned, either to join in Aurora’s latest speculation, or to silence her. She felt a fool. She felt betrayed. The enormity of the identity of the young man who professed to love her, rocked her far more profoundly within, than the post coach did without.

“Was it some sort of jest, a cruel prank, the mischief of a young man still tasting wild oats?” Aurora was whispering again, voicing the questions that Nell had already asked herself. Aurora did not give a fig for the black looks she encountered from their traveling companions. “Was there perhaps an elaborate bet arranged between himself and his Whip Club cronies?” she hissed. “If so, I’ve no very high opinion of the lot of them. ’Tis a twisted scheme.”

Nell sighed. Persimmon faced, Cat would have called the two females facing her. Nell could not blame them for their dour looks. It was very rude of her and Aurora to continue their private conversation for such a long time. The old tabbies would think the worst. She almost laughed. They were entitled to think what they might. This was the worst. She could imagine nothing to surpass the excruciating embarrassment of her situation.

She bent toward her sister’s ear. Perhaps she could put an end to the whispering. “I find it too unbelievable to think that I should be singled out as the target for such a plot, if plot it is,” she hissed. “The Duke had never set eyes on me until we met in the lane leading to the White Hart Inn.”

Aurora tossed her golden head. “Yet, ’tis odd, that on the very day I was to be introduced by his sister, he introduced himself to you instead. Can fate be so fickle?”

Nell had not thought of it that way. Perhaps this madness made more sense than she had at first supposed. Lord Beauford had known that a Quinby was to be introduced to him with the hopes of attracting his attention, perhaps an offer of marriage. She herself had more than once confirmed as much within his hearing. Was this offer of marriage from Beau Ferd, the coachman, a Duke’s attempt to foil both his managing sister’s matrimonial schemes, and the pretensions of a pair of penniless young ladies? Was the man she had fallen in love with really capable of such cruel mischief?

Shocked and sickened by her mind’s turnings, Nell felt numb with the enormity of the lie perpetrated against her. All hopes and fears of the past day and sleepless night wondering about the future, were like ashes in her mouth.

In a daze she rocked along, blind to the passing scenery, blind to the censorious looks from the females with whom they shared the interior of the postcoach. Her mind was too overcome with the hugeness of the lie perpetrated against her, to think of, to notice with comprehension, anything else.

This incredible revelation explained a lot of things that had plagued Nell’s better sense. It explained the expensive gloves Mr. Ferd wore. It explained a vocabulary that was far more extensive than what one might expect of a driver. It explained Mr. Gates, andthe strange friendship between Beau Ferd-- she must remember to think of him as Lord Beauford--and Charley Tyrrwhit. It explained--Nell felt suddenly soulless--Beethoven, and a whistling coachman who would share his music with a postboy.

Why had she not trusted her instincts? She had questioned the coachman’s identity from the start. She had at one time asked him outright if he was not a gentleman. She remembered now, that he had evaded the question, answering it with a question of his own.

She had suspected something was amiss, and pushed her suppositions away. She had abandoned all sense, and allowed her sensibilities, her growing desires and naive, trusting nature to reign. She had believed that Beau Ferd, not the Duke of Heste, loved her,  that he meant to honor his vow to cherish her for the rest of his life. How much, how little could she trust him, now that she knew him for the liar he was?

Doubt cut through Nell’s numbness like a knife, as she considered the possibility that this love she felt to the very core of her being was nothing but a lie. This possibility wounded her so deeply that Nell felt physically weakened and shaken. She had clung to the stair railing last night, that her legs might not surrender beneath her to that weakness, and having made her way upstairs, flung herself down upon her bed and wept like a child.

She clung to the idea of returning to the safe haven of her mother’s arms with equal tenacity today. Her chin wobbled, and tears stung her eyes, but she did not give in to her weakness, her grief made her angry in the end. Like a wounded animal turning to defend itself, she focused her anger, her suffering, on its source. She began, deep within her heart, to hate the man who had misrepresented himself to her as the kind, soft-spoken Mr. Ferd. Each time she thought of the kisses that had been coaxed from her lips, she was stabbed afresh by the sharp point of a Duke’s deceit.

As she stared out the dusty window of the coach, something powerful and savage rose within Fanella’s breast, an anger and vindictiveness that wanted nothing more than to inflict pain in return for this tortuous rending of her heart.

“He kissed me,” she said softly, wiping her hand across her lips, as if to wipe away the memory.

Aurora’s cornflower blue eyes widened in disbelief. “What?”

The two women who shared the coach perked up. For the first time, Aurora had not bothered to lower her voice.

“He kissed me,” Nell was careful not to follow her sister’s example.

Angry color blazed in Aurora’s cheeks. “He must be made to pay,” she spluttered, her volume still far too loud. “He must make an offer for you. Mamma will see to it that it is so.”

“Hush, Aurora. He did offer for me,” Fanella’s words stopped Aurora’s tirade cold.