Masquerade

by Susan Carroll

  Phaedra struck his hand aside. "As much as I dislike anyone interfering with mine! So monsieur, I strongly advise you to keep your opinions about widows to yourself and stay away from my grandfather. Otherwise I might be obliged to-to-"

  "Yes?" he prompted.

  "To find some way to be rid of you," she said,

  For the first time that evening, Armande smiled, a smile nowise reflected in the dangerous depths of his eyes.

  "How amusing," he drawled, in a voice silken with menace. "I was thinking exactly the same thing about you."

  Chapter Three

  Phaedra stared at the playing cards in her hand. Her eyes, bleary from lack of sleep, refused to focus, and the morning breeze drifting through the open window did nothing to clear her groggy senses. The library at Blackheath Hall, her grandfather's house, was a small, narrow room set at the back of the second floor. Sawyer Weylin could not see wasting any of his grander apartments upon a set of rubbishy books. The closely packed volumes that lined every available inch of wall space exuded a strong odor of leather and dust. Even though it was but the first of June and the hour not advanced past ten, the air was humid and stuffy. The summer promised to be a hellish one.

  Aye, it would be hellish indeed if she continued to be afflicted with such dreams as had tormented her last night. Every time she had closed her eyes, Phaedra had found herself back in Lady Porterfield's ballroom, circling through the steps of the dance with a silver-masked stranger. Sometimes she would wrench away the mask to see a grinning death's head. But other visions were worse. She would see Armande de LeCroix, his blue eyes glinting with the intensity of a candle flame, his seductive whisper ensnaring her in a silken web. His mouth had sought hers, hot and moist.

  It was fortunate, Phaedra thought, that she had been able to force herself awake. No lady would have such wicked dreams- which were all the more disconcerting because the man was her avowed enemy, Varnais. Ewan had always told her that she was possessed of a harlot's nature.

  "Are you going to play that jack, my girl?" A good-humored male voice with an Irish lilt broke into her reflections. "You might be better advised to lay down your queen."

  With a start, Phaedra realized she was holding her hand too low.

  Leaning across the mahogany card table, her cousin Gilly unabashedly perused her cards. She raised them and directed a half-embarrassed glance at the young man sprawling in the slender-legged Chippendale chair, which looked too fragile to bear the weight of his lanky frame. How much of her shameful thoughts had her cousin read upon her face?

  Patrick Gilhooley Fitzhurst grinned at her, flicking aside one of the strands of hair that drooped in front of his twinkling green eyes. His riotous mass of brown curls defied confinement in the queue he had attempted to form at the nape of his neck.

  "'Tis a fine hand you have there, I'm thinking," he said. "Would to God it pleased you to play some of it."

  "I intend to, Gilly, if you would cease interrupting me."

  Re-sorting her hand, she tried to concentrate on her game. But the vision of steely-blue eyes kept rising between her and the cards. She kept remembering the marquis's final words of warning: he would find a way to be rid of her if she pried into his affairs. Of course, she had made the first threat, but she had been angry and blustering. He had meant it. What sort of deadly game must the man be playing, if the mere hint of a few questions provoked such a response? Phaedra had a feeling that she would never know a peaceful night's sleep again if she did not discover the truth about de LeCroix.

  "Phaedra!"

  She started, almost dropping her cards. "Oh, very well, Gilly."

  She flung down a jack, little thinking what she did. With a snort of disgust, Gilly trumped her, taking the trick.

  Phaedra strewed the rest of her cards across the table. "You've won."

  "Won, is it?" Gilly wrinkled his snub nose. "For all the challenge you offer, I might as well have been playing with my old grandmother, and herself half blind. Here, look at this."

  Phaedra watched as Gilly tugged one threadbare cuff of his rateen frock coat, shaking it until several aces dislodged from his sleeve, fluttering onto the table. "And you not noticing a blessed thing! I thought I'd taught you better."

  "And I thought you would have outgrown such childish tricks." She began to gather up the cards, but she paused, regarding him gravely. "Gilly, you have not been using these tricks elsewhere. Not when really playing for money."

  The jade eyes widened to the full extent of their innocence.

