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Authors: Nadine Miller

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BOOK: The Madcap Masquerade
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“My dear child, how lovely to see you again. I apologize for summoning you here on such short notice, but I have a houseguest who is most anxious to meet you and since he plans to leave London within the next few hours … “ She favored Maeve with a nervous smile. “Well, you can see what a quandary I was in.”

Maeve glanced up as a heavy-set man, with iron-gray hair and the mottled complexion of a fellow who enjoyed his liquor, entered the room. Lady Hermione smiled. “Ah, here he is now.”

Puzzled, Maeve stared at the stranger, wondering who he was and why he would have expressed a desire to meet her, of all people. She watched Lady Hermione’s anxious gaze dart first to her, then the stranger, and a horrible thought struck her. It was through this social butterfly cousin of hers that Lily had met her last protector. Did the woman think to perform the same service for Lily’s daughter?

Maeve stiffened her spine and raised her chin, prepared to set both Lady Hermione and her houseguest straight, but the fellow found his voice before she could utter her first word. “Bloody hell,” he said, studying her features with pale, somewhat bleary blue eyes. “As alike as two hairs on a dog. You’re right, Hermione, she’ll suit me right as a puddle suits a duck.”

“Now wait just a minute,” Maeve protested. “If you think I have any intention of taking up my mother’s profession—”

“Oh la! Nothing of the sort, though I can understand your confusion,” Lady Hermione interjected in her soft, breathless voice. “You must forgive Harry his rag manners.” She cast a look of warning at her portly houseguest. “He never was one to observe the social niceties.”

Her nervous smile once more in place, Lady Hermione declared brightly, “Before we go any further with this, I think I should introduce you two. Maeve, my dear, this impatient gentlemen is Squire Barrington, your father.”

“My father?” Maeve stared blankly at the man whose face she had imagined a thousand times, but whom she had never hoped to meet.

“Aye,” the squire said, “and father of your sister, Meg, as well.”

Maeve’s heart skipped a beat. “You must be mistaken, sir. I have no sister.”

The squire gave her a toothy grin. “So you were given to believe, for ‘twas how Lily wanted it, but—”

Lady Hermione laid a restraining hand on the squire’s arm. “Let me tell her, Harry. Tact is most definitely not your long suit.”

She gestured toward the loveseat Maeve had just recently vacated. “Please sit down, my dear. You too, Harry. This is a story that should have been told years ago. Now that I finally have the opportunity to tell it, I intend to do so properly.”

She paused, drew a deep breath and began. “Twenty-two years ago, on April 1, 1792, Lily St. Germaine Barrington gave birth to identical twin girls, whom she named Maeve and Margaret. I know, because I was present at the birthing.”

Maeve closed her eyes and gripped the arm of the loveseat for support as the shock of Lady Hermione’s disclosure sent the room reeling around her in sickening circles. In a matter of minutes, this woman, whom she scarcely knew, had turned her life completely upside down. She could have dealt with meeting the man who was her father; she felt nothing but contempt for him.

But a twin sister was something else entirely. The idea that she was no longer the solitary individual she had always considered herself to be, but one of a pair of identical twins, boggled her mind. At long last she understood why she sometimes had the disquieting feeling that a part of her was missing.

“Are you all right, my dear? You’re pale as a ghost.” Lady Hermione leaned forward and covered Maeve’s hand with one of her own.

Maeve shook her off, unable to bear her touch. “I’m fine,” she said coldly. “Finish your story, my lady. I want to know what part my mother played in this miserable business.”

Lady Hermione’s hazel eyes filled with tears. “Do not judge Lily too harshly. She was terribly unhappy in the marriage which had been forced upon her.”

“That made two of us,” the squire grumbled.

Lady Hermione ignored him. “But she was prepared to make the best of it rather than lose her child, which she most assuredly would have done if she’d left her husband. As you well know, a married woman has no rights under British law.”

“With good reason, if you ask me.” The squire’s florid face turned a shade redder. “Never met a woman yet with anything but nonsense in her brain box.”

