Regency Masquerades: A Limited Edition Boxed Set of Six Traditional Regency Romance Novels of Secrets and Disguises

by Brenda Hiatt

  “Oh, I knows that. You is the one what will marry Mr. Christopher. I be Timothy Slate, but everybody calls me Timmy.”

  Good heavens, even the servants thought her betrothed to Kit! Servants gossiped with the townsfolk, as well she knew, so perhaps this was a necessary lie. But she was growing sick at heart at the deception. There had been too many lies, too many disguises. Sometimes she wondered who she really was, and how she would find herself again when this latest masquerade was concluded.

  “Your owl is an uncommon fine ’un,” Timmy said. “I’ve not seen any so friendlylike as ’e is. Most is skeered of people.”

  “He? Are you sure of that? I had thought Fidgets to be female.”

  “Oh, ’e’s a boy all right. The boys be a mite smaller than the girls and they gots whiter feathers in the front.”

  Lucy stifled a laugh. “Are you absolutely certain?”

  “Oh, aye. I knows lots about owls. They looks to be smart, but they mostly be stupid. The same way as some people. Hard to tell about folks just from lookin’.”

  Profound wisdom from a stableboy. “Well, don’t tell anyone else about Fidgets’s gender,” she advised him. “It will shatter a number of illusions if you do.”

  “If you say so,” Timmy agreed cheerfully. “What’s a ’lusion?”

  “Well, it’s rather like a dream, or a wish. Something a person wants to think is true even if it isn’t.” Rather like imagining Kit in love with her.

  “They be good then,” Timmy piped. “I got lots of Lusions. Nothin’ much else to do when I is workin’ but to dream ’bout doin’ somethin’ else.”

  “What do you dream of?” she asked curiously. For all her tedious existence, the one she would soon return to, Timmy’s prospects were even less promising.

  “Mostly I ’magines meself a jockey, me bein’ small and good with ’orses. But sometimes I thinks about sailin’ boats on the lakes, or mebbe even the ocean. One day I means to do one or t’other.”

  “I am certain that you will, Timmy.” She stood, catching the rough heel of her half boot on the hem of her skirt. She had been measured for new shoes, but they would not be delivered before tomorrow. Meantime she clomped about Candale in her weather-beaten boots, wearing Lady Kendal’s made-over dresses, wishing she could be Luke again. Or even Mrs. Preston, cloaked head to toe in black. Anything but a patched-together frump!

  Fidgets made a low noise in his throat, and she turned to see him poised for flight. A second later he swooped past her. She heard the sound of hoofbeats then, and guessed that Kit had returned.

  Shading her eyes against the afternoon sun, she went outside and saw him rein in, Fidgets perched atop his hat. A misbegotten pair if ever there was one, she thought. Almost as unlikely as the Honorable Christopher Valliant mated with Lucinda Jennet Preston, governess.

  Dismounting, Kit opened the saddle pack and removed a parcel tied with string. “I brought Fidgets a present,” he said. “The least I could do, considering the number of voles she’s dropped at my feet.”

  “What of Diana?” she demanded impatiently. “How is she?”

  “You may read the news for yourself.” He withdrew several folded sheets of paper from his coat pocket. “She sent a letter.”

  Lucy seized it and quickly scanned the pages, inscribed with a pencil in Diana’s elegant handwriting. Then she read it again, more slowly, while Kit was in the stable with Timmy, seeing to the horse.

  Fidgets had relocated to his shoulder when Kit returned, examining his beaver hat with a frown. “Look at this,” he said, holding it in front of her. “Cost me a pretty penny, this bonnet.”

  She saw several small holes in the crown where eight talons had knifed in. “Better the hat than your head,” she said unsympathetically. “Consider it the price of love.”

  He gave Fidgets a stem look. “Just for that, milady, I may not give you your present after all.”

  The owl made a low moaning sound.

  “The letter tells me Diana is happy and well, but of course she would say that. You spoke with her, Kit. How is she truly getting on?”

  “Far better than I expected. Country life appears to suit her. When I arrived she was mucking out a sty and singing naughty songs to the piglets. Later she introduced me to geese and ducks and cows and goats, each one by name.” He regarded her with a pensive expression. “It is well, I believe, that she has work to occupy her time and new experiences to keep her from reflecting overmuch on the old ones.”

