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

by Brenda Hiatt

Perhaps she even understood why Robin had been so self-destructive these last two years. It must have been guilt that drove him.

  She just couldn’t imagine her brother hurting an innocent girl. He would have to admit it himself to persuade her.

  But in the meantime, she had to finish preparing the house to welcome her new sister. Gwen mustn’t be besieged by bad memories, not at Christmas, not with her family. “Max!” she called out as her husband returned from the stable. “We need more pine boughs to decorate the hall.”

  He made some comment under his breath, something about denuded pinewoods and junglelike halls. But he went to exchange his hammer for an ax, and she forgot everything she had to do inside the house. She trailed him to the shed. “Dearest, you will be careful, won’t you? Perhaps I should go with you. I’ll carry the ax.”

  He didn’t have a chance to respond, because a carriage came clattering over the bridge.

  “Oh, no! They’re here already, and everything is unfinished!”

  Max said bracingly, “You’ve done enough for now. I’ll help you once we get them settled. Just put on that pretty smile, and they’ll feel right at home.” Then he took her arm and led her out to meet their first houseguests.

  Gwen emerged first from the carriage, a fur muff dangling from one hand. Now that Dorie knew what had happened here two years earlier, she understood why Gwen remained near the coach and avoided looking directly at the lodge.

  Impulsively, Dorie detached herself from Max and went forward with her hands outstretched. “I’m so glad you have come!” And then, bending so close her forehead brushed Gwen’s bonnet brim, she whispered, “Thank you.”

  Gwen managed a smile and replied gently, “Thank you for inviting me,” then turned to accept Max’s greeting kiss.

  Mr. Vayle had climbed down from the carriage also, and came up beside Gwen. Interesting, Dorie thought, seeing the comforting smile he gave to her sister-in-law, and the ease with which she accepted it. Was it just Mr. Vayle’s native kindness, which Dorie herself had experienced? Or was it something more intimate?

  She slanted a glance at her husband, wondering what he would think of a connection between his sister and Mr. Vayle. It would solve several problems, certainly.

  Mr. Vayle left off shaking Max’s hand and came to greet Dorie. “Welcome to Greenbriar Lodge,” she said, smiling up at him. But Mr. Vayle had frozen, his eyes on a point beyond her shoulder. Automatically she turned to see what had so paralyzed him, but there was nothing there but the house and garden and the road leading back to the stables.

  “Has this place—has it always been called Greenbriar Lodge?” Mr. Vayle huddled into his greatcoat as if chilled.

  Dorie was puzzled, but answered readily enough. “I don’t think so. We’ve only owned it for fifty years or so.”

  “It belonged to the Sevarics before that. It had another name then.”

  “Yes, I think so. Max would know.” She wasn’t certain she wanted Max reminded of the lodge’s history, but Mr. Vayle was so pale she had to reassure him. “We could ask him.”

  “No, no, don’t bother. There’s nothing to be done.” He transferred his regard to her, peering at her as if to decipher something from her face. “You called him Max.”

  “Well, yes.” Why this should make her blush, she didn’t know, but the heat rose in her cold cheeks.

  “Good. You two are happy then?”

  She looked at her husband, a few yards away with his sister. It was a most improper question to a new bride. But Mr. Vayle had been instrumental in getting them married, and somehow she felt she owed him the truth. “We are aimed in that direction.”

  “You haven’t reached it yet? But you’ve had three weeks!” Mr. Vayle shook his head at her as if he were a schoolmaster and she a blockheaded student.

  She found herself making excuses for disappointing him. “It’s just our families, you see. The feud,” she whispered, glancing back to make sure Max didn’t overhear. “He still won’t accept my brother, and I can’t truly fault him.”

  “We shall see.” Mr. Vayle fixed Max with a severe gaze. “We shall see about that.”

  This was her first Christmas as a wife, and she already had enough to worry about, given the state of the house and the newly mended linens. She couldn’t have one of her guests preaching to her husband. It would ruin everything. But Mr. Vayle ignored her half-formed plea and flung open the carriage door. “You can come out now.”

