Unmasked by the Marquess

by Cat Sebastian

  Charity had heard of such goings-on at White’s, but had never thought she’d see those antics with her own eyes. “I daresay if I had a bit more money I’d act the same,” she mused. There was no sense in trying to hide her lack of funds from Lord Pembroke. He had surely divined that the Selbys would have no need of his assistance if they had unlimited resources.

  Pembroke must have made some discreet gesture to a waiter, because Charity soon found herself being presented with a glass of brandy delivered by a white-gloved hand. She took a grateful sip.

  “If you were to flip through the pages of the betting book over there,” he said, gesturing across the room with his own glass of brandy, “you’d find a good number of wagers placed by my father. One day when I was feeling especially sorry for myself, I added up the amount he had lost, and I discovered it would have been enough to purchase an establishment for my brother and disencumber a number of properties that were weighed down by mortgages.”

  It was hard for Charity to accept that a peer of the realm with a house on Grosvenor Square and a horse as fine as the one he had ridden in the park the other day could have much cause for self-pity, but when she turned her head and studied his austere profile, the stern set of his jaw, she knew he was sincere about his troubles. “You speak freely of your father’s vices,” she observed.

  “I’m simply bringing you up to snuff. I haven’t told you anything the rest of London doesn’t already know.” He took a long sip. “My father was quite infamous,” he added grimly.

  He was serious-minded, this hard-featured aristocrat. It wasn’t simple arrogance that made him look down his nose at others, but full-blown moral rectitude. Charity would have bet that he was positively up to his ears in self-reproach too. All that rot ought to have gone out of style with the Crusades, as far as Charity cared.

  “I don’t hold with gambling,” was all she said. And it was true, insofar as she felt sick at the thought of gambling away money that didn’t belong to her. If she had her own money—well, that was never going to happen, was it?

  They were so near, inches away from one another, that they could keep their voices quite low. Charity wasn’t sure if she could actually feel the heat coming off his body or if her own body was playing tricks on her. All it would take would be for her to shift the smallest margin to the side and their hips would be touching, their boots rubbing against one another’s.

  At that moment Pembroke slung an arm across the back of the settee. She could feel the fine wool of his coat brushing against the hairs on the back of her head. Paralyzed by awareness, she couldn’t decide whether to sit up straighter to free herself from the closeness, or to lean back into his arm.

  It was only a companionable touch, one man to another. Men were always jostling and backslapping, treating one another with casual friendliness like so many puppies. She had participated in this easy camaraderie time and again, but there was nothing casual or easy about being near Lord Pembroke. Not only because of his rank and power, but because she wanted him, and she couldn’t disregard the sparks of warmth that seemed to travel from his body to hers.

  This was the hard part of being a man. Six years ago, when she first put on Robbie’s taken-in clothes, she had felt silly, like she was in a costume. That had lasted all of five minutes, and then she felt righter than she had in her entire life. She was supposed to be wearing breeches and top boots, riding jackets and cravats. Her hair was meant to be cropped.

  When she absolutely had to dress as a woman—those visits home from Cambridge when Robbie was still alive—she usually borrowed one of Louisa’s shabbiest and most faded gowns. She felt like a mummer, like an actor in a farce, and longed for the next chance she’d have to resume her breeches and waistcoats.

  But this proximity to a man she desired was very hard to manage. And there was no denying that she did desire Lord Pembroke, despite all his arrogance and hauteur. Or, hell, maybe because of it. He was just so bloody sure of himself, of his place in the world. And why shouldn’t he be?

  It was useless to think of him in that way, though. She had had her share of women—and men, for that matter—interested in her, but what was she supposed to do about it when they were under a misapprehension about who and what she truly was? They thought they were attracted to a young country squire, not a former housemaid dressed in her dead master’s castoffs.

  She sighed, an action that caused her to tilt back in her seat and accidentally settle against Pembroke’s arm. She stilled, wondering if he would pull his arm away. Instead she felt his fingers in her hair.

