A Masked Deception

by Mary Balogh

  "I shall have to find happiness with what I have, monsieur," she replied.

  "And is that possible, angel? Do you love your husband?"

  She hesitated. "Oui, monsieur," she said almost in a whisper.

  "Then why," he asked in wonder, looking down into her face and tracing her jawline with his finger, "have you come to me, angel?"

  Again she hesitated. "He does not love me," she said, "and sometimes I feel the need of a man's love."

  He hugged her to him again, trying to recover from the blow of learning that she did not really love him, but another man who was too much of a fool to realize what a treasure he possessed.

  "And you, monsieur," she was asking hesitantly, "do you love your wife?"

  Brampton was a long time answering. Did he? He closed his eyes and tried to picture himself holding his wife like this. She would feel very similar-more shy, a little stiffer, less yielding. But the size was right. He felt a nameless yearning that he did not wait to explore.

  "Yes," he said abruptly at last, and was not at all sure whether he had given a truthful answer or not. He did not notice the suddenly wildly beating heart of his companion because he had pushed away from her and taken her hand in his again. He led her back to the path, feeling unutterably depressed.

  "Come, angel," he said, "let us forget the fireworks for tonight. Come with me to where we can say goodbye in private. Will you?"

  "Oui," she said sadly.

  The next two days were almost impossibly busy ones for Margaret. She had all the last-minute preparations to make for the departure to Brampton

  Court and most of the instructions to give for the closing up of the town house, since it was unlikely that they would be back before the summer was over, at the earliest. Brampton spent most of those two days at his desk in the library looking after the business side of the removal. Charlotte rushed about in high spirits, helping no one, generally getting under everyone's feet, but keeping an air of cheerfulness in the house.

  Margaret was glad to be busy. She did not want to think about that evening with Richard until she was in the country again, where perhaps she would be able to steal away sometimes and think, where the surroundings would be peaceful and soothing. Charlotte had come to her room at eleven o'clock the next morning, unable to contain her impatience any longer. Margaret had still been in a sleep of exhaustion, not having arrived home until four o'clock in the morning, dangerously near to dawn, in fact.

  "Meg, wake up," she had said, plumping herself down on the edge of the bed. "Tell me everything that happened."

  "There is nothing much to tell, Lottie," Margaret had lied. "But we shall not be meeting that way again."

  "Why ever not?"

  "We both agreed that there was no point, Lottie. We were in a dead-end situation."

  "Well, but what did he say, Meg? Was it his decision not to meet again?"

  "No, but he agreed with me. He did say one thing, though," Margaret had said shyly. "He said he loved me."

  "Yes, I know that, Meg. He has said so before. What we need is a plan-"

  "No, Lottie," Margaret had interrupted, "I mean that he said he loves me, Margaret."

  Charlotte had stared, openmouthed. "Meg!" she had exclaimed. "I knew it would all turn out well. But why, featherbrain, did you not take that as your cue? You should have swept off your wig and your mask and said something like 'Here I am, my love,' and then you would have fallen into each other's arms and lived happily ever after."

  Margaret had laughed. "You read too many romances, Lottie," she said. "Now, will you leave me while I ring for Kitty and get up?"

  That was all they had said on the subject. Brampton had been very quiet for two days-very remote, almost morose. Margaret, who had been filled with such wild hopes by his words at Vauxhall, had fallen back on doubt. He was, as ever, unfailingly courteous to her, but he rarely looked at her or talked to her as he had been accustomed to do. And he had not been to her bed for more than a week.

  It was in this rather tense state of affairs that the removal to Brampton Court was made. Margaret and Charlotte rode in the earl's traveling carriage and picked up the dowager before leaving the city. The luggage was piled into two coaches that followed. Kitty and Stevens also rode in one of the baggage coaches. Brampton rode his favorite bay stallion, sometimes riding alongside the carriage so that he could check on the welfare of the ladies. Margaret wished with all her heart that she could ride alongside him. It was so hot and stuffy inside the carriage.

