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Authors: Nadine Miller

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BOOK: The Madcap Masquerade
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She was in the habit of walking the streets surrounding Lily’s small house early each morning, but she had never before walked in the country. She found herself wondering how one kept from getting lost without the usual city landmarks to find one’s bearings. She would, she decided, simply keep the eight tall chimneys of Barrington Hall in sight at all times as her guide.

With that in mind, she set off at a brisk pace, past the stables and down the driveway she’d ridden up the day before. Turning left at the gate, she followed the road until, after an hour of steady walking, it dwindled into a country lane just wide enough for one carriage. An orchard in full, glorious bloom bordered the lane on her right, a meadow dotted with grazing sheep on her left. Swept up by the sheer beauty of the landscape, she ploughed on, though the lane was still muddy from the heavy rains of the previous evening.

A mile or so farther, she stopped to catch her breath and get her bearings. She breathed deeply, amazed at the crystalline purity of air free from the smoke and dirt of the capital—and even more amazed at the silence, broken only by the faint chirping of a flock of birds nesting in the hedgerows bordering the lane.

The city was never silent. She wondered if she could ever accustom herself to the quiet of the country. Her urban ears automatically listened for the rattle of carriage wheels over cobblestones, the voices of street venders hawking their wares.

Then all at once the stillness was broken by the sound of voices—strong male voices raised in a bawdy country song. The sound appeared to be coming from beyond a small hill to her right. Curious, she wriggled through a break in the hedgerow and waded through the dew-damp grass to the stand of beeches at the top of the hill.

“Spring planting,” she said to herself, studying the activity in the valley below. She wondered if the men involved were her father’s tenant farmers or if she had walked so far she had crossed over into the Earl of Lynley’s estate.

A confirmed city dweller, she had never actually witnessed the planting of crops, but she had read about it and the scene before her was just as she had envisioned it. A dozen or more men, with huge canvas sacks of seeds strapped to their left shoulders, walked beside shallow, neatly spaced trenches, spreading seed as they went. Behind each man, a young boy with a hoe covered the trench with the dark, rich loam piled alongside it and tamped it firmly in place. Men and boys alike, they sang as they worked and every dip of a hand into a sack, every sweep of a hoe across the soil was as rhythmic and precise as the movements of dancers executing the steps of a minuet.

The sun was higher in the sky now and its rays warmer. Maeve removed her shawl and seated herself on a fallen log to watch the age-old springtime ritual that had probably been carried out in this very valley for centuries. The farm laborers ranged in age from very young to very old, but one and all, they looked to be strong and healthy and well fed. If they were, in fact, the squire’s tenants, he was a much more conscientious landowner than she would have credited him.

One fellow in particular caught her eye. A head taller than the other men, he had a dark, foreign look about him that set him apart from the rest. As she watched, he reached the end of a row, dropped his sack and proceeded to strip off his shirt, leaving him bare to the waist.

Maeve gasped. Despite her unconventional upbringing, she had never before seen a living, breathing man in such a state of undress. Her knowledge of the male body was limited to Lord Elgin’s famous sculptures at the British Museum. But cold, hard marble, no matter how explicit, had not prepared her for the sight of powerful muscles rippling beneath sweat-sheened skin the color of fine bronze. The incredible masculine beauty of the tall, black-haired farm worker literally took her breath away.

As if suddenly sensing her presence, he turned his head in her direction and raked her with eyes that, even from a distance, she could see were as inky black as his hair. She fully expected him to snatch up his shirt and quickly cover his nakedness. He did no such thing; instead his perusal of her grew even bolder.

In vain, she tried to tear her gaze from his. For a long heart-stopping moment he held her spellbound with a brazen stare that sent tremors of awareness ricocheting through the most feminine parts of her body—until the satisfied male smile curving his full, sensuous mouth shocked her back to reality.

