The Madcap Masquerade

by Nadine Miller

  Yes, indeed, Meg would make a fine mistress for Ravenswood and for his two lesser estates. With her at his side, there would be none of the barely concealed animosity his tenants had shown toward his mother on the rare occasions when she’d accompanied him on his inspection tours.

  Things were looking up—or so he thought until he handed his horse to a solemn-faced groom and entered the door of the manor house to find utter bedlam. Two of the maids were huddled at the foot of the staircase weeping copiously, a young footman appeared about to do the same and Mrs. Heatherwood, the housekeeper, stood above them on the landing, looking for all the world like one of the fire-eating dragons of ancient mythology.

  The dragon advanced on him, eyes blazing, the moment she saw him. “Just like that, she sacked him, my lord, because his hand shook when he served the tea and a mite sloshed on the sour-faced duke—and him serving the Earls of Lynley for more than forty-five years. No disrespect to my betters, but it’s not right and it fair broke the old man’s heart.”

  It took no imagination on Theo’s part to figure out who had sacked whom. His mother had apparently flown into one of her rages and discharged Doddsworth, the ancient butler who had served three generations of the Hampton family through triumph and tragedy with quiet distinction.

  What in God’s name was the woman thinking of? Doddsworth was as much a fixture at Ravenswood as the bronze lions at the gate and the Gobelin tapestries and Baccarat chandeliers that decorated the drafty entryway.

  “Where is Doddsworth?” Theo asked. Repairing the old man’s injured feelings was the important thing at the moment; he would deal with his mother later.

  “In his chamber, packing his things. If you’ve a mind to speak to him, my lord, I’ll show you the way.”

  Theo raised a hand to forestall her. “I know the way, Mrs. Heatherwood.” Many’s the time he’d sought refuge from his mother’s rigid discipline in Doddsworth’s neat little apartment when he was a lad. The one place the countess would never demean herself to enter was the servants’ quarters.

  He knocked on the butler’s chamber door to find, as reported, that Doddsworth was indeed packing a battered brown valise—probably the same one he’d brought with him when he’d begun his service at Ravenswood nearly half a century before. Theo clasped the old fellow’s hand in his, shocked to see how uncontrollably it shook. No wonder he’d spilled the blasted tea. “So, Doddsworth,” he said, “what’s this I hear about you and my mother having a run-in?”

  “It was all my fault, my lord. I should never have tried to pour, what with my hands shaking as they do nowadays. I’m just a pride-foolish old man, too stubborn to let loose of the reins.” His rheumy eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I should have retired when the old earl died, but I convinced myself you needed me until you settled in.”

  “And so I did, Doddsworth.”

  “But now look what I’ve done. Disgraced myself and disgraced Ravenswood as well, to my everlasting shame. Did they tell you it was the Duke of Kent I spilled on?”

  “The Duke of Kent be damned. I thoroughly despise the pawky fellow. Hopefully he’ll be gone in a day or two and this sorry business will be forgotten. I’ll smooth things over with my mother and—”

  “No, my lord. You’ve enough on your plate as it is without a doddering old fool like me to worry about. The number one footman can take over my duties. The kindhearted fellow’s been quietly relieving me of more than half of them for the past year, though he thinks I don’t know it. I’m tired, my lord, and more than ready to spend the summer sitting in the sun outside my sister’s cottage in Surrey. She’s been after me to move in with her ever since she was widowed five years ago.”

  “Are you certain that’s what you want, Doddsworth? I wish you’d reconsider. It won’t seem like Ravenswood without you at the helm.”

  “I’m certain, my lord, now that I know you’ve found yourself a fine lady to be your countess. Anyone with eyes in his head can see yours will be a happy marriage, unlike that of your poor father, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”

  “I doubt my parents’ unhappiness was a secret from the staff—certainly not from you,” Theo said drily. “Neither of them made any effort to hide the fact that they despised each other, as well as the only issue that came of their hell-spawned union.”

