Unmasked by the Marquess

by Cat Sebastian

  With a clatter, Keating placed a tray of buttered muffins on the table before her. “I wish I knew what your game was. That way I’d know what to tell the magistrate when I get called before him.”

  “I don’t have a game. We wait here for a few more days. If Alistair has come to his senses and realizes he doesn’t want anything to do with me, then he’ll pretend he doesn’t know I’m here. And you and I will go to India, like we told Clifton.”

  “And if his bloody lordship does turn up?”

  “Don’t be so boring, Keating,” she drawled, languidly stretching her arms over her head. “You can’t expect me to spoil all your surprises.” In truth, Charity had no idea what would happen if Alistair came. It was quite possible he’d be furious and turn them out into the street. In which case, they’d go off to India as planned and she wouldn’t have lost anything by coming here.

  “Hmph. Maybe you’ll let me in on the secret of why we had to come to this drafty shambles of a house instead of going to London like civilized people.”

  “I told you. I wanted to see it.” Also, she wanted to give Alistair the chance to avoid meeting her or even acknowledging her existence. That would give him a graceful, gentlemanly way to end things.

  Keating flounced out. All things considered, he hadn’t complained about this interlude at Broughton nearly as much as she had expected. Perhaps he had found some handsome and like-minded fellow to pass the time with.

  Charity, for her part, was almost enjoying herself. Never before in her life had she been utterly without occupation. Even during those months in London, which had been the closest to a holiday she had ever experienced, she had been busy; between escorting Louisa and trying to pack a lifetime’s worth of amusement into a span of weeks, she had hardly sat still. But here at Broughton Abbey there was nothing to do. She felt wonderfully indolent.

  It truly was a terrible house, though. None of the chimneys worked properly, the furniture was almost universally uncomfortable, and there were some very noisy bats in the attic. It was no wonder that previous generations of de Laceys had sought pleasures of the flesh after being reared in such a comfortless place as this.

  She read a few more pages of her novel, but was interrupted by the sound of heavy footsteps in the hall, rapidly approaching the library. Realizing that it didn’t sound like Keating’s step, she only had time enough to scramble up from her reclined position when the double doors to the room were flung open.

  And there stood Alistair, the capes of his greatcoat billowing behind him.

  “You,” he said, relief and exasperation in his voice.

  “Me,” she agreed affably.

  “Why the devil are you wearing that?” He still hadn’t moved from the door.

  “This?” She touched the bodice of the blue-gray gown. “You bought it for me. And I pawned the other one for Keating’s wages.” Which he had promptly spent on the stagecoach fare to Shropshire, but that was neither here nor there.

  “I damned well know I bought it for you. Why are you wearing it, though?”

  “I don’t want to tell you when you’re acting so abominably.” She sniffed. She wanted to fling herself into his arms, kiss that angry line between his eyebrows, then knock him to the ground and kiss him some more.

  He was across the room in three strides. “Miss—wait, are you going by Miss Church?”

  “I told your housekeeper I was Mrs. Selby.”

  His voice was a low and sinister rumble. “Mrs. Selby, then. Why are you dressed as a decent and respectable lady when in fact you are a scoundrel who runs off in the middle of the night in order to commit untold felonies and nearly worry me to my grave?”

  “The men’s clothes you bought me were quite ruined in the boating accident, if you must know, and I was too dispirited to steal another set.” She took a deep breath. This was how gamblers felt before rolling the dice. “Besides, I thought I ought to present myself as a marriageable sort of person in the event that anyone wanted to marry me.”

  He took her hands in his, nearly crushing them. “Hear me now, Robin. I will marry you regardless of what you’re wearing. And I will marry you. You could be dressed as a goat or as the Archbishop of Canterbury and it’s all the same to me.”

  Perhaps she wasn’t made to withstand this degree of happiness, because she thought she was about to burst. “Alistair, do you realize that you have a kitten peeking out of your coat?”

  “We’ll discuss kittens later. Will you marry me, Robin?”