  There was to be a two-day interval between the arrival of the earl and his family group and the coming of the house guests. Margaret found, to her relief, that the staff at Brampton Court, under the able leadership of Mrs. Foster, had all the arrangements so well planned that there was little to do before the arrival of her guests. She spent the time wandering from room to room and poring over menus to see that no detail had been forgotten, and wandering in the gardens, notably the rose garden, cutting fresh blooms for the house and breathing her fill of country air. Brampton spent most of his time in the library, dealing with the urgent business of the estate before his guests claimed the bulk of his time.

  It was in the rose garden, on the morning of the guests' arrival, that Margaret allowed her thoughts to dwell on what had happened between her and her husband a few nights before. She sat on a wrought-iron seat, breathing in the fragrance of hundreds of roses growing around her in bushes, creeping over the low wall that separated the flower garden from the southern lawn, and trailing over an archway that led to a stone fountain.

  She had found that evening most painful, just as if she really were taking a final farewell of Richard. She realized now that she had made a terrible mistake in following Charlotte's plan. She had led Richard into a passionate and seemingly illicit relationship with a woman he thought to be a stranger. She had not made him happy. He had seemed devastated at their parting. And she had not made herself happy. She had tasted all the delights of the love she wished to share with her husband, but had cut herself off from a continuance of that love.

  She could not possibly tell him the truth now, tell him the identity of his unknown lover. And it was too late for her to try to show him that she, Margaret, would welcome a warmer, more physical relationship with her husband. They had grown into too firm a pattern in the months since their marriage.

  Besides, she would be even more terrified than she already was that he would discover the truth.

  Margaret thought of the previous two nights when Richard had resumed his visits to her bedchamber. Nothing had changed. Not a word, a look, or a gesture suggested that he had meant what he had said when he told her that he loved his wife. And those brief minutes of physical union had been almost unbearable when she had longed to wrap her arms around him, twine her legs about his, and seek the warmth of his mouth with her own.

  And yet it had been sweet to know that he had come back to her! Margaret was still nursing the secret and growing hope that she was carrying her husband's child.

  But Richard was unhappy! His face had had a closed and shuttered look in the last four days. She had not seen him smile in that time. Margaret remembered how reluctant he had been to let her go that night. They had gone to the same place as before. Richard had drawn the heavy curtains across the window and doused the candles without a word before unclothing her and himself and making love to her with a silent kind of desperation. There had been no tenderness involved and no real joy, only a driving need.

  He had held her afterward and soothed her and whispered words of love. They had not slept. Soon he had lifted her on top of him and brought her new and unexpected delights as he taught her to straddle his broad, strong body, her knees drawn up under his arms, while he took her again. Afterward, he had eased her legs down to lie either side of his, and he cradled her against his chest. They had slept that way, still joined together.

  Margaret had, in fact, come dangerously close to being caught in the light of dawn. When they had woken
up, she had tried to climb off both him and the bed, but he had turned, with her still in his arms, until she was trapped beneath him. And soon she had been a willing prisoner, giving and giving what she wished so desperately to spend her whole life giving him.

  Even when she was finally dressed and groping for the door, Richard had scrambled, naked, off the bed and reached it ahead of her. He had held her in a bruising hug for several minutes, not saying a word, not attempting to kiss her. Finally, he had let her go.

  Margaret felt that she would never quite forgive herself for causing him that pain. She wiped a tear from her cheek with the back of her hand.

  "Here you are, my dear," Brampton's voice said from the opening in the wall behind her. "I have to visit some of the cottages down by the river to approve some repairs. I thought you might like to ride there with me. We should be back in plenty of time to greet our guests."

  Margaret turned and Brampton again had that unsettling sensation of drowning fathoms deep in her eyes, which were wide with an expression he had not seen in them before.

  "I should like it of all things," she said calmly, rising to her feet and accepting her husband's arm.

