by Unconquered
Fully dressed, she turned to her sister. “Well, Mandy, will I fool them?”
“Oh, yes, Miranda! Yes! Yes! Yes!” Amanda turned around excitedly, her dark robes swirling. “This is going to be the most memorable night ever, twin! Let us go and see if we may fool our husbands!”
Miranda smiled at Mandy’s childlike enthusiasm, then turned to Mary Grant. “My sister and I both thank you, Mistress Grant, for your great efforts on our behalf. The embroidery on both these costumes must have taken hours. Please remain at Swynford House tonight so you may get the first decent night’s sleep that I imagine you’ve had in many weeks. Tomorrow my sister and I will settle our bill with you.”
Mary Grant curtseyed. “Thank you, milady. I appreciate your kindness. The truth is that I have not slept in three days in order to finish your costumes on time.”
“I suspected as much,” came the reply. “Thank you again.”
The two sisters left the sewing room, and hurried downstairs to the library, where they had arranged to meet the gentlemen. Jared had chosen to come as an American frontiersman in fringed deerskin jacket and leggings, beaded moccasins, coonskin hat, and Kentucky rifle. Somehow, he lent elegance to the rough-and-tumble costume. Adrian was garbed as an Arabian prince, in white pantaloons, and a white-and-gold-embroidered Persian coat. His enormous turban had a pigeon’s blood ruby and three egret feathers in its center. His boots matched the ruby.
“Magnificent!” Lord Swynford exclaimed as the two women entered the room. “Amanda, my pet, you are an adorable page.” He put an arm around her and kissed her on the cheek. Miranda giggled as Mandy would have done.
Jared Dunham voiced his approval of the costume worn by the woman he took to be his wife. “Yes, my dear, you are the perfect witch, although you do not really look too terribly wicked.” His arm snaked out and pulled Amanda close, and his head dipped down to meet her mouth. Amanda’s first reaction was to shriek and fight him off, but then she remembered that she was supposed to be Miranda. She was also overwhelmingly curious to know what it would be like to be kissed by this man. She quickly found out, almost swooning in his fiery embrace.
Jared Dunham chuckled wickedly, and murmured against her ear, “Don’t faint, pigeon, or you’ll give away the masquerade.”
“Let’s go,” Adrian hurried them. “It would not do to arrive after Prinny’s grand entrance, and that is scheduled for quarter past ten. I suspect traffic on Regent Street will be unbearable.” Taking the arm of the page, he moved out into the foyer, where the footmen waited with their cloaks.
“You know?” Amanda whispered to Jared.
“From the moment you both walked into the room,” he answered. “Your sister’s legs are beautiful, not easily forgotten, particularly by an attentive husband.”
“Then why did you kiss me?” demanded Amanda, indignant.
“Because I’ve always wondered what that button of a mouth tasted like. It’s very sweet, pigeon. And because I wanted to see a spark of outrage in Miranda’s eyes, which I did.”
Amanda laughed. “You two deserve each other,” she said. “I wonder if Wyndsong will be big enough to contain the pair of you.”
“Come, Jared, Miranda,” Adrian called from the foyer. “There’ll be plenty of time for lovemaking after the masquerade,” and Amanda chuckled, wondering if Adrian would remember that remark later, after their deception had been revealed.
Carleton House was a crush of people, but the festivities had been planned well. Regent Street from Oxford Circus to Piccadilly had been closed to all traffic but the two thousand guests. The side streets leading into Regent Street along that route had also been closed off to all but the invited, and each carriage attempting to turn into Regent Street was stopped by a guardsman who checked invitations and counted the inhabitants of the vehicle. This allowed the guests to proceed smoothly right up to the entry of Carleton House, where they left their carriages to linkboys holding lighted torches.
The invitations were checked again at the doors to Carleton House, the Prince Regent’s residence, and then the guests proceeded inside, unannounced, as announcements would have spoiled the surprise of the disguises. In the main ballroom of the palace musicians played chamber music and everyone awaited the Prince Regent. He came at precisely quarter past ten, as anticipated. Passing between the lines of bowing, curtseying guests, he made playful remarks to certain guests as he went.
