Daring Masquerade

by Mary Balogh

  Kate did as she was bidden without looking at him or replying to his words. It was a humiliation to admit on this occasion that he was right. She had even been on the verge of pushing her chair back and stalking from the room. The very thought now made her turn hot and cold. She kept her eyes on her plate for the next few minutes while she felt her heartbeat return to normal.

  The greatest humiliation was that her words, which had sounded so noble to her own ears, were really not true at all. She had felt a thrill of excitement in Nicholas Seyton’s presence, so much so that she had allowed him to kiss her the very night of the kidnapping and had returned the night after with a great eagerness to be kissed again. Of course, she thought in her own defense, she had not felt any of that attraction to her captor until he had convinced her that he was not in reality a common highwayman or kidnapper at all.

  Kate turned in gratitude to Sir Peregrine when he made a commonplace remark to her, and began a conversation with him that lasted until Lady Thelma rose to lead the ladies back to the drawing room so that the gentlemen might be left to their port and their masculine conversation.

  Chapter 8

  The Earl of Barton conducted his guests on a tour of his home late the following morning. Kate would have declined to join the company, but again her employer insisted on her presence.

  “I will not have you look upon yourself as some sort of servant, Kate,” Thelma said. “You are my companion, my friend. And one cannot be really friendly with a servant, can one? Besides, you are as much a lady by birth as I am. No, really, you must consider yourself to be a part of this house party.”

  “You are very kind,” Kate said, much affected. “I merely thought you would prefer now to spend your time with your friends. Miss Barr-Smythe and Miss Carstairs are more of an age with you.”

  “Yes, they are,” Thelma agreed. “But I do like you, Kate. And admire you. I wish that I could acquire some of your courage to face life. I like to be with you. That is why I chose you as my companion, you know.”

  Kate smiled. “Thank you,” she said.

  Thelma frowned. “When do you plan to leave off your half-mourning for your husband?” she asked. “It has been more than a year, has it not? You must have loved him a great deal, Kate, to be still wearing such dull colors. Yet you are so lovely. You will put us all in the shade when you do start wearing brighter colors and fashionable designs again.”

  Kate said nothing. The earl’s instructions regarding her appearance were not known to his daughter, then.

  So she joined the other guests in their tour of the Abbey. The only persons missing, in fact, were Viscount Stoughton and Lady Emma Worth, who had announced the evening before that she never rose before noon. Kate was not sorry for this second formal showing of Barton Abbey. She felt as if she would wander through the house for a lifetime and still find new wonders to marvel at.

  Most of the guests exclaimed in awe at the contrast between the white stone and marble hall, massive and Palladian in design, and the richly decorated salon beyond, its walls and furnishings covered with deep crimson Genoese velvet, its coved ceiling bright with paintings and gold-leaf decorations, its walls hung with large canvases, all family portraits.

  The Marquess of Uppington said little and contrived to look somewhat bored, Kate noticed. She turned to observe the obnoxious Sir Harry Tate, expecting to see a similar expression on his face. However, he was standing before a painting that was smaller than most, one that showed a smiling fair-haired body standing with one hand resting on the neck of a seated greyhound dog. It was the portrait of a former Viscount Stoughton, she had discovered on her first tour of the house, Nicholas Seyton’s father, in fact. She had gazed at the portrait herself a few days before, wondering if without his mask Mr. Seyton resembled his father at all.

  Sir Harry, hands clasped behind his back, seemed absorbed in the painting, while the other guests exclaimed over the larger canvases or the more obvious magnificence of the ceiling or the carved and pillared doorcase that connected the salon to the hall. He turned while Kate still watched him and met her eyes. Immediately his eyelids drooped to half-cover his eyes, and one eyebrow rose as he fingered the riband of his quizzing glass and raised it to his eye. He looked languidly through it at the figures carved around the marble chimneypiece.

