The Madcap Masquerade (6 page)

“I have no intention of ravishing you,” he continued in his most seductive voice. “Certainly not in my own garden with a houseful of guests but a few hundred feet away.”

She inclined her head in a sad little nod. “I know. I am being very silly. But one’s first kiss is an important milestone. I had always hoped … .”

A flush of heat suffused the cheeks framed beneath his fingertips and he knew, as surely as if she had completed her sentence, that she had hoped she would share her first kiss with a man for whom she cared deeply.

The bitterness he usually managed to keep buried inside him rose up to choke him. Didn’t the foolish woman know that only the poor and the untitled could afford maudlin sentimentality? The daughters of wealthy squires and the sons of noble spendthrifts were expected to substitute duty to family and fortune for such plebeian longings.

Angry that her
naïveté
had reminded him of the empty state of his own heart, he yanked her to him and claimed her mouth in a savage, punishing kiss. But to his surprise, her lips were warm and moist and surprisingly responsive despite his inexcusable brutality.

An unexpected tenderness swept over him when he recognized the innocence in her instinctive reaction to his cruel assault on her senses. He felt his lips gentle to match hers, his heart pound with the same frenetic staccato he could feel pulsing in the soft breast crushed against his chest.

With a groan, he dragged his mouth from hers before his mounting desire swept every sane thought from his head. Stepping back, he held her at arm’s length. Her eyes looked glazed, her lips softly swollen. He inhaled deeply and felt his own chest heave as if he’d run a long distance. Good God! The last time he’d had such a reaction to a mere kiss, he’d been sixteen and as wet behind the ears as a newborn lamb.

“Well, Miss Barrington, now you’ve been kissed,” he said because he could think of nothing else to say.

Her lips parted in a tremulous smile. “Yes, my lord, I certainly have been, and I must say it was a remarkable experience.” She hesitated. “Is kissing always so—I’m not sure how to describe it—so emotional?”

“No, not always,” he said, and left it at that. He found himself strangely loth to discuss the amazing intensity of feeling this small, rather plain woman engendered in him. Even now, just looking at her triggered a tender protectiveness he could not remember ever having felt for any other being.

Their brief moment of passion had left her endearingly untidy. A lock of wispy brown hair had worked loose from her chignon. He tucked it behind her ear. One small, puffed sleeve dangled an inch or two lower than the sleeve on her other shoulder. He straightened it up, then retrieved the fan she’d dropped to the floor of the temple and placed it in her hand.

All the while, she stood statue-still and silent, her green cat eyes following his every move, her impassive face giving no hint of what thoughts filled her head. It occurred to him that what he had originally seen as her painful shyness was actually a quiet reserve that gave her an intriguing air of mystery. He felt strangely elated; the last thing he had expected was to find himself fascinated by the woman whom fate had forced him to make his wife.

Behind him the musicians played the first chords of the waltz he had promised to dance with her. Since kissing her again was unthinkable at the moment, the next best thing was to take her in his arms and waltz her around a dance floor.

“Our set I believe, Miss Barrington,” he said, and grasping her hand, hurried her back to the manor house and onto the dance floor before the momentary delirium he was suffering caused him to do something unforgivably foolish.

Maeve soon discovered that waltzing with the Earl of Lynley was nothing like waltzing with Lily’s dance instructor. He moved with a sinuous grace all his own, which struck her as not unlike that of the great black feline she had first likened him to. She had always been conscious of having to think about following Monsieur Daudet’s lead; she felt as if she and the earl and the music had merged into one fluid being which revolved in wondrous, breathtaking circles with no conscious effort on her part.

As if reading her mind, the earl executed a complicated maneuver to miss colliding with another couple, then swung them through two rapid revolutions toward an open space in the center of the floor. “You dance like a dream, Miss Barrington,” he said with obvious delight. “You should recommend that dancing master of yours to the ladies of the
ton
when next you go to London. I can think of at least a dozen of the heavy-footed little dears who might profit from his instruction.”

Maeve felt a flush heat her cheeks. “Thank you for the compliment, but I suspect my competence on the dance floor at the moment is due more to my talented partner than my teacher,” she said, chuckling to herself at the idea of the fashionable impure sharing their dance instructor with the prim and proper ladies who patronized Almack’s.

The earl raised an eyebrow. “Are you by any chance flirting with me, Miss Barrington?”

Maeve shook her head. “I don’t believe so, my lord. At least I was not aware of it if I was.”

