Sweet Masquerade (The Love and Temptation Series Book 4)

by M C Beaton

  “No, but it was terrible. They were all staring at me and whispering. And just before you arrived, Mr. Cameron cut me.”

  “Of course he did.” The earl gave a harsh laugh. “He must have been outraged. He must have thought I was palming off my used wares on him.”

  “No!” said Freddie, putting up her hands to her hot cheeks.

  “I arrived in time to salvage what I could of the situation. Now that we are to be married, the scandal will die out.”

  “But I don’t want to marry you, since you don’t want me,” said Freddie, becoming as furious as she was miserable. “Have you no thought for my feelings? Did you never consider that I might have dreamt of marrying someone nearer my own age?”

  “What we wished or did not wish for does not enter into this,” he said. “I am not having the name of Berham brought down into the mud. I am not in my dotage. What is this about dreaming of a young man? Had you formed a tendre for James Cameron?”

  “Yes!” Freddie lied furiously.

  “Forget him,” he said abruptly. “He obviously believed the first breath of scandal about you. I would not believe wrong of any woman I loved.”

  “Obviously,” said Freddie dryly. “It’s a wonder Lady Rennenord did not cut my throat before you saw her for what she was. Men are such fools. How could you be so taken in by that simpering smile and all those pretty tricks?”

  “Perhaps having to look at an excuse for a female who wore boy’s clothes gave me a craving for femininity. Now I am to be tied for life to a silly girl who is more than likely to challenge one of the patronesses of Almack’s to a duel.”

  “You should have married Clarissa Rennenord,” said Freddie bitterly. “That is exactly the sort of thing she would say.”

  “All this sparring is vulgar,” he said with a weary sigh. “We are to be married as soon as possible, and that is that. I do not expect you to fulfill your marital functions. No doubt you have an ineradicable disgust of that side of marriage, thanks to your grandfather’s weird determination to introduce you to the facts of life in as brutal a manner as possible.”

  Freddie fell silent. Did the earl not realize that if you loved someone as much as she loved him, fears of brutal lust seemed a world apart?

  He glanced down at her and said in a kinder voice, “We should not be quarreling like this. You will find you are able to have a pleasant life. I will not interfere with your pleasures. Married women have a great deal of freedom.”

  “Do you plan to take a mistress?”

  “No. Not at this moment.”

  “Perhaps later? Then what would you say if I took a lover?”

  “Fustian!”

  “Well, I shall,” said Freddie, all her disappointment and rage erupting again. “And we’ll see how you like that!”

  “Don’t be childish,” he said wearily. “I have enough to worry me without coping with your tantrums.”

  “And just what do you think you are indulging in, sirrah? A noble rage?”

  He turned his head away and did not reply.

  Freddie held on to her rage and nursed it. She knew that the minute she stopped being angry, she would burst into tears.

  They arrived back at Berkeley Square, still in a grim silence. The earl strode off into the library and slammed the door. Freddie stormed off upstairs to her room.

  For a long time she sat and made plans. Then the door opened, and Miss Manson walked in, her long face radiant.

  Freddie held up one small hand. “Before you gush all over me with congratulations, I would have you know that my lord has felt constrained to marry me because of the gossip. He does not love me one little bit.”

  Miss Manson sat down in a heap on the floor and burst into tears.

  Freddie looked at her with some exasperation. “Do not cry,” she said. “Please try not to cry. I need help.”

  Miss Manson took out a handkerchief the size of a young bedsheet and blew her nose. “I feel for you so,” she said. “You are so much in love with Lord Berham.”

  “Does it show so much?” asked Freddie wistfully.

  Miss Manson nodded her head. “And he is in love with you,” she said.

  “Pooh!” Freddie tossed her head. “You should have been in the carriage and heard him fretting and fuming about having to marry me.”

  “But he looked at you in such a way, even at Lamstowe.”