  She couldn’t quite bring herself to say yes, afraid that the joy of it might make her faint. But she gave a sharp nod, and was rewarded by the answering flash of triumph in Alistair’s eyes. “You’d have to do something about Clifton. He wants a death certificate.”

  “Then you shall have a death certificate as a wedding present, my dear. But you leave Clifton to me.” The look in his eyes made Charity nearly feel very bad for poor Maurice Clifton.

  “You do realize you’ll be sinking yourself even below your father’s bad reputation?” She needed to get all these doubts out of her mind. She wanted to throw them onto the floor before him like birds that needed plucking and dressing before they could be cooked. “You’ll be branded an eccentric, possibly a lunatic, for having a wife who goes about in men’s clothes. Your heirs—”

  “Our heirs,” he corrected her, squeezing her hands.

  “Our heirs,” she amended, her heart giving an extra beat, “will be touched by the scandal.”

  “It will be my pleasure, my absolute delight to deal with anyone who wants to make trouble for my wife or children. You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to it.”

  “I’m afraid you haven’t yet realized how much trouble this will all be.”

  “You’ve been nothing but trouble since I met you. And I’ve never been happier. I want a lifetime of trouble from you.”

  She extricated her hands from his and wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down for a kiss. This was what it was like, then, to finally know that everything was going to be fine. It was a pair of hands on her lower back, drawing her close.

  When they broke the kiss and she laid her head on his shoulder, she could feel his heart pounding.

  “Now do I get to hear about the kitten?” The creature was peering around Alistair’s neck at Charity. It looked like the head of a dandelion, like if she breathed too hard it might blow away.

  “No. Now I take you upstairs to what will be the worst bed you’ve ever slept in, and I get you out of those clothes.”

  Alistair leaned against the heavy oak headboard in order to better enjoy the sight of Robin sprawled naked and sated across the monstrous bed. Her presence somehow made sense of the moth-eaten velvet hangings, not to the mention the sheer acreage of the mattress. He planned to use this bed to have her in ways he hadn’t even thought of yet.

  The kitten was under the decided impression that Robin’s foot, concealed by a sheet, was a mouse or some other small creature in need of instant fluffy death. Every time the cat reared up and pounced, Robin let out that champagne pop of laughter.

  “I was starting to think you really did mean to leave the country without a word,” he said after a few minutes.

  “I nearly did,” she confessed, rolling over to face him, chin in hand. “I am in a pickle with Clifton, you know. He said either I had to get him Robbie’s death certificate, or he would expose Louisa and you as accomplices. But—”

  “Me? The bastard dared to name me?” Oh, putting this fellow in his place was going to be a pleasure.

  “Yes, so I didn’t think I had much choice but to go through with that boating accident scheme. Keating entirely disapproved, by the way.”

  “And rightly so.” He was glad that she hadn’t been entirely on her own during their time apart.

  “Anyway, it wasn’t until I had dried off and gotten a hot meal—”

  “Wait.” His mind was reeling. “You can’t mean to tell me that you actually went overboard? Wh
y could you not devise a way to stage a drowning without risking death?”

  “I was seeking verisimilitude. Self-preservation wasn’t much of a priority at the time. And I thought it was the only way I could make it up to you. Anyway, once my mind cleared, I thought to myself, Charity, you fool, you know a man with power and influence and a bit of ready money. He’ll help you.”

  “You’re damned right, I’ll help you. That’s what I tried to tell you in Little Hatley, but I made a hash of it. Listen, Robin. You jumped off a boat to prevent scandal from touching me or Louisa. Surely you’ll allow me to make far lesser sacrifices for you.”

  She regarded him gravely for a moment. “I’m not used to being on that end of things.”

  “I know you aren’t. But you did let your first husband send you to Cambridge.” He watched her face register his phrasing.

  “Oh, you’re going to be like that, are you? ‘Oh, but you let your first husband do such-and-so.’” He gathered that her snooty accent was meant to be an impression of him. “If you recall, my going to Cambridge was the thing that started all this trouble.”