  From the carriage, abashed and defiant, came her brother Robin.

  Instinctively she started toward him, but stopped. She no longer knew where her loyalties lay. With her brother? With her husband and his sister?

  Max said in an icy voice, “Vayle, I told you to keep him away from my sister.”

  For a moment, they were a brittle tableau: Robin with a foot still on the carriage step, Max with fists clenched, Mr. Vayle with a hand out to warn or arrest.

  And then, clear and calm, Gwen spoke. “Don’t blame Vayle, Max. I invited Lord Lynton along.”

  The moment broke. Max spun around to look at his sister. Robin came forward a few steps and smiled apologetically at Dorie. Mr. Vayle crossed his arms and leaned back against the carriage. Gwen stood, pale but resolute, and said to her brother, “We are all family now, you know.”

  Max’s silence was so resonant Dorie strained to hear some change in his breathing that might presage trouble. She knew that silence. It meant he was struggling with his principles.

  Under Max’s intense regard, Robin straightened to his full height. He was still slighter than Max, but for once he held his head up, and she felt a stirring of pride. It took courage to come here and face the ghosts of the past. She just hoped Max wouldn’t punish him for it.

  Max strode up to Robin and stopped only a foot away. Robin didn’t flinch.

  “I can’t say I would have invited you here, had I anything to say about it. But apparently you’ve apologized to Gwen’s satisfaction. And Vayle’s no fool. If he thinks my sister is safe in your presence, I won’t dispute it.”

  Robin let his shoulders relax as he exhaled a relieved breath. “Then I may stay?”

  Max shrugged and turned to help the coachman with Gwen’s luggage. “Ask your sister. It’s her house.”

  Max’s rash words came back to haunt him. Here it was, after dark, after dinner, and Dorie was expecting him to make good on his promise to finish decorating the hall. Hauling the stepladder up to the landing, he wrenched it into position under the plaster ceiling medallion. He gave reason one last try, not that it was likely to have any effect on his wife.

  “Sweeting, everyone’s gone to bed. By the time they see this, it’ll be Christmas already, and the whole display will be unnecessary.”

  Dorie dragged the long rope of pine up the last three steps and coiled it into a snake on the battered oak floor. Then, as he knew she would, she put a slippered foot on the first rung. “You go on to sleep then, if you’re so tired. I will hang the decorations.”

  Sighing, he tugged her away from the ladder and took her place. “I’ll do it. I’ll do it. I will do it. You just hand that rope to me, and the hammer, and the nails.”

  “Oh, no, the rope I’m just draping over the banister. This is all I want on the ceiling.” From the pocket of her dress, she pulled out a twig. “The kissing bough.”

  He scaled the ladder in a second or two, and without another word got the twig established in the center of the medallion. “There you go,” he said, handing her the hammer and climbing down. “We should try it out, don’t you th—”

  When his leading foot touched the lowest rung, the ladder bucked. He heard a crunch as the old oak plank gave, saw the surprise in Dorie’s eyes as he fell past her, felt with relief the solidness of the floor against his head and back. The ladder had just poked a hole in the floor, he thought as he lost consciousness; the landing hadn’t given way under them. She was safe.

  He must have died in the fall. For surely he was in heaven now,
held in Dorie’s arms, his face pressed in the warm valley between her breasts.

  “Max? Is your forehead very badly hurt?”

  It would have been uncivil to point out that the injury was on the back of his head, and besides, this way his mouth was closer to interesting areas. “Not very,” he said huskily. “I might feel better if there weren’t so many layers between me and my poultice.”

  He felt her laughter against his head. It hurt a bit, but he didn’t complain.

  “Is that what I am? A poultice?”

  Now that he heard it back, he realized that didn’t qualify as much of a compliment. “I guess I’m not very good at being romantic,” he said into her bodice.

  She released him then to shove the ladder off his legs. But she kept her hand comforting on his forehead, and her eyes warm on his face. “You are good, and brave, and strong, and true. You are kind and generous. And—” she brushed her fingers across his cheek—“very handsome. Even bruised and battered.”