  “Oh, he is fond enough of me, but he does not love me as a woman. He is furious. It’s to be a sort of arranged marriage. I go my way and he goes his. I am planning to run away.”

  “Where to?”

  “To my old home, Hartley Manor. We will go in disguise.”

  Miss Manson thought about their masquerade at Lamstowe and of how frightened she had been.

  “We were to go to see Kean in Hamlet this evening,” said Miss Manson hopefully.

  Freddie frowned, twisting her fan around in her fingers. She had longed to see the famous actor. “But he will be so angry—Lord Berham, I mean.”

  “Would it not be a good idea to see?” ventured Miss Manson. “Very angry gentlemen never stay very angry for long. I will, of course, go with you, Frederica. But I am such a cowardly person that the thought of taking to the road in disguise makes me tremble. Please, could we not go to the play this one evening?”

  Freddie thought about seeing the earl again, of sitting next to him at the play.

  “Besides,” pursued Miss Manson, “there are so many other Lady Rennenords in London who would be only too ready to console him if you disappeared.”

  “Let them have him!” said Freddie defiantly. But then she capitulated. One more precious evening in his company. Just one.

  Just to hear his voice again, watch his satanic dark looks, perhaps hear that husky, caressing note in his voice that he had when he was amused by her.

  The earl sat in the library for the rest of the afternoon, brooding savagely on this twist of fate. He forgot how bored he had been before Freddie had crashed into his life. Never had bachelordom seemed so sweet. He thought about the proposed visit to the play. Was this what his life was to be? Escorting a flighty schoolgirl and her eccentric companion? Be damned to both of them. He poured himself another glass of brandy and stared moodily into the flames of the library fire.

  Then he heard the faint sounds of someone playing the piano in the drawing room across the hall. Freddie. He had forgotten how well she could play.

  After some hesitation he went and opened the library door and listened. She was playing a haunting piece of music which was new to him.

  He stood leaning against the door jamb, drinking his brandy and listening. The music sounded sad and wistful, conjuring up nostalgic dreams of lost spring-times and lost youth and wasted passions. He went back into the library and closed the door.

  Miss Manson noticed an air of constraint between Lord Berham and Freddie, but at least they did not seem to be quarreling openly as they set out for the theater.

  Kean’s performance was superb. From his first speech to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to his distracted speech to Ophelia and his “To be or not to be,” he electrified the house. His fencing was magnificent. When he finally fell, the pit rose howling with applause.

  Her troubles momentarily forgotten, Freddie turned to Lord Berham. “Wasn’t he marvelous? Many say his Hamlet is inferior to his Richard, but after tonight’s performance I cannot believe it.”

  The earl made some remark which sounded remarkably like a grunt.

  Freddie’s enchantment fled, leaving her feeling small and unwanted. “Are we to go home?” she ventured miserably.

  “We are invited to take a late supper with a Major and Mrs. Tulley. Of course, if you would rather return home, I can make your apologies.”

  “No, I shall be happy to go,” said Freddie, sounding as miserable as anyone could be.

  “I sent them word of our engagement,” said the earl. “They are good friends of mine and would be surprised if they read the notice in the journals t
omorrow before hearing anything about it from me.”

  “Our engagement in the newspapers?” said Freddie. “So soon?”

  “I sent a servant with the announcement before I even went to the Oakleys’.”

  “Before?” Freddie looked at him in amazement. “You didn’t even think to propose to me,” she said, lowering her voice as several members of the audience began to look at her curiously. “You did not think I might refuse?”

  “You have no alternative,” he said coldly. “And neither have I. Shall we go?”

  Miss Manson watched their angry faces in trepidation. If they continued like this, she thought, undoubtedly she would be forced to set off on another adventure with Freddie.

  Would her married life be like this? thought Freddie gloomily. Being ordered here and there without her wishes ever being consulted.

  The Tulleys came as a pleasant surprise. The major was thin and ascetic-looking and had little to say, but he had a restful manner and was a good listener. Mrs. Tulley was much younger than her husband, a good-natured brunette who teased the earl about having fallen in love at last.

