The Madcap Masquerade (20 page)

“Ye’re a fool, Maeve Barrington, and ye’re no true daughter of Lily’s after all. She would have seen her main chance and taken it, no matter what.”

Maeve pulled herself together and stared him in the eye, hating him for what he was—hating herself for letting desperation force her to sink to his level. “I may be a fool,” she said coldly, “but I’m a fool who holds a signed and witnessed contract and if you think I won’t take you to court to collect my money, just try me, old man. When it comes to collecting what’s due me, I am very much like my mother.”

For a change, Maeve instructed Mrs. Pinkert to open a bottle of the squire’s best wine to serve with dinner that evening. It was her last night at Barrington Hall and though she dined alone, she intended to do so in style.

The squire was still in the throes of his current “sickness” but she felt certain she’d put the fear of God in him with her threat to face him in the London courts with his signed agreement. Luckily he had no way of knowing she was bluffing, or that she would never dare risk such notoriety for fear of revealing the true identity of Marcus Browne in the process.

He had grudgingly promised to travel to London sometime in the month of June to arrange transfer of the stipulated funds to her account. She could only pray he kept his word. After her last encounter with him, she felt no compunction whatsoever about forcing him to pay Lily’s debts. It seemed an ironic justice, considering what the two of them had done to Meg and her.

Despite her flagging appetite, she ate heartily of Mrs. Pinkert’s perennial mutton and potatoes. This might well be her last good meal until she managed to sell another cartoon or the squire made good his promise, whichever came first.

After dinner, she wandered out to the kitchen to spend a few moments chatting with Mrs. Pinkert and Lucy, surprised at how fond she’d grown of them both in but two week’s time. There would be no one to chat with in London; Bridget had left for Yorkshire to live with her married sister the same day Maeve had departed for Kent.

The snug little house in which she’d once felt so contented would seem terribly empty and lonely without Lily and Bridget—almost as lonely as her life would be without the excitement and passion Theo had brought to it. The very thought triggered a pain so intense, she said a hasty goodnight to the two servants and fled from the kitchen before she turned into a watering pot yet again.

She stopped at Meg’s music room on her way to the bedchamber and let her fingers wander idly over the keys of the pianoforte, playing bits and fragments of compositions she loved. Her music had always seen her through difficult times before; tonight it failed her miserably. Every note she played reminded her of Theo’s voice, Theo’s laugh…Theo’s kiss.

There was nothing left to do but retire, though the thought of enduring yet another interminable sleepless night was almost more than she could bear. Wearily she trudged up the stairs to the pretty bedchamber she’d briefly shared with her identical twin—a woman who was her exact image, yet as much a stranger to her as any she might pass on a London street.

The truth was there was no one in the whole wide world who cared if she lived or died—except Theo—and by tomorrow at this time, he would despise her. She had lived with loneliness and isolation all her life. She’d thought she knew them well. She realized now she’d only just begun to comprehend the meaning of the words.

The French windows were standing open when she reached the bedchamber and a pale spring moon cast a silver glow over the small balcony beyond them. Maeve placed the lighted candle she’d carried with her on the bedside table, stepped out of her slippers and onto the balcony.

The wood beneath her stockinged feet was still warm from the sun and the night breeze fragrant with the scent of spring flowers. A thousand stars shimmered in the heavens. Somewhere a cricket chirped; a nightingale trilled its lonely, exquisite song.

Tomorrow she would return to the smell of fresh pasties warmed over charcoal braziers and soot from thousands of smoking chimneys—to the sound of carriage wheels on cobblestones and the cries of street whores selling their bodies to the dandies exiting a performance at the Drury Lane theater. But tonight, she would give herself over to the sights and sounds and fragrances of the Kent countryside.

Removing the pins from her hair, she invited the friendly breeze to play through the heavy tresses as Theo’s fingers had done the day he’d carried her from the lake.

Closing her eyes, she let the memories of the moments she’d spent with him during the past two weeks parade through her mind, one by one. She could almost feel his presence, almost sense the magic that sparked between them whenever he was near.

