Daring Masquerade

by Mary Balogh

  Teasing her at the start had been somewhat amusing. It had not been amusing that afternoon to make such contemptuous insinuations about her intentions toward Uppington when he knew that she must be suffering distress. From her appearance it had seemed obvious that Uppington was trying to force himself on her. Had he and Lady Emma not arrived when they had, perhaps Katherine would not have been able to fight him off. And then Nicholas would have been forced to kill Uppington, Sir Harry or no Sir Harry.

  He risked a glance at Katherine now. She sat quietly, her hands in her lap, her eyes on Lord Stoughton. She looked quite self-possessed. He had to admire the lady. Most females would have taken to their beds with migraines and handkerchiefs, hartshorn and laudanum if they had had to endure one-half of what she had suffered this day. But not Katherine Mannering. There was no outer sign whatsoever that she was not simply a placid, rather dull lady’s companion. He wanted to kiss away that placid look.

  Nicholas shook himself mentally. Sir Harry yawned as she turned her eyes toward him again.

  She had cried. Not in the delicate, wilting way that one expected of a lady, it was true. She had sobbed and sniffed and used her hands to cover her face instead of a lace handkerchief. And she had been thoroughly cross with her own weakness. But his heart had ached for her. He guessed that it took a great deal of provocation to squeeze a tear out of Katherine Mannering. And he had been quite unable to take her in his arms or to kiss away the tears. Sir Harry Tate would never allow such danger to threaten the starch of his shirt collar. Sir Harry would not encourage such female sniveling. And he had stranded himself in the person of Sir Harry when he sent Nicholas Seyton on his way to Shropshire earlier in the day.

  All he had been able to do for her was lend her his handkerchief. Sir Harry would approve of that action. He would prefer to sacrifice a freshly laundered linen handkerchief than to suffer the sight of streaming eyes and running nose and the sound of wet sniffing.

  He had managed talks with two of the servants during the day. His talk with the cook, which Katherine’s arrival in the kitchen had interrupted, had not produced a great deal. In addition to what the butler had mentioned, she recalled that the wet nurse had been “uppity” because she had been to Paris on more than one occasion. Fortunately the woman had not been able to lord it over them a great deal because only one of the footmen understood French. But she remembered the boasting about Paris.

  A wet nurse was not likely to be a woman of vast means, Nicholas decided. The fact that she had been to Paris more than once perhaps denoted that she lived fairly close to that city. It was a very small detail, and only a guess at that, but it was something for a man who had almost nothing else to go on. At least if he did have to fall back on that mad notion of going to France to search for an Annette, he could focus his search on a thirty-mile radius around Paris. Small comfort!

  Another detail the cook recalled was that the wet nurse had offered it as her opinion that the child she nursed would be better off in a home with men than in the one with “those two women.” His mother and his grandmother, the cook had understood the two women to be. Again, the information apparently told Nicholas almost nothing. But there was something there. If his mother had lived with her mother and there were apparently no men with them, was it likely that she was the dancer or whore that his cousin the earl had suggested she was? The head gardener, Dobson, had not been able to add anything to the very scanty knowledge that Nicholas already had. He had been a very junior assistant five-and-twenty years before, a lad very much in awe of his superiors. He remembered how very close the present earl and Nicholas’ father had been, always together and as often as not trailed by Josh Pickering, who fairly worshiped Viscount Stoughton. The head gardener at that time had not liked the two cousins a great deal because they had been forever in trouble when they were younger and more than once involved his daughter in their wild schemes.

  Dobson knew nothing about the Frenchwoman who had nursed him or about any letter or other papers. He never had spent much of his time in the kitchen, where he was likely to pick up such gossip. He did recall his present lordship wandering and riding all over the gardens and park for weeks after his cousin’s death. Poor gentleman. He had taken the death hard.

  Altogether, Nicholas thought, he knew very little more now than he had known from his grandfather’s words during his final illness. And what he had learned since then did not lead him any closer to finding his mother or disclosing the mystery of his birth. And until a few months before, he had not even realized that there was any such mystery.