  “Never think that, my lord. Your father loved you in his fashion. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to protect your claim to the earldom. If he spent little time with you when you were a lad, it was more than likely because you were too painful a reminder of …of the unhappy past. But forgive me, my lord, I’ve said far more than I’ve a right to.”

  Snapping the ancient valise shut, he straightened up and smiled fondly at Theo. “I’ve watched you grow from a wee babe into a strong man worthy of the title and responsibilities you’ve come into, and I’m proud to have served you and your father and your grandfather before you. But it’s younger hands you’ll be needing for what’s ahead of you now, so if you’ll be kind enough to give me the loan of a carriage to carry me to the coaching inn at Maidstone, I’ll be on my way.”

  “The carriage and John Coachman with it are yours for as long as it takes to carry you to your sister’s cottage in Surrey,” Theo declared. “And if you’ll leave her direction with my man-of-affairs, I’ll instruct him to send your pension to you there each quarter from now on.”

  Overcome with emotion, he abandoned all thought of social decorum, clasped the frail old butler in his arms and gave him a fierce hug that left them both close to tears. “God bless you, Doddsworth,” he managed in a strangled voice, “and don’t be surprised to find me dropping in for a cup of tea the next time I’m on my way to London.”

  The old man pulled a square of linen from his pocket and blew his nose. “I’ll be looking forward to it, my lord.”

  “Well that’s that then,” Theo said, and without further ado, he marched down the three flights of stairs to the entryway and sent a footman to the stables with orders to his coachman to ready his crested traveling coach. Then, through the myriad hallways of Ravenswood he strode to where Nigel Farnham, the man-of-affairs he’d inherited from his father, maintained his cluttered little office.

  “Doddsworth is retiring,” he announced as he threw open the door. “You’ll need to set up an adequate pension, to be paid quarterly, so he can live out his remaining years in comfort.”

  Farnham looked up from the account book on which he was working, a smile on his heavily jowled face. “Yes, my lord. Luckily that will be no problem since I received notification from our London banker just yesterday that the squire has already transferred a sizable portion of Miss Barrington’s dowry into your account. I shall simply start a new sheet in the pension ledger.”

  “We have other servants currently on pension? I don’t recall seeing any such accounts when I went over the books with you last winter.”

  “You would not have, my lord. The pension accounts are in a separate ledger which is locked in my safe. Only the total quarterly amount is entered in the general ledger.”

  “Are there any other accounts kept in your safe that I may have missed?” Theo asked, struggling to control his temper. Farnham was a good man and kept meticulous records, but prying information out of him was like pulling hens’ teeth.

  “No, my lord. There is nothing else in my safe except the oilskin packet Doddsworth gave me for safekeeping the day your father died.”

  “What is in the packet?”

  Farnham looked insulted. “I wouldn’t know, my lord. It is sealed.”

  Theo took a deep breath and began again. “Would you be good enough to explain why the pension accounts are secreted away in such a manner?”

  A dull red flush darkened Farnham’s pasty complexion. “I cannot say, my lord. Your father gave me explicit instructions on my first day of employment, two years ago last March, on how the pension ledger was to be handled. He did not, however, explain why.”

  “I se
e,” Theo said, but, in truth, he saw no reason whatsoever why something so simple and straightforward need be locked away in a safe. Furthermore, he had a strong suspicion that his man-of-affairs was not being entirely candid with him about this particular matter. He scowled darkly at the portly fellow. “Please retrieve the ledger from the safe, and the oilskin packet as well. I would like to examine them.”

  Farnham instantly leapt to his feet and sprinted across the room to where the small metal safe was tucked in between two tall, wooden file cabinets—not an insignificant accomplishment for a man of his bulk.

  “Here they are, my lord,” he said breathlessly a moment later, handing the two items to Theo. “As you will see when you look at the ledger, we currently have three pension accounts—Eudora Thistle—your former nanny, Joseph Hogg—the head gardener who retired four years ago after thirty years of service.” He hesitated and his flush unaccountably deepened.

  “And the name of the third pensioner?” Theo asked impatiently.