  “Bollocks. If you hadn’t gone to Cambridge dressed as the scamp you are, you would never have found yourself on this lumpy mattress tormenting an innocent cat. Your sister would never have become Lady Gilbert de Lacey. And your pestilential Aunt Agatha would never have become an esteemed bluestocking, which she is, according to Amelia Allenby. And, in a roundabout way, I would never have settled the Kent property on Gilbert or that money on the Allenby girls if I hadn’t met you, and surely that counts for something.”

  Her mouth was hanging open. “You—the Allenbys—money?” He had never seen her so discomposed.

  He nodded and then made a dismissive gesture. There was time enough to talk about the Allenbys later. “Robin, I don’t think I’ll ever have the words to describe what you did for me. I was living a half life until that day you let Louisa’s bonnet loose in Hyde Park. Portia says I was on ice, and she has the right of it. I wasn’t living. I was only . . . there.”

  “Well,” she said, her eyes wet, “somebody really ought to build a statue of me. I’m amazing.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” he murmured, pulling her close, still hardly able to believe that he had her here, with him. “Never forget it.” He had been an appalling fool during his last trip to Broughton, when he hadn’t been able to imagine her here. She was the only wife for him, she was the only conceivable mistress for this house. Dreary and derelict, Broughton needed champagne laughter and infinite sunniness. It needed love. He needed love.

  A few minutes later Alistair found himself imprisoned in bed. Robin had fallen asleep on one of his shoulders, and the kitten had fallen asleep on his opposite arm. He wouldn’t be getting off this lumpy mattress anytime soon. And he was completely fine with that.

  “Too unfair, Robin.” Alistair looked up from the letter he was writing and tossed his quill aside. “Not sporting at all.” He looked at her hungrily, raking his gaze over her body. “Shut that door and come over here so I can look at you properly.”

  She had spent hours ransacking the attics of Broughton Abbey in search of something suitable to wear, and had turned up some old frock coats and shirts with ruffled cuffs. These garments, along with breeches that must have been Gilbert’s at some point, gave her something of a swashbuckling air.

  Today was the first time she had dressed like this—she was going to stop thinking of these clothes as men’s clothes, because in fact they were hers—because she wanted to wear them, not as part of a necessary disguise. She was soon to be Robin de Lacey, she was dressed vaguely like a pirate, and she was delighted with herself.

  She spun in a circle so he could admire her.

  He leered wolfishly at her. “You look like a corsair.”

  “I know!” she said, clapping her hands together in satisfaction. “That’s exactly what I thought.”

  He took her hand and reeled her in so she was standing in between his legs. “I’m going to have you on this desk, you know,” he said, his voice low and silky. She felt his hand skim along the curve of her backside.

  “Very likely,” she said. “But not today.” She sank to her knees.

  “Oh, hell.” He sank back further in his chair, though, giving her access to the fall of his breeches. Twisting his fingers in her hair, he tilted her head so she had to look at him. “This is the first time your hair has made any sense at all. It’s pirate hair. Almost long enough for a queue, but not quite.”

  With his thumb, he traced her lower lip, but she caught it in her mouth and lightly sucked it.

  He swore under his breath.

  For weeks she had felt lucky to be desired by a man who was open-minded enough to tolerate her strange attire. But it occurred to her now, looking at his darkening eyes and feeling his erection hardening beneath her touch, that it wasn’t a question of toleration. He liked this. He liked her, funny clothes and odd hair and the entire in-betweenness of her. She wasn’t an ordinary woman, but he wasn’t an ordinary man either. They fit together, and it felt right.

  Agreeing to marry Alistair had been the biggest gamble she had ever taken, because she wasn’t wagering only her own security and happiness but his as well. He was confident that he could find a way to satisfy Clifton’s demands; he had assured her that he would be able to weather any scandal that resulted from their union. She wouldn’t rest easy, though, until she had seen with her own eyes that she hadn’t brought shame and sorrow upon him. It was all well and good for him to say that he wanted to make sacrifices for her, but until he knew what that meant it was only pretty words.

