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

by Brenda Hiatt

  “You have an aversion to trade?”

  “Always did, until I met my pussycat.” Kit glanced at the head resting on his shoulder. “Lord, I think she’s gone to sleep. Can’t say I’m sorry for it. When she’s awake, she chatters like a magpie.”

  “A considerable distance from here, Devonshire. Are there no eligible young ladies closer to hand?”

  “Any number of them, although few have claim to beauty and fortune. One or t’other, but not both.”

  “Indeed, it is a rare combination.” Crawley sipped at his wine. “Did you perchance pay court to a Miss Diana Whitney? I am informed that she is a considerable heiress and exceedingly well favored.”

  “Never heard of her. No Whitneys in Westmoreland, I’m fairly sure, or none of any consequence. Is she out?”

  “The family estate is a little way south of Lancaster, I believe, and her debut was postponed due to the tragic death of her parents.”

  “There you are then. Stands to reason I’d not have come upon her. And now, of course, I have my Devonshire puss. Couldn’t cry off even if I wanted to, not since her father towed me out of the River Tick. Only to throw me into parson’s mousetrap, to be sure, but I go willingly. She’s a lusty armful when she ain’t rattling on.”

  Crawley rubbed his long nose with a stubby-fingered hand. “We must all marry to advantage one way or another. I find myself in an equally difficult predicament, with a fortune derived from trade and a wish to better myself socially.”

  “Then you should buy yourself a wife from the aristocracy in the same way my turtledove’s family is buying me.” Kit held out his glass for a refill. “This is superb, I must say. French?”

  “Of course.” Crawley settled on a chair across from him. “Have you considered investing your wife’s dowry in a profitable venture? I don’t mean to intrude in your private affairs, sir, but it happens I know of several ways to multiply your investments if you are willing to take a few minor risks. Please stop me if you prefer I not continue.”

  “By all means, do go on. What have you in mind?”

  “Naturally, I can offer no particulars until you have the money in hand. Circumstances and opportunities come and go, and what I would recommend today will be unavailable tomorrow. But when you are in a position to act quickly, I shall be honored to be of assistance.”

  “In exchange for what?” Kit asked bluntly. “A percentage of the initial investment, perhaps, or a slice of the profits?”

  “Dear me, no. What little I could amass in such a fashion is scarcely worth my time. But I apprehend that you are a man of the world, sir, with a grasp of—shall we say?—tit for tat. I propose to inform you of business opportunities, the same ones I select for my own speculations, in exchange for a few introductions.”

  “Well, that’s simple enough. But I should warn you that my reputation hereabouts is not altogether without blemish. Fact is, some of the high sticklers won’t have me in their drawing rooms, and once I’m leg-shackled to a cit, my credit will sink even lower.”

  “My word.” Crawley’s thin lips curved ever so slightly. “One could imagine you to have no interest in our proposed arrangement.”

  “Oh, but I do. Just wanted you to know how the wind is blowing.” Deciding that he’d endured quite enough of Sir Basil for one evening, Kit nudged Lucy with his elbow. “If you are still of a mind to proceed, we’ll speak again when the puss’s dowry is burning a hole in m’pocket.”

  “I hope that will be soon. In the meantime, may I trust that you—”

  Lucy shot upright with a squeal. Turning a wide-eyed gaze to Crawley, she shook her head as if to clear it. “Who in blazes are you?”

  Kit wrapped his arm around her. “Wake up, pussycat. You must have been having a bad dream.”

  She slumped into his embrace. “Oh, there you are, Kittikins. What happened to the ball? Why aren’t we dancing?”

  “Why not indeed?” He glanced at Crawley and rolled his eyes.

  “Rather have s’more champagne. I’m thirsty.”

  “I shall be pleased to escort you to the ballroom,” Crawley said, coming to his feet. “Mr. Valliant, you’ll not object if I have several bottles of this excellent wine delivered to your carriage as a token of my esteem? And, if I may be so bold, as a seal on the bargain we have struck?”

  “Delighted, I’m sure,” Kit replied, stifling a laugh. The blackguard was oiling him up with the selfsame wine he’d stolen from him not ten nights before.