  “You really ought to do something about your hair,” he said softly, and she thought she could actually feel the vibration of his voice where his hand touched her. “It’s too long by half.” He fiddled with the ends, where her hair curled a bit around her collar.

  She turned her head toward him, not enough to dislodge his hand, but enough so she could gauge whether his expression was amused or reproachful.

  It was neither. His eyes were narrowed, his mouth curved up slightly in the faintly indulgent expression he seemed to adopt only when addressing her. He looked . . .

  He looked like he wanted to touch her as much as she wanted to be touched. God, she was lonely. And a little bit drunk. Even the friendly, sisterly touches she had used to share with Louisa were now strange and rare, hampered by the civilities of London society. She wanted to feel another person’s hands on her.

  No, she wasn’t being quite honest with herself. She wanted to feel this man’s hands on her.

  She took another sip of brandy and watched as Pembroke did the same, his hand still on her head, his eyes never leaving her face. He wanted her. Lord help her, but she wouldn’t have guessed Pembroke to be that sort of fellow. Not that she cared one way or another, except that it made her current situation a good deal more difficult.

  And more interesting.

  His hand slid into her hair, massaging the back of her scalp. She suppressed a groan of pleasure. Now, why in hell did it feel so good when other people rubbed one’s head and so pointless when one did it oneself? But this felt more than good. She felt like she needed a bucket of water dumped over her, but still she couldn’t summon up the self-control to pull away, to come up with any excuse to leave this settee, to return home, anything.

  “Robert,” he said in that low, intimate tone. “Odd, but you don’t seem like a Robert. What do they call you at home?”

  Now, how could she answer that? Robbie hadn’t seemed like a Robert either, which was why everyone had called him Robbie. “At school they called me Selby,” she answered truthfully. “Louisa calls me all manner of things.” This, too, was true.

  “Hmm,” he murmured, his hand momentarily still on her head. “Robin. That’s what I’ll call you.”

  “Like Queen Elizabeth’s Robin,” she commented, only realizing that comparing herself to a queen’s supposed lover was not perhaps quite the thing.

  That must have brought him to his senses, because he removed his hand and said, “Indeed,” in a much less intimate tone. “Robin suits you, though. Much less serious than Robert.”

  She couldn’t disagree, and she liked the idea of having a name that hadn’t belonged to poor Robbie nor been impersonally bestowed on her by the vicar’s wife. Charity Church, for heaven’s sake; it was more a designation of origin than a proper name.

  The card game broke up, and they were joined by a handful of gentlemen. Some of them Charity knew either by name or face from Cambridge, but the rest seemed to take her presence at White’s or her proximity to Pembroke as a sufficient recommendation, proof enough that she was part of their world.

  They were talking about a friend of theirs, somebody Charity had never met, so she was able to drink her brandy and observe the gentlemen without anybody paying her much attention.

  Well, strictly speaking, she was observing only Pembroke.

  He had a bit of dark stubble on his jaw. She would have figured him for the type of man to appear
only clean shaven in public. Or perhaps his beard simply grew in too fast to avoid stubble by this time of night. Surely that notion shouldn’t make her feel suffused with warmth. There was, after all, nothing so remarkable in a beard. But she wanted to reach out and feel its coarseness under her fingertips.

  His hair appeared very dark in the dim light of the club, the strands of silver only the faintest sparkle. His spectacles must have been in his pocket. Indeed, when she let her gaze roam lower, she thought she could see their shape beneath the fine wool of his coat. She could also make out the outline of lean muscles.

  It was time to leave before her thoughts went farther in this direction. She stood up, but she must have moved too fast, or perhaps she had had too much to drink, because the room began to spin around her. Her field of vision narrowed and blurred, and the next thing she knew she felt a strong arm wrap around her waist.

  “Steady now,” Pembroke murmured, his voice a rumble in her ear. “The brandy here may be stronger than what you’re used to.”

  “Must be,” she said faintly, but she rather thought it was the presence of this man who had clouded her thoughts, and not the drink.