So real was her lovely dream, she even imagined she heard music in the background. Strange, hedonistic music like nothing she’d ever heard before—music that made her woman’s body ache for a fulfillment she could only begin to imagine.

A moth, drawn to the candle flame, brushed by her cheek and she opened her eyes, expecting the pain of reality to erase the last remnants of her brief, beautiful phantasm. Oddly enough, the music played on, the lilting melody seeming to rise from beneath the very balcony on which she stood.

She held her breath, waiting for the music to slip away on the night breeze like the rest of her fantasy. It grew louder, more poignant and someone began putting words to the music—strange, foreign words sung in a rich, throaty baritone.

Puzzled, she leaned over the balcony railing and spied a familiar, tall figure lounging against the trunk of a white birch in the garden below her. His song finished, he stepped forward into the moonlight.

“Theo?” Maeve gasped. “Good heavens, is that you? What in the world are you doing down there?”

“I’m serenading my lady love with my guitar—an instrument I was taught to play by a Spanish nobleman—a
caballero
who fought with my regiment to free his country from Bonaparte’s clutches. When Ramon wasn’t fighting like a demon from hell, he could always be found standing beneath some senorita’s balcony strumming his guitar and singing his heart out. I thought it a wonderfully romantic custom—one I wanted to share with you.”

He was dressed all in black in what Maeve realized must be the costume of a Spanish
caballero
, like the one he spoke of. A short black jacket, trimmed in silver embroidery, skimmed his narrow waist. Matching trousers hugged his long, powerful legs and flared above the toes of his black boots. A flat brimmed hat cast mysterious shadows across his handsome features. Maeve’s breath caught in her throat. She had never seen anything or anyone as beautiful as Theo was at this moment.

Smiling up at her, he languidly strummed his fingers across the strings of his guitar, drawing forth a sound like a plaintive human sigh. “What say you, my love, can you hear my heart speaking to yours through my song? Can you feel my soul reaching out to yours, my body longing to make us one?

“Say the words I want to hear,
querida
—the words you almost said when I kissed you in the little church.” His voice rose strong and determined above the soft, provocative notes he coaxed from the melodious instrument cradled across his chest. “I swear I’ll not leave here until I hear them.”

Maeve stared at his moonlit figure, torn between retreating to the safety of the bedchamber and acquiescing to his demand. The latter won out; she had wanted to say the words for so long and this would be the last chance she would ever have of saying them. Another “last,” and this one would be the most bittersweet of all.

She gripped the railing with taut fingers. “Very well, my lord, I shall say the words you want to hear but only if I have your solemn vow that no matter what the future brings, you will always believe that at this moment in this place, I spoke from my heart.”

“An odd vow to demand of the man with whom you are destined to spend the rest of your life.”

“Still, I demand it.”

“Very well, little termagant, I swear that no matter what the future brings, I will always believe that the words my beloved spoke on the night of the thirty-first of May in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and fourteen came from her heart. There, will that do as a solemn vow?”

“It will do.” Maeve leaned forward, across the balcony railing. “Listen well, for I shall only have the courage to say them once.” She drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I love you, Theodore Hampton, Earl of Lynley, with all my heart and all my soul and shall until the day I die.”

“And I love you, Meg Barrington, with all
my
heart and all
my
soul and shall until the day I die.”

Maeve looked down on Theo’s handsome face one last time through eyes blurred with tears and thought what fitting irony that his declaration of love should be to a name that had never belonged to her. “Goodnight, my love,” she said quickly before her trembling lips could no longer form the words.

“
Buenas noches, mi querida
,”
Theo replied as she turned and fled into the bedchamber.

To her surprise, Lucy was standing beside the bed, her eyes brighter than the bedside candle. “I just come to help you undress for bed, Miss. I didn’t mean to listen to you and the earl. Honest I didn’t. But I just couldn’t help myself. It was so romantical. Just like a page from one of Mrs. Radcliffe’s books.”