  “Rosa Natoli.” Farnham’s tongue slid over the name so rapidly, Theo nearly missed it. “There have, of course, been others over the years,” he continued, “but their accounts were closed out when they died.”

  Theo remembered Eudora Thistle and Joseph Hogg very well. They had both been an integral part of his childhood. But who the devil was Rosa Natoli? The name sounded Italian and offhand, he couldn’t recall there ever having been an Italian servant at Ravenswood—or, for that matter, even an Irish, Scottish or Welsh one. What he could recall very clearly was his mother’s often-expressed horror of having any servants in her house except those with staunch English blood flowing through their veins.

  There was something havey-cavey here if his father felt it necessary to go to such lengths to keep the pension ledger away from prying eyes—something he felt certain his man-of-affairs knew more about than he was willing to admit. Furthermore, now that he thought about it, Doddsworth had made some rather odd allusions to his father’s conduct as well.

  He thanked Nigel Farnham for his help, tucked the account book and packet securely under his arm and declared, “I’ll take these with me and look at them when I find time.” If, as he suspected, they contained some dark family secret, the last thing he wanted was an audience when he came upon it.

  All the way to his bookroom, he speculated on who this woman, Rosa Natoli, might be. Probably some doxy his father had gotten with child; even in his fifties, the earl had been a virile man, and few had condemned him for his philandering ways once they’d met his frigid countess.

  But why so secretive? His father wouldn’t be the first nobleman who’d chosen to support a mistress of whom he was particularly fond. If such an act were seriously frowned upon by society, most of the royal dukes would have been ostracized years ago.

  After pouring himself a brandy, Theo settled into the chair behind his desk and opened the account book to the place marked by a strip of wide white ribbon that had yellowed with age. It was the quarter just passed and Farnham’s neat figures clearly showed that the three pensioner’s he’d mentioned had been duly paid their stipends.

  One ledger sheet was allocated for each quarter, and Theo leafed back through them to where the gardener’s name first appeared, then farther yet to when his old nanny had been pensioned off after being replaced by the tutor who’d prepared him for enrollment in Eton. Even that far back, the mysterious Rosa Natoli was listed on each sheet.

  One by one he turned the sheets, back fifteen years, twenty years, twenty-five years …thirty. Other names appeared and disappeared, always with their occupation and length of service to the Hampton’s recorded next to the first listing of their names, but Rosa Natoli’s name still headed each ledger sheet.

  Finally, toward the front of the book, he found the sheet on which her name first appeared. Her occupation was listed as ladies’ maid, her length of service at Ravenswood a mere seven months. Her first quarterly stipend was entered in the ledger on the thirtieth day of June in the year seventeen hundred eighty-two.

  Theo’s jaw clenched. He was born on the twenty-first day of June in that same year.

  The coincidence was so glaring no one, including the village idiot, could come to any conclusion other than the obvious one. Now he understood why Farnham had found the subject of the pension accounts so embarrassing.

  “Bloody hell, I’m my father’s bastard,” he muttered to himself, and an icy chill crept through him that not even the finest French brandy could dispel.

  For a long, painful moment he simply stared at the telltale entry in the ledger, his mind too shocked to accept what his eyes had already verified as an indisputable fact. Finally, with shaking fingers, he broke the seal on the oilskin packet.

  If he’d had any lingering doubts about his dubious parentage, the folded parchment contained within it quickly dispelled them. Apparently a copy of a document filed with the Master of the King’s Records, it stated that the Fifth Earl of Lynley acknowledged his son Theodore Edward James, while born out of wedlock, to be his rightful heir with full legal claim to all titles and lands belonging to the Earls of Lynley. The King’s official seal was affixed to the document and it was witnessed by the Earl of Stamden and the Marquis of Blandford.