  They moved on to the east wing, beyond which the chapel and part of the cloisters of the old Abbey still stood. Nicholas was finding the tour painful. His cousin’s descriptions were for the main part accurate but woefully shallow. It hurt to hear the home that he loved and knew in such minute detail being treated as a mere showpiece. The paintings were seen as decoration merely, while to him they represented his heritage, his ancestors, even if there was a possibility that he had only an illegitimate connection to them. The old Abbey chapel and the open, pillared cloisters along one side of it were presented as quaint but unimportant relics by the earl. To Nicholas they were live history and still held the presence of God as they must have done when this whole property was occupied by monks. For many years he had been in the habit of visiting the chapel to pray or merely to sit and think.

  But he endured the whole tour. And he succeeded, he felt, in hiding his own pain, with only one slip. Katherine Mannering had altogether too sharp a mind for his comfort. She had been watching him with quite penetrating eyes as he stood looking at his father’s portrait. And he knew that for that minute or so he must have dropped his guard. The portrait had always fascinated him. His father! What had he been like? That portrait was the only surviving one of him, and there was nothing else—no writings. The viscount had not been a studious young man.

  It had not been a serious lapse, Nicholas decided. His back must have been toward Katherine as she watched. But he must be careful. It would not be disastrous, he supposed, if she discovered the truth. She would not give away his secret. But if his disguise was too weak to deceive her, then perhaps other people too would discover the truth. And that would be serious. Besides, he did not want Katherine to know his real identity. It was vastly amusing to tease her in the guise of Sir Harry Tate. He had thoroughly enjoyed himself the evening before at the dinner table, though he had felt some pangs of conscience after making her so indignant that she almost disgraced herself before the whole company. He looked forward to further such encounters.

  He should not continue that game, of course. One of his main reasons for keeping his identity secret from Katherine was to make sure that they kept their distance from each other. But he felt fairly safe in his present line of teasing. She had clearly taken a thorough dislike to Sir Harry Tate, and he intended to keep matters that way. She at least would feel no temptation to taste his kisses again.

  And that thought was enough to set Nicholas to looking about him with more languid attentiveness as the party entered the music room. He must not think of kissing Katherine Mannering. That had been a very pleasant experience from his past. And it must remain in his past. When this was all over and he had somehow gained some satisfactory answers about his origins, he would go away from Barton Abbey and find himself a desirable woman, perhaps even a wife, and with her rid himself of all the frustrations of his present chaste way of life. But not with Katherine. And not now.

  If he could prove that he was legitimate, of course . . . But he did not yet dare look upon that possibility with any great hope.

  Despite Lady Thelma’s assurances of the morning, Kate found herself with an unexpectedly free afternoon. Mr. Sidney Moreton and Lord Poole invited Thelma and Julie Carstairs to drive with them into Trecoombe to see the harbor and the fishing boats and the few shops. Mrs. Carstairs said that her daughter might go, provided the two young ladies promised not to leave each other’s sides, and the earl gave his permission. Thelma was the nearest to excited Kate had ever seen her.

  “You may have the afternoon off, Kate,” Lady Thelma said immediately after luncheon. “You may wish to go walking. I know you like doing so and have been held back by me. I hate to walk whe
n I might just as conveniently be driven. Now you may do as you wish. I shall see you at teatime or perhaps later.”

  Kate smiled. “Perhaps I will walk farther into the park than I have done so far,” she agreed.

  “Mr. Moreton is to describe the boats in the harbor,” Thelma said. “He is from Cornwall, you see, and knows all about fishing. He has even worked with the fishermen from his home on occasion. Is that not very brave, Kate? I do not believe I could have the courage to set out upon the sea in such frail craft.”

  Kate noticed that the girl showed no nervousness about leaving the estate to travel the distance to the village. She seemed to have no thought to possible highwaymen lying in wait for her. Clearly Mr. Sidney Moreton was seen as protection enough against the dangers of the road. Kate failed to see the attraction. Mr. Moreton was not handsome in either face or physique. He was small and slight of figure. And he was a quiet man. Kate did admit to herself that she had never conversed with him. Perhaps he had a charm of manner that accounted for Thelma’s infatuation, but was not obvious from mere observation.

  