  Chapter 10

  The first few days of the house party were filled with noisy gaiety. All the invited guests arrived that first day except Devin Northcott, who traveled to his parents' home two days later and finally joined the Brampton Court set on the following day.

  The older ladies quickly established the blue salon as their domain. There they exchanged the latest on-dits from town, shared stories of their children and grandchildren, and did some shameless matchmaking.

  "My dear Isabella," Lady Romley said on one such occasion, "don't you think that Susanna Kemp and your dear son Charles would make a handsome pair?"

  "She has ten thousand a year," the dowager mused. "Do you think he might form an attachment, Hannah?"

  "I distinctly observed him smile at her twice during dinner last evening," her friend reassured her.

  "Ah, it would be so comfortable to have all my children well established," the dowager sighed, smugly aware that Lady Romley still had two daughters to be provided with husbands.

  "Of course, he does seem uncommonly fond of the earl's sister-in-law," Lady Romley commented slyly.

  "Charlotte? Just a silly chit! Charles has a better notion of what is due him, never fear, Hannah," the dowager replied tartly.

  "Rumor had it a while ago that Devin Northcott was about to offer for her," said Lady Romley.

  "Very unlikely," the dowager decided. "Devin must be immune to all the little misses of the Season after avoiding them for ten years or more past."

  "She has no dowry?" quizzed the other.

  "But little," the other replied. "I have considered suggesting to dear Richard that he might marry her to the vicar of St. Stephen's. It is Richard's living, you know, Hannah, and the new man needs a wife."

  "Ah," Lady Romley commented, "the gel will be grateful for that. Fetching little thing!"

  The younger ladies spent much of their time wandering around, trying to look pretty. They kept to their rooms most of the morning, sleeping and preparing to meet the day. In the afternoon they wandered in the gardens, took carriage rides to various parts of the estate to see the views from the hills or to have a picnic, or sat indoors to gossip-usually about one predominant topic.

  "However do you tell the twins apart?" Annabelle asked Faith wide-eyed. "I should not know which one was my betrothed!" She giggled.

  "But they are both so handsome," Susanna commented. "And, Lady Brampton, is it true that Captain Adair is to return to Spain soon?"

  "I believe he hopes to return before winter sets in," Margaret replied.

  "How romantic it would be to follow the drum as a soldier's wife," Susanna sighed.

  "It would be most disagreeble and uncomfortable you may be sure, Susanna," Lady Lucy commented as she stitched at a sampler.

  "Is Mr. Northcott to come to dinner again this evening?" Faith asked of no one in particular. "I do think he casts the other men in the shade with his elegance."

  "Never say so," Annabelle objected. "Did you not note the high points of Mr. Rodney Langford's collars last evening? I know it was not Mr. Kenneth Langford, because you were holding his arm, Faith. And did you not see his striped satin waistcoat and stockings? I like to see a man in the height of fashion. Mr. Northcott is too-too-"

  "Staid?" asked Charlotte helpfully.

  "There, you see?" Annabelle said triumphantly. "Charlotte agrees with me."

  "I did not say that," Charlotte pointed out.

  The men spent most of their days out riding, or fishing, or playing billiards indoors. Their conversation was, significantly, about horses and hunting and the latest boxing mills they had witnessed, about cards and gambling and the latest bizarre bets that had been entered in the books at the clubs.

  "I say," said Ted Kemp, "did you see Bill Bruiser give Hatchet Harry a leveler in the ring last week? Two minutes into the first round. Harry had pounded Bruiser like a punching bag in the stomach. Bruiser did not even bat an eyelid. Then one left hook and bam! Blood pouring from Harry's nose and Bruiser being carried from the ring shoulder high."

  "A damned waste of time I called it," said Charles. "It took an hour to drive out to the mill and another half-hour to find a parking spot. The whole thing was over before a man had started to watch."

  "Who is going to win the race to Brighton?" Rodney Langford asked.

  "What race?" asked Sir Henry.