  “Do you have a carriage waiting for you?” he asked. “Or, if I put you in a hackney, do you have anyone waiting for you at home?”

  “No carriage,” she said. That was an impossible expense. “And I daresay Louisa has been in bed for hours.”

  “Then I’ll drive you home in my carriage.” Pembroke steered her toward the door after bidding good night to the other gentlemen.

  He kept his arm around her, hauling her against him, as they descended the stairs. She let herself enjoy the feel of him solidly next to her. He smelled good, too, like books and brandy.

  “Up you go,” he said after his carriage was brought around.

  “You didn’t have to worry,” she said. “I’m not drunk, and even if I were, I can hold my liquor. I wasn’t going to embarrass you.”

  “You’re probably nine stone with your boots on. I doubt you can hold three glasses of wine.”

  He was right about that, but she wasn’t going to admit it.

  “Besides,” he continued, “I didn’t think you were going to embarrass yourself, let alone me. I wanted to go home and didn’t care to leave you in the company of those gentlemen.”

  Oh. “Thank you?”

  He laughed, low and soft. The carriage pulled up in front of her house and she opened the door.

  “Don’t thank me,” she heard him say as she descended to the street. “I seldom do anything that merits gratitude, Robin. I am always correct, but never benevolent. Remember that.”

  She hurried into the house without daring so much as a glance back over her shoulder.

  Keating opened the door for her. “Miss Louisa is waiting for you.” His arms were folded across his chest.

  “It’s two o’clock in the morning.” She handed him her gloves and coat. “She ought to be asleep.”

  “So should you. It’s no hour for a young lady to wander about London.” These last words he spoke in a barely audible whisper. Keating, of course, was in on the secret. He had been with Charity since Cambridge, ostensibly as a manservant but more often as an accomplice and an ally. And tonight, a mother hen.

  She kissed him on his grizzled cheek. “Good old Keating.”

  “Be off with you, pet.”

  When she reached the top of the stairs, she could see a light coming from under Louisa’s door. She scratched lightly on the door, quietly enough not to wake Louisa if she had already fallen asleep.

  But there came the sound of slippered feet padding across the bare floor, and the door to Louisa’s room was flung open.

  “I thought you were dead in a ditch.” The candle Louisa held was nearly burnt down. She had been waiting up for hours, then.

  “I was at the club Lord Pembroke had me join.”

  “Until two in the morning?” Louisa sniffed. “And positively reeking of brandy.”

  Charity didn’t know what bee Louisa had in her bonnet—it had nothing to do with brandy or late hours—but there was no sense in getting into it now. “The night lasted rather longer than I had thought it would. Next time I’ll send word, if you like.”

  Louisa wrinkled her nose. “And this is a Tory club, is it not?” She, like her brother before her, was a staunch Whig.

  “Yes, Pembroke insisted—”

  “Pembroke!”

  Charity was surprised by the vehemence in Louisa’s voice. Louisa was usually so mild, so easy to get along with. “He’s done us a great favor—”

  “I sincerely doubt it,” she retorted, her blue eyes glittering by the light of the candle she held in her hand. “He doesn’t seem the sort of man to do favors.”

  That observation was uncomfortably in accord with what Pembroke himself had told her not five minutes earlier.

  “Regardless,” Charity said, “it would be odd if I refused his invitation to join his club. I didn’t drink all that much, and I didn’t lose any money at the tables. I promise that there’s nothing for you to worry about.” At least, nothing more than the usual. “Besides, since when do you object to a gentleman having a bit of harmless fun?”

  Louisa stared at her, mouth hanging open. “Charity, you are not a gentleman,” she whispered.

  Charity felt herself blush. It wasn’t as if she could protest, but the fact of the matter was that she felt more like a gentleman than she did anything else. Cheeks hot, she said, “You know what I meant.”

  They stood there for a moment, regarding one another—Louisa in her white dressing gown and hair in curling papers, Charity in rumpled evening clothes, cravat rakishly askew.

  “What are you going to do after I marry, Charity?” Louisa asked, breaking the silence.

