Unmasked by the Marquess

by Cat Sebastian

  In a manner befitting a marquess. Yes, that’s what he’d hang on to, that’s how he would get through the painful atrocity that would be this ball. He was a bloody marquess. If he held a ball, it would be, by definition, everything that a ball ought to be. He would cling to the dignity of his station, to his birthright.

  A marquess, as long as he behaved like one, could not be diminished by any grasping charlatans or shameless frauds. Or penniless foundlings driven to extremes to help their friends—

  He would not let his mind travel down that path. No more would he indulge in this sort of sentimental flight of fancy. He would not tarnish his standing out of misguided sympathy for the criminal classes.

  Alistair brushed the dirt off his gloves and went back inside.

  Charity had retreated to the tiny, musty study at the rear of their rented house, the room where Louisa wrote letters to the Fenshawe steward and Keating hid from the rest of the staff. For days now, Charity had avoided the drawing room. She couldn’t bear to face anyone. Leaving the house and risking running into Lord Pembroke was entirely out of the question. Aunt Agatha, grumbling but compliant, had risen to the occasion and accompanied Louisa to the park and on afternoon calls.

  The door creaked noisily open, revealing Lord Gilbert standing on the threshold. Some confused servant must have sent him back here, to what had to be the shabbiest room he had ever graced with his aristocratic presence.

  “This is dashed awkward, but can I ask you a favor, Selby?”

  “Of course,” she managed, attempting what she hoped might pass as a smile. “Anything.”

  “It’s my brother. He’s a . . . well, you know.” He fidgeted uncomfortably on the hard chair. “I hardly need tell you. On the best of days he’s a bit hard to take. All grimaces and lectures, you know.”

  She did know. Only a few days ago she had found it charming, possibly because it was so plainly a front, and who better than she to know a front when she saw one? The real Lord Pembroke wanted to read lurid novels and cuddle on the sofa. All this lord-of-the-manor business was because he was embarrassed by his father’s excesses and anxious about providing for those who would have been cut off without a groat if he hadn’t stepped in to shore up the estate’s finances. And one of those beneficiaries was none other than Lord Gilbert, who surely ought to know better than to complain about the brother who kept him in shiny boots and ample brandy.

  “He has high standards,” she said, knowing full well that the cause of their rift was the fact that she did not meet those standards and never could.

  “Of course,” Gilbert said quickly, his handsome face contrite. “But I don’t reckon he needs to be quite so insufferable about them. This morning he threatened to stop my allowance if I don’t take holy orders and move to Kent.”

  Charity privately thought that nobody ought to be a clergyman if they didn’t feel called to it, but at the same time considered Gilbert a total ingrate. If he couldn’t put his mind to making himself feel called, surely he could figure out some way to earn a living without his brother’s money. “And what can I do to help?” she asked, not sure where she came into this.

  “Well, like I said, it’s an awkward business.” He gazed around the room, as if his surroundings would offer some clue as to what to say, some path through whatever doubtlessly minor awkwardness was troubling him.

  Charity knew the exact moment he noticed the peeling plaster, or maybe it was the faded draperies or threadbare carpets, because he snapped his gaze back to her. He was embarrassed to be here—he was embarrassed to have noticed what kind of place this was. He only tolerated the drawing room because Louisa was in it, a sufficient ornament to compensate for acres of worn upholstery.

  “Whatever falling-out you’ve had,” Gilbert continued, his cheeks reddening, “do you think you could see your way to patching it up?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t—”

  “I don’t blame you for it,” he said, the words coming out in a rush. “He’s so prickly, it’s a wonder we all don’t quarrel with him. But he was so much . . . happier, I suppose, when you were around. If he wants to cut off my allowance, that’s fine. I’ll manage. But I don’t think he’d want to do that unless he was miserable. Do you see?”

  Charity did see. And she agreed—that did sound like the action of an unhappy man. But knowing that Pembroke was miserable, and that it was her fault, only poured salt on her wound.