  When they arrived at the ballroom, it was apparent that a number of guests had already taken their leave. Several couples were rather lackadaisically engaged in a contredanse, and others hovered around the tables where a supper had been laid out.

  “You will pardon me if I do not join you,” Crawley said with a bow. “I have pressing matters of business to attend to. Honored to make your acquaintance, Miss Jennet. Good night, Mr. Valliant. Do enjoy yourselves for the rest of the evening.”

  “Thank heavens!” she said when he was finally gone. “What a horrid man. All the time you were speaking with him, I was longing to claw my fingernails down his face.”

  “Far less than he deserves,” Kit agreed, drawing her away from the open doors into a shadowy alcove. “And all the time I was speaking to him, this is what I was longing to do.” Before she could object, he wrapped one hand around her waist and the other around her neck and brought his lips to hers.

  He meant only to give her a brief embrace, one that revealed nothing of the passion that burned in him, one she might accept without becoming enraged. But to his astonishment she melted against him, her soft breasts pressing against his chest as she put her hands on his shoulders and allowed him to deepen the kiss.

  They were both breathing heavily when he finally lifted his head and looked into her stunned eyes. She rallied quickly, though. Too quickly.

  “I didn’t mean to do that.” Stepping back, she straightened her skirts and stiffened her spine. “It was the champagne. Spirits really do render me witless. Pray forget it ever happened.”

  “As if I could, moonbeam,” he said gently. “But I’ll not kiss you again unless you ask me to.”

  “See that you don’t! May we leave now, please?”

  “Not quite yet. For one thing, we must allow time for the wine Crawley promised me to be stowed in the carriage. And for another, you have expressed a wish to dance. He will expect us to do so.” Kit seized her hand. “Come along, puss. I hear the first notes of a waltz.”

  Her gaze was plastered on his neckcloth as they joined the other couples, only four of them, on the dance floor. But she moved in tune with him, never missing a step, graceful as a willow in a summer breeze, for all her efforts to hold herself stiffly away from him.

  “Never again,” she said between her teeth, “are you to call me ‘puss.’”

  “Agreed… until the next time I hear ‘Kittikins.’”

  She unbent long enough to cast him a saucy grin. “It suits you. But truly, Kit, what was the point of coming here? We learned that Sir Basil is a swine, but we already knew that from Diana’s report. Or did you not believe her? You have made a deal with him that you’ve no intention of honoring, which accomplished nothing whatsoever. A Bow Street Runner is now on to our masquerade and will be lurking in the shadows, expecting us to lead him to his quarry. I told you from the first that this was a terrible idea, but you would not listen. You never listen.”

  “Of course I do. Make no mistake, Lucy. I have the highest regard for your intelligence and judgment.”

  “Which is why you invariably ignore whatever I say and charge ahead, towing everyone else in your wake.”

  He took a deep breath. Her words had hit home, or near to, and they hurt. But he’d nothing to hide from her. If they spent the rest of their lives together, which was his firm intention, she was bound to uncover every last one of his flaws. “I demand my own way, Lucy, because I am willful, self-indulgent, impulsive, and—until I met you—without purpose.”

/>   Her eyes widened. And her mouth opened to speak, but nothing came out.

  For once, Kit reflected bleakly, he had managed to silence her. And startle her, too, with a confession he hadn’t wanted to make. Not yet. This was scarcely the time and place to bare his soul.

  With some effort, he relocated the original subject. “You may well be correct that it was a mistake to have come here,” he said. “Nevertheless, I have learned a good deal more than you imagine, and I believe the information will prove of use.”

  “What could you have discovered that I failed to note? I have been with you the entire time.”

  Since he’d already resolved not to tell her about recognizing the man who shot him, there was no clear answer to her question. Nor was he thinking at all clearly, what with her so supple in his arms and so infinitely lovely. A magical creature woven of moonlight and pearls, his Lucy—when she wasn’t flaying him alive with her tongue.