“Oh do be quiet and let me finish, Harry,” Lady Hermione snapped. Turning a beseeching look on Maeve, she continued, “Try to put yourself in Lily’s place. She was desperate. The birth of twins seemed a God-given solution to her problem. She could have both her freedom and her child.

“I admit I was horrified when she first proposed to Harry that they each take one twin and go their separate ways. But once I thought about it, I could see the merit in the idea. Harry was no happier with her than she was with him.”

“Amen to that,” the squire muttered.

“So, I take it you immediately agreed when my mother made her infamous proposal,” Maeve said, addressing her father for the first time.

“Not right off, I didn’t. If you want to know the truth, it struck me as a demmed odd thing to do. But then everything about Lily was a bit odd, if you ask me.”

“But you did eventually agree.”

“I did,” the squire admitted. “No point arguing with Lily. She always got her way in the end.” He shrugged. “And the way she put it—two halves of a whole divided evenly—made a certain sense. At least that way, nobody got the short end of the stick.”

“Nobody except my twin and me.” A terrible anger gripped Maeve when she thought of how cruelly Meg and she had been used by both their beautiful, care-for-nothing mother and this buffoon who’d sired them. “Did it never occur to either of you that this wonderful solution to your problems deprived us of the joy of growing up together as we were meant to,” she asked with undisguised bitterness.

She watched the squire squirm as he considered the truth of her accusation and decided to sink the knife a little deeper. “Tell me, sir, why did you bother to seek me out now, when you cared so little you could cut me out of your life with no regret when I was a babe?” she asked.

“Don’t take that snippy tone of voice with me, Miss. I had my reasons for finding you.”

“Dare I ask what they might have been?”

“Women, that’s what. Silly, pestiferous creatures every one of them and your sister, Meg, the silliest of them all. Scared of her own shadow, she is, which I can see right off you ain’t. For more years than I care to count, I’ve put up with her whining and whimpering every time I reminded her of her duty to me and to the name of Barrington—and I’ve never yet raised a hand to her. But, by God, this latest bumble broth is more than any man should be asked to bear. So, you can see why I’m pleased as punch you look enough like her that not a soul could tell you apart.”

Maeve scowled. “I see no such thing, sir. Please be more explicit.”

Lady Hermione raised a silencing hand. “Let me explain it, Harry. You’re just muddling it up.”

She turned to Maeve, her expression solemn. “The gist of it is the squire recently negotiated a most advantageous marriage for Meg with the Earl of Lynley. It is the ideal arrangement since the earl’s estate marches beside Harry’s and the heir the marriage produces will one day own it all.

“Harry brought Meg to London and asked me to oversee the purchase of her bride clothes—a grueling task at best and an absolute nightmare in the brief time he allotted us.” She hesitated. “As Harry intimated, Meg is terribly shy and reclusive. Between the shopping trip to London and her apprehension over the upcoming betrothal ball that the Earl of Lynley is planning—”

“Which is but two days away,” the squire interjected.

Lady Hermione gave him a look that quickly silenced him. “The strain was too much for her, poor thing. Taking her maid with her, she ran away to Harry’s sister in the Scottish Highlands. She’ll come back, of course, once she’s rested up and gathered her wits, but in the meantime—”

“What will the earl and his high-in-the-instep mama think when his bride-to-be buggers out on the blasted ball?” the squire grumbled. “They’ll think she’s a dimwit, that’s what, and the earl will start looking around for another heiress to pull his fat out of the fire.”

Maeve turned a baleful eye on her father. “Are you saying the earl is only marrying my sister for the money she brings to the union?”

“Why else would a grand fellow with a fancy title agree to marry a mousy little nobody like Meg?” the squire asked sourly.

“Harry is right,” Lady Hermione agreed. “I know the earl personally. There’s not a handsomer, nor more charming man in all of England. Meg is the luckiest of women. Which is why it is so important that nothing disrupt Harry’s plans for her.”