  And what did it matter that she enjoyed this sham, this fraud? So what if by now she felt more at home as Robert Selby—Robin, she thought with a pang—than she did as Charity Church? Miss Church was a poor creature, a housemaid, with no family and no future, no possessions beyond the drab gray dress she wore to clean the floors of a house she was allowed to live in only on sufferance. Robin Selby, though, was free. Robin danced and laughed, was at ease with lords and ladies, and was able to take care of the people he loved.

  But in a few months, a year at the utmost, there’d be no reason for her to keep up this charade. Once Louisa was married, Charity would have to give up this life.

  Sooner, if Pembroke chose to expose her. The possibility of exposure had always seemed vague, contingent. But now she felt like a prisoner listening to the beams of a scaffold being hammered into place outside her cell. Her one hope was that exposing her deceit would create precisely the sort of scandal that Pembroke would want to avoid.

  Lord Gilbert coughed, forcing her thoughts back to the present. “Do you think you could just make it up with him? He’ll never apologize for whatever it is he did to keep you away, so perhaps you could take the matter in hand?”

  But he had apologized to her. Twice. First for criticizing Aunt Agatha, then for commenting on her thinness. What must it have cost him to so uncharacteristically swallow his pride? And how must that memory compound his outrage, to know he had lowered himself to begging pardon of the very person who had duped him?

  “I’m afraid I’m the one who owes the apology,” she admitted.

  Lord Gilbert laughed, a startled and embarrassed sound. “Oh, I doubt that. You’re so agreeable, you and your sister. I can’t imagine either of you provoking a quarrel. But it’s kind of you to take the blame. Do you think you could pay a call on him this afternoon? Just to show him that you mean to go on as you have?”

  She tried to imagine showing up at Pembroke House and acting as if the events of the other day had never happened. He’d have her committed to a lunatic asylum.

  She felt the blood drain from her face when she realized that this was an actual possibility. A man with his connections might very well cause a woman of her crimes to be sent to Bedlam or worse. And then what would become of Louisa?

  No. She would simply have to depend on his distaste for any kind of scandal, and refuse to consider whether there were methods a peer of the realm might employ to dispose of her quietly and without any notoriety attaching to his name.

  “Are you quite all right, Selby?” Lord Gilbert had come to kneel by Charity’s side. “You looked like you were about to faint.”

  He was a kind man. Harmless, despite being aimless and spoiled. She couldn’t even bring herself to resent his unearned good fortune or the part he might play in this unfolding disaster.

  “I’m coming down with something, I dare say,” she lied.

  “Oh, no. You’re not going to get sick.” He rose to his feet. “If you don’t show up at my brother’s ball tomorrow, I’ll come here and fetch you myself, even if you have typhus. There are too many people who are counting on you and your sister to be there—”

  “We’ll be there,” she said. She wanted to lock herself away in this cheerless room, but that would do no one any good. They would have to go to the ball. There was no way around it. It was either that or they might as well give up London entirely. A few more weeks and one of the gentlemen who had been infesting the drawing room would offer for Louisa. Pembroke’s ball was exactly what they needed to bring this sham to a close. Each suitor would realize
how very in demand Louisa was, and would hurry to win her hand before any of his competitors.

  A fortnight at the utmost, another month before a wedding could take place. During that time she would count on Pembroke not wanting a scandal.

  And then she would disappear, as if by a conjurer’s trick.

  Revenge was beneath the Marquess of Pembroke. Revenge was best left to cuckolded farmhands and medieval popes, jealous fishwives and mad Plantaganets. Gentlemen who wore perfectly tied cravats and whose account books were testaments to rectitude had no need for anything so base as revenge. For such gentlemen, the mere knowledge of their superiority, their ability to outrank and outclass everyone around them, ought to afford sufficient comfort.

  So why was it that Alistair spun himself yarn after yarn of how he would bring The Impostor low? He had one very sustaining fantasy of having that fraudulent creature tossed onto a ship and sent to the icy reaches of Canada, where there would be nobody to swindle or beguile but great white bears and bloodthirsty French trappers. It was cold there, and dark. Wintry and barren and silent.