  Leaning over him, her dark hair falling over her shoulder, she was too lovely, too sweet, to resist. And besides, up above, tacked on the ceiling in the flicker of lamplight, was that kissing twig.

  He tangled his hand in her hair, slid it along the back of her neck, and pulled her down for his reward. It was a real kiss, the one he’d been dreaming of for weeks now: her lips were soft and surprised, sweet and welcoming, and he felt her warmth radiate through him.

  “Max,” she whispered against his mouth.

  Reluctantly he let her go, just far enough so that she could speak. Her words came gentle against his chin. “I am grateful that you have been so patient with me. But you’ve waited long enough. I am ready now.”

  It was too good to be true, and Max armed himself against disappointment. “Ready for what?”

  She made an annoyed sound and pressed closer so that she was almost lying against him. “What do you think? What will make us truly married.” She rose to her knees, then stopped. “Unless your head hurts too much.”

  “Doesn’t hurt at all.” But when he leapt to his feet, his head started swimming and he had to lean against the banister. It was poetic justice. He had feigned a head injury to get into her bed, and now a real head injury might keep him out. “Just dizzy from the kiss.”

  “Liar,” she said. But she didn’t protest any further.

  After securing the area—setting the ladder down against the wainscoting, and pulling off his boot and sticking it in the hole in the floor—he picked her up and carried her to their bedroom.

  With his bare foot, he pushed the door open and then hesitated. There was something he had meant to say, before the bed filled his vision and he forgot his own name.

  She said something inarticulate but impatient against his shirtfront, and he recalled what had slipped away in the haze of anticipation and concussion. “I love you, Dorothea Caine.”

  She squirmed closer in his arms. “Max,” she whispered. “I’m so happy. But—”

  He set her down gently on the bed, her head on the lace pillow. “But what?”

  “But do you know what would make me even happier?” In the soft light from the fire she smiled a secret, womanly smile. “If you would give me a baby for a Christmas gift. Maximilian Caine Sevaric. Or,” she added, “perhaps it will be Maxine.”

  He took a deep breath and glanced back over his shoulder at the mantel clock. It read twenty of nine, which meant nine—it always ran a bit slow. That left three hours till Christmas. Plenty of time.

  “As you wish, madame. We men of the Light Division never shrink from a challenge.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Yawning, Gwen glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece in her room. It was nearly midnight, only a few minutes before Christmas.

  Everyone had retired early, pleading weariness from the journey or, in the case of Max and Dorie, disappearing without a word. Except for a mysterious rasping noise, rather like a branch scraping against the roof, the house was silent. She put aside her book, extinguished the lamp, and burrowed under a thick down comforter.

  All her Christmases had been lonely. Her father deplored celebrations and mocked her for attending church, but she always went to St. Martin-in-the-Fields for midnight services. There she lost her melancholy for a time in the joyful music and the promises of hope in the gospel readings. During the war years, she had prayed especially hard for her brother, bivouacked in a place even more hostile than Sevaric House.

  Everything would be different when Max came home, she told herself year after year.

  And so it was. Max was safe tonight, in the arms of his wife, and Gwen’s heart was lighter since the reconciliation with Robin Caine. Tomorrow there would be a Yule log and presents and laughter and her first taste of Christmas pudding.

  But she was lonely still. And would be, she feared, for the rest of her life.

  A clicking sound, so tiny she scarcely heard it, was followed by a positive roar from somewhere down the hall.

  What in heaven? Bewildered, she went to the door and cracked it open just in time to see Vayle, holding a candle, emerge from the room he shared with Robin. He was in stockinged feet, with a dressing gown draped over his shirt and breeches.

  Stealthily, he closed the door and the latch clicked into place. Immediately the roar subsided to the steady drone that had disturbed her all evening. She stifled a laugh.

  No wonder Vayle was anxious to escape that room! Robin’s snores could wake the spirits of the dead.