  The earl took her bantering in good part. He seemed more at ease than he had been for some time and entertained the company with a description of amusing plays he had seen.

  “I gather you enjoyed Kean’s Hamlet,” said Major Tulley to Freddie after the earl had finished.

  “Very much,” she replied. “It was electric.”

  “Oh, don’t talk of electricity.” Mrs. Tulley laughed. “Or my husband will subject you to his latest toy. It’s an electrifying machine.”

  “How does it work?” Freddie asked curiously. “So many people seem to believe that electricity cures everything from agues to blindness.”

  The major showed more animation than he had all evening. “I do not think it can do any of these things, but I do believe it helps the circulation of the blood. With your permission, Miss Armstrong, I will give you a little demonstration. It is quite harmless, you know.”

  Freddie nodded eagerly. The major rang the bell, and soon a manservant returned with a small machine that had a cranking handle. Freddie looked at it curiously. Electricity was still very much an amusement, although in some cases a dangerous one. She could remember her grandfather telling her about all the people who had been killed in the last century trying to emulate Benjamin Franklin by flying kites in thunderstorms. Some people even believed that an electric shock helped the growth of plants.

  They were all seated in the Tulleys’ comfortable drawing room. The machine was set in front of the fire.

  “What do we do?” asked Miss Manson, looking nervously at the electrifying machine as if it might bite.

  “Well, my wife will hold this wire while I crank the machine. You all form a chain, holding on to each other’s hands. Let me see. Miss Manson, you hold my wife’s hand, and Berham, you take Miss Manson’s hand on one side and Miss Armstrong’s on the other.

  The major started cranking busily. Mrs. Tulley held on to the wire, rolling her eyes to heaven in mock resignation.

  “Now,” said the major.

  The earl took Miss Manson’s hand in his right and then half turned and held out his left hand to Freddie. She lowered her eyes and almost shyly put her hand into his, feeling his strong fingers closing about her own.

  The earl felt a tingling sensation going up his arm, and Freddie must have experienced the same sensation, for she looked up at him in surprise.

  “What an odd machine!” exclaimed the earl. “The shock affects only my left side.”

  “Very odd,” teased Mrs. Tulley, “for you see, I had dropped the wire by mistake. Ah, Lord Berham, what you are experiencing is the electricity of love.”

  “Nonsense!” said the earl. “It must have been a twinge of rheumatism.”

  “Of course,” Freddie agreed sweetly. “At your great age such maladies are to be expected.”

  “Pay attention,” called the major. To his wife, he said, “Please make sure you have the wire.”

  He began to crank the handle furiously. Everyone experienced a mild but unpleasant shock. Miss Manson screamed and fell forward on the floor, her skirt rucking up at the back, to reveal a pair of matchstick legs encased in green silk stockings.

  And that’s something else to lay at Clarissa Rennenord’s door, thought the earl, looking down at Miss Manson with disfavor. She had recommended Miss Manson. If he dismissed Miss Manson, she would no doubt think the fickle aristocracy was being heartless again. Why did people never examine their own faults? thought the earl savagely. Why did they always blame other people for their misfortunes?

  Take Miss Frederica Armstrong, for instance. She should be grateful to him. Yes, grateful! Did she realize the full extent of the honor that had been conferred on her? He glanced down at her, surprised again to find himself looking at a beautiful young woman instead of the tomboyish schoolgirl he always seemed to think her.

  Her gown was of pale straw-colored silk. It was cut across the bosom in such a way as to reveal the charms of high, firm little breasts.

  He remembered how that ridiculous ball gown she had worn had revealed all her charms and found himself suddenly prey to what he could only damn as an intense fit of lust.

  This would never do, he chided himself as the others, including a vastly recovered Miss Manson, crowded around the machine to examine it. He had been celibate too long. When they were married, he would see about setting up a mistress. But what if Freddie took a lover?