  A sun-kissed face and an infectious laugh would be quite wasted. Useless, in fact. Charm couldn’t protect one from frostbite. There, The Impostor would be quite as cold and alone as Alistair felt now, as Alistair had felt two months ago.

  Robin. The coming of spring, he had once said.

  Alistair wished he were the sort of man to smash glasses, to throw crockery at the wall, to swear at servants. Perhaps those men had the right of it—one explosion of anger followed by an embarrassed return to normality.

  No, Alistair did not wish that. He was levelheaded, he was both rational and reasonable. He neither threw nor swore.

  He fantasized about sending people to Canada. No trace of madness there.

  “Fuck!” he attempted. Nothing. His anger and sorrow had not dissipated. “Damn!” he tried, vaguely embarrassed to raise his voice in an empty room. Still no use.

  “Alistair?” came a hesitant voice from the doorway. The longer he spent in this library, the more timidly people addressed him.

  Mortified, he slowly pivoted around. It was Gilbert.

  “Everything all right here?” his brother asked, quite unnecessarily. There were babies in their prams, minnows in the brook, stars shining upon distant planets who could look at the Marquess of Pembroke and tell that things were far from right.

  “I was conducting an experiment,” Alistair said, likely compounding the inanity of the scene, but he was speaking the truth and that had to count for something. “I wanted to see if swearing made me feel better.”

  “Did it?” Gilbert looked genuinely curious.

  Alistair tried to look like a detached, impartial man of science. “It did not.”

  “Ah. Doesn’t work for me either. Worked a charm for Father, though.”

  Alistair had forgotten that. It was a dark day indeed when Alistair found himself emulating his father.

  He remembered what had transpired the last time he had seen his brother. “Did you consider my proposal?” It was high time Gilbert established himself at that rectory, settled down, and lived responsibly. Alistair needed to see Gilbert safe, provided for, with some direction to his life.

  “That’s why I came. I’ll always be grateful that you offered it to me, but I have to decline. I’m sure there are many worthy fellows who’ll be happy to have such a good living. Give it to one of them. But not me.”

  Idiot. Idiot.

  Alistair sighed and sank into the chair by the fire. It was warm for April, but the fire was blazing. Likely the housemaids lacked the temerity to question his cranky lordship about whether he still required a fire. Gilbert poured them both glasses of brandy and pressed one into his hand, a kindness Alistair knew he did not deserve.

  He tried to school his voice into some semblance of calm, as if it meant nothing to him to cast his brother adrift. “I don’t dare hope that you have some reasonable, alternative plan for your future,” he said after a sip of brandy. It was not a question, merely an observation. He had given up trying to figure out the man.

  “Well, actually . . .” Gilbert began.

  Alistair hastily drained his glass. Had any sensible observation commenced with “Well, actually”? If so, Alistair had never heard it.

  “I was thinking of trying my hand at farming.”

  “Oh my God,” Alistair said. This again. The younger son of a marquess becoming a farmer. The mind reeled. Of course there were some gentlemen who made a hobby of improving the farms connected with their estates, and were forever writing letters to publications that one could evidently subscribe to if one wished to pursue that particular mania. But these were great landholders, operating on a scale that Gilbert could not aspire to. Alistair feared Gilbert had in mind a mule and a plow, a straw hat and a watercolored rustic idyll.

  “I shan’t ask you for anything,” Gilbert said, a mite too stiffly. “I’ll do this on my own.”

  And when he inevitably failed, Alistair would bail him out. They both knew it, but it wouldn’t do to say it aloud. “I see.” Alistair tipped his head against the back of the chair and studied the motes of dust that were caught in the lamplight. “I wish you luck.”

  “What happened between you and Selby?” Gilbert asked.

  “Excuse me?” Alistair straightened so abruptly he nearly injured his neck. “I have no notion of what you mean. What have you heard?” Only after he saw the stunned expression on his brother’s face did he realize that those last words were only heard from the mouths of guilty men.

