The Deception (2 page)

“Kate will need clothes if she is going to go into society,” Cousin Louisa said. “Her wardrobe is ... somewhat sparse.”

“You can take her shopping, Louisa, and send the bills to me,” my uncle said. His good humor appeared to be restored.

I bit my lip. I didn’t want to take his money.

Cousin Louisa smiled at me. “You will be the most beautiful girl in London, my dear,” she said.

I smiled back, appreciative of her generous attempt to raise my spirits. I was in little danger of letting her words go to my head. I might have inherited Papa’s cheekbones, but I was still Irish and poor, and the chances of my making a good match were slender, to say the least. I had no intention of spending the rest of my life hanging on my uncle’s purse strings, however, and in order to be independent I needed to find a way to support myself.
Perhaps,
I thought with the incurable optimism of youth,
perhaps in London something will turn up.

* * * *

I rose early the following morning to go for a ride. My uncle’s hunters had been stabled at Charlwood since the end of hunting season in January, and I had been riding them on days when the weather was not too nasty. The sun was just coming up when I left my room and began to walk down the dark, picture-hung corridor on which all the main bedrooms at Charlwood were situated. I stopped short when I saw a girl coming out of my uncle’s room.

It was Rose, the under-housemaid. She was fully dressed, but her hair was hanging in a loose tangle around her shoulders. It was very pretty hair, the color of honey. She stopped when she saw me and pressed up against the wall. I stared at her in confusion and saw that there was an ugly red welt on her left cheek. Her eyes were red as well and she obviously had been crying.

“Are you all right, Rose?” I asked.

“I’m fine, Miss Fitzgerald,” she whispered.

She did not look fine. My eyes went from her marked face to my uncle’s door.

“I—I was bringing Lord Charlwood his morning tea,” she stammered.

As I have previously mentioned, the sun was barely up. “I see,” I said in an expressionless voice.

She began to inch her way down the hall, her back still pressed against the wall. “I’d best be going now,” she said.

I nodded and let her go, which was clearly what she wanted to do.

I thought about Rose the whole time I was in the saddle. Obviously she had been summoned to my uncle’s bed, and obviously she had not found it to be a pleasant experience. Every time I thought of that mark on her cheek, my stomach clenched. Most frustrating of all was the knowledge that I could do nothing to help her escape my uncle’s clutches.

It would be difficult enough trying to escape them myself.

* * * *

The very air of London seemed to act like a tonic on Cousin Louisa. She dragged me around the shops on Bond Street, visibly shedding years with every purchase she made. I was appalled by the amount of money she spent, but she kept assuring me that Charlwood would not be at all surprised.

“How old are you, Louisa?” I asked as we sat having an ice at Gunther’s after a particularly expensive session at Fanchon’s dress shop.

“Forty-one,” she replied.

I had thought she was about sixty.

“But you’re younger than my father!” I blurted in surprise. My father had been forty-six when he died, and his thick black hair had not held a thread of gray. There were definite strands of gray in Louisa’s soft brown locks.

She smiled reminiscently. “Daniel did not age, then?”

“Did you
know
Papa?”

“I was at Charlwood the summer he met your mother.”

I knew this story well. Papa had delivered a horse to Mama’s father, taken one look at Mama and stayed on to school her father’s other horses. They had met secretly all summer long, and in September she had run away with him to Scotland, where they had married.

Louisa’s smile became even more nostalgic. “Your father was so good-looking, Kate.
Lizzie
was head over heels in love with him. I helped her pack her bag the night they eloped.”

I stared. I had not realized that Louisa knew my parents.

A well-dressed middle-aged woman passed our table and cast a scornful look at my old brown pelisse. I returned her look with one so haughty that she was startled.
Old harpy,
I thought.

“I have often wondered if Lizzie was happy,” Louisa said.

“I think she was very happy,” I said. “Papa was...” I searched for the words that would describe my father. “Oh— the world just seemed so much more vivid around Papa,” I finally said. “It’s true that he was a gambler, and there were times when money was short. But...” My voice quivered, and I folded my lips.