  "Now, by the grave of my sainted mother-"

  "Gilly!"

  He sighed, then stood up to remove his frock coat, revealing the patched canvas work on the back of his worn silk waistcoat. "There, now do I look as if I were making my living fleecing gentlemen at cards?"

  She smiled. "I do beg your pardon, Mr. Fitzhurst."

  "And so you should, my girl." He donned his frock coat, adding, "You were such a gloom-faced chit this morning. I only thought to amuse you by reminding you of the old days when we used to play at being cardsharps. Lord, don't you remember how we planned to run off together and live by our wits? We even practiced picking pockets. That, of course, was only supposed to sustain us until we saved enough for pistols and could take to the High Toby."

  "Yes, I remember. What dreadful, wicked children we were."

  She chuckled, but her laughter held a hint of wistfulness in it. She remembered well the old days. Her Irish days, she was wont to think of them. When she had run wild with Gilly, barefoot down the dusty lanes like a pair of urchins, scrumping apples from Squire Traherne's orchard, scaling trees as if they were castle walls, galloping bareback across the meadows on half-wild ponies. It was a wonder they both hadn't broken their necks. Never again in her life had she felt so free.

  Gilly, her mother's nephew, was all that she had left of those days. Her English grandfather, angered by his only son's elopement, had always hated her Irish mother. With both her parents dead, Sawyer Weylin had done his best to sever all Phaedra's connections with Ireland, but her affection for Gilly proved too strong a bond even for the old man to break.

  Phaedra became aware that Gilly had come round the table to her side. His fingers, roughened from handling the leather of his horses, chucked her lightly under the chin.

  "Out with it, Phaedra, my girl. Sure and your mind hasn't been on the cards. What's troubling you?"

  She sighed. "It seems I have acquired an enemy."

  "The devil you say! And you, with your sweet, gentle disposition. "

  "I am serious, you rogue," Phaedra said, although she was forced to bite back a smile. "What have you heard of a man who calls himself de LeCroix?"

  "Is it the Marquis de Varnais you're meaning? Well, he appears to be far wealthier than me and I've heard half the ladies in London would willingly cuckold their husbands in his bed."

  "Is that all you know of him?"

  Gilly regarded one of his worn sleeve cuffs. "The marquis and I do not exactly attend the same supper parties, colleen."

  "I would have also thought him to be above my grandfather's touch, but apparently they have become boon companions."

  Phaedra's chair snagged on the thick Axminister carpet as she shoved it back, rising to her feet. She paced about the small chamber while she recounted for Gilly the entire tale of her meeting with the Marquis de Varnais, beginning with the nobleman's advice to Sawyer Weylin that she be kept in Bath, and ending with a description of Armande's warning.

  "And he as good as threatened to kill me if I asked any more questions about him," she concluded.

  To her disappointment, Gilly looked unimpressed. He perched atop one corner of the library's heavy desk, tapping a boot against the claw-foot leg in negligent fashion.

  "Astonishing." He exuded his breath in a long low whistle.

  "Not back in town but one night, and already after picking a quarrel with someone. It must be the Irish in you, my dear."

  "It was far more than a
quarrel. There is something sinister about the marquis. The man is plotting some mischief, and I have an intuition that it concerns both Grandfather and myself."

  "And you intend to make sure that it does."

  She glared at her cousin, but he disarmed her with a smile.

  "Admit it, Fae. You were piqued by this meddling marquis, so you sought out the fellow and provoked him. You've a devilish sharp tongue, enough to rouse a saint to murder."

  "It was nothing of the kind. But I cannot expect you to comprehend. You were not there. You didn't dance with him."

  "Aye, and I don't suppose there's much likelihood of his ever asking me to do so, either," was Gilly's cheerful reply. "I think your marquis is simply too top lofty to give an account of himself to anyone. My advice is to leave the man alone. But I see from the mulish look on your face that you're not about to do that."

  "No, I'm not. I do not like those who intrude themselves in my family. Nor do I like being threatened." Phaedra stalked over to where Gilly perched upon the desk. "Despite your marked lack of sympathy, I am glad you happened by this morning."

  "Happened by, is it? You had me summoned from my bed at the crack of dawn."