  Theo stared with unbelieving eyes at the signatures of the two men he had known since childhood. Neither one had ever given the slightest hint that they were privy to such information about him. He shook his head, hoping to clear the cobwebs from his befuddled mind, but none of what he’d stumbled upon made any sense. Why, of all the bastards his father must have sired in his long career as an unconscionable rake, had he chosen to acknowledge the illegitimate son of an Italian maid as his legal heir? And why had his wife countenanced the bizarre act?

  Theo knew instinctively he would receive no answers to these questions from the proud, cold woman he had called “Mother” all his life. Nor did he dare, at this particular moment, confront her concerning her cruel treatment of Doddsworth. Between that and the mind-boggling information he’d just unearthed, he doubted he could keep from strangling the coldhearted bitch. It was enough that he finally understood why she had never shown him the slightest scrap of tenderness or affection.

  But answers he must have, no matter how painful they might be. He made note of Rosa Natoli’s direction—the village of Hawkshead in the Lake District. His heart skipped a beat. He’d made a pilgrimage to that very village in his eighteenth year to view the place where his idol, William Wordsworth had lived in his youth. For all he knew, he might have passed Rosa Natoli on the street and never known she was the woman who’d given him life—then given him away in exchange for a quarterly stipend. A terrible bitterness welled within him. Most men had only one mother. He apparently had two. One was as cold and brittle as a statue carved from a block of ice—the other a greedy Italian trollop whose only legacy to her abandoned child was the hot blood that flowed in his veins. He knew the one woman all too well. He would make an effort to know the other so he could put a face on the shadowy creature he already despised. Then he would consign them both to hell and get on with his life.

  The first shades of evening were creeping over Barrington Hall when one of the Ravenswood grooms delivered Theo’s note to Maeve. It was brief and to the point. He would be unable to ride with her the following morning as he’d been called away for a few days on family business.

  She clutched the piece of paper to her bosom and offered a prayer of thanks to a benevolent God for giving her the reprieve she so desperately needed. Then quickly, she penned a note of her own and directed one of the kennel boys to deliver it to the vicar. He sent his reply back with the same boy. He would be happy to meet her at dawn and though he doubted it could be accomplished in such a short time, he would do his best to teach her to ride a horse before Theo returned to Ravenswood.

  True to his word, Richard arrived shortly after sun-up the next morning, driving a donkey cart with two young mares tied to the back of it. The most docile-looki
ng of the two had a sidesaddle on its back. With a curious groom looking on, Maeve quickly climbed into the passenger’s seat. A moment later, they were off to a remote section of her father’s estate where they could secure the donkey to a tree or fence post and proceed with the riding lesson with no one the wiser.

  “This is the pommel,” Richard said once it was safe to begin the lesson. He indicated a knob protruding from the front of the saddle. “When I give you a boost up, you must wrap your right leg around it, grasp the reins and put your left foot into the stirrup iron.”

  That sounded easy enough. Maeve put her left foot in Richard’s cupped hands, grabbed what she could reach of the saddle and said a small prayer. An instant later she shot upwards and landed with her head hanging down the other side of the horse and her stomach across the saddle seat.

  From its spot beneath a nearby tree, the little donkey brayed an appropriate, “Hee-haw, hee-haw, hee-haw.” Maeve would have laughed out loud if she could have gotten her breath. It was, she had to admit, a singularly apt pronouncement, considering her present situation.

  “Are you all right?” Richard asked anxiously, grasping her around the waist and pulling her back to the ground.

  “I …I think so,” she gasped, pushing the mangled feather on Meg’s jaunty little hat out of her eye and straightening the skirt of Meg’s emerald green riding habit. She’d halfway suspected the act of riding a horse could prove somewhat difficult, but she’d had no inkling that merely mounting one of the beasts would present such problems. Still, if the silly, vacant-eyed Incomparables she’d seen riding in Hyde Park could do it, then devil take it, so could she.

  The next two attempts were as fruitless as the first, but on the fourth try, she managed to get her bottom onto the saddle. Unfortunately, her legs were so tangled in the flowing skirt of the riding habit, she could neither hook her right knee over the pommel nor her left toe into the stirrup. Once again, Richard had to lift her down.