Unmasked by the Marquess

by Cat Sebastian

Louisa regarded her dubiously. But it really was absurd, how very pretty Robbie’s little sister had turned out to be. Her hair fell in perfect flaxen ringlets and her skin was flawless. Other than her blond hair she looked nothing like Robbie, thank God, because that would have been too hard for Charity to live with.

  Charity shook her head in a futile attempt to dismiss that unwanted thought, and then blew an errant strand of hair off her forehead. “I only have to figure out how to make them notice you in the first place, and if that prig of a marquess isn’t willing to help, then we’ll find another way.”

  “Was he really that bad?”

  Charity put her hand over her heart, as if taking an oath. “I tell you, if he had a quizzing glass he would have examined me under it. He seemed so dreadfully bored and put upon, I nearly felt bad for him. But then I remembered all his money and got quite over it.”

  That made Louisa laugh, and Charity was glad of it, because it wouldn’t do for the girl to worry. Charity was worried enough for both of them. Going to Pembroke had been a last resort; he was such a loose connection of the family, but he was the best Charity could come up with. Louisa needed a husband, and she needed one soon, because Charity wasn’t sure how much longer she was going to be able to keep up this charade. Dressing like a man didn’t bother her—quite the contrary. But pretending to be Robbie when the real Robbie was cold in his grave? That was too much. It was a daily reminder of what she had lost, of what she would never have.

  Louisa put down her teacup and clasped her hands together. “I’d be glad to go to Bath for a few months. Remember that the Smythe girls found husbands there.”

  Charity remembered all too well. One of them had married a country clergyman and the other had gotten engaged to an army officer on half pay. She’s be damned if Louisa threw herself away like that. Hell, if she had gone through with this farce for Louisa to wind up marrying a curate she’d be furious.

  She had to forcibly remind herself that her feelings were immaterial. This was her chance to see Louisa settled in the way Robbie would have wanted. It was only because of the Selbys that Charity was here in the first place, clean and fed and educated, rather than . . . Well, none of that bore thinking of. She was grateful to the family, and this was her chance to take care of the last of them.

  “Listen, Charity. When I think of the expense of this London trip—”

  “You mustn’t call me that,” Charity whispered. “Servants might hear.” And if Charity knew anything about servants, which she most certainly did, it would only be a matter of time before one overheard. And then their ship would be quite sunk.

  “Oh!” Louisa cried, clapping a hand over her mouth. “I keep forgetting. But it’s so strange to call you Robbie.”

  Of course it was. Not everyone was as hardened to deceit as Charity had become. She had been assuming this role for years, from the point when the real Robert Selby had decided that he did not want to go to Cambridge and would send Charity in his stead. She, at least, was used to answering to his name. But since Robbie had died two years ago, she increasingly felt that she no longer had his permission to use his name. The deceit was weighing heavier on her with each passing day.

  All the more reason to get Louisa set up splendidly. Then Robert Selby could fade gracefully out of existence, leaving his Northumberland estate free for the proper heir to eventually inherit, while Charity would . . . Her imagination failed her.

  She would figure that out some other time. First, she’d take care of Louisa.

  “If all else fails, we’ll go to Bath or a seaside resort. I promise.” And she flashed her pretend sister her most confident smile.

  Chapter Two

  “Keep a weather eye out for any of the aunts, Alistair.” Gilbert had a playful sparkle in his eye that Alistair was glad to see after their recent disagreements. “Half the ton is out and it’s too damned fine a day to have it ruined by the likes of Aunt Pettigrew.” The young scapegrace pushed his hat down low over his brow as if that would disguise him from any passing relations.

  Alistair bit back a laugh. He shouldn’t encourage his brother in such foolishness. But he didn’t want to encounter his aunts any more than Gilbert did. Alas, they were likely lurking around here someplace, everyone in London having apparently decided as one to take advantage of weather that seemed to belong more to May than to March.

  He slowed his horse to a walk when they approached a knot of carriages. “I’ve been avoiding the aunts since before you were born. Give me some credit.”