  She nodded. That had often been her thought at the cottage, where Diana had little to do but mope. “Was she making a pretense, do you think, so that we’d not be concerned about her?”

  “She would likely have done so, were it called for. But Nell—er, her hostess—confirmed my own impressions. They have already become fast friends and were planning to cook up a batch of jam this afternoon. I am promised several jars for the Candale pantry on my next visit.”

  Her heart considerably lighter at such an encouraging report, Lucy smiled. “Well then, I shall worry about her only every other minute. And, Kit, I am sorry about your hat.”

  “As you said, the price of love.” He tossed it onto a fence post and offered her his arm. “Will you walk with me for a few minutes? There is something I wish to discuss with you.”

  Her heart sank again. From the glint in his sky-blue eyes, he was up to something she was not going to like. But what could be worse than his last appalling idea—their appearance at Sir Basil Crawley’s ball—or the one before it that cast her as his fiancée? Fingers crossed that he had only minor devilry in mind this time, she allowed him to escort her to the hill that rose up behind the paddocks.

  As they began the climb a cool breeze tugged at her bonnet and lifted his hair, burnished to gold by the midafternoon sunshine. The hill was mostly bare, sprinkled with scarlet-berried rowans and birches cloaked with gold-brown autumn leaves.

  Fidgets picked his way down Kit’s other arm and began to peck at the string tied around the parcel in his hand. “Such a greedy wench you are,” Kit chided.

  “What did you bring hi—her?”

  “Chicken feet. Celia won’t allow poultry on the premises, so I was forced to import them from the farm.”

  She eyed the parcel dubiously. “Are owls partial to chicken feet?”

  “Devil if I know, but they’re a far sight easier to come by than voles. Shall we find out?”

  When they reached the top of the hill, Kit placed Fidgets on a tree branch and moved about twenty yards away. The owl immediately flew to his shoulder.

  “No, no, my dear.” He returned Fidgets to the branch. “Be a good girl and stay where I put you.” A few moments later Fidgets was on his shoulder again. Patiently, he repeated the exercise several times, with similar results.

  “Whatever are you doing?” Lucy asked as he carried the owl back to the tree once again.

  “Trying to get a stubborn female to obey me, which I daresay no man has succeeded in doing since the dawn of time.” He stroked Fidgets’s head. “Stay, beloved. Please. Do it for me.” This time Fidgets remained in place when Kit walked away. Keeping his back to the owl, he opened the parcel and with drew a gray-pink chicken foot. Then he turned and held it out. “Come, Fidgets. Come and get it!”

  The owl tilted its head, regarding him curiously, but stayed where it was.

  “You’re confusing the poor thing, Kit. First you tell her to stay, and then you insist that she come.”

  “Precisely. There really is a point to this, moonbeam. All will be made clear. I simply want to discover if Fidgets can be persuaded to come to me when I give her the signal, and apparently a chicken foot fails to turn the trick. It seems I’ll be put to hunting down a mousie to tempt her.”

  “Will that not signify that Fidgets has trained you?” she observed tartly.

  He chuckled. “I’m doing something wrong here, obviously. What draws an owl to prey? Odor? A rustling sound in the undergrowth?”

  “Either wou
ld do, I suppose. Owls generally hunt at night, which is about all I know of the matter. They can see creatures moving in the dark, don’t you imagine, the way cats do?”

  “Lucy, you are positively brilliant. That’s it, of course. Watch this!” He waved the chicken foot back and forth in an arcing motion.

  With a shrill cry, Fidgets swooped from the branch, plucked the chicken foot from his hand, and settled on the ground to gobble it up.

  “Well done,” Kit said, “but that beak came a bit too close to m’fingers. I’d as soon not lose any one of them on our next try.”

  Lucy watched him tie the string that had secured the parcel around a chicken foot and move some distance away. Then he swung the string round and round over his head. In a flash, Fidgets was onto the target with extended claws, ripping chicken foot and string from Kit’s hand and carrying it to the tree branch.

