The Marriage Masquerade

by Cheryl Anne Porter

  Across from her, a narrow hewn-wood bed—its head abutting the stones of the thick wall across the way and its length jutting out into the room—boasted a sagging and torn mattress through which straw poked out and trailed to the floor. The work of rats, she told herself, though blessedly none appeared to be around at the moment. The only other furniture proved to be a roughly cut chair that was pulled up to a small table that listed to one side. To Yancey, the furnishings had the appearance of dollhouse furniture made by a giant—or for a giant.

  Instantly to mind came the hugely broad Scotty, the butler. The man spoke to her as if she were a dog. Sit. Stay. Yancey shook her head. No. This wasn’t his room. He’d never fit through the doorway, much less atop that bed. Besides, the room did not have the air about it of daily use. The narrow window wasn’t covered to keep out the weather. And the bed wasn’t mended, nor did it have any linens. Nor was there any clothing or other personal items to be seen. Could it be, then, that it was simply someone’s retreat, just as it was now hers?

  She didn’t know. Nor did she care, she told herself. All that did matter to her at the moment was that she was the one up here now at the top of the round tower. She was the one alone—and still ashamed for having allowed a mere man to scare her so. Never mind that he was more than twice her size. And never mind that she slept in his house and ate his food and was under his control. Never mind any of that. Because, as he’d so innocently or otherwise reminded her, she was the Fox. And a seasoned Pinkerton operative. As well as a mature woman, to boot.

  Then why was she sitting here on the floor of a stone-tower room and using a bit of her petticoat to wipe her eyes? Because sometimes even the strongest of women fall. Because even the most mature and independent are susceptible to the occasional emotional undoing. But she’d never thought it would happen to her. Not until the Duke of Somerset came into her life. Yancey feared she’d met her match in this man. Feared it, yet refused to accept it.

  “Oh, leave me be,” she tiredly told her scolding conscience. “Just please leave me be.”

  As if there were an actual person in the room with her from whom she wished to hide, Yancey slumped in on herself, turning away from the door and resting her cheek against the wall’s blessed coolness. A sudden sense of utter aloneness in the world settled over her like an onerous weight. This was sorrow … and suddenly she was crying again. She cried for her mother. She cried for what her father had done and what she, Yancey, had then done to him. She feared she’d never be free of those awful images. And yes—this was so difficult for her to admit—she had run from her yearning for the duke, a wanting that persisted despite everything she had at stake here.

  Yancey covered her hot cheeks with her hands. “Dear God, I am so undone. And I am so confused. Why? Why does this place and this man unsettle me so?”

  “Don’t fear, child,” a warm and sympathetic voice suddenly said behind her. “You don’t know it yet, but you belong here.”

  Chapter Eight

  Sam experienced the very devil of a time setting his world to rights following Miss Calhoun’s fleeing from his presence out in the garden. Then, and making matters worse, by the time he’d recovered enough to retrieve his handkerchief and her hair combs and make his way to the manor with the intent of apologizing yet again to his distraught guest, every servant seemed to know of his despicable behavior toward her. How they transmitted this information among themselves with a speed to be envied by the fleetest of Thoroughbreds, Sam believed he would never know for certain. But somehow they did—most logically, he believed, from gardener to page to maid and so on throughout the house—but however it was accomplished, the lord of the manor was now paying in spades for his outburst.

  Inside the manor house, as he passed through it and encountered various members of his household staff, their sepulchral quietness vied for the upper hand with their judgmental solemnity. Under less trying circumstances, Sam would not have stood for it. But this time, and in this instance, having deemed it more than called for, he stoically ran the gauntlet of his servants’ disapproval. Time and again, he was told that the lady was not in the manor proper. She had not passed this way.

  Sam wasn’t satisfied with that. Perhaps she’d instructed the servants not to tell him where she was. In that case, if she had, he would not ask them to break their word to her. Yes, it rankled a bit to think his servants would feel more loyalty to her than they did to him. But given his behavior with the lady, he couldn’t fault them, he supposed. And that being so, he did the only thing he could. He made his own search of the house, top to bottom. It proved fruitless. But Sam couldn’t say he was totally unhappy with his results. At least his staff had told him the truth—the lady was not in residence.