  “I don’t know.” Charity glanced away from Louisa’s face, taking in the peeling paint on the door frame. “There’s the gamekeeper’s cottage at Fenshawe. I could stay there,” she said, knowing it for a lie.

  Louisa wrapped her dressing gown tightly around her. “But we won’t own Fenshawe after Cousin Clifton inherits.”

  The “we” was generous. Charity had never owned anything, least of all the estate of Fenshawe. Robbie had owned it. And since it had been entailed, it ought to have passed to his cousin. But when Robbie died, Charity had already been attending Cambridge under his name. Her thoughts muddled by grief and confusion, it didn’t seem so terrible to keep quiet about Robbie’s death and step into his shoes at home as well. The cousin, living in Dorset, could be kept in ignorance.

  Sometimes when Charity was having a hard time falling asleep, she tried to think of exactly how many laws she had broken, how many ways she ought to have been hanged or transported. But Robbie had scarcely any property that wasn’t entailed. Louisa, not yet sixteen, would have been destitute and homeless. For the two years since Robbie’s death, they had stinted and scraped together enough money out of the estate’s income to fund this season in London and put together a modest dowry for Louisa. The plan was for Louisa to marry and then they would figure out a way to set things right, to let the cousin inherit and to allow Charity to go back to being herself.

  Whoever that was.

  “I could live with you, after your marriage,” Charity countered, already knowing that it could never happen.

  “I’d love nothing more,” Louisa said, and Charity believed it. “But I just realized that whoever I marry will recognize you as my brother. You can’t very well put on a gown and hope nobody notices the resemblance.”

  Charity had known that from the beginning. There could be no happy ending to this deception. Even when Robbie was alive and healthy and brash and persuasive, she had understood that if she went to Cambridge in his stead, there would be no going back to being plain Charity.

  Even if there were, she didn’t want any part of it. There would be no more gowns, no more floors to scrub.

  Neither could she continue as Robert Selby one minute longer than strictly n
ecessary. Charity didn’t have the stomach for it.

  She would be alone, adrift, with no name and no friends. She would, in fact, be in much the same situation she had been in before arriving at Fenshawe over fifteen years ago. The only difference was that this time her aloneness would be the result of her own choice, a sacrifice she had made to protect the one person who was left to her. She looked fondly at Louisa.

  “Charity, where will you go?” Louisa asked with her eyes wide. “What will we do?”

  She leaned forward and kissed Louisa on the cheek. “Never mind that, my girl. I have it all in hand,” she lied.

  Chapter Four

  Every time Charity turned around, the silver tray in the front hall bore a new assortment of calling cards and letters.

  “Another batch.” Keating unceremoniously dumped a pile of invitations onto Louisa’s writing desk.

  “Do try to behave like a respectable butler, Keating.” Charity adopted an arch tone. “You’re serving in a very fashionable household now.”

  “I sometimes forget. Can’t imagine why. Could be that I can’t be arsed to care.” The two of them were alone in the drawing room, so they could speak freely.

  “Or it could be that you’re a scoundrel and a reprobate.”

  “Takes one to know one.” He threw a pointed glance at Louisa’s mountain of invitations. “I hope you know what you’re getting into.”

  All Charity knew or cared about was that the drawing room was full to bursting nearly every afternoon. After having lived in virtual isolation at Fenshawe since Robbie died, this was a welcome change. The two most frequent visitors were Amelia Allenby and Lord Gilbert de Lacey. They often arrived together, Lord Gilbert bringing Miss Allenby in his curricle. Lord Gilbert’s purpose was ostensibly to call on Mr. Robert Selby, but any fool could see that he was there to moon over Louisa.

  As for Amelia Allenby, Charity looked upon her as a gift from the gods. She had never had a female friend besides Louisa, and as much as she loved Louisa, that was more a family connection than a friendship born of common interests. Miss Allenby, though, was somebody Charity could talk to on any number of subjects. She had read all the poetry that had been popular among the undergraduates in Cambridge and was even on familiar terms with a number of the poets.