  Phaedra ignored this grumbling remark. Instead, she leaned past her cousin, indicating the sheets of parchment stacked on the desk behind him. "I have another delivery for you."

  Gilly glanced over his shoulder. The next instant he leaped off the desk as though it had caught fire. His air of nonchalance vanished, and he paled beneath his tanned skin.

  "Mother of God! Are you daft, woman, to be leaving this about where any dim-witted housemaid might chance upon it!"

  Phaedra proceeded to gather up the sheets. "I assure you, no one has been in here this morning but myself. I just wrote it last night." She didn't add that the pages had been scratched out here in the dismal hours before the dawn, when her garret room was too hot and her bedchamber far too confined, far too full of the Marquis de Varnais.

  She ran a hasty eye over some of the paragraphs, pleased to see that at least she had been coherent at that hour. But she drew up short at the last page.

  "Lud! I almost forgot my signature." She reached for a quill pen, dipping it into the pot of ink. At the bottom of the final sheet, she hastily scrawled the name, Robin Goodfellow. The signature looked bold and masculine enough to fool anyone, even her sharp-eyed publisher, Jessym. As she proceeded to sprinkle sand to dry the fresh ink, Gilly peered over her shoulder.

  "What the deuce have you been writing about this time?"

  "Read it and see."

  While Gilly edged himself atop the desk once more and began his perusal, Phaedra picked up a blank sheet of parchment and fanned herself with it. The front of her loose-fitting sacque-style gown already felt uncomfortably damp and clinging. She stalked over to one of the narrow window casements to see if she could force it open further.

  Sawyer Weylin's estate lay far north of Piccadilly. The sprawling Palladian-style mansion was nestled in a parklike setting, simulating a country gentleman's estate. But one never quite escaped the reminders that the bustling city of London was not far away. Phaedra crinkled her nose. Even out here, one occasionally caught a whiff of the coal-smoke and that pungent odor peculiar to the River Thames.

  "Sweet Jesus!"

  Gilly's exclamation drew Phaedra away from the window. She turned around to find her cousin gripping her manuscript, looking far from pleased.

  "My essay doesn't meet with your approval?" she asked.

  "The parts about the navy's ships being filled with dry rot, and the bit about the king and parliament being negligent are excellent." Gilly raked one hand back through his dark hair, further disordering his unruly curls. "But these passages about the Marquis de Varnais! It sounds as though you are implying he could be anything from a low-born impostor to a French spy."

  "I only hinted at a few reasons why he might be so prickly about his background."

  "This borders on libel, Phaedra, and well you know it! Jessym will never print it."

  "Jessym prints anything he thinks will sell." But inwardly Phaedra squirmed in the face of Gilly's disapproval. Maybe she had gone too far in her remarks about Varnais. But she hoped that her writing would make society, and especially her own grandfather, regard the man a little more warily.

  Gilly tossed the sheets back down upon the desk. "I'm surprised at you, Fae, that's all. Your pamphlets have been full of masterful writing, about fine, important issues. It's that proud of you, I've been. This is common gossip."

  Phaedra gave an affected shrug, although she felt the sting of his criticism keenly. She knew that her earlier writings had been much better. Her secret career as Robin Goodfellow had begun some months before Ewan's death. Then she had written stirring condemnations of the king and his ministers for their shortsighted dealings with both the Americans and the Irish. Her impassioned words had supported the American colonists in their war for independence. She had cried out for justice for the beleaguered Irish Catholics, whose livelihood was being stolen by greedy English landlords. All her writings had been heartfelt because they mirrored her own despair, her own yearning for freedom from a marriage that had become a bondage.

  She responded bitterly to Gilly. "I am sorry you disapprove of my 'common gossip.' But I had not much choice, thanks to Grandfather and his good friend the marquis. It is not easy to write about fine, important matters from exile in Bath. You know I only intended to make a brief holiday when I left town after Christmas, not to find myself banned for the rest of my days."

  "But you cannot blame Varnais for that. You are an independent woman now. You can come and go as you please."

  "What? With my grandfather controlling the purse strings of the meager pittance Ewan left me? I had barely enough pocket money to get to London on the stage. When Grandfather finds me returned, he may well fling me into the street.”

