Caprice: The Masqueraders Series - Book One (6 page)

Emory’s acquiescence in the matter incensed Hadrian. Where was the boy’s backbone? Was a Blackburne to simply roll over like a dog? His hands shook with rage as he restacked the deck, but he was determined not to act on it. He did not wish to see his brother cower again.

“It comes to mind, Emory, that there’s no satisfaction like that of bearding a lion in his den,” he said when he had regained control of his emotions.

When Emory lifted his eyes he saw a positively wicked grin spread across Hadrian’s face. “You mean, diddle him at his own game?” The idea set his own eyes agleam. “Always thought there was something havey-cavey about Tibbitts.” Within seconds of saying it, he actually believed his own words. “Show me a few of those cheats again. I want to catch him red-handed.”

“Tibbitts would be highly suspicious if you suddenly arrived on his doorstep and demanded a game of cards,” Hadrian cautioned. “I must think this through.” In fact, he had already determined that it would be wiser if
he,
not
they,
sought a satisfactory retribution. Emory’s enthusiasm for the scheme might betray them ahead of time. “Be a good lad and ring to have the carriage sent round. I could do with a dose of fresh air and fair company. How about you?”

Emory’s grin nearly slid off his face. “I know the place. There’s a girl by the name of Lily who knows this trick …”

London, May

“I’ve been thinking, Clarie, my love,” Heloise announced cheerfully as both ladies sat in the breakfast parlor of her London residence in Park Street.

Clarissa shifted her gaze toward the pale-yellow sun swimming irresolutely in and out of the cloudstrewn sky beyond the windows. They had arrived in London the day before. “I’m afraid it will rain today.”

“The idea came to me in the middle of the night,” Heloise continued as though her niece’s comment had been to the point. “It’s so simple a solution, I’m surprised you did not think of it yourself.” The appealing gaze she cast Clarissa’s way was not met in turn.

“I should like to visit Bond Street. I’m in need of a new handle for my umbrella,” Clarissa responded. “And then the confectioner. I’ve a sweet tooth in need of chocolate drops. Perhaps, later, we can visit the library for a supply of novels.”

“You’re not listening to me,” Heloise admonished in an injured tone.

Clarissa turned to her aunt. “I heard you, dearest. It’s just that we’ve spoken of this matter before. I’m still in mourning and therefore not at liberty to go out socially. You, however, are free of restraint and may announce your return to town by making a few calls this afternoon, if the weather holds.”

Heloise shook her head so that her extraordinary red-gold hair flashed fire. “That won’t be necessary. We shall soon be flooded with invitations. Why else have we come to London?”

To distract you, dear Aunt,
Clarissa mused in silence.

It had become increasingly clear during the two weeks since her arrival from Jersey that while her aunt was not ailing in a physical sense, her mind often took alarming turns away from reality. She could barely contain her distress when Heloise talked about her husband as though he were still alive. Yet any attempt to remind her of the truth was met with a stony stare of silence.

Potsman had confirmed Clarissa’s suspicion of her aunt’s “delicate” mental condition. “The viscount’s absence has left milady too much to her own devices,” he had remarked after a particularly difficult day in which fancy had held sway over reality in his mistress’s mind. “Something should be done to distract her from brooding over impossible matters. In her own time she’ll come to accept that Lord Arbuthnott is dead.”

It was the only personal opinion she had ever heard Potsman utter, and so it left an impression on her. That was why she had agreed to her aunt’s suggestion that they visit London, even though her aunt’s reason for the trip was wholly inappropriate. She had seized upon the idea of seeking a new husband for Clarissa during the present Season.

“Do you know what I think, Clarie?” Heloise’s clear eyes suddenly shone with mischief. “The rules of mourning bar the Widow Willoughby from society. Therefore …” She drew the word out ominously. “You must become someone else!”

“Must what?” Clarissa responded.

“It came to me as I was conversing with Quentin,” Heloise continued, referring to her daily habit of addressing her husband’s portrait. She had even insisted upon bringing it to London with her. “Widows can’t be presented at Almack’s. So, we must make you over into someone else, a foreigner, I think. It’s so easy to be vague about foreigners. Hardly anyone knows any.”

“You are quizzing me, of course!” Clarissa managed after a moment of stunned silence.

Heloise regarded her niece with tolerance. “It does require a moment to accustom oneself to the idea. If you will but reflect, you will realize that all can be managed with ease. You were a coltish schoolgirl when you were last in England. You are virtually unknown to most of my London acquaintances. Even so, my idea for a disguise offers complete anonymity. Why, you gave me the idea when you spoke of the corsair you’d met.”