  As for the papers, he might as well forget about them, though he was quite convinced that they existed or had existed. How could anything be hidden at Barton Abbey when he had spent a boyhood of remarkable freedom there, free to search and explore every corner of the house and estate except the private apartments of his grandfather and the servants? When he was living in Evans’ cottage, he had felt somehow that if only he were at the Abbey he would be able to find some answers. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

  There was still his new idea, of course. He had already started to put that into effect with the letters Parkin was to send back from Shropshire. But there were several days to wait yet. And there was no knowing how successful the plan would be.

  The music appeared to be at an end for the time being. Conversation was replacing it. Uppington was on his feet before Lady Thelma, holding out a hand for hers as if he were soliciting her for a dance. Nicholas was close enough to hear the words “the garden.” He rose languidly to his feet, brushing at an invisible speck of lint on the sleeve of his brocaded evening coat. If Lady Thelma was to be taken walking in the garden, Katherine would be expected to accompany her. And Uppington had proved only that afternoon his expertise in manipulating such situations.

  “Mrs. Mannering,” he said on a sigh. “I perceive that Uppington has the good sense to favor a walk in the garden when the air indoors is decidedly stuffy. Your presence will doubtless be required. Do allow me to escort you.”

  Kate looked up in some surprise—and gratitude. She too had realized that Lord Uppington was taking Lady Thelma outside and that therefore she must go too. There seemed no way that the marquess could then rid himself of his charge of her employer, but Kate had learned well not to trust the man. She would not have thought there was a way to become stranded with him that afternoon either. Her confidence in herself must be at a low ebb, she thought as she rose to her feet, if she was feeling gratitude to such an unfeeling cynic as Sir Harry Tate.

  She realized when it was too late to refuse his escort that on this particular occasion she probably had nothing to fear. The earl drew her to one side as she was leaving the room to fetch shawls for herself and Thelma.

  “Mrs. Mannering,” he said, “your accompanying Lady Thelma into the garden is very proper. However, you would do well to leave her alone with Lord Uppington for perhaps five or ten minutes. Not entirely alone, of course. But out of earshot, shall we say?”

  Kate’s heart plummeted, even though his words assured her of her own safety. It was perfectly obvious to her why she was to remove her company from Thelma for a short while. The poor girl! Had Sidney Moreton already been rejected by the father? she wondered. But no matter. He would be rejected even if he had not yet found the opportunity to make his intentions clear to Lord Barton. And would Thelma be able to refuse the marquess? Kate doubted that the girl had the strength of will to stand up against the wishes of her father. She was doomed to marrying a toad.

  Her marriage would be even worse than Kate’s own had been. At least Giles had not humiliated her by taking mistresses. He had used her to satisfy his bodily urges, and while she had been nauseated by his attentions, she would at least admit now that they were preferable to the knowledge that she was not in any way appealing to the man with whom she had seemed doomed to spend a lifetime.

  Angela Lacey joined her in the corridor to the private apartments. She too was on her way to fetch a c
loak. She smiled shyly at Kate, her cheeks bright with color.

  “It is a lovely evening for a walk,” she said.

  Kate smiled. So the girl liked Charles Dalrymple, did she? Kate did not blame her. Nicholas’ friend seemed a kindly man. How could he possibly have two such men for friends as Nicholas Seyton and Sir Harry Tate? Neither in any way worthy of him. The very thought of Nicholas was enough to give her the uncomfortable feeling that the bottom had fallen out of her stomach. She would not think of him. He did not deserve to be pined after. He had taken her for his own delight and gone on his way. Well, she had made love with him for her own delight too, and now she would go on her way.

  She would spend the next half-hour matching wits with that thoroughly obnoxious Sir Harry Tate and see if she could score a point or two against him. She had a great deal to make up for. It quite made her blush with mortification to remember that she had actually cried in his presence that afternoon. She would have to make him suffer for having brought her to that.