  “Brace yourself, because Aunt Pettigrew is looking for you. Yesterday she summoned me to her house—”

  “And you went?” He had known his brother was flighty, but a man had to be a confirmed bedlamite to willingly visit Lady Pettigrew.

  “Of course not! But then she came around herself—”

  “To your rooms?” The image of Aunt Pettigrew, swathed in furs and shawls, calling at Gilbert’s bachelor lodgings at the Albany was too absurd to call to mind.

  “She sat in her carriage and waited by the entrance to my building until I came out, if you can believe it.”

  “A siege, then. You have my pity.” Here they were, talking nearly like a normal pair of brothers despite the decade that lay between them. “What the devil did she want?”

  “She asked if you were holding a come-out ball for Amelia Allenby. I told her of course not, that you’re far too snobbish—” He checked himself. “I told her you have nothing to do with the Allenbys, or balls, or debutantes,” he amended.

  “And so I don’t.” A ball for his father’s illegitimate child. What a revolting notion.

  “She went on for a while about harlots and jezebels and the sins of the father and all the rest of the usual rot.” Gilbert paused to tip his hat at a passing acquaintance Alistair did not recognize. “Oh, and something about how the hallowed halls of Pembroke House would be defiled by the spawn of sin.”

  Alistair was stunned. “She actually said that? Hallowed halls and whatnot?”

  “Hand to God.” Gilbert’s eyes were shining with merriment.

  “She’s madder than I thought.” One might have thought that the late marquess’s own sister would have known better than anybody that there was nothing hallowed about the halls of Pembroke House.

  “I daresay she’s annoyed that you didn’t engage her grandson when you were looking for a secretary.”

  Of course she was. There was always somebody who wanted something.

  But it rankled Alistair to find that he was in accord with his aunt about the Allenbys. Being allied with such a one as Lady Pettigrew was enough to make one doubt one’s convictions.

  “Have you thought about my proposal?” Alistair ventured, wanting to change the topic to something he felt surer of. But he saw right away that he had bungled things. He always did where Gilbert was concerned. He watched the smile vanish from his brother’s face like the sun disappearing behind a cloud. Damn it. But what was he supposed to do? Let Gilbert carry on in this decadent, aimless manner? Surely not. Indeed, when Gilbert had called at Pembroke House today, Alistair had thought it meant his brother was ready to listen to reason regarding his future.

  “I didn’t call on you for a lecture,” Gilbert said tightly, as if reading Alistair’s thoughts. “I thought we’d get some air, behave civilly, refrain from airing grievances or cataloging my faults for a quarter of an hour or so, but evidently I was mistaken.”

  Oh, for God’s sake, did he have to carry on like that? “The living is a good one.” It was no less than a sinecure, a comfortable rectory in Kent with a curate already there to attend to the more menial tasks. Gilbert had been disinclined to serve in the army or navy, and that left him with the church, as far as Alistair was concerned. It had been two years since Gilbert had finished at Oxford, but still he had not taken orders. Alistair was beginning to worry that his brother would take after their father in laziness and dissipation.

  “I don’t think I’m cut out to be a clergym
an.” Gilbert spurred his horse ahead.

  Alistair suppressed a groan and nudged his own horse to catch up. They had been through this at least two dozen times. “But then what will you do? You can’t mean to go on in this manner, I hope.” Drinking and gambling and going through his quarterly allowance in the span of six weeks. He could marry, but it went without saying that he’d have to marry an heiress, the Pembroke estate being stretched to the limit.

  A horrifying thought occurred to him, likely inspired by Mrs. Allenby’s visit the other day. “You don’t mean to be a poet or something, do you?”

  Gilbert let out a crack of laughter, his sullenness evidently gone as quickly as it had come. “God, you make it sound as bad as being an opium eater or a highwayman. No, dear brother, I don’t intend to write poetry. Mainly because I’m bad at it. But let your heart rest easy on that score. Nor do I intend to take to the stage or become a prize fighter.”