The earl’s hearty peal of laughter seemed to fill every inch of the vast ballroom. “You are a delight, Miss Barrington,” he exclaimed. “I can never remember being cut down to size with such expertise.”

Maeve’s cheeks grew even warmer. She was dimly aware that all eyes were upon them—that the ladies on the sidelines were gossiping behind their fans and the gentlemen raising speculative eyebrows as she and the earl spun past them. She didn’t care. This was her first real waltz at her first ball and she intended to savor it with the same delight she’d savored her first kiss.

Never mind that she was dancing in another woman’s shoes and had kissed another woman’s betrothed; never mind that the arms which held her and the lips which had enthralled her belonged to a rake and fortune-hunter. Once she’d collected her promised fee from her father, she would be perfectly content to return to London and never see the handsome earl again. But somewhere in the middle of his amazing kiss it had occurred to her that this evening which she’d dreaded was turning out to be one she would remember with pleasure all the rest of her life.

Raising her head, she smiled happily at the man who had unknowingly provided her with such delightful memories—memories a plain, bookish kind of woman like her could never normally hope to collect.

He smiled back. “You look positively radiant, Miss Barrington. Dare I ask the reason?”

“I am enjoying myself,” Maeve said simply.

A look of astonishment crossed his handsome face. “By George, come to think of it, I am too, Miss Barrington. More than I have in a long, long time.”

“I must speak with you, Theo. In private. Immediately.” His mother’s glacial tone of voice made it plain she was exceedingly annoyed. This did not surprise him in the least. He could never remember when she was not annoyed about something. The question was, what had raised her ire at this particular moment.

He moved away from the pillar against which he’d been leaning since his waltz with Meg Barrington had ended. He’d reluctantly turned her over to Richard Forsythe as his partner in a quadrille, and had spent the last fifteen minutes watching the two of them stumble their way through the figures to the amusement of the three other couples. Apparently the quadrille had not been in the repertoire of Miss Barrington’s talented dance instructor.

“Can’t it wait until the ball is over, mother?” he asked. “I have a hundred guests relying on me to entertain them.”

The countess sniffed. “If you ask me, you have entertained them sufficiently for one night,” she hissed behind her fan. “What in the world were you thinking of to disappear with that hussy for a good half hour, then bring her back looking as if she’d been mauled by a bear?”

Theo was tempted to admit he had taken his betrothed out in the garden to kiss her. He resisted it. Such an admission would be sure to set his mother off on one of her endless tirades about the disgusting similarities between male humans and the lower species of animals.

“Then, as if that weren’t enough, you had to make a further spectacle of yourself waltzing her about the floor in that indecent fashion,” the dowager continued, apparently unfazed by his silence. “Have you no thought for our good name?”

Theo glanced about him to make certain no one was within hearing distance before he answered. “In case you’ve forgotten, that
hussy
is the woman I am pledged to marry,” he said patiently. “It is only natural I should wish to make an effort to become better acquainted with her.” Not for the first time, he found himself wondering how a woman with such a horror of anything hinting at sexual attraction between a man and woman had managed to give his father a son.

“Precisely what I need to speak to you about. I think you should postpone the announcement of your betrothal.”

Theo made a monumental effort to control his temper. “You can’t be serious. That announcement is the sole reason I’ve gone to the expense of giving this infernal ball—an expense I could ill afford at the moment, as you well know.” His mother was always difficult, but all things considered, this latest peccadillo of hers was beyond enough.

“Hear me out, Theo. It occurs to me that we may have made a serious mistake in our choice of your future countess.”

“
We
have done nothing of the sort, mother. If it’s Miss Barrington’s green gown that’s bothering you, it is not all that scandalous. Granted the neckline is a bit low for a country ball, but I rather like the way the color compliments her eyes.” Eyes which at that moment Theo could see were laughing into Richard Forsythe’s as he led her from the floor at the end of the rollicking country dance. He frowned. Odd, he’d never before realized what a handsome fellow Richard was—for a vicar.

The countess gave another derogatory sniff. “The dress is but one example of how the dreadful girl deceived us. She is not at all the diffident little creature she pretended to be.”

“Indeed she is not,” Theo readily agreed. “Personally, I find her combination of innocence and independent spirit quite fascinating. I can happily state I am not looking forward to my marriage with the same dread I felt yesterday.”

The countess’s nostrils flared with anger. “Your flippant manner does you no credit, Theo. As your mother—and the mistress of Ravenswood—I demand you show me the respect due me.”