  But Vayle was behaving oddly for a man in search of a quieter place to sleep. Instead of proceeding immediately to the staircase just beyond his room, he moved slowly along the wall in her direction, pausing every now and again to rap softly against the wood paneling.

  Before the light of the candle came within range, she closed the door and pressed her ear against it. Vayle drifted past her room, still rapping on the opposite wall until he came near to the chamber where Max and Dorie slept.

  Then he padded back toward the staircase, tapping on her side of the hall except when he passed her room, as if taking care not to wake her.

  When the sounds faded, she slipped into the dark passageway and followed him on tiptoe. What was he looking for? He spent a long time on the staircase, knocking every few inches while she hid in the shadows beyond the top step.

  Once she heard him swear, and guessed he’d entangled himself in the branches of greenery piled in a corner of the landing. She’d caught her skirts on the spiky holly earlier, when she made her way to bed.

  She strained to hear more, but he had gone still. Curiosity made her incautious, and she leaned out just far enough to see him on the landing below. The pool of light widened as he held the candle above his head, and she saw what had tripped him up—a boot of military cut. That was strange. Max wasn’t one to leave his possessions lying about, especially not where someone could get hurt.

  Even odder, when Vayle pulled at the boot it resisted him. When it finally came up, he immediately dropped it, set the candle down, and knelt. Gwen couldn’t see what he was studying, for he was blocking the candlelight with his body. But whatever it was, it fascinated him. He even stretched out full-length across the landing, peering at the floor.

  Jumping to his feet, he grabbed the candle and ran down the stairs, his candlelight casting eerie shadows on the wall. In the ground-floor hall, he resumed his tapping on the plaster.

  He had run mad. It was the only explanation. Gwen hung over the railing, holding her breath until her chest ached, watching him test for—for what?

  Just under the staircase, he stopped tapping. Then he looked around, and Gwen ducked back into the passageway. When she inched along the wall to the railing, the hall was dark. He was gone.

  Heart in her throat, she crept down into the darkness, her bare feet noiseless against the oak steps. Enough moonlight came in through the window to outline the newel post at the end of the banister. She took hold of it and felt her way around the bottom of the staircase
.

  Weak light sliced through the wall under the stairs. She had to move closer to discover the two-foot-wide opening in the wall panel.

  Pausing several feet away, she gazed into the space under the stairs. The room, if it could be called that, was no larger than a pantry cupboard. Against the opposite wall was a low, shadowy piece of furniture, long and narrow. A table, perhaps, or a trestle bed.

  Vayle stood with his back to her, slightly bent over the wooden frame, the candle in his left hand.

  How had he known about this odd cubbyhole, concealed in a house he’d never visited? Her skin prickled, as if phantoms hovered about her in the gloomy passageway. Suddenly Christmas felt like All Hallow’s Eve, with gauzy spirits floating in the amber light of a single candle.

  What if she closed the panel? Would he be sealed inside long enough for her to summon Max?

  She bit her lip, annoyed at her timidity. This was only Jocelyn Vayle, after all, a liar and a womanizer, but surely harmless. The damage he’d done to her heart was her own fault.

  She had been weak, yielding to impossible hopes he could not help but rouse. It was his nature to be charming, and her folly to wish his attentions meant he had come to care for her. Air dreams. Insubstantial fantasies. She could sooner capture the smoke of his candle than win his love.

  “Come in, Gwen,” he said quietly. “You’ll want to see this.”

  At the unexpected sound, she jumped back with a squeal.

  “Don’t be frightened,” he continued in a calm voice. “You have trailed me from the first, I expect, although I thought the sounds I heard were the creakings of this antique house… until I felt your presence.”

  Anxiety became anger. “Why are you creeping about in the middle of the night?” she demanded. “Tell me, or I’ll call for my brother!”

  He turned then, and she gasped.

  In the flickering candlelight, he was transformed. The planes of his face were edged with shadows. Fire blazed from his eyes. She did not know him.

  He lifted a hand. “Please, Gwen. You must know I would never hurt you. Later you can show Max what I’ve found, but for now just come inside and look.”