  Kit followed, drawing his knife from the sheath to detach the string before Fidgets swallowed it. “That’s the secret,” he called to Lucy over his shoulder. “She flies to whatever moves, so long as it resembles a meal. By tomorrow, with practice, I’ll have her coming and going whenever I wish.”

  Bully for you, Lucy thought, toes curling inside her half boots. He could not rest until he had seized control of everything and everyone. Even a befuddled, infatuated owl must be trained to obey him.

  He placed another chicken foot on the branch for Fidgets, retied the parcel, and approached Lucy with a wide grin on his face. “Let me guess. You are wondering what this is all about.”

  “Male supremacy, I would presume. A demonstration of how clever you are.”

  “I am sometimes clever,” he said unrepentantly. “But the man who thinks himself supreme is a fool.”

  “Just so.”

  “Lucifer! A man could shave with the edge of your tongue. Cry peace, will you, long enough for me to explain?”

  Contrition burned in her throat. “I beg your pardon, sir. I have no right to speak to you in such a way. It is—I mean—oh, I don’t know what I mean! In future, I shall think twice and then again before—”

  “Don’t you dare,” he said softly. “I mean it, Lucy. Speak your mind with me at all times. Have you ever known me to take offense?”

  “N-no. But I always assumed that was because you didn’t give a twig what I had to say. Like not taking offense when a dog barks or a frog croaks.”

  “Ah. I see.” He put down the parcel and placed his hands on her shoulders. “I’ve not made myself clear. Believe me, I do give a twig, Lucy mine, for every word you say and for every expression on your face and for every gesture you make. I give whole forests for each one of your rare, beautiful smiles.” Breathless, she gazed into his clear blue eyes. It would be so easy to lose herself in him.

  “Come,” he said, releasing her shoulders. “Beyond that cluster of birches is a splendid view of the fells.”

  When they reached a promontory shaded by a large oak, they stood in silence for several minutes, gazing over the sheep-studded dale to the rugged crags beyond. In the far distance, the fells looked to be made of twilight-blue smoke.

  “I have been thinking,” he said, “what else can be done for Diana. She is in good hands, of course, but Whitney still holds the trump card. So long as he owns the legal right to demand she be returned to his custody, he can make matters exceedingly difficult. He’ll not get hold of her, you may be sure. No one within a hundred miles will defy the Earl of Kendal on this matter. But should Whitney petition the Chancery Court, and I expect he will, things could get slippery.”

  “How? I know nothing about the courts. Tell me exactly.”

  He gave her a lopsided smile. “My acquaintance with the law is primarily from the opposite side, Lucy. You must ask Kendal to explain the finer points. I do know that Chancery moves at the speed of a glacier and that there’s little chance Lord Eldon will render a final judgment before Diana comes of age, at which point the ruling becomes moot. But she may well be called to give depositions, and there is a remote possibility she’ll be summoned to London for questioning.”

  “We mustn’t let that happen,” Lucy said instantly. “It would be a frightful experience.”

  “The more so because she originally said that the injury to her face was the result of a fall, without explaining it was Whitney caused the fall by striking her.”

  “But she only lied because she fears him. Anyone who sees her face will understand why.”

  Kit ran his fingers through his hair. “I should never have gone down this track. It has alarmed you and led me away from my point. Diana will not be returned to her guardian under any circumstances, and Kendal will stand her protector so far as the law permits. But should Whitney dig in his heels, she is certain to be subjected to a great deal of unpleasantness before the case is finally resolved in her favor. I wish to spare her that.”

  “By all means!”

  “Any and all means,” he said. “Keep to that thought while you hear me out. Our problem is simple enough—we must convince Whitney to sign over custody of Diana to my brother without taking the matter to court. We know Basil Crawley has been pulling his strings, but we’re not altogether certain why.”

  “He wants to marry Diana. You already know that. She inherited a considerable fortune.“

  “But he is, by all accounts, a wealthy man. Possibly a greedy one, which would explain his persistence, but he may have an altogether different motive. Perhaps Kendal’s investigation into his business affairs will disclose what it is, although we’ll have no answers anytime soon.”

  “So how can they signify?” She scowled at him. “You are dancing around the point, sir.”