  She freed him from his breeches and drew him slowly, inch by inch, into her mouth, savoring his heaviness on her tongue, enjoying every groan and shudder she elicited from him. Even if things went horribly awry, they would have this. They would have one another, they would have the way their bodies connected. She only hoped it wouldn’t be spoilt by shame and resentment.

  “Robin,” he said some time later. “Tell Keating to pack your bag. Let’s get back to London where you can make an honest man of me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Before they left Broughton, Alistair wrote a letter to Maurice Clifton, requesting the honor of his presence at Pembroke House to discuss the matter of the Fenshawe inheritance. The man said he wanted a death certificate, but Alistair was willing to wager that he’d accept something else. Not necessarily something less—for as tempting as it was to punish Clifton for his attempt to blackmail Robin and implicate Alistair himself, the fact remained that under the law Fenshawe ought to be his, and Alistair would do his part to set things right.

  He and Robin both wrote to Gilbert and Louisa, begging that they cut short their trip and return to London for the wedding. Because even though Robin had declared that she would sooner die than have a proper wedding at St. George’s Hanover Square (“if you think I’m going to deck myself out with orange blossoms and walk down an aisle, you can go sod off,” the future marchioness had declared), Alistair wasn’t going to get married in a hole-in-corner manner. No, for his plan to succeed he needed this marriage to be properly witnessed and then freely discussed.

  He would not have anyone, least of all Robin, think that he had the smallest particle of shame or reservation about this marriage. He was having her and holding her for the rest of his life, rumors and scandal notwithstanding. He was the Marquess of Pembroke, and that had to count for something. People could say what they liked; ladies could whisper behind their fans and men could give him the cut direct. But he was still one of the highest ranked men in the nation. If he held his head high, confident that he was as correct and gentlemanly as he ever had been—no, more than he ever had been—then that would put paid to most scandal-mongering.

  Not all of it, though. He wasn’t that naive. But what did he care if a couple of prigs turned their backs when he walked into White’s? They were free to do so, and he’d simply know them for the fools they were. Those dear to hi
m would know better.

  That was something else Robin had done for him. A few months ago he hadn’t cared much for anyone, and he had been confident that nobody cared at all for him. Now he knew that he had a handful of people who valued him for more than his rank and his fortune.

  When they arrived at Pembroke House, he addressed Hopkins in his blandest tone of voice. “This is Mrs. Selby, soon to be Lady Pembroke. You’ve met her before as Mr. Robert Selby. Youthful pranks, you understand. She’ll stay in the green bedchamber until the wedding.”

  Hopkins, not even raising an eyebrow, merely replied, “Quite right, my lord,” and that had been the end of it. Alistair knew the rest of the staff would follow suit, and if they had a problem with the new marchioness, they were free to find other employment.

  Robin took this all in stride as well, deploying her customary charm on the befuddled housemaids. Things might be awkward for a while, but he couldn’t really envision a world in which people didn’t like his Robin, however little she conformed to their expectations.

  While Robin settled in, Alistair wrote two letters. The first was to Lady Pettigrew, to whom he announced his forthcoming marriage in much the same terms as he had used to Hopkins. He wrote that her presence at the ceremony was essential to his happiness, by which he knew she would infer that her nephews and grandchildren would not be able to look to the Marquess of Pembroke for favors unless she bent to his will.

  The next letter was to Mrs. Allenby, and it contained much the same information, but without the implied threat, because he didn’t doubt for the slightest moment that all the Allenbys would celebrate his marriage under any circumstances.

  Maurice Clifton arrived the next morning. Judging by his appearance, he had only now arrived in London and come directly to Alistair. Good.

  “Mr. Clifton. I won’t keep you for too long,” Alistair said without rising from his chair. “I’m to marry Mrs. Selby, your cousin’s widow.” With some satisfaction, he watched the blood drain from Clifton’s face. “As you may be aware, the future Lady Pembroke is a high-spirited young lady inclined to merriment and pranks, including masquerading as her husband in order to attend university. My understanding is that this has caused you some difficulties regarding the inheritance of Fenshawe.” This was a statement, not a question. Clifton had no information that Alistair required, and he wanted to make that perfectly clear.