“Alvaney, is that you beneath that doublet? Yes, it most certainly is. Your new tailor can no more cut a doublet properly than he can a morning coat.”
Good-natured laughter sounded, and Lord Alvaney capitulated gracefully, acknowledging his master’s superior perception.
“Ah ha! ’Tis Lady Jersey, I’ll be bound!”
“Oh, how did Your Highness know?” Lady Jersey sounded properly piqued.
“Why, madam, if you are going to try and disguise yourself to me you will have to hide that fetching beauty mark.”
“Oh, sir, your eye is certainly keen!”
The Prince Regent chuckled, and passed by. Suddenly, well into the ballroom, he stopped before a beautiful gypsy and asked, “Will you do me the honor to open the ball with me, Princess de Lieven?”
Dariya de Lieven was far too intelligent to play games. She curtseyed elegantly, and said, “I am honored, Your Highness,” and the band struck up the first waltz as the Prince Regent, garbed as his famous ancestor, Henry VIII, opened his masquerade by dancing across the floor with a beautiful gypsy, who was really the wife of Russia’s ambassador.
After an appropriate interval the rest of the guests joined in, and the ballroom was soon filled with waltzing couples. Within the hour the masquerade was well under way with guests spilling out of the overheated ballroom into the gardens of Carleton House. In the Gothic conservatory of the palace a buffet table was set up filling one hundred and fifty feet of the room’s two-hundred-foot length. The Irish damask cloth covering the table was of one piece, woven especially for this occasion in a Tudor rose design.
At ten-foot intervals down the long table were large, round Waterford bowls. In the centers of the bowls were six-armed silver candelabra surrounded by a profusion of tall, multicolored, sweet-scented flowers. The candelabra burned cream-colored beeswax tapers. All the serving pieces were of the finest silver. Although the guests would not be invited to partake of refreshments until after midnight the food was already on the table.
The long table had been set, from the far end of the room, with the appetizers first, the fish course next to that, and so on to the end of what would be a large, sumptuous meal. At the far end were large silver and china bowls of prawns, oysters, and clams. There were smaller dishes of spiced sauces, for many of the fish were served cold. There were lobsters and crabs with bowls of hot melted herb butter. Next were platters of Dover sole, served hot, and platters of salmon en gelée and cold trout in herb dressing. Large lemons, whole and delicately carved, adorned all the fish platters.
There was plentiful game as well, and the Prince Regent’s friends had vied with one another to see who could put the most game on his table that night. There were a dozen platters of quail and partridge, and three whole swans. Ducks had been roasted to a golden brown and baked in sauces of cherry or orange. Pigeon pâté nestled in a bed of fresh watercress. Claw-footed silver platters held the ten roasted, stuffed turkeys and smaller platters held thirty dozen petits poulets a l’Italien. In the center of the table rested the most enormous boar anyone remembered ever seeing. Surrounding the boar were huge sides of beef and venison, and surrounding these were legs of lamb and smoked hams studded with cloves and baked in champagne and honey.
Huge serving bowls filled with green beans, celery with bread crumbs and cheese, and cauliflower done three different ways marched toward the near end of the table. There were tiny peas done in a delicate butter sauce—a great favorite in London that season—as well as seven different potato dishes. There were the usual roasted potatoes, potatoes in sauces, an
d tiny puffed potatoes.
Nearing the end of the table were breads of every description, in small white loaves and long rye loaves, egg-glazed brioches and tiny crescents, soft rolls and hard rolls. Each bread was accompanied by its own small silver dish of iced butter.
Even that majestic table could hold only so much, and the desserts had been placed on a long mahogany sideboard. There were individual soufflés of mocha, raspberry, lemon, and apricot, each in its china dish. Vying for attention with all the tortes and custards were twenty varieties of iced cakes, and as many fruit tarts. Fruit tarts were a perennial favorite, as were jellies flavored with exotic liqueurs. The Prince Regent and his friends kept up a running competition to see who could contrive the most outrageous jellies. The Prince usually won.