  He looked at her again. She was bending over the machine, the silk of her gown tight across her bottom. He half closed his eyes. How old Colonel Armstrong would gloat!

  It has all hit me at once, mused the earl. I have been thinking of her as a sort of boy for so long.

  And yet he remembered her kneeling in front of him all those months ago at Berham Court and recalled how his feelings towards the “youth” at his feet had alerted him to the fact that she was a girl. He had to admit, she had held a certain attraction for him even then.

  “I say, Berham,” called the major. “Don’t you want to examine this? Feel any better for your shock?”

  “No,” said the earl, thinking only of the shock to his senses caused by Miss Frederica Armstrong. He went over and crouched down by the machine while the others stood back to give him a better view.

  Freddie looked wistfully down at his thick black hair and the strong line of his profile, at his broad shoulders set off by the exquisite tailoring of his blue coat, at the strong thighs encased in tight pantaloons, at the strong, capable hands with the great crested ring on the middle finger of the right one as they examined the machine.

  Grandfather was wrong, thought Freddie. Men were not the only ones consumed by lustful feelings.

  Miss Manson covertly watched both of them. She had caught the earl looking at her in a disapproving way, and all her old fears had come rushing back. Lady Rennenord had not lost any time spreading malicious gossip. She probably had sent a letter to Berham asking Mrs. Bellisle to close the cottage.

  Once again the future yawned like a great black pit at Miss Manson’s feet.

  Only look how Freddie studied the earl with that wistful, hungry look. Only see the way the earl did not look at Freddie, and yet every bit of his body seemed to be intensely aware of her presence. Unless something happened, this intense feeling each had for the other could drive them violently apart instead of into each other’s arms.

  Pride, thought Miss Manson, nodding her head wisely. That’s all it is. Pride and wounded feelings.

  The earl looked around at that moment and caught Miss Manson nodding wisely to herself.

  The woman’s quite mad, he thought, looking at her with dislike.

  Miss Manson caught that look and became even more terrified. She must do something. But what?

  It was a silent threesome who made their way back to Berkeley Square after saying good-bye to the Tulleys.

  As soon as they had arrived, the earl mut
tered, “Good night.” Without looking at either Miss Manson or Freddie, he strode off into the library and shut the door.

  Freddie looked after him, her hands hanging at her sides, her mouth drooping in disappointment. Then she turned to Miss Manson.

  “We will leave tomorrow,” she said, half to herself. “I am so weary now, I think I shall go straight to sleep. It is not fair, Miss Manson. I am a prey to self-pity. All the villains of this piece seem to escape scot-free. Lady Rennenord has succeeded in her revenge. That awful captain and those terrible Hope sisters are free to prey on more unsuspecting people.… Oh, I shall be glad to get away.”

  Miss Manson watched her go, her brain working furiously. If only there were some way to force the earl and Frederica to be together even for a short while. Perhaps then the earl might realize how much he loved the girl.

  Miss Manson looked at the clock and saw that it was three in the morning. A new day. Today was the day of the May Fair, the day on which all the servants were allowed to go. From eleven in the morning until five in the evening there would not be a servant in the house. And Freddie, like most of London society, often slept until noon.

  Miss Manson started on a tour of inspection while she laid plans.

  What she had in mind just might work.

  Chapter Nine

  Captain Cramble sat up on the box of a hired carriage and thought gloomily about its occupants.

  Ever since they had left London he had had a feeling of foreboding. Miss Mary had insisted on taking possession of the leather bag with the jewels. The captain felt somewhere in his fat soul that it was only a matter of time before the sisters would decide to give him the slip or, worse, kill him.

  He longed for a drink, but the sisters had ordered him not to stop until three in the afternoon, when they should have left London and all its Bow Street Runners a safe way behind.

  His mind turned this way and that. He was sure they would not harm him until he had arranged a passage for them all on a boat at Dover. He pulled his watch out of his waistcoat. Only half an hour to go. How could a man be expected to think with a sober head?