Ravenswood. So that was what this was all about. His mother had apparently decided Meg Barrington posed a threat to her position as mistress of the historic manor house. He had wondered at her willingness to accept the squire’s shy, reclusive daughter as the future Countess of Lynley, despite her less than auspicious bloodlines. Now he understood her reasoning. A self-deprecating female such as Miss Barrington had appeared to be would be only too happy to leave control of the vast manor house in the dowager’s hands.

But as it turned out, his bride-to-be was not as timid as she’d first seemed. The vibrant young woman who had arrived at her betrothal ball in a shockingly inappropriate dress might very well demand her mother-in-law be removed to the dower house, as was customary.

He couldn’t help but feel a little sympathy for his mother. What she had lacked in warmth, she had more than made up for in her dedication to Ravenswood in the four and thirty years she had been mistress of the Hampton family’s principal estate. The thought of relinquishing her position to a younger woman must be devastating to her.

On the other hand, for his own part, he found the idea of sharing Ravenswood with an enchanting little green-eyed cat much more appealing than his original plan of sharing it with a mousey frump and his demanding mother.

“Don’t worry. We’ll work something out to everyone’s satisfaction,” he said in the patient tone of voice he always used with his mother. He even halfway believed what he promised her. This evening he’d been dreading had gone so swimmingly up to now, he’d begun to think the same phenomenal luck that had seen him through many a close scrape on the Peninsula was once again his. With luck like that, how could a man go wrong?

“Now if you’ll excuse me, Mother,” he said with a conspiratorial smile he felt certain would placate her, “I believe it is time I made the announcement which will start all that lovely Barrington money flowing into Ravenswood’s depleted coffers.”

With a perfunctory bow, he whirled around, headed for the musicians’ platform where he planned to make his speech, and came face to face with his mistress, Sophie Whitcomb.

T
heo swallowed the anger that threatened to choke him. What in God’s name was his mistress thinking of to show her face at his engagement party? And decked out in an outrageous purple ball gown, the like of which he’d seen on the strumpets parading their wares on Drury Lane. It was the last thing he would have expected of a practical, no-nonsense person like Sophie.

All too aware that an expectant hush had fallen on the crowded ballroom, he pasted a welcoming smile on his face and lifted her outstretched hand to his lips. “How pleasant to see you, Mrs. Whitcomb,” he ground out between gritted teeth.

“I’m happy to see you, as well, my lord.” Sentimental tears puddled in Sophie’s huge, brown eyes. “I can’t tell you how pleased—and surprised—I was to receive your gracious invitation.”

Invitation! Theo stared at her, mouth agape. He’d left the compiling of the guest list to his efficient man-of-affairs with instructions that cards should be directed to everyone of consequence within a twenty-mile radius. He groaned. Now that he thought of it, the widow of a county alderman would be one of those favored individuals.

Why hadn’t he thought to check that list before the invitations were delivered? More to the point, why hadn’t Sophie had the sense to decline an invitation which was obviously issued by mistake? Damn the woman! This embarrassing bumblebroth was all her fault.

With sinking heart, he saw the squire approaching—a smile on his florid face, his daughter on his arm. There was naught for it but to pretend nothing was amiss and make the proper introductions. Theo cleared his throat. “Miss Barrington—Squire, may I present Mrs. Sophie Whitcomb, the widow of our late alderman.”

The squire turned a baleful eye on Sophie. “Already met the silly chit a hundred times in the village, ye looby,” he grumbled. “This ain’t London, ye know.”

Miss Barrington was a bit more gracious. Her smile was sweetness itself. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure, Mrs. Whitcomb, since I rarely visit the village.” Her remarkable cat eyes narrowed. “However, I’ve heard so much about you, I feel as if I know you very well.”

Theo held his breath as Sophie made a sound halfway between a nervous giggle and a hiccup. “Don’t believe all you hear, Miss Barrington. People around here are given to exaggeration.”

“As are people everywhere,” Miss Barrington agreed, with a sage nod of her head. “You must come for tea at Barrington Hall some day soon, Mrs. Whitcomb. I am certain we would find much of interest to chat about.”

The roses in Sophie’s cheeks instantly paled to a sickly white and Theo felt the color drain from his own face as well, until it occurred to him that Miss Barrington must not know who Sophie was. No proper young lady would invite her betrothed’s mistress, or indeed any man’s mistress, to drink tea with her.

The squire, on the other hand, turned an angry purple that rivaled Sophie’s outlandish dress. “Invite the jade to tea? In a pig’s eye,” he muttered and seizing his daughter by the arm, headed for the pre-arranged spot near the musicians’ platform where the engagement announcement was to be made.