She clasped a hand to her generous bosom. “La, Miss, has there ever in all this world been a woman as blessed as you?”

O
ne of the village lads delivered a note from Richard early the next morning while Maeve was having her second cup of tea. It said the package she’d been expecting had arrived safely and was waiting for her at the vicarage.

The package? An odd way of putting it, to Maeve’s way of thinking. She was expecting a reply to the letter she’d sent her twin. But why would Meg send her a package? She shrugged. Maybe Richard was just being cautious in his wording in case the squire should see his note.

Maeve could have put his mind at ease on that point. She doubted her father would crawl out from under the pile of hounds until he’d drained the two full bottles of brandy she’d seen sitting beside the straw pallet, and slept off the effects.

Still, Richard’s note couldn’t have arrived at a better time. She had already alerted Mrs. Pinkert to the fact that she was leaving and she’d planned to tell Lucy she was walking to the vicarage this morning to help Richard arrange flowers for the Sunday service, something she understood Meg often did. The note conveniently corroborated her fib.

Half an hour later, with her nightrail and a pair of slippers crammed into her reticule, she closed the door on Meg’s pretty bedchamber and walked down the three flights of stairs to the vast, two story entryway of Barrington Hall. She’d dressed in the same long-sleeved dimity dress she’d worn the day before; Lucy had insisted on giving her own drab dresses to the village poor. But absconding with one of Meg’s lovely dresses was bad enough; she couldn’t bring herself to take anything else. She was, therefore, wearing her own serviceable outerwear which she’d brought from London.

Lucy was just starting up the stairs, her arms full of freshly ironed garments. The young maid gave a shriek of dismay when Maeve passed her. “Whyever are wearing that awful bonnet and that heavy, old brown pelisse on a beautiful day like this, Miss? What if you should happen to meet the earl ? La, I maybe shouldn’t say it, but you don’t look your usual pretty self in those ugly garments. As I always tell my sisters, clothes do make a difference.”

Somewhat curtly, Maeve dismissed the young maid’s pleas that it was her reputation at stake as well that of her mistress, since everyone in the village knew who dressed the squire’s daughter. She had no intention of meeting up with Theo; she had, in fact, purposely chosen the time of day when she knew he’d be involved in the work of managing his estate.

She soon realized, however, that Lucy had been right about the pelisse. It was much too heavy for a warm spring day. By the time she reached the neat, little, two story brick house adjacent to the village church, she had it draped over her arm and was ready to remove her bonnet as well.

Richard, himself, answered her knock at the vicarage door. “I gave my housekeeper a holiday, for obvious reasons,” he said mysteriously as he led Maeve down the hall to his bookroom.

“I take it, from your note, the letter from my sister has arrived.”

“The letter? Oh, no. Something much better than that.” With a dramatic flourish which seemed totally foreign to his retiring nature, he threw open the door and stepped aside to let Maeve enter ahead of him.

Sunshine streamed through the windows of the cheerful little bookroom and Maeve found herself momentarily blinded after the dimly lighted hall. She heard a soft gasp and glancing in the direction from which it came, stared at what could easily have been her reflection in a mirror. For a long, heart-stopping moment, she stared at her twin in stunned silence, vaguely aware that Richard had exited the room and discreetly closed the door behind him.

Meg was the first to speak. “I set out for Kent the day I received your letter. I couldn’t believe I actually had a twin sister.” Her voice was softer, more hesitant than Maeve knew hers to be, her smile endearingly shy.

“Nor could I when Lady Hermione told her amazing story.” Maeve took a step forward. “I believe it now.”

Meg’s gray-green eyes searched Maeve’s face as if memorizing every feature. “I have always had this strange feeling that some part of me was missing. Now I know why.”

Maeve took another step…and another. “Oh Meg, I’ve had that same feeling so many times. I’d be going along in my usual way, doing my usual thing, then for no reason I could fathom, I’d suddenly have this terrifying sensation that I was somehow incomplete and isolated from everyone around me.” Maeve knew she was chattering; she couldn’t help it. The shock of meeting her twin face-to-face had thrown her completely off-kilter.