  Now Alistair laughed too, despite his better judgment. “A dancing master, then?”

  “No, a smuggler. We need the money.”

  Gilbert was like a toddler, his bad mood forgotten with a bit of silliness. “Why not cast your sights higher, then? Have some ambition, man.” Alistair adopted a stern expression that he feared was a near caricature of his usual self. “You could take to the seas as a privateer.”

  “Or perhaps a . . .” The younger man’s voice trailed off. “Who the devil is that girl over there?”

  Alistair was about to ask where to look when the answer became immediately clear. A few yards ahead stood the prettiest girl he had ever seen. She was hatless, of which Alistair could not approve, but that afforded them a better view of her perfect features. There was some commotion surrounding her, and her bare head was soon explained when a gentleman ran over to her with a bonnet. If she had let her bonnet loose in an effort to attract notice, she had succeeded. Half a dozen gentlemen were now approaching the man who had retrieved the errant object.

  Only then did Alistair realize that the man was none other than Robert Selby. Without thinking, he brought his horse to a stop, joining the cluster of onlookers.

  He could hear the clear ring of Selby’s laughter as he adjusted the bow under the girl’s chin to a rakish angle. She was blushing prettily and seemed flustered by the attention.

  “That, I believe, is our father’s goddaughter,” he said, watching his brother’s jaw fall open in astonishment.

  Charity could hardly keep from bouncing on her toes. They had done it. After all those futile weeks of angling for invitations and paying afternoon visits to all the decent connections she could scrape together from Cambridge, all it had taken was one badly tied bonnet.

  A dozen well-heeled gentlemen gawped at Louisa, likely wishing for an introduction. If even a quarter of them brought cards tomorrow, if even one saw fit to invite Louisa to any sort of gathering, that would repay every farthing they had spent on coming to London.

  And Louisa had played it off marvelously—blushing and stammering as if she hadn’t a clue what Charity was up to when she tugged on the bonnet ribbon. To be fair, perhaps she didn’t know—Charity hadn’t exactly informed her beforehand. Some situations called for decisive action, and sometimes gently born young ladies had to be kept in the dark when scruples were to be abandoned. But it hardly mattered, because Louisa behaved exactly as she ought to. She always did.

  Charity heard footsteps on the gravel behind her and assumed it was one of Louisa’s admirers come to get a closer look.

  “You do have a situation on your hands.” The voice was coolly amused. “My, my.”

  She didn’t need to turn her head to know who it was. Even at Cambridge she didn’t often encounter that sort of accent, cold and polished like hard steel.

  “My lord,” she said, sketching a bow to Lord Pembroke. “I’m not sure I follow your meaning.”

  “Your sister.” With his immaculately shaved chin he gestured toward Louisa. “You were quite right that she’s lovely. Too lovely, I’d venture to say. You’ll be overwhelmed with offers, but I’m afraid they’ll be all the wrong sort.”

  “You think some fellow will offer her a slip on the shoulder?” Charity bit her lip. Even merely receiving an offer to become a man’s mistress could ruin Louisa’s chances at a respectable marriage.

  If the marquess were put off by her plain speaking, he didn’t show it. “Oh, I’m certain of it.” He pulled his spectacles from his pocket and made a ceremony of unfolding them and placing them gingerly on his nose. “Luckily for you, I’ve reconsidered. I’d be most glad to take you and your sister under my wing, as it were.”

  She was momentarily stunned. Tilting her head back to meet his gaze more fully, she studied his face, searching for any hint of what had caused him to move from haughty disdain to breezy acquiescence in the span of a few days. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t kindness. There was no trace of compassion on his chiseled features. “Why?” she finally asked.

  “Does it matter?” He raised one eyebrow in a faint display of amusement.

  “Frankly, no.” And it didn’t. But she still wanted to know what had motivated their benefactor.

  He laughed softly, without any warmth. Charity had seen sneers that were friendlier.

  “At least you’re honest,” he said.

  That she most definitely was not, but she wasn’t about to contradict him on that point. “May I ask how you plan to assist us?”