Louisa kindly gave me a moment to collect myself. Then she said, “You are very like him, Kate.”

I shook my head. It was true that I looked like Papa, but inside I was quite different. I changed the subject. “It is nice to be away from Charlwood. The place is like a tomb.”

Louisa shivered. “It has always been like that. When I was young I hated having to go there on a visit.”

“Was it like that then when my mother was young?” I asked curiously.

Louisa nodded, then glanced around the crowded tables as if she was afraid someone would overhear her words. “Your grandfather ...” She stopped and looked down at her lemon ice.

“Yes?” I prompted when it seemed she was not going to speak again.

She finally said simply, “Your grandfather was a hard man.”

I said nothing. On the other side of the room a little boy dropped his spoon and called out imperiously for another. A waiter hastened to his side.

Louisa looked up at me again and said, “I am sure that Lizzie found life with Daniel, however hard, infinitely preferable to life at Charlwood.”

Two fashionable young men in elegant blue coats stared at me rudely as they passed our table. I ignored them and said to Cousin Louisa, “If you dislike Charlwood so much, why ever did you agree to come and stay with me?”

She sighed. “I had no choice in the matter, my dear.”

“Nonsense.” I was still young enough to believe that grown-ups always had a choice.

“It is not nonsense,” Louisa said sadly. “I live with my brother’s family, you see, and Charlwood offered Henry a large sum of money if he would dispense with my services and allow me to chaperone you. My brother accepted, and so I had to go.”

“Services?” I asked, puzzled. “What services, Louisa?”

“I act as my sister-in-law’s housekeeper,” Louisa said. “They don’t call me that, of course, but that is what I am. And then, because I am not an employee but a dependent of theirs, they can ask me to do all kinds of other things.”

A girl’s high voice came from one of the tables around us. “Oh, la, Mr. Wetmore! You are such a jokester!”

“What kinds of other things?” I asked Cousin Louisa.

“Oh, I go to the village on errands, sit up with the children if they are ill. That sort of thing.”

“Do they pay you?”

She smiled forlornly. “They give me a home, Kate.”

I put my spoon down on the table’s white cloth. The ice had all of a sudden lost its flavor. “Why do you put up with such treatment?”

“I have no husband and I have no money of my own,” Louisa said. “I have to live, Kate.”

“You couldn’t earn your own money?” I asked.

Louisa shook her head. “The only position open to a lady with no means of her own is to become a governess, and that is not a life I aspire to. At least now I am considered a member of my brother’s family, no matter how ill-used. Believe me, Kate, the life of a governess is much worse. You are not family and you are not a servant. It is a wretched existence.”

I thought it sounded much less wretched than the life she had just described to me. At least one got paid for one’s labor! I drew concentric circles on the tablecloth with my fingertip and asked thoughtfully, “Just what credentials does one need in order to become a governess, Louisa?”

My cousin didn’t answer, but I could feel her looking at me. I glanced up, my eyes full of innocence.

“Don’t even consider it, Kate,” she said. “No one would ever hire you.”

That made me indignant. “Why not?” I demanded. “Mama taught me herself until I was ten. And Papa was always willing to buy me books, so I learned a great deal on my own.” I raised my eyebrows and gave her my loftiest look. “I assure you that I am perfectly capable of instructing young children.”

Louisa said bluntly, “It wouldn’t matter if you were a scholar, my dear. You wouldn’t be hired because no woman in her right mind would let you near either her husband or her sons.”

“Nonsense.”

“It is true,” Louisa said. She sounded very positive.

I decided to confide in her. “The thing is, Louisa, I do not want to go back to Charlwood, and so I need to find a way to support myself.”

“Find a husband,” Louisa advised.

I could feel the expression that Papa always referred to as my “mule’s look” settling over my face. “I don’t want a husband,” I said.

Louisa smiled at me as if I were a child. “Every woman wants a husband, my dear.”

I wouldn’t dignify that comment with a reply. Instead I thought of our morning’s shopping expedition, of the dozens of expensive dress shops and hat shops that lined Bond Street. I had a depressing feeling that Louisa was right about my chances of becoming a governess, but surely there were other ways.