Tears streamed down Meg’s face. “It was very confusing. As if I were desperately lonely for someone I had never met—someone who, for all I knew, didn’t exist.”

Maeve could stand it no longer. With a hoarse cry she covered the last few feet between them and clasped her twin in her arms. Long, breathless minutes passed in which they could do nothing but cling to each other and weep for joy.

“Finally, Maeve stepped back, a little embarrassed by the intensity of her emotional reaction. “We should have grown up together,” she said grimly. “We should have always been there for each other.” She clenched her fists as a wave of soul-scorching anger swept over her. “I shall never forgive Lily or the squire for the terrible thing they did to us.”

Meg nodded her head solemnly. “I, too, felt terribly bitter when I was first confronted with the fact that I had a sister I’d never known and a mother who hadn’t cared enough about me to keep me with her.”

Gracefully, she seated herself on a nearby chair and indicated Maeve should do the same. Folding her hands in her lap, she continued, “On the long ride from the Highlands, I devoted every waking minute to praying for guidance and understanding as to why our parents felt impelled to do what they did. I am happy to say that after much meditation, I was finally able to cast my anger from me. I am at peace now…with everything.”

“Well, I’m not,” Maeve stated flatly. “You’re obviously a much nicer person than I am.”

“Not nicer. Different.” Meg’s gentle smile made her plain features glow as if they’d been lighted from within. “Richard told me that while we looked incredibly alike, we had completely different personalities. I can see he was right. You are so much more…lively than I. Stronger and braver too, I’ve no doubt. Maybe if we could have grown up together, I might have absorbed some of your independence of spirit.”

And I might have absorbed some of your sweet, forgiving nature
. Maeve could see why the young vicar admired her gentle sister.”

“I’m not at all brave,” Meg continued. “I’m deeply ashamed that I ran away from my obligations. I would hope that had I known I had a twin sister who would be made to suffer because of my cowardice, I would have acted differently.”

“I didn’t exactly suffer,” Maeve protested, her conscience pricking her when she remembered how much she’d enjoyed every moment she’d spent with Theo in the past three days.

“Of course you did. You stood in for me at that dreadful betrothal ball, and Richard told me how the earl has forced his attentions on you ever since.” Meg dabbed at her tear-filled eyes with a lacy handkerchief. “You must have hated every minute of it.”

“Actually, Theo can be quite charming when he puts his mind to it,” Maeve said, leaping to his defense though she recognized that in doing so, she risked exposing her feelings for him. “He’s not the arrogant rake I first thought him to be. He’s really very kind and considerate and…sincere.” She almost said romantic, but she had an instinctive feeling that was not a word that would impress her twin.

Meg frowned. “How can you say the earl’s not a rake? Or that he’s the least bit sincere? My maid, Betty, told me he keeps a mistress right here in our village and heaven only knows how many in London and doesn’t care in the least who knows it. That is not my idea of a moral, God-fearing man. I have always found it rather amazing that Richard considers him his friend as well as his employer.”

“But people can change. Theo has. My maid, Lucy, heard gossip in the village just two days ago that he’d given the Widow Whitcomb her
congé
and set her up in a reputable business in another county.”

The color drained from Meg’s face. “Oh, no, never say such a thing—not when I’m faced with the prospect of becoming his wife. His mother assured me that if I married him, I would only have to endure his attentions until I produced an heir. Then, he would take his carnal pleasures with his mistress and leave me alone.”

“The dowager countess told you
that
?” Maeve stammered, to hide her shock at discovering that in spite of all that had happened, Meg still considered herself betrothed to Theo.

Meg nodded. “Those were her very words and comforting words they were, too. In fact, if she hadn’t called on me the day before the earl made his offer, I would never have accepted him, no matter how much Papa insisted I must.”