  Nicholas hesitated slightly when the Marquess of Uppington drew his partner to a halt at the stone fountain in order to examine its architecture. Angela Lacey and Charles Dalrymple were already strolling into the formal gardens, though the night was somewhat darker than they had expected. The sky was clear and the stars were bright, but the new moon gave only a minimum of light.

  “Do you suppose we should also circumnavigate the fountain in order to admire the naked cherubs?” Sir Harry asked Kate in his most studied drawl. “Or would such a sight put you to the blush, ma’am?”

  “Neither,” Kate said. “I wish to walk as far as the roses in the center of the gardens. Their smell from here is mixed with the perfume of other flowers, and I think nothing lovelier than the fragrance of a rose.”

  Nicholas gave her a sidelong look. “I perceive this is the moment of the grand proposal,” he said. “Was it the fond papa or the misguided maiden herself who has warned you to keep your distance?”

  Kate was thankful for the darkness, which hid her blush. “Lord Barton,” she said. And then, forgetting how pointless it was to talk so with such a man, “Poor Lady Thelma. I fear she will have no choice. And she will lead a dreadful life with that man.”

  Sir Harry looked at her, cynical eyebrows raised above half-closed eyes. “She will be a marchioness,” he said. “A duchess at some time in the future. He has position, she wealth. Would you ladies not describe such a match as a marriage made in heaven? What more could she possibly want?”

  “Respect, perhaps,” Kate snapped back. “Love. The assurance that she will be important to her husband.”

  “My dear Mrs. Mannering,” he sighed, “you must be one of those women addicted to sentimental novels. This is the real world, ma’am. Lady Thelma will be of infinite importance to her husband. She will produce his heir.”

  Kate would have removed her hand from his arm if the path had not been so dark. “Yes,” she said, realizing as she heard the word come from her mouth that she sounded nettled. She would certainly not win an argument if she lost her temper. “Yes, Sir Harry, you are a thoroughly predictable male. A woman to you is a machine, just like those in the new factories, but used for breeding. And is a wife to consider her life’s goal fulfilled if she can but have the good fortune to produce a male child?”

  “I have angered you, my dear Mrs. Mannering,” Sir Harry said, sounding surprised. “But I see how it is. I should have been more sensitive to your feelings. You, of course, failed in your quest to become a fulfilled woman. You had no child, male or female, did you? And how long did you say you were married to Mr. Mannering?”

  “Oh!” Kate withdrew her hand from his arm as if it were a red-hot bar of iron and stood still on the path, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “You are impudent, sir. Quite insufferably ill-mannered. My marriage and my childless state are none of your concern. None whatsoever. I will not tolerate your sarcasms on a topic of which you know nothing. And I am not your dear Mrs. Mannering, sir.”

  “Dear me.” Sir Harry was quite annoyingly unperturbed by her tirade. He also had stopped walking and stood facing her, his face a mask of boredom, one hand playing with the ribbon on his quizzing glass. “I did hit a tender spot, did I not? My apologies, ma’am. I had no intention of wounding. Shall we walk on? I see that Miss Lacey and Dalrymple are coming up behind us, having taken a different route. And I would hate them to think that we have stopped to embrace. I have more regard for both your reputation and my own.”

  “Embrace you?” Kate said scornfully. “I would sooner kiss a frog, sir.” She pushed her arm almost vengefully through his.

  “Well, my dear Kate,” he said, patting her hand lightly, “you need have no fear. I have no burning desire to kiss you, either.” Liar! Nicholas Seyton thought. “My tastes run to quieter, more feminine, dark-haired beauties. You must remember, of course, that frogs when kissed are reputed to turn into handsome princes.”

  “But a handsome exterior does not guarantee a handsome character or a gentlemanly one,” Kate retorted.

  “Now, somewhere in those nasty insinuations,” Sir Harry said. “I believe I detected a compliment. Thank you, my dear Kate.”

  “I have told you,” she hissed through her teeth, aware that the other couple was approaching nearer, “that I am not your dear Kate.”