  Then where the devil was she? He was forced to conclude that Miss Calhoun was, in actuality, nowhere. Which was a ridiculous notion because everyone must be somewhere. It was a law of nature or of some such related science, wasn’t it? Frowning, and worried that he’d driven her to do something foolish like leave on foot, Sam sought out the only person he had yet to question. Scotty. He found the hulking giant in the butler’s pantry.

  Seated on an impossibly small stool next to a tiny table which he dwarfed, the big man was engaged in, lo and behold, cleaning a gun. Surprise laced with a jet of apprehension had Sam raising his eyebrows. “Dear God, Scotty,” was his greeting to the enigmatic butler. “Has it come to this, man? You need a gun?”

  Scotty’s response was to glance up at his employer from under his heavy brow ridge and then silently resume his quiet task. “No. Your gun.”

  Well, that explained nothing. Sam exhaled. “I see.”

  Following that, Sam wondered how exactly to proceed from this point with his butler of very few words and, worse, very unpredictable responses. If he didn’t frame a question with precise and simple wording, Sam reminded himself, then he would get the answer he deserved. Watching his butler, who’d been an orphaned babe taken in all these many years ago by Her Grace Nana with no forthcoming explanation to anyone as to where she’d got him or under what circumstances, Sam suspected that the man understood more and felt more than he let on. Sam also believed that Scotty didn’t lack so much in intelligence as he did in language, for whatever reason.

  Finally Sam believed he had it—the most politic framing of his simple question. “Scotty, have you seen Miss, er, the duchess?”

  Still singularly occupied with his task, the big man didn’t look up, but he did answer. “Yes.”

  Excitement raced through Sam. If one didn’t mind pulling hen’s teeth, then one could get results with his butler. “When did you see her, Scotty?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Sam’s breath left him in a disappointed huff. “Yesterday. Not today, then? Not at all?”

  Scotty kept polishing the gun’s barrel. “No.”

  Impatience and irritation had Sam quirking his lips. “Are you certain?”

  Now the butler raised his head, looking Sam in the eye. “Yes.”

  “Then no one has seen her. Yet she can’t have disappeared into thin air.”

  “No.” The butler put the gun and the cloth down on the table and stood up … always an impressive sight. “Her Grace Nana knows.” He then pointed a thick finger in a vague direction, somewhat northwest of where they stood now. “The tower.”

  Sam slumped with relieved revelation. “Of course. The tower. She went to the tower.” She was safe. Sam stepped forward and clapped Scotty on a huge and solid arm. The butler’s stance and expression did not change. But that didn’t stop Sam from being grateful. “Thank you. The tower. I would never have thought of looking there.”

  Then he sobered, just then realizing the import of what Scotty had said. “Did you say that Nana is with the, uh, duchess in the tower?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, where the devil is Mrs. Convers? How did Nana get away from her nurse?”

&nbs
p; “She hides.”

  “And Mrs. Convers?”

  “She looks.”

  “Of course. But doesn’t find her.”

  “No.”

  This was an insane conversation and well Sam knew it. “Do we know where Mrs. Convers is, then? What has Nana done with her?”

  “Carriage house.”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “Not again. Locked in, I suppose?”

  “Yes.”

  Sam eyed his butler and wondered how to proceed. There were rules regarding these things, rules known only to Nana, who wasn’t to be trifled with. Sam was quite convinced that she could turn them all into toads if she so chose. “I see. May I at least assume that we will be letting her out soon … Mrs. Convers, I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  Well, that was a relief. Mrs. Convers was the third nurse this year, and here it was only May. Sam shook his head as he took another tack and did his wondering out loud. “So Nana is up in the tower. There must be a hundred or more steps. How in the world does the old dear get up all of them?”

  “One at a time,” Scotty supplied seriously.