Heloise watched emotion alter every detail of her niece’s finely modeled, faintly exotic yet sensitive face. “You inherited the Holton looks. Why not use them? You shall portray an Arabic lady and wear a veil!”

Without replying directly, Clarissa shook the folds from her linen napkin and held it up to her face. Peeking over the top edge of it, she asked, “Is this what you have in mind?”

“Absolutely not! You look like a highwayman.” Heloise regarded her with consternation. “If you do not wish to oblige me, then I shall simply return to Surrey.”

Clarissa could not believe that her aunt was serious until she spied her quivering lower lip. Feeling ashamed of herself, she lowered her napkin. “Forgive me. I meant no disrespect. Yet your desire to launch me in society is impractical. I am a widow, and no amount of wishing will change that.”

“Stuff and nonsense! Wouldn’t you like to dance at Almack’s, drink champagne—which we will again be able to obtain, now that that vulgar little Corsican is gone—and truly fall in love?”

Clarissa was nonplussed. She had completely underestimated the extent of her aunt’s delusion. “I have no interest in acquiring another husband. Yet even if I did, what sort of man would want a lady who had tricked him with disguise and deceit?”

“All men are deceived in some manner by love. If truth be known, they expect it.”

“I don’t believe it,” Clarissa answered, reminded painfully of Evelyn’s disappointment with her.

Heloise’s expression stiffened. “Really, Clarie! Had I suspected that this would be your attitude, I wouldn’t have … Well, I daresay there’s been little damage done thus far.” She paused to gauge the effect of her words on her niece. “I can scarcely snub those I invited to call, but I suppose it will only take a few days to see the duty through. Then we will return to the country.”

Clarissa’s gaze narrowed behind this little speech. It was unlike her aunt to concede a point so easily. The sound of the front doorbell startled her. “Whom are you expecting to call?”

“Today?” Heloise looked about vaguely in one corner of the ceiling until a thought occurred to her. “Oh, of course. That will be the modiste. I thought we would need new clothes in order to entertain. Now, I suppose you won’t want …”

Clarissa sighed. She knew better than to give in for even one second to her aunt’s stratagems, but the temptation of a new dress was strong. “A new frock would be nice.”

Heloise, distracted by the salver of calling cards that had been left by her place at the table, picked one up. “The very thing!” she exclaimed. “Look here. An invitation for tea with Lady Feathergate, and for tomorrow afternoon. We shall accept.”

“No, we shan’t,” Clarissa protested faintly. “Lady Feathergate’s daughter Georgianna and I were in school together. They’d be scandalized were I to call in mourning black.”

Heloise nodded. “Excellent. It’s directly to the purpose. If we’re to be shot from the saddle,” she continued in the vulgar parlance of her beloved Quentin, “then it should be done at the first crack. ’Twill be a simple matter to cry ‘Fool you’ if Lady Feathergate takes exception to our little dissemble. Now, finish your cocoa, dear. I hear the butler coming to announce the modiste.”

It will not work.
Having been persuaded this once to attempt it, Clarissa wondered for the hundredth time why she was sitting in a carriage that for all intent and purposes was a tumbrel carrying her reputation to the guillotine.

The sheer wicked urge to see if such deceit was possible could not alone account for her decision to give in to her aunt’s designs. Neither could the joy of wearing the jonquil crape gown she had bought from the French modiste. If not for the wisp of yellow silk veiling the lower half of her face, she might have been entirely happy. That and the fact that she was wearing kohl, which rimmed her eyes and made them smart.

Oh, she was not what her father would have called too “stiff-rumped” to enjoy a prank for the sheer devilment of it. During the long boring days between battles on the Continent, soldiers pulled pranks of every sort to relieve the accumulated tension. Yet those memories did not allay one scintilla of her fear of discovery at the bald fraud they were about to perpetrate upon friends.

“Ah, here we are,” Heloise called cheerfully when the carriage came to a stop in Grosvenor Square. “Now remember what we practiced, dear.”

“I cannot do this,” Clarissa whispered, clutching her reticule as though it were struggling to get away.

Heloise turned back to her, a fashion plate in blueberry and black. “Have you remembered your accent, dear? How fortunate we are that you remember a little of Quentin’s instruction in Arabic. Just a flavoring. We don’t want them to think you haven’t been educated within an eyelash of the Regent’s own children.”

Clarissa shut her eyes, feeling her heart pound as though it would break free of her ribs. There were reasons for this little deception, she told herself. Good reasons. The most important was her desire to launch her aunt once more into the mainstream of society. Once she stepped back into her old circle, Lady Arbuthnott would forget this folly. If a beginning toward that goal could be accomplished only by these means, then so be it.

Clarissa opened her eyes. “I’m ready.”