  “I will hold a ball. You and your sister will be invited and I will dance with your sister. Not the first dance,” he said, as if deciding whether to toss a farthing or a ha’penny at a street sweeper, “but perhaps the second one.”

  He looked older in the daylight. In that dusty old crypt of a library she hadn’t been able to guess his age. Of course she hadn’t needed to guess, since Debrett’s told her he was thirty-four. But in the gloom, lit only by the fire that burned in the hearth behind him, he had been reduced to a silhouette of forbidding aristocratic hostility. Here in Hyde Park in broad daylight, she could make out fine lines near his eyes, magnified by his spectacles. But still, he was the sort of man one might say would be handsome, if only he made an effort, if he smiled or made any attempt whatsoever to be agreeable. Likely he had no need to be agreeable, being as rich and powerful as he was.

  How utterly repellent. She had to force her face into some semblance of gratitude.

  “You’ll dance with my sister?” She dragged her attention back to the matter at hand. A single dance? That would never suffice. Why bother making such a show of offering aid when it was so paltry?

  “There hasn’t been a ball at Pembroke House in decades.” He hesitated, and when he spoke again it was with the grudging honesty of a man not willing to participate in anything so base as a half truth. “At least, not the sort of dance to which one invites respectable ladies. Receiving an invitation will be considered a mark of the highest favor, naturally. My dancing with her will cement her position as a person of considerable interest. She will be inundated with invitations and protected from inappropriate offers. That, Mr. Selby, is what I will do for you and your sister.”

  Had she ever met a man so arrogant? She thought not. “Is that your experience, my lord? That a single dance with a young lady is enough to confer such an advantage on her? I’ve never met a marquess before so please forgive my ignorance. Is nobility a sort of contagion? Like lice or influenza?”

  For a moment she thought he would take offense. His lips pressed together into a thin white line, and for the briefest instant he was the farthest thing from handsome she could have imagined. Then he grinned, a smile so lopsided as to be wholly out of place amid his severe, aristocratic features.

  “I dare say, if this is how people act in your part of Northumberland, it explains why my father turned up there. He had no regard for the respect due his station. I once found him holed up in a cowshed with a couple of poachers. The poor fellows had no idea if they were going to get dragged before the magistrate or if they h
ad made a friend for life.” Lord Pembroke’s expression shifted from amused to reproachful, the crooked smile replaced by a frown that matched the small creases around his mouth. “Of course, in the morning he was too hungover to remember any of it.”

  In light of that fleeting smile, Charity had to revise her opinion of the man. Or at least of his face. Yes, he was insufferably arrogant and likely up to no good in his offer to help Louisa. But he was most definitely handsome, damn it. She couldn’t quite tell if it was the grin, or the face, or simply some ineffable combination of rank and privilege that created the illusion of beauty. Would she feel this tug toward him if he were a costermonger or a stable boy? Impossible to say, since he was so wrapped in layers of wealth and rank you could scarcely discern the nature of the man within.

  He caught her staring at him and raised an eyebrow in response, and she had to fight off a blush.

  Charity knew herself to have a lamentable weakness for handsome men. And now, it would seem, Lord Pembroke knew it too. There wasn’t much she could do about it in her current role, and even as a woman she doubted she was pretty enough to attract a man like this one. But it had been so long since she had been a woman that she couldn’t rightly remember.

  He pointedly cleared his throat and she realized that she was still staring at him. She decided that the more gallant course of action was to keep right on looking. Staring might be rude, but looking away would be cowardice.

  Also, she was quite enjoying looking at him.

  Lord Pembroke held her gaze for an instant, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking. “To answer your original question, before you devolved into impertinence. My dear child, I can’t remember the last time I danced with anyone, let alone a chit in her first season whom nobody has ever heard of. If you doubt that my noticing your sister will confer any advantages on her, simply wait and see.”

  “You don’t dance?” He had to be invited to dozens of balls and have infinite opportunities to dance. “Why ever not?”