  “It’s only that I noticed that he hasn’t been here or at the club, and when I called on him this afternoon—”

  “You went there?” Alistair could feel his cheeks heat and took a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

  “I often do,” Gilbert replied evenly. “Anyway, he hasn’t even been in his own drawing room these past few days, so I nosed around the house until that strange butler of theirs brought me to him. I asked him if the two of you had a falling-out—”

  “You what?” Alistair roared.

  “I was concerned.” Gilbert seemed not to notice that his brother was practically foaming at the mouth. “I know how awful you are about admitting when you’re in the wrong, and thought to tell him so. That way he didn’t think it was personal. But he said that he was the one in the wrong, and—”

  Alistair laughed, dry and joyless. “Oh he did, did he? How noble. How very generous-minded of him.”

  Gilbert was now regarding him in plain astonishment. The fellow could never make his face do anything other than advertise his thoughts. “What on earth happened?”

  “I’m not at liberty to—”

  “Please don’t hide behind moral superiority.” This was the first hint of frustration with his older brother’s foul mood that Gilbert had betrayed today. “If you know anything about the Selbys—Miss Selby in particular—that you believe renders them unfit for our friendship, you’d do best to tell me.”

  Alistair curled his lip. “Why, are you going to call me out?”

  “Alistair, just listen to yourself! I’m asking because I intend to marry Louisa Selby and if there’s some reason I shouldn’t, you ought to tell me.”

  “And you’d listen to me for once? I doubt it. But have it your way. I can think of nobody less suitable to be your wife than Miss Selby. Marry whom you please.” Hell, if he were to be a farmer he could sink as low as he liked. “But not Miss Selby. Anyone else. I couldn’t bear it.” Those last words he hadn’t meant to speak out loud. But they were the truth—he didn’t know how he could endure a constant reminder of The Impostor. Of his own loss.

  “Ah,” Gilbert said after a long moment. “I see.”

  Alistair truly hoped that he did not.

  Chapter Eight

  Miss Church—Mr. Selby—Alistair had quite given up on the matter—danced every dance, fetched drinks for spinsters and wallflowers, and in general charmed and delighted a ballroom filled with jade
d and cynical members of the ton.

  A week ago, Alistair would have been proud, would have considered it a feather in his cap to have discovered such a fellow. Not only that, but he would have shared in his friend’s triumph.

  Now he only marveled at the layers of deceit involved in this performance. It was absolutely impossible to look at Miss Church and see a woman. From the way she walked, to her manner of speaking, to the gallant way she brought ratafia to the ladies, she was every inch the fashionable young gentleman.

  In the natural course of things, somebody ought to be fetching her ratafia, oughtn’t they? He tried to envision The Impostor wearing a white muslin gown and graciously receiving a proffered beverage, but the image proved quite elusive.

  One who had made a less thorough study of her over the last month would have thought that tonight she was the happiest of God’s creatures. Her smile never slipped, her laugh—perhaps a trifle flatter than the champagne pop that had won his idiotic heart—still cut through the hum of music and chatter. And yet he knew from Gilbert’s report that she was not happy. She was quite possibly as distressed as he was, and indeed she had more reason for sorrow: they both knew perfectly well that he had the whip hand. The one time she had let her gaze stray to her host, he saw a flicker of fear on her open countenance. And rightly so. He could ruin her and her sister without even going out of his way, without using up a fraction of his power and esteem.

  He surveyed the ballroom, glittering evidence of that power and esteem. A royal duke danced with a Russian princess. The prime minister stood by the door to the card room. Thousands of beeswax candles burned in highly polished chandeliers and sconces, their light sparkling off the jewels that the country’s most important families had retrieved from their vaults for the sole purpose of wearing tonight. This was, as he had known before even sending the invitations, the event of the season.

  The longer he watched, the more his eyes dazzled, the dancers dissolving into sparks of light—a ruby necklace gleamed here, a beaded gown there. And in the middle of the glittering whirl, no matter where he looked, was Charity Church. His eyes couldn’t stop resting on that one person out of all the hundreds, his gaze snagging every time on that one crooked smile, that one bird’s nest of hair.