There were cheeses and, of course, many platters of carefully arranged crisp crackers, as well as enormous footed crystal bowls of fresh fruit, including Spanish oranges, cherries arrived from France two days before and preserved in ice, green and black grapes from the hills of Southern Italy, green pears from Anjou, and that most treasured of all rare fruits, pineapples from the faraway South Sea islands. English strawberries completed the bounty.
Because of the vast number of guests, and because it was assumed that most had eaten substantial dinners, the Prince Regent’s buffet table was a modest one in comparison with the usual thirty-six-course dinners he served his guests at Carleton House and at his pavilion in Brighton. A separate table set up along one wall of the Gothic conservatory held the liquid refreshments, which included iced champagne, fine wines both red and white, and Madeira and port.
Tables with silver services had been set up in the gardens, and the guests who wished to eat there or rest from the dancing came to sit in the cool evening air. Earlier, a rather silly pageant depicting sweet Spring banishing cold cruel Winter had been held. It would have been, decided Amanda, a great deal more successful if sweet Spring had not been played by the hefty Lady Jersey, who was one of Prinny’s favorite ladies.
“Milady?”
Amanda looked up to see a bewigged footman. “Yes?”
“His Royal Highness would like to see you, Lady Dunham. I am to take you to him at once.”
Good Lord, thought Amanda. Was Prinny planning to get amorous with Miranda? What would she say to him? She should have to admit their deception, and hope that his sense of humor was firmly established this evening. She rose and followed the footman. It was as she had suspected, for he led her deep into the darkest part of the garden. There could be no mistaking the Prince Regent’s intentions toward her twin sister. She rehearsed what she would say to him, but nothing seemed to sound right. Oh Lord, what a pickle! The noise of the party was becoming fainter. At least no one would see this meeting, she thought.
Abruptly her headdress was ripped away and something stifling was thrown over her head. Viselike arms wrapped around her, but somehow Amanda managed to scream and began struggling wildly to free herself, flailing out blindly.
“Jesus, she’s a fighter!” she heard a voice say. “Can’t you shut her up?”
“No one can hear her down at this end of the garden, but the prince don’t want no trouble. Hold on till I get the stuff.”
Amanda flailed at her captors, using every ounce of her waning strength to kick out with her heavy wooden clogs. A voice howled as she made contact with shins. The two men wrestled her to the ground, and then one of them pulled the blanket from her head while the other forced a sweet-smelling linen cloth to her nose and mouth. Amanda tried not to breathe, but finally she gasped and the sweet scent burned down her throat, quickly overcoming her.
“Whew,” said one of her captors, “I thought we’d never get her quieted down. The hall door’s open so let’s get her through it and into the coach. Then we can go back and get the gent. My advice is to cosh him on the head right off.”
“You cosh him, and I’ll get him here. What’ll I tell him?”
“What the prince told you to tell him, you fool! That Lady Miranda Dunham would like to see him in private, and you’re to lead him to her. Go on now. I’ll put her into the coach, and then be waiting for you.”
The festivities went on, and then at two o’clock in the morning the signal was given for the guests to unmask. Standing next to the blue page, Jared Dunham stayed the hand that reached up to remove the scrap of blue velvet and silver lace. “Did you really believe I could look at those legs of yours, wildcat, and believe them Amanda’s?” His bottle-green eyes were laughing at her.
“You rogue! You knew?” She pulled her mask off. “When did you know? Did I fool you at all?”
“No. You might have if you had worn something that covered more of you,” he answered.
“You knew from the beginning? You kissed Amanda deliberately?”
“She has a sweet mouth,” he teased her, “but she kisses like a child.”
Miranda laughed, and said, “Do you remember the first time we went to Almack’s after we were married?”