Theo watched Miss Barrington’s rigid, emerald-clad figure disappear into the crowd ringing the dance floor and found himself struck by a sobering thought. The two most colorfully—and inappropriately—gowned females in the entire room were his current mistress and his future wife. He wondered if that said something about his taste in women.

“I’ll speak to you later, Sophie,” he said grimly. “I have other business I must attend to right now.”

“Oh! Well, if you must.” Her plump, white fingers clutched at his sleeve. “I was hoping to have one dance with you, Theo. I should like it ever so much.” The roses bloomed again in her cheeks. “We’ve done just about everything else together, but we’ve never danced.”

The idea was so preposterous, Theo couldn’t bring himself to dignify it with an answer. He simply turned his back on his soon to be ex-mistress and walked away. He could feel her puzzled gaze follow him as he collected his mother and wound his way through the crowd to where the squire and Miss Barrington waited. Determinedly, he shrugged off his brief twinge of guilt at the thought of her apparent bewilderment. If Sophie chose to be dense, she would simply have to live with the consequences.

Maeve had always had a quick temper, but she couldn’t remember ever having felt a rage equal to that which consumed her at the moment. To begin with, she’d been treated to a lecture from her father, of all people, on the impropriety of inviting a “loose woman” to drink tea at Barrington Hall.

“I felt certain the earl’s mistress and Mrs. Pinkert would have much in common,” she’d explained sourly.

The squire’s eyes fairly bulged from his head. “Emma Pinkert may be no better’n she should be, but she knows her place and keeps it,” he said indignantly. “Which is more’n I can say for that trollop Lynley takes his pleasure with. But not to worry. Mark my word, daughter, the widow’ll be last week’s news once ye slip the leg shackles on him. I ain’t blind, you know. I seen the way he looked at ye when the two of ye were dancing.”

“But
I
am not marrying the Earl of Lynley. Have you forgotten it is my shy, retiring twin whom you’re planning to sacrifice for the sake of this monstrous scheme of yours? How will a gentle creature, such as you’ve described Meg to be, cope with a husband who has no more respect for her than to invite his mistress to his engagement ball?”

The squire’s silence was an answer in itself, which left Maeve to wonder why her sister, or indeed any woman in her right mind, would consider marrying a man like the Earl of Lynley. She had met some conceited fools in her day; Lily had favored men of that ilk. But the arrogant, full-of-himself earl made the gaggle of titled rakes who had clustered around her mother look like innocent school boys.

She watched him give an imperious wave of his hand, alerting his waiting servants to circulate among his guests with glasses of champagne to toast his engagement. How charming!

“The cat’ll soon be out of the bag now,” the squire said smugly, as a sound like the buzzing of a hive of bees spread through the assembly of curious guests. His words were somewhat slurred and Maeve realized he was in his cups, as were his three cronies, who converged on him demanding to know what was going on.

“Bounced me bran-faced daughter off to a blooming belted earl, that’s what,” he gloated, too pleased with himself to keep the secret a moment longer. This privileged communication instantly inspired his hunting companions to make earthy conjectures on what the wedding night of said daughter and a rakehell like Lynley might entail. By the time the earl and his mother arrived to take their places beside her and her father in front of the raised platform on which the musicians were gathered, Maeve was red of face and spitting mad.

And she soon realized her torture had just begun.

The earl’s speech was a masterpiece of sham and fabrication. If she didn’t know better, she would think, from the glowing words he used to describe his bride-to-be, that after a lifetime of searching he had finally found the one woman who would make him the perfect wife, the perfect mother of his children and the perfect countess. He did not, of course, mention the fact that her huge dowry was the perfect solution to the financial problems with which he was reportedly beset.

It was all so false. Particularly since the Widow Whitcomb had moved to within a few feet of where he stood and stared at him with soulful brown eyes the entire time he delivered his tongue-in-cheek address.

Mrs. Whitcomb brushed a tear from her cheek and all at once Maeve was struck with an eerie premonition of disaster. There was an air of pathetic vulnerability about the widow that brought back painful memories of a friend of Lily’s—a pretty dimwit who had made the fatal mistake of falling in love with her protector.

A shiver crawled Maeve’s spine as she recalled the cold January morning when Lily and she were called upon to identify the girl’s body, found floating face-down in the Thames shortly after the titled rake delivered his
congé.
Maeve shivered again and silently prayed Mrs. Whitcomb’s was a stronger, more resilient nature.

She found herself wondering why a high-stickler like the dowager countess would permit her son’s mistress to be invited to Ravenswood for any occasion, much less one as important as his engagement ball. It had to have been the earl, himself, who made up the guest list, which meant he was an even more insensitive lout than she had imagined.

Things were certainly done differently in the country than in London society. The same admirers who’d fawned over Lily at the Cyprians’ Balls and entertained her in their private boxes at the theatre had cut her dead if they met her in Hyde Park with their “proper” ladies on their arms.

But, Maeve reminded herself, who was she to judge anyone on a lack of propriety? At least Lynley didn’t represent himself to be someone he was not. In her own way, she was even more despicable than he—a hired imposter who had demanded an obscene amount of money for a sordid piece of work. The only innocent in this whole miserable fiasco was her sister, and Maeve made herself a solemn vow that no matter what it cost her, she would save Meg from the unhappy fate the squire and the earl had planned for her.

With that in mind, she managed a somewhat strained smile when the earl concluded his artful piece of claptrap and raised her fingers to his lips. Luckily, she was not called upon to converse with the handsome hypocrite or with her gloating father. She was instantly deluged with well-wishers, most of whom made it all too clear they were utterly amazed that the Earl of Lynley would consider marrying a plain-faced commoner like Meg Barrington. Furthermore, from the venomous looks the Dowager cast in her direction, it was plain she agreed with them.

Maeve survived the hour or so of backhanded congratulations with stoic indifference, but once the crowd around her thinned, she decided she’d had enough.

“I’m tired and I want to go home,” she said to her father. The squire looked at her as if she’d just sprouted an extra head. “Ye’re daft. The party’s just getting interesting and I’ve no intention of leaving.”

“You may live to regret that decision, sir,” Maeve said, aware the earl could hear every word of their conversation. “If I have to listen to one more person tell me how fortunate I am to have won the admiration of the Earl of Lynley, I swear I shall scream. Are these people all as idiotic as they appear or is it a deep, dark secret that he must marry an heiress to save his precious Ravenswood?”

The squire’s face contorted with rage. “Demme it, girl, keep a civil tongue in yere head. I’ll not have ye mucking up me plans.”

“I can understand your fatigue, Miss Barrington; I, too, am tired of standing in one spot.” The smile the earl turned on Maeve was the same amicable one he had worn for the past hour, but the look in his eyes was murderous. “I hear the musicians tuning up for another waltz. Shall we dance?”

“No thank you, my lord. I do not feel the least inclined toward dancing.”

“To be perfectly truthful, neither do I, Miss Barrington. But for the sake of propriety, we must keep up appearances.” Without further ado, he grasped Maeve’s elbow in a vice-like grip and propelled her through the crowd of watching guests and onto the dance floor.

“Propriety!” Maeve gasped. “How can you have the gall to mention the word? Or are you so ignorant of social custom you consider it appropriate to invite your mistress to the ball at which you announce your engagement?”

Theo swallowed hard. He could see he’d made a serious error in judgment where his intended was concerned. She was neither as naive nor as reticent to speak her mind as he’d been led to believe. There was no point in trying to lie his way out of this one. She had him dead to rights.

“If you are referring to Mrs. Whitcomb, it was all a mistake and none of my doing,” he explained with the same careful patience he normally reserved for his mother when she was being her most difficult. “My man-of-affairs sent a card to everyone of note in the vicinity, which, of course, included the widow of our late alderman.

“I am devastated to think her presence caused you a moment of pain and embarrassment, dear lady,” he purred in the dulcet tones that had inspired many an incomparable of the ton to offer herself to him body and soul.

“Don’t be an ass!” Miss Barrington frowned. “Why would you think her presence would disturb
me,
my lord? I do not care in the least how you conduct your personal affairs; ours is purely a business arrangement negotiated between you and my father. When I questioned your lack of consideration for a woman’s sensitivities, I was thinking of Mrs. Whitcomb. One has only to look into those pathetic bovine eyes of hers to recognize the foolish creature believes herself in love with you. Think of the pain you caused her, prattling on about how happy you were to marry another woman, when most likely you’d warmed
her
bed but twenty-four hours earlier.”

For the first time in his life, Theo found himself utterly speechless. He didn’t have to pretend shock at his betrothed’s bizarre reaction to the unusual situation they found themselves in; he was jolted to the core by her unconventional attitude.

“Miss Barrington!” he exclaimed, when he finally found his voice. “This is not a conversation I would expect to be having with my future wife.”

“And why not, my lord? I believe in speaking the truth as I see it.”