  The stern expression which sat so ill on Gilly's good-humored face softened. "Well, we can become highwaymen as we'd always planned. How have you managed to escape the jaws of the old crocodile thus far?"

  "He was out when I arrived last night. By now I expect his beloved housekeeper has informed him of my return." Phaedra grimaced. The mere prospect of a confrontation with her grandfather left her feeling deflated. She crossed the room and began to fold the sheets of her essay.

  "If you don't wish to deliver this for me, I understand. But the sad truth is, Gilly, that I rather need the money."

  "Whist now. Did I ever say I wouldn't take it? You could malign the good Saint Patrick himself, and I'd stand by you to the end." Gilly tugged the manuscript from her hand and tucked it inside his waistcoat.

  When she deposited a grateful kiss upon his cheek, he groused, " All I say is, heaven deliver you if your grandfather ever suspects that you are the rascally Robin Goodfellow tweaking the king's nose." Gilly gave a short hoot of laughter. "Come to think on it, it is more likely myself that'll be suspected. I think Jessym half does already. Belike one day I'll find your marquis coming after me with his wicked sword."

  "I would never let it come to that," Phaedra vowed earnestly. "If you were ever accused of being Robin Goodfellow, I would-"

  She broke off, interrupted by a high-pitched scream.

  "What the devil is that?" Gilly asked.

  "I don't know," Phaedra said, looking up fearfully at the ceiling above them. "But I think it is coming from the direction of my garret."

  Lifting her skirts, she dashed out of the library, with Gilly hard on her heels. Seeking out the backstairs, she took the risers two at a time, not pausing for breath until she reached the small chamber at the very top of the house.

  The scream had not been repeated, but when Phaedra stood outside the door to her private sanctum, she could hear the sound of muffled sobbing and above it, a steady thwack, like a poker being pounded against a cushion.

  "Sounds like someone is taking the devil of a drubbing," Gilly said. "You'd best let me deal with this."
>
  Phaedra shook her head, her mouth compressing into a hard line. Turning the knob, she flung the door open and burst into the room. The sight that met her eyes occasioned more rage than astonishment, for she had already guessed what was amiss.

  The chamber, with its low ceiling and plain white plaster walls, was a jumble of furniture discarded from the elegant apartments below. Between a Jacobean daybed and an empty bookshelf, cowered a tall, raw-boned maid, her flat bosom heaving with sobs. The girl held her large-knuckled hands before her face in an effort to ward off the blows. Her assailant, a wisp of a woman garbed in black bombazine, brought her cane crashing onto the girl's back with great energy, her lips stretched in a grimace of ecstasy.

  Phaedra flew across the room, catching the woman's arm in mid-swing, and wrenched the weapon away from her. “Mrs. Searle! What is the meaning of this? How dare you strike my maid!"

  From beneath the starched lace of her mobcap, Hester Searle's colorless eyes glared at Phaedra with all the malice of an adder contemplating its prey.

  "When yer ladyship hears the truth, ye'll want to beat the wicked creature yerself. I caught Lucy fixing to burn yer ladyship's finest gowns." The woman pointed an accusing finger toward a pile of black silks strewn before the fireplace.

  The girl scrambled over to Phaedra, shrinking behind her skirts.

  "Oh, milady," she sobbed, "I tried to explain."

  Phaedra glanced down at the purple swelling which had begun to disfigure the girl's cheek. She shook with anger, but she managed to place a gentle hand upon the girl's shoulder. "Never mind, Lucy. I will settle this. You run along to Thompson and have him apply something ointment to that eye."

  With a hiccup of relief, the girl bolted from the room, nearly blundering into Gilly in the doorway. Phaedra rounded upon Mrs. Searle. Never had she so loathed the sight of that woman's sharp-featured face, the coal-black hair drawn back from her brow in a widow's peak. A distant relative of Ewan Grantham's, poor and untutored, Hester had been hired as the housekeeper upon her late husband's recommendation. More often than not, Hester had served as Ewan's spy. Upon her husband's death, Phaedra had hoped that Hester would resign her post, but it seemed she was never to be rid of the sly creature.