She smiled. “And that’s where you come in, my dear. Since I knew how closely you resembled your sister, having seen you both in recent years, I suggested you could stand in for her at the ball—and until such time as she sees fit to return to England. Once he saw you, Harry instantly agreed. No one will be the wiser and an otherwise sticky situation will be avoided.”

Maeve bolted from her chair. “You must both be mad,” she exclaimed.

“On the contrary, my dear, it is another heavensent solution to an unfortunate problem. Lily would be the first to applaud my idea. For all her extravagances, she was basically a practical woman—as I feel certain you must be also. Your father is a very wealthy man. He will make it worth your while if you do him this favor, and I happen to know Lily’s untimely death left you strapped for money. Think how handy a few hundred pounds would be right now.”

Maeve studied the faces of the two schemers and felt nothing but disgust. Still, Lady Hermione had given her something to think about. On the one hand, she abhorred the thought of falling in with her father’s plans. On the other, she could see that doing so could work to her advantage, as well as place her in the best possible position to protect her twin.

If Meg was truly as timid as they claimed, she would need protection from them and from the Earl of Lynley, whom Maeve felt certain was far from being the paragon Lady Hermione had described. For no woman, no matter how shy, would hie herself to the wilds of Scotland simply to avoid appearing at a ball. It was obvious poor Meg was fleeing from the dreadful earl.

Maeve’s heart pounded wildly in her breast at the very idea that she had a twin sister who desperately needed her help. She had never before been needed by anyone—certainly not by Lily, who had been a force unto herself.

At the thought of Lily and the heartless plan she had conceived two and twenty years ago, Maeve felt a wave of pain surge through her. She clenched her fists, determined to out-scheme the schemers who once again were trying to manipulate her and her twin’s lives to suit their own purposes.

She had one advantage. Living with Lily had sharpened her instinct for survival, and that instinct told her that the squire was more desperate than he cared to admit to bring about this marriage between Meg and the earl. There was more involved here than acquiring a title for his daughter, or even combining the two estates. She had no idea what that might be, but she sensed it gave her the leverage she needed to drive a hard bargain.

“I will masquerade as my twin at the ball and for a fortnight afterwards, but only if you agree to my terms,” she said finally.

The squire and Lady Hermione exchanged a look of surprise.

“And just what are your terms?” the squire asked.

Maeve drew a deep breath, exhaled, and calmly declared, “I want Lily’s outstanding debts paid in full.”

Lady Hermione gasped. “But that is unconscionable. Rumor has it she owed more than ten thousand pounds at her death.”

“True, and the figure mounts daily,” Maeve said. “As her only known daughter, I am being hounded by her creditors—a situation
I
find unconscionable. But, nevertheless, I shall not be unreasonable. I’ll settle for exactly ten thousand pounds—no more, no less.”

Actually, Lily’s debts amounted to but a little over six thousand pounds, but Maeve felt no compunction about nicking her father for the balance. He owed her for all the years he’d failed to contribute to her support when she was a child.

Between what was left after she paid off Lily’s debts and her snug, little house, she’d have the security she’d always longed for. If all went well, she might even be able to offer her twin an alternative to marrying a man she obviously feared.

“Ten thousand pounds! You’re your mother’s daughter all right, greedy little witch,” the squire grumbled.

“And you, sir, are free to accept my terms or reject them and explain Meg’s absence at her betrothal ball to the earl, if you can. The choice is yours.”

“I am bitterly disappointed in you, young lady,” Lady Hermione declared in a coldly disapproving tone of voice. “What you demand is out-and-out robbery, and no man in his right mind would agree to it.”

A scowl darkened the squire’s beefy face. “Now just a minute, Hermione, I haven’t said I would—but I haven’t said I wouldn’t either. I’m thinking on it.”

“You can’t be serious. Surely you’re not considering meeting her demands.”

But Maeve could see her father was already close to agreeing to her outrageous terms—terms she would demand be in the form of a written and signed contract.

BOOK: The Madcap Masquerade
11.74Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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