  "Viscount Harley's son and old Sangster to race their curricles from London to Brighton Saturday next," Rodney explained.

  "It will probably end with a couple of broken necks," Lord Romley commented.

  "Sangster's favored on the odds, I hear," said Kenneth Langford.

  Very little of their conversation concerned the ladies.

  The evenings were a time that the whole party spent together. After dinner, when the gentlemen had rejoined the ladies after their port, there would be pianoforte music and singing, or cards, or some impromptu dancing, or merely conversation. Once there was a lively game of charades. It was during these evenings that the older ladies gathered some of their ammunition for the next day's gossip.

  Lady Romley noticed that Annabelle and Ted sat together at the pianoforte singing quietly together long after everyone else's attention had moved on to other matters. She noticed that Faith and Kenneth did not speak to each other for the whole of one evening. She noticed that Charlotte rarely talked to Devin Northcott, but that she followed him everywhere with her eyes. And she noticed the Devin spent most of his evenings talking with Lady Brampton.

  The dowager Countess of Brampton noticed that Susanna tried in many ways to fix her interest with Charles. She noticed that her daughter-in-law looked tired. She definitely had the look of one who was enceinte, she confided in an undertone to her friend the next day ("so wonderful for dear Richard to have an heir at last, Hannah"). She noticed Charlotte disappear through the French windows one evening with Charles while most of the others were at cards. And she noticed them returning more than half an hour later.

  "Charlotte, my love, do you wish to rescue a drowning man?" Charles had said. "Come and walk in the garden with me."

  "What, does Susanna Kemp not compare with your Juana?" Charlotte asked cheekily when they were outside. She tucked her arm comfortably through his.

  "Have you heard of the difference between night and day, brat?" he asked.

  "You really are being most cruel to all the ladies, you know, Charles," she scolded gaily. "Here they all are, falling over themselves trying to ensnare you, and you will not even warn them that you are betrothed."

  "Should I wear a sign?" he asked. "And can I help it, my love, if I was born with quite irresistible charm?"

  "And with incredible immodesty," Charlotte commented to the stars.

  They went to sit on the stone wall surrounding the fountain in the rose garden.

 
; "Juana is really coming to England," Charles announced.

  "Oh? When?" Charlotte clapped her hands.

  "She was not sure of that. The war had disrupted life in Spain. It may be weeks or only days before she arrives in Portsmouth. She may even now be on the seas. She is to send me a message when she arrives. I can be there from here in four hours or less."

  "Charles, do you not think it would be wise to tell your mama or his lordship that she is coming?"

  "No, I do not," he answered. "It will be time enough for them to know when she is here. They cannot possibly see her and not fall in love with her on the instant."

  Charlotte could not help but feel that he was looking at the situation through a lover's eyes, but she kept her counsel.

  Lord Romley one evening showed interest in the old Norman church at Brampton town, four miles away.

  "Yes, it is in very good repair," the earl replied to a question directed at him, "and almost entirely original. It is still used as our parish church."

  "The new vicar is very knowledgeable about it," Margaret added. "He knows every tomb and the history of everyone buried there."

  "We will be going there to church next Sunday," Brampton added, "but in the meanwhile, we could arrange an excursion there if anyone is interested."

  "Splendid!" said Faith. "Do you not agree, Kenneth?"

  It seemed that everyone agreed. The excursion was set for the following afternoon, weather permitting. Meanwhile, the evening's conversation became brisk with plans for conveying sixteen people-Devin Northcott said he would ride over to the house after luncheon and make one of the party. It was decided that the closed traveling carriage and the open landau would together convey twelve people. Devin offered to take one other person up with him in his curricle. Two of the men would ride.

  The following afternoon proved perfect for an outing. The sun shone from a cloudless sky; there was no wind to threaten hats or bonnets or carefully placed curls of hair. The ladies, bright and summery in their silks and sprigged-muslin dresses, were able to dispense with shawls and pelisses, but not with their parasols.