  “We have all the long journey back to Candale to discuss the events of this night, Lucy, or to have a row if you prefer. But for now, I cannot be sorry for any circumstance that permits me to hold you in my arms. The waltz will soon come to an end, moonbeam. Until it does, will you simply dance with me?”

  Perhaps it was only that he wanted to think so, but it felt as if she drew closer to him. The tension in her body seemed to dissolve. And the waltz played on, far longer than he dared to hope, attuned to his deepest wishes. Imperceptibly the meter slowed. The tone of the violins grew deep and sonorous, vibrating to the passion banked inside him.

  She was gazing somewhere beyond his shoulder, or into herself, her eyes dreamy and unfocused.

  He nearly always knew what she was thinking before she told him, and she generally left him in no doubt whatever by speaking her mind. But at this moment, bewildered by the expression on her face and the unfathomable mystery in the curve of her lips, the wistful lift of her brows, and the faraway look in her eyes, he felt powerless.

  Kit rested his cheek against hers for a moment. “Tell me what you are thinking about, moonbeam.”

  Her murmured reply was nearly inaudible.

  He thought… but no. That wasn’t it. She could not possibly have said “elephants.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  In the chill October night, Lucy was glad of her heavy cloak and the oilcloth tarp lining the pit, which was a little larger than a grave but not so deep. She was perched on a small footstool with a swath of black serge draped over her cape to conceal its green-white glow.

  Time passed slowly in a peat pit. From her position, she could see nothing but the black sky directly overhead, blazing with stars and the gibbous moon. Wind stirred bracken and dry autumn grasses, and in the copses of hazels and oaks, rooks and wood pigeons beat their wings.

  The conspirators had been in position for nearly an hour. Timmy was stationed on a hill overlooking the road, ready to give the signal when Robbie and Lord Whitney came into view. Lucy placed no great faith that they would appear at all.

  In her opinion, this entire scheme was sheer lunacy. It had held together thus far only because Kit swept away all objections and plowed directly ahead, relying on everyone else to follow. Which they had done, to be sure.

  Giles Handa was stationed in a thick spinney with any number of props and implements spread out on a blanket, including a large thin sheet of metal and a drum. Timmy had practiced until he could deliver a spine-chilling howl, which was meant to sound like a wolf baying at the moon. Since none of the conspirators had actually heard a wolf, there was no way to be certain of its accuracy, but during their practice session it had echoed quite effectively off the surrounding hills.

  High atop the burned-out ruin of Arnside watchtower, which he had reached with the use of a grappling hook and rope, Kit was crouched behind the battlement with his own supply of props and devices, including an iron bedwarmer filled with hot coals. From her position about a hundred yards away, she could detect no sign of him. The derelict pele tower, with its broken walls, collapsed masonry, and gaping window openings, was a hoary presence looming near the top of a long sloping hill. The first time Kit brought her here she had looked inside, but there remained only the corbels meant to support the burned-away floor and a spiral staircase ending in midair.

  As the minutes dragged by and the moon climbed higher, Lucy grew more and more convinced they ought to pack it in. Lord Whitney would surely refuse to set out for a remote destination in the middle of the night. Especially this night, All Hallows’ Eve.

  Kit’s confidence had never wavered. He’d rehearsed Robbie for hours, preparing him to deal with every question and objection Whitney might raise. To avoid being recognized when the escapade was over, the Scotsman had even dyed his luxuriant copper-colored beard, padded one shoulder to give him the look of a hunchback, and inserted pebbles in his shoes to remind himself to shuffle.

  If Lord Whitney was at home when Robbie arrived, and if he admitted the disreputable creature past the gate, he’d have heard a plain-enough tale. “Old Fergus,” an itinerant ne’er-do-well who sought out deserted crofts and stables to sleep in, had come upon a young woman with a scarred face on the previous night. He saw her through the window of an isolated cottage, moved on to seek shelter elsewhere, and thought nothing more of the incident until he spotted a notice about the reward posted in a shop window.

  Now they waited to learn if Lord Whitney had fallen for Robbie’s story. Kit had advised her to be patient, for it was a long journey to this spot from Willow Manor, and the last several miles had to be navigated on a rough track through marshy land.