A dark red flush crept into her cheeks and she leaned closer to Maeve to whisper confidentially, “I know all about the unspeakable humiliations a woman must endure in the marriage bed, you see.” She shivered. “It’s a lucky thing women of the lower classes seem to like that sort of thing, which is why so many of them become mistresses or,” her blush deepened, “even whores. For how could any lady of breeding endure married life if her husband didn’t have such unspeakable creatures on whom to slake his lust?”

“How indeed?” Maeve raised her eyes to the ceiling and prayed for patience. She was tempted to tell Meg that their own mother had been one of those “unspeakable creatures,” but that would have been beyond cruel.

“I suppose it was the dowager, coldhearted witch that she is, who educated you on the horrors of married life.”

Meg stared at her in obvious dismay. “As a matter of fact, it was my maid, Betty. And how can you speak so disparagingly of the countess? The woman is kindness itself. Why she even went so far as to promise I needn’t worry about becoming the mistress of Ravenswood; I could simply leave the management of the staff in her hands, just as it’s always been.” She twisted her handkerchief into a tight knot. “It was only when I was in London and couldn’t seek her sage advice, that I became frightened and ran away.”

Maeve shook her head. She couldn’t believe her twin could be so gullible where the countess was concerned, or so prejudiced against the man to whom she’d allowed herself to be betrothed by their father. In truth, if any other woman had divulged what Meg just had, she’d have judged her a trifle dim-witted.

But how ironic that she, herself, should be the one to defend Theo so vigorously to her timid, confused sister.

Could it really have been only a few short weeks ago that she’d naively convinced herself she despised all males and was, therefore, immune to the passions that controlled the lives of so many other women?

Lily had warned her that when the right man came along, she’d change her mind. She could do no less than give her twin the same warning. But then a thought struck her. Maybe that right man had already come along for Meg.

“What about your good friend, Richard?” she asked. “Do you find the thought of physical intimacy with him abhorrent?”

Meg gave her a look which clearly said she had gone mad. “Richard isn’t a man. He’s a vicar,” she said indignantly. “I cannot believe he would stoop to indulging in the disgusting practices men like the earl enjoy.”

Maeve wasn’t so positive Richard lacked the normal male instincts. She remembered a certain look in his eyes the night of the ball when he’d believed her to be Meg. “Vicars have children,” she suggested. “How do you account for that?”

“I don’t know,” Meg admitted, her eyes widening with something akin to horror. “But I’m certain it can’t be
that
way.”

Maeve could see there was no point in belaboring the touchy subject. That prim and proper governess Mrs. Pinkert had mentioned had obviously kept Meg completely ignorant of the ways of men and women, and this was not the time to attempt to educate her.

In fact, she glanced at the clock ticking away on the mantle, there was no time left for anything except the briefest of goodbyes. Noon would be upon her before she knew it.

“It breaks my heart to think of leaving you now that I finally have a sister of my very own,” she said, though in truth, she was a bit disappointed to find Meg and she had so little in common.

Leaving?” Meg’s face fell. “Where will you go? And how can you consider such a thing when we’ve only just found each other?”

“I have no choice. I must catch the noon mail coach to London.”

Tears puddled in Meg’s eyes. “But why?”

“Think on it,” Maeve said, determinedly hardening herself against her sister’s obvious distress. “Two Megs at Barrington Hall is one too many at the moment. Maybe once you’ve sorted things out with the earl …”

It was a lame excuse, but she would only frighten her timid sister if she explained that her real reason for leaving so hurriedly was her belief that she’d better be as far away from Ravenswood as possible when Theo discovered he’d been the victim of a hoax. She’d seen him turn into an absolute bear over something as trivial as the sinking of a rowboat; she could well imagine how angry and mortified he’d be when he realized he’d declared his love for an imposter—even trusted his darkest secret to her.

“Don’t cry, Meg,” she pleaded, when her twin began to do so in earnest. “I can’t take you with me at the moment, for I’ve just enough money to get myself to London. But if all goes well, I should be able to support us both before long. Then you can come live with me in the little house our mother willed me and forget all about the squire and his scheme to marry you to a man you despise.”