The nerve of the cheeky fellow! A total stranger, and an ordinary farmhand to boot, ogling her with the same proprietary look she’d seen on the faces of the men who had bought and paid for Lily’s services. Gathering her shawl about her, she rose from her log and made as dignified an exit from the grove of trees as the humiliating circumstances afforded.

Far to her left, the chimneys of Barrington Hall, while still in sight, now looked more like a row of toothpicks than the imposing appendages she’d spied when first alighting from the squire’s carriage. She wondered what had possessed her to walk so far, when she’d known full well she would have to walk just as far on the return trip. Resigned to her fate, she scrambled down the hill to the lane and hastened back to the manor house as fast as her legs would carry her.

Hot and tired, she stopped just inside the gate to catch her breath and put her thoughts in order before continuing to the house. What in the world had happened to her back on that hill? Try as she might, she could not ignore the fact that the unsettling tremors she’d experienced on that hill still echoed deep inside her.

But why? She had been around men all her life—handsome, urbane, sophisticated men. Not a one of them had ever evoked a reaction in her such as she’d experienced watching the dark-haired farmhand strip to the waist. She shuddered, wondering if she’d inherited more of her mother’s alley-cat tendencies than she’d realized.

With a toss of her head, she instantly dismissed the idea as utter nonsense and marched resolutely toward the manor house. She was simply out of her element here in the country; the city was her natural venue. She had no doubt whatsoever that once she returned to familiar surroundings, she would be her normal, disciplined self.

In the meantime, she would have to make very certain she never again wandered into territory where she might encounter such a disturbing sight.

***

In an unusually thoughtful mood, the Earl of Lynley mounted his horse and rode slowly home from his day of working in the fields with his tenant farmers. It was something he’d done every spring he’d been in Kent since he was old enough to take his place as a hoe-boy. But the experience had somehow failed to satisfy him today.

To begin with, the last person he’d expected to find walking alone so far from home was the oh-so-proper Miss Meg Barrington. Nor would he have expected her to sit herself down on a log to watch him and his men at spring planting. She was country born and bred; she had to know men who worked the fields shed their shirts when the sun grew too hot. Yet, from her gaping mouth and crimson cheeks when he’d shed his, one would think he had taken her completely by surprise.

And she had been different somehow from the timid mouse who had run in terror from him a mere fortnight ago. The Miss Barrington of this morning had displayed none of the lowered eyelids and trembling limbs that had repelled him at their last meeting. There had been a certain boldness in her gaze when it locked with his, a self-assurance which had sparked his interest in a way her former timidity never could.

He had delighted in it at the moment, but now that he thought more about it, he found it strangely troubling. The squire had sent word two weeks before that he was taking her to London to buy bride clothes. What could have happened during that fortnight in the city to have changed her?

Instantly a dozen things came to mind. He knew all too well what brought sparkle to a woman’s eyes and roses to her cheeks. He’d accomplished the miracle himself more times than he could remember.

She’d undoubtedly met some man while in London. Most likely one of those powder and paint dandies who prowled the salons of Mayfair looking for just such an innocent country goose as Meg Barrington. He gritted his teeth at the thought of another man touching the woman who was to be his bride. Never mind that he was marrying her against his will or that he, himself, was far from chaste. There were rules about such things. If he must marry a plain-faced frump then, by God, he would at least demand that she be one who was pure and untouched.

But how could he tell before his betrothal was announced and it was too late to call the whole thing off?

“Kiss her,” he advised himself out loud. He had often boasted that with his vast experience, he could instantly tell all there was to know about a woman by the way she kissed. He would apply that test tonight at the ball. He would take Miss Barrington aside and kiss her before the squire could make his announcement and if she failed the test … .

He smiled to himself. There would be time enough to worry about that when the time came.

***

After a hearty tea shared with the squire and Mrs. Pinkert, Maeve retired to her chamber to ready herself for the ball at which she was to make her debut impersonating her twin. With the exception of the one disturbing incident with the farmhand, her first full day at Barrington Hall had gone surprisingly well.