  A soft whistle, nearly imperceptible, sounded from beyond a fringe of trees to her right. She listened closely. Next came two shorts and a long, the signal that Robbie was approaching in company with another man. Lucy’s heart began to pound.

  Dropping to her knees, she rigged a makeshift ladder by placing the footstool atop a small wooden box at the spot where she would emerge from the pit. Kit had demonstrated for her one afternoon, and it had truly appeared that he was ascending from the underworld. Clad in the luminescent cape, her long wig glistening in the moonlight, she would be a ghoulish specter indeed.

  She had little idea what was supposed to happen before her cue to rise up, and not much better a notion what would transpire afterward. Kit had told her to follow her instincts, because everything depended on Lord Whitney’s reaction to what he saw and heard. She arranged the black serge loosely around her so that she could quickly throw it off and picked up a length of twine knotted around the tiny corpse of a white mouse.

  They would come from her right, she knew, pass behind her, and from there follow the curved track that wound up the hill. It would take them directly between where she waited and the shadowy watchtower. Soon she heard the slow beat of hooves against the boggy ground and the creak of wagon wheels. Voices floated to her, the words indistinguishable until the men were only a short distance away.

  “I don’t like this,” said one of them in a nervous, high-pitched tone. It had to be Lord Whitney. “This cannot be the way.”

  “She’s well hid, and that’s a fact.” Robbie spoke in a rough growl. “I recollect the tower, m’lord. Come by it t’other night, I did.”

  “We don’t even know that she’s still there,” Whitney grumbled.

  “Can’t say. Happen she moved on. The cottage be mebbe a mile from here. You be wantin’ to go back?”

  “No, no. We’ll have a look. Cannot this nag move any faster?”

  “Not while ’e’s goin’ uphill.”

  As the wagon lurched past her hiding place, flickering orange light slid over the pit. Lucy huddled lower until the pit was in darkness again, tracking the wagon by sound. It was making the arc that would take it up the hill.

  Soon now. She felt perspiration on her forehead and ordered her hands to stop trembling.

  A roar of thunder shattered the night. It seemed to be coming from all directions, bouncing off the hills and echoing back aga
in. Then she heard a loud crack. A bright ball of light soared across the sky.

  Lifting her head over the edge of the pit, Lucy saw the wagon at a stop about fifty yards in front of her. Two lanterns hung from the side panels, making a small pool of ruddy light. Robbie had gone to take the frightened horse’s bridle, and a pudgy man was crouched beneath the wagon, apparently trying to make himself invisible. He jumped noticeably when the thunder sounded again.

  There came an unearthly wail from the pele tower, and another fireball sailed overhead.

  For a few moments the night went still. Then she saw, atop the battlements, an explosion of light and a cloud of white smoke. In the midst of the smoke appeared a glowing figure, arms upraised. It was clad in a luminous cape. Long white-gold hair streamed out like a banner in the wind. Flames danced at the witch’s fingertips.

  “Crambe est vinum daemonium!” it bellowed. “Ergo bibamus!”

  With a shrill cry, Whitney scrambled from under the wagon and broke into a run.

  “Halt or die!” Sparks shot from the battlement, cascading down the stone wall like a waterfall of fire.

  Whitney stopped immediately and swung around, head uplifted, to face the tower.

  “You have offended!” The apparition jabbed a finger in his direction and sparks flew from the tip. “Hear me now, insect. I pronounce your doom.”

  “Wh-who are you?”

  “Retribution. Malediction. Damnation.“

  That was her first cue. Lucy raised her arm and swung the mouse over her head. What with all the fire and smoke and thunder, she rather thought Fidgets would have long since flown to cover in the trees. But he swooped from a tower window with an earsplitting screech, passing within inches of Whitney’s head on his way to supper. Whitney screamed as the owl flashed by.

  Keeping hold of the twine, Lucy drew Fidgets into the pit and whispered an apology as she pulled off the black serge and used it to hide the mouse. “You can have this later,” she promised. He cast her a doleful look and began pecking at the serge.