“Yes,” he said slowly, and then he laughed. “Do you mean, milady, that you want to go home now?”
“Yes, milord, I do. I have had enough eating, drinking, and dancing to last me a lifetime.”
“As always, madam, your slightest wish is my command,” and he took her arm.
“Fiddlesticks, milord, you lust after me as I lust after you!” she shot back.
“I do indeed,” he chuckled.
“How are we getting home? Our carriage was sent back.”
“We’ll take Adrian’s. The last time I looked he was playing cards with Prince de Lieven, Lord Alvaney, and Prinny. We’ll send it right back.”
“That’s rather rich company for Adrian to play with, isn’t it?” Miranda worried.
“Adrian’s no fool, darling. He was winning. The moment he begins to lose anything he can’t afford he’ll take his winnings and leave the table. He has such a charming, boyish way about him that nobody ever gets offended when he does it. They’ve all played with him at White’s and Watier’s often enough.”
They found their way through the wide corridors of Carleton House back down to the main entry hall, and Jared ordered his brother-in-law’s carriage brought around while they got their cloaks. Helping her into the coach, he ordered the driver to take them home, and then to return to wait for Adrian and Amanda. The vehicle clopped through the silent city streets while its inhabitants embraced passionately. Holding her in the crook of one arm, Jared let his other hand roam her body beneath the velvet tabard, finding the small pearl buttons of her silk shirt, opening them, and pushing through to cup a full, sweet breast. His lips moved to the softness of her neck, and she murmured restlessly, her nipples hardening against his palm. His hand moved up again to pull her feathered bonnet off. Running his fingers through her lovely hair, he whispered, “You were the most fetching page I have ever seen, wildcat. It was all I could do not to whisk you away hours earlier.”
“Say it!” she commanded.
“I love you, Miranda,” he replied.
“And I love you, Jared. Now can we please go home? Really home, I mean. To Wyndsong.”
“Will next week suit you, milady?”
“Next week?” She sat up, shaking his arm off. “I have packing to do! It isn’t like before Tom was born, Jared! Traveling with a child is next to impossible. You must take everything imaginable, for there are no shops in midocean.”
“Dream Witch will be back next week from Massachusetts, wildcat. We can go anytime you’re ready.”
“Next week!” she cried joyfully. “I’ll manage somehow.” Then she thought a moment, a little smile on her face. “I wonder what Anne thinks of America. And I wonder what your father and mother think of Jon returning with a second wife, her two children, and their own two babies, Susannah and Peter!”
“Well, at least Father can’t accuse Jon of being idle these two years. When you add Jon’s three children by Charity, he now has seven children. We’ll have to work hard to catc
h up with him, wildcat.”
“Unless you have another wife, Jared Dunham, we will have to concede to your brother in this matter. I have given you the next lord of the manor. Now I want a daughter, and then I am finished.”
“You may have your daughter, milady, but I must have two sons.”
“Two? Do you remember how badly your father treated you because he didn’t want you to try and rob Jon of his place as heir?”
“I am not my father. Besides, I will need the second son for the ships. If Tom is to be lord of the manor, he cannot handle the trading business as well. One son for the land, one for the sea, and a daughter we can both spoil.”
“Agreed,” she said solemnly. “We will begin serious work on Jason Dunham tonight,” and they laughed.
“Jason, is it? I like it, milady. It has a good ring to it. I assume that since you have named both my sons I get to name our daughter?”
Her eyes clouded as she thought of Fleur. Then, knowing that he expected an answer, she said brightly, “Indeed, milord, you must name our daughter. I am very bad with female names.”
He had seen the momentary lull in her high spirits, and wondered as he had more than once since her return just what secret she was keeping from him, and why.
The Swynford carriage turned into Devon Square, and pulled up before their town house.
Jared dismissed the house servants for the evening while his wife went upstairs to undress. Perky, dozing by the fire, quickly sat up as her mistress entered the room. Her jaw dropped, and she rubbed her eyes sleepily, looking hard at Miranda.