She’d toured the vast house in the morning before the squire and Mrs. Pinkert rose from their beds, and in the early afternoon she’d begun work on the third in a series of cartoons she’d been commissioned to do on the unpopular Prince Regent and the crowd of sycophants who surrounded him. She had even, during her long hours of solitude, managed to come to grips with her reaction to the handsome rustic. It had taken some doing, but she’d finally chalked it up to hunger. She was, she suddenly remembered, never at her best before breakfast.

True to his word, the squire had ridden into the village shortly before noon and hired two of the local innkeeper’s buxom daughters—the oldest to serve as a housemaid under Mrs. Pinchert, the younger one, Lucy, to act as abigail to Maeve.

Lucy was a treasure. She confessed she had always aspired to be a lady’s maid in some grand house in London and had made a point of studying the gowns and jewelry and hairstyles of the ladies of quality who stopped at her father’s inn. As a result, she had an eye for color and style that was remarkable in a country innkeeper’s daughter, and she could also read and write.

She quickly passed over the pink and blue and white gowns hanging in Meg’s armoire and chose a vivid green silk with a shockingly low neckline and tiny puffed sleeves that perched provocatively below Maeve’s shoulders. “I rather think Lady Hermione meant this one for the honeymoon—not the betrothal ball,” Maeve protested. “As I understand it, unmarried ladies are not supposed to wear bright colors.”

“Pooh,” said Lucy with a wave of her plump white hand. “Maybe that’s true in London. “But who around here would know it, Miss, except the earl’s mother, and she never approves of anything.”

Maeve offered no further objections. In truth, she rather liked the way the green dress enhanced her eyes, and when Lucy suggested she snip a few tendrils of hair and let them curl about her face to soften the look of her severe hairdo, Maeve could find no objection to that idea either.

“La, Miss, you do look a picture,” Lucy declared once she finished her work. Maeve took a critical look at herself in the cheval glass and decided that Lucy was right. While she could not, by any stretch of imagination, be termed a beauty, Lucy’s clever ministrations had turned her into a far more attractive woman than she had ever before been.

Lucy rolled her pretty blue eyes heavenward. “How I envy you, Miss, going to a ball at Ravenswood. Maybe you’ll be lucky enough to have the Earl of Lynley ask you for a dance.”

“I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised,” Maeve said drily.

“He’s the grandest, most handsome man I’ve ever seen in all my born days,” Lucy rhapsodized as she straightened up the dressing table and returned the walking dress Maeve had just stepped out of to the armoire. “I remember the day last winter when he rode home from the wars after the old Earl died. Stopped at the inn, he did, and looking more like a prince in his fine uniform than Prinny himself. My sisters and me fair swooned away at the sight of him.” She pressed a hand to her heart. “My mam would whip me for sure if she heard me say it, but I can’t help wishing I was the Widow Whitcomb.”

“Why in heaven’s name would wish to be a widow?” Maeve asked, failing to see how the odd statement fit into Lucy’s impassioned dissertation on the earl.

“Took her as his mistress his first week home, the Earl did, and you should see the fine presents he brings her whenever he goes to London. And her a bit long of tooth and nothing much to look at less you’re looking at her bosom.”

Which the earl apparently did, Maeve surmised. So, her vulgar boor of a father had forced her twin into a betrothal with a man who not only admitted to marrying her solely for her inheritance, but was a known rake who openly flaunted his mistress as well. No wonder poor Meg had fled to Scotland.

By the time she’d ridden the short distance to Ravenswood and listened to her father’s ideas on how she could ingratiate herself—and therefore Meg—in the eyes of a high flyer like the Earl, Maeve had taken the fellow in such violent dislike, she wanted nothing more than to abandon the mad scheme she’d become involved in and return to her safe, peaceful life in London.

She pressed her fingers to her aching temples. But unfortunately, with Lily’s debts hanging over her head, her own future security, as well her ability to save her twin from the evil earl’s clutches, depended on the ten thousand pounds she would earn for masquerading as Meg for the next fortnight.

BOOK: The Madcap Masquerade
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