“There are plenty of shops in London,” I said. “Why couldn’t I get a position in one of them?”

Louisa looked scandalized. “Do you really think Charlwood would allow his niece to take a position in a London shop?”

“He doesn’t care about me,” I said. “He’ll be glad to get me off his hands.”

“He will care about what society says about him if his niece is reduced to becoming a milliner’s assistant!”

I had an answer for that. “Why should anyone know? I will get a position in a shop that society doesn’t frequent.”

Louisa looked very grave. At this point both of us had forgotten about our ices, which were slowly melting in their glass dishes. “You must not leave your uncle’s protection,” she said. “If you should do that, Kate, if you should try to live on your own in London, you would not be safe.”

“I can take care of myself,” I said.

“You would be raped within the week,” Louisa said sharply. “London is not the country, Kate. It is filled with unemployed rascals who would show no respect for a solitary female.”

I bit my lip. “I’ll get a gun,” I said. “I know how to shoot.” I have never been one to give up easily.

Louisa cast her eyes upward. “I cannot believe I am having this conversation! Kate. Think. If
someone jumps out at you from the shadows, you will not have time to use a gun.”

I was not a stupid young girl who knew nothing of the world. I remembered the many times my father had stood between me and some man who had looked at me with hot and greedy eyes. Louisa was right. Unfortunately. I ate a little bit of my soupy ice and cudgeled my brain. Suddenly an idea exploded in my mind with all the brilliance of fireworks in the night sky.

“I could pretend to be a boy!” I said. “I used to wear breeches to school the horses. If I cut off my hair...” I smiled triumphantly. “What a splendid idea, Louisa! No one would rape a boy!”

“You are funning me,” my cousin said.

“Not at all. I assure you, Louisa, I could get a position in any stable I applied to. I really am
very
good with horses.” No point in false modesty, I thought. The more I considered this idea, the more I liked it. “Think of Rosalind in
As You Like It,
” I said enthusiastically.
“She
fooled everyone. Why shouldn’t I?”

Louisa was looking at me with a mixture of admiration and horror. “I don’t care if you are a genius with horses.” There was still color in her cheeks, and she looked almost pretty. “No matter what position you might manage to find, Kate, you will not be given the luxury of a room to yourself. You will have to share your living quarters, and there is no possible way you can keep your sex a secret if you have to share a room with other men.”

I scowled. I did not like the way she kept pouring cold water on all my beautiful schemes. “You are so gloomy, Louisa!” I exclaimed.

“I am realistic, my dear,” she said. The pretty pink faded from her cheeks. “Find a husband, Kate. It is the only solution.”

Chapter Two

My entrance into London society, or the
ton,
as it was called in the newspapers, was hardly an unqualified success. Because of my uncle and Louisa I was invited to a number of the larger balls, but it was clear that I would never be considered worthy enough to be admitted into that inner sanctum of the English aristocracy, Almack’s Assembly Rooms.

My dance card was always full at the balls we did attend, and I was invited to a host of other parties: routs, breakfasts, musical evenings, and so on, but the young men who danced and talked with me were clearly more interested in flirting than in proposing.

Since I am being honest, I will have to admit that I was disappointed. I yearned for a home with all my heart, and, much as I might despise Cousin Louisa’s advice, I knew she was right when she said that in order to find a home I had first to find a man. I suppose this strong desire for permanency stemmed from my nomadic upbringing. One always seems to want what one does not have.

My uncle had been away from Charlwood for most of the winter, so these weeks in London were the first time I had ever spent an extended period in his company, and he did not grow on one. In fact, the more I was with him, the more uneasy he made me. I kept telling myself that I was being ridiculous, that he was my mother’s brother, that he had taken me in, had lavished money on me, et cetera.

But I did not like his eyes. On the surface they seemed so extraordinarily clear and direct, but when one returned his gaze, one found that one could not see in. There was something about that deceptively cloudless gaze that reminded me of someone, and it wasn’t my mother. I had a feeling that this resemblance was the cause of my apprehension, but I didn’t place it until the evening of the Cottrells’ come-out ball for their second daughter.