  Sam’s question had of course been rhetorical, but that point would be lost on the hulking butler. Still, a bemused chuckle escaped Sam. “Yes. I suppose then that I will have to take a page from her book and do the same thing.”

  “What book?”

  Dear God. Sam momentarily closed his eyes and rubbed at his forehead. “I mean I will have to climb the tower steps in the same manner. One at a time.”

  “I’ll come, too.”

  Sam shook his head in the negative. “No, there’s no need.”

  “I’ll come, too.”

  Sam eyed the big determined man, looking him up and down. “Of course you will. Never any question about that.”

  * * *

  Her tears dried, and feeling somewhat calmer now, Yancey perched sideways atop the torn straw bedding in the tower’s room. Her Grace Nana mimicked her pose and sat at the bed’s other end, facing her. The perfectly white cats, Mary, Alice, and Jane, had accompanied her up here and had arranged themselves around the room. One sat in the window’s wide sill. Another perched on the chair. And the third sat atop the table. Like silent sentinels, they watched the two women.

  Bemused as much as befuddled by their appearance here, Yancey allowed the tiny older woman to hold her hand and stroke her palm. A harmless activity, yet it seemed very much to please the ancient lady, who looked up at her now and said, “You’re a magical person, my dear. But you don’t know it.”

  This white-haired peer of the realm kept saying such mysterious things as that, just as she’d done a bit ago when she’d made her presence known to Yancey. But taken aback nonetheless—not knowing if she was in the presence of the insane or the insightful, but suspecting both—Yancey tried to extricate her hand. The ancient woman’s grip proved to be surprisingly strong and unyielding. More curious than alarmed, Yancey relaxed, refusing to struggle with her.

  Eyeing their joined hands, Yancey said, “I wish you wouldn’t say things like that, about me being magical and belonging here. Because I really don’t know what you mean by them.”

  “I know you don’t. But you will come to know.”

  Yancey raised her head until she met Her Grace Nana’s gaze. A beatific smile lit the sweet little woman’s wrinkled face. “In time, Sarah Margaret, you will know.”

  Yancey froze. That name. That hated name. It was all she heard. She knew the elderly woman believed she was talking to the duke’s wife and had no idea who she really was, but that didn’t forestall her emotions. Defiance born of years of hurt and betrayal reared its jutting head in Yancey’s heart. “I don’t wish to be called by that name. It is detestable to me.”

  “I know—”

  “No. You don’t know.”

  She’d spoken more sharply than she’d intended but Her Grace Nana appeared unperturbed. “Oh, but I do. You won’t always hate it. It won’t always be so for you.”

  Yancey tried now in earnest to pull her hand out of the older woman’s grip. This time, Her Grace Nana allowed it. With her hand free, Yancey smoothed her hair behind her ears, nothing more than a nervous gesture. “How can you know? How? And yes it will always be hateful to me. Always.”

  Yancey’s benign tormentor smiled her sympathy and patted Yancey’s arm. “Poor wounded lamb. Nothing lasts for always, my dear. Nothing. And I am right. You will see, and you will come to know.”

  As if that were the most innocuous of comments needing no further elucidation, Her Grace Nana pulled herself to her feet, shuffled over to the table, and stroked the purring cats, talking in silly love tones to them.

  Yancey could only stare at the woman’s age-hunched back and remind herself that Her Grace Nana’s talk was so much prattle. And if she seemed to know things that she really couldn’t know, then it was probably because she was referring to some knowledge she had of the real duchess, someone Yancey knew nothing about. So of course, Yancey reminded herself, it was only natural that she should feel as if she were in the dark. But frighteningly, she reflected, with her gaze still trained on Her Grace Nana’s shawl-covered back, the lines between herself and the other Sarah Margaret were beginning to blur, even in her own mind.

  But why wouldn’t they? she argued right back. She’d taken on the other woman’s identity and life, hadn’t she? Yes. Her only hope now was that she wouldn’t also suffer the woman’s fate—and even that was assuming that the murdered Sarah Margaret Calhoun back in Chicago was in fact the actual duchess these people believed Yancey to be.

  Unbidden, the duke’s handsome yet menacing face popped into Yancey’s mind, immediately racing her pulse with awareness of him as a man as well as fear of him as an adversary. She frowned, putting a hand to her temple. She mustn’t allow her woman’s heart to respond to him. She must instead think rationally about this man. He knew she wasn’t his wife. Yet he hadn’t told anyone differently. And without his corroboration, her protestations otherwise to the servants this morning had fallen on deaf ears.

  Yancey’s question remained: why wouldn’t he tell them she spoke the truth when she said she was not the duchess—a woman they’d obviously never met? The unsettling answer was that it served some purpose of his to allow her charade to continue. Could that purpose be to get away with murder? After all, how could anyone say his wife was dead if she was right here in attendance? A possible truth, then, was that Yancey’s own masquerade had played innocently, yet perfectly, right into the duke’s scheming hands.

  A very daunting notion. She still did not want to believe him capable of murder. She still wanted to think him innocent. Because she was so attracted to him? Yes. A self-loathing filled Yancey. She’d always prided herself that being female was her greatest asset in her profession. And now here it was in danger of being her greatest weakness. Always before, she’d never had a problem keeping her heart out of her work. But here and with this man, she was finding it increasingly difficult to do so, even after only one day. How difficult would it be next week, then? Or the week after that?

  Exhaling, Yancey rubbed a hand over her face. This was awful. The whole thing. A convoluted mess. Then an ironic smile claimed her lips. Of course if it weren’t, she’d have no need to be here. And if there’d been an easy or even a discernible answer to the mystery of the duchess, she would have had no need to go to such lengths—physically and geographically—to solve this case of simple mistaken identity that had led her into this intrigue.

  Frustration ate at her. If only she could come right out and ask the duke what the truth was. She’d certainly intended to do exactly that, but that had been before she’d met him. And now that she had, now that she’d felt his irresistible masculine tug on her female heart and body, she wasn’t so sure she really wanted to know the truth. And that alone could get her killed.

  Yancey suddenly felt physically ill. She clutched at her stomach, concentrating on breathing and forcing her incriminating thoughts back to wher
e they belonged, back to some dark place at the back of her mind where they could no longer accuse her or cloud her judgment. And thus she sat quietly, repeating to herself that she had a job to do. She’d come all this way to do it, and do it she would. She would allow nothing and no one to interfere with that, least of all the duke or even her present companion.

  Yancey sat there until she believed her own conclusions, until her mood lifted and she felt more her practical-minded self. Shifting her weight atop the clean straw mattress, she told herself that it now seemed silly that she had allowed this ridiculous conversation with this ancient little woman to upset her. Yancey concentrated now on Her Grace Nana. What she finally saw was the truth—a dear but dotty woman whose white hair wisped about her head like a halo, whose skirts trailed the ground, who played hide-and-seek, and who talked to cats.

  And so it was with a chuckle that Yancey called the woman’s attention away from the cats and back to herself. “All right, then, Your Grace Nana, how will I know? Tell me that much.”

  Coming back over to the bed and again perching a hip atop it, much as if she sat sidesaddle on a horse, Her Grace Nana smiled a knowing smile as she took Yancey’s hands in hers. Yancey’s heart softened at the feel of the warm small-boned, age-gnarled little hands that held hers. The older woman’s disconcertingly lucid light blue eyes met Yancey’s. “I cannot tell you … except to say that you will know. You will be left with nothing more than knowledge. And nothing less.”

  Yancey frowned. Now, what the devil does that mean? Her sympathetic gaze roved over the other woman’s impossibly sweet face. She was to be pitied and indulged, but not believed. As if to prove all this to herself, Yancey took another, more practical, tack in her questioning. “I see. Now, dear, tell me how you knew I was up here, or if you even did, I suppose I should add. I mean, you could have been coming up here anyway and simply found me here.”