The next half hour passed in a blur for Clarissa. She could never afterward recall what was said by whom and in which order. By some manner which seemed nothing short of miraculous, she had been issued in beside her aunt and had faced across the span of a tea table two women she had known in childhood. Yet neither of them had recognized her, nor did they seem to find exceptional the fact that she wore a veil. Her aunt introduced her as “the daughter of a sheikh befriended by Lord Arbuthnott. She speaks little English, but her manners are impeccable.” The Feathergate ladies accepted without comment the stranger in their midst.

For her own part, Clarissa had spoken little and eaten nothing. When the requisite thirty minutes were over, she could barely rise to her feet, so weak were her knees from their constant trembling.

“Well, that is that!” Heloise declared with laughter when they were once more ensconced in her city berlin of ultramarine blue with crimson undercarriage and wheels. “We were quite the success, don’t you think?”

“Never … again … as long as I live.” Clarissa forced out the words as though she were choking on them.

“Oh, I don’t know. We may need to visit them on occasion, but I do agree that they lack a certain levity of spirit. Poor Georgianna, I had quite forgotten her most unfortunate tendency to squint.” Heloise sat forward suddenly, just as the carriage began to roll. “Well, what do suppose we are to make of that?” she murmured as she gazed out of the window.

Half reclining on her seat, Clarissa opened one eye. “What do you mean?”

“A most singular sight. The Earl of Ramsbury and his brother, Mr. Blackburne. What do you imagine they are doing strolling in the square?”

Since neither gentleman was known to her, Clarissa could not have cared less. In fact, she had no intention of opening the other eye until her aunt suddenly tapped the carriage ceiling to halt the driver. A moment later, Heloise let down the window to peer out.

“Why, it is! Lord Ramsbury, what
are
you doing here?” she declared when the carriage stopped near the gentleman in question.

“Taking the afternoon air, Lady Arbuthnott,” Hadrian replied and tipped his hat before approaching the carriage with his brother by his side.

“This is most peculiar,” Heloise remarked as she leaned into the window to better scrutinize the young man. “You should be dead. I distinctly remember sending a funeral wreath upon the occasion of your interment some fifteen months ago.”

“It would appear that the arrangements were somewhat premature,” Hadrian allowed with a small smile. “In any case, I am pleased to be able to thank you in person for your kindness upon the occasion of my demise.”

“This is most irregular. Isn’t it most irregular, dear?”

Clarissa had hoped she would escape unnoticed but her aunt had just made that impossible. “I would not know, my lady,” she said in a husky undertone which she hoped would not carry beyond the confines of the carriage.

“You have a new companion, Lady Arbuthnott?” Emory asked, his keen young eyes having detected the slender arm of a young woman visible beyond the older woman.

“I have better than that, Mr. Blackburne,” Heloise answered. “I have with me a young lady who is soon to be launched into the Season.”

This bit of news made both bachelors stiffen, but it was too late for them to backpedal into obscurity.

“Even odds she squints,” Emory mumbled under his breath as Heloise turned to her companion.

“Come, dear, and meet the earl and his brother,” Heloise coaxed and drew an unwilling Clarissa into view at the window. “Gentlemen, you are the very first in London to meet her. Allow me to present my charge. Come, dear, and pay your address to the earl.”

Thus cornered, there was nothing else Clarissa could do but respond. Eyes lowered to give the appearance of modesty, she said in a soft-voweled voice, “It is a great honor to be in the presence of the earl and his brother.”

“ ’Pon my oath!” she heard one of the gentleman say faintly. “She’s veiled!”

In spite of her agitation, Clarissa’s natural sense of humor got the better of her and, smiling, she looked up. She never knew which of the men had spoken for she was suddenly gazing straight into a pair of silvergreen eyes, and nothing after that seemed to matter.

Trapped by those eyes that seemed to see through her right down to her silk undergarments, Clarissa found it impossible to speak. That gaze! She knew this man. But, no, that was impossible. A coincidence, surely.

“My lady.” She heard his cultured voice as if from a great distance. And then her gloved hand, which was gripping the window ledge, was lifted and saluted by a pair of masculine lips. “I believe I am the most fortunate man in London this afternoon.”

The voice, too, was the same. How could she ever forget it? The beard, flowing robes, and turban were missing, but the wicked scar rising from the arch of his left brow was too singular to be coincidence. This was the man who had stolen a kiss from her in Plymouth!

“My dear earl, you always did possess exquisite manners,” Heloise said in a pleased tone as she observed the earl’s pointed interest in her niece. “You will quite sweep my poor innocent off her feet. Won’t he, dear?” she said encouragingly. When Clarissa did not answer right away, Heloise stepped lightly on her foot to spur a response.