  Sir Harry raised his quizzing glass to his eye as he looked down at her. “No,” he said, “I was told that you were not my dear Mrs. Mannering. I took your objection to mean that I was being invited to greater familiarity. Now I understand that it is the ‘dear’ to which you object. And you are quite right. Why is it that we always address people in letters as ‘dear,’ when often times we dislike or even despise the recipient? I shall never again insult you by claiming that you are in any way dear to me, ma’am. Will that please you?”

  “Immensely, sir,” Kate said.

  “It is a very good thing we have been blessed with noses, is it not?” Sir Harry said, turning his head so that the other couple was included in his comment. “There is precious little to see tonight, but Mrs. Mannering insists that the fragrance of the roses will be unadulterated once we reach the center of the gardens. Are we there, ma’am?”

  “Yes. You see?” Kate said. “Six paths meet at this point, and there is the statue of the first Earl of Barton.”

  “Staring commandingly to the south as if he had just conquered an army of twenty thousand infidels,” Sir Harry commented, raising his glass to his eye again.

  “This whole house and park is every bit as magnificent as it is said to be,” Angela said, turning and gazing back at the huge dark outline of the south front of the Abbey. “Thelma and Adam are fortunate indeed to have it as their home. I feel sorry for that Mr. Seyton who felt obliged to leave here.”

  Kate noticed Mr. Dalrymple pat the girl’s hand as it rested on his arm. “Nick loved it,” he said. “He knew every inch of the place and every detail of its history.”

  Kate swallowed, the raw ache of Nicholas’ defection replacing the irrational chagrin she had been feeling over the fact that she was in no way appealing to Sir Harry Tate. “Has he really gone away to stay, do you think?” she asked with studied indifference.

  Mr. Dalrymple looked from her to Sir Harry and back again. “Yes, I believe so, Mrs. Mannering,” he said. “He has his own property in Shropshire, you know, and there is really nothing for him here. I do not believe he would wish us all to be feeling sorry for him.”

  “Quite the contrary,” Sir Harry said. “Not many children born on the wrong side of the sheets have fared as well. In my opinion, Mr. Nicholas Seyton can count himself fortunate indeed to have the means with which to masquerade as a gentleman.”

  “Masquerade?” said Kate sharply. “I would say gentlemanliness is more a quality of character than a simple birthright, sir. There are many men who have all the qualities of birth and fortune without being able to claim honestly that they are gentlemen.”

  “Now, are you de
fending a man you have never met, Mrs. Mannering?” Sir Harry asked, his drawl very marked. “Or are you attacking some men that you have? You have not met Mr. Seyton, I take it? It would be quite improper for you to do so, you know.”

  “Where are Lady Thelma and Lord Uppington?” Angela asked. She had been smelling the roses and had not listened with close attention to the last few exchanges.

  “Oh.” Kate said. “For how long have we been walking? We must start back. They have become engrossed in their conversation. What a shame they have missed the roses.” She tugged on Sir Harry’s arm.

  “You need not be unduly alarmed, Mrs. Mannering,” her escort said, resisting the urgency of her hand and strolling with her at an annoyingly sedate pace. “Lady Thelma is perfectly safe, you know, and would be if she were left for a whole hour behind locked doors with Uppington. He wants her for her money and for her breeding capacity—after the nuptials, of course. It is not for quick and clandestine satisfaction of his lust that he wants that young lady. Your case is quite different, of course. It is clear that Uppington, at least, does not prefer quiet, feminine, dark-haired beauties. Does the door of your bedchamber have a stout lock, by the way?”

  “Yes,” she retorted, “and you will find it in use anytime during the night you may care to try it, sir.”

  “Dear me, Mrs. Mannering,” he said, “what a sharp tongue and a short memory you have. Why would I wish to force my way into the bedchamber of a lady for whom I feel no stirring of, ah, lust? I meant, in my kindly way, my dear . . . Pardon me. I meant in my kindly way, ma’am, to advise you to lock your door against the marquess.”