  “Yes. Sorry. I’ll come at it directly, if you promise not to object until I’ve finished explaining how we shall bring Whitney to heel.”

  “There is a way to do that?”

  “Of course.” He grinned widely. “I have a plan.”

  Oh, dear, she thought, sealing her lips and gesturing him to proceed.

  With boyish enthusiasm, he launched into a plot so outrageous that she could not believe her own ears. With growing dismay, which soon ratcheted up to stunned disbelief and went from there to absolute horror, she listened to the most improbable scenario ever devised by a supposedly sane man. By the end, she was practically sputtering.

  “So,” he said, looking excessively pleased with himself. “What do you think?”

  What she thought was easily summarized. “You are deranged.”

  “That aside, you have to admit it’s a devilish ingenious scheme.”

  “It’s sheer lunacy. Who could believe such a thing?”

  “No one with a crumb of sense, to be sure, but we are dealing with Lord Whitney. And if you pause to consider, Lucy, playing at witchcraft was your idea in the first place.”

  She threw up her hands. “That was to keep anyone from venturing too close to the cottage where we were hiding. And yes, mostly to scare Lord Whitney away. When Diana told me he was superstitious, it put me in mind of my name, Jennet Preston, and the Lancashire Witches. But what I did was nothing whatever like what you have proposed.”

  “Nonetheless, I am convinced it will work. This morning I spoke at length with Diana about her uncle. Did you know that he keeps a pair of scissors under the doormat to prevent witches from entering his house? Don’t ask me how scissors could stop a witch, were there any such thing, but he is sure they will. He picks up every bit of metal he sees on the ground—nails, pins, discarded tin cups—lest a witch craft it into a weapon to use against him. Diana says he has filled a trunk with the metal odds and ends he has accumulated. He is forever touching wood and tossing salt over his shoulder and muttering imprecations meant to keep devils at bay.”

  “Lots of people are more or less superstitious,” she cut in. “Their habits are generally harmless.”

  “But few people are quite so stupid as Lord Whitney. What’s more, he feels guilty for what he did to his niece. I must take her word on that, but
she said that he has wept and apologized profusely on more than one occasion.”

  “Crocodile tears. He hoped to use her beauty to his own advantage, and now he has destroyed it.”

  “I’m not so sure he is insincere, Lucy. And he’s lost nothing, because Crawley still wishes to wed her despite her appearance. Keep in mind our primary goal. If Whitney is spooked into signing a few legal documents, Diana will not be dragged through the courts. Isn’t that worth taking a long shot? And consider this. Superstition, stupidity, and guilt make a potent brew. We have only to light a spark and Lord Whitney will go up in flames.”

  Lucy gave him a penetrating look. “You are the one consumed by this farce, sir. You are so caught up in the theatrics of your scheme and the childish notion of running wild on All Hallows’ Eve that the end result is inconsequential. May I hope you told Diana nothing of your absurd plan?”

  “You may be sure I did not. She has enough on her plate as it is. And I expected you to react in precisely this fashion, Lucy, so don’t imagine I’ll be talked out of having a go. After leaving the farm, I rode over to Silverdale and spoke with Robbie and Giles Handa. They’ve agreed to join up, and Giles has all sorts of ideas I’d never have thought of. Apothecaries can do wondrous things with saltpeter and sulfur and charcoal. You will be amazed.”

  Her heart plunged to the vicinity of her toes. She’d have sworn that stolid, sensible Robbie would have no part of this circus. And serious-minded Giles Handa? But of course, she recalled in some wonder, they had believed in her when she asked their help, asking no questions, trusting her instantly.

  She had never brought herself to return their trust. At every moment she expected them to betray her, especially when she learned of the reward posted for Diana’s return. But they had remained loyal and generous, with little hope of repayment for all they had done on behalf of two strangers. Tears welled in her eyes to think of it. She turned away so that Kit would not see them.

  She felt him move behind her then, sensed the warmth of his body against her back and the brush of his breath against her hair, and nearly fled from the startling intimacy of his closeness. But she couldn’t find the strength to move. To her horror, she didn’t even try very hard. Nor did Kit touch her, although he sifted through her skin and flesh in a way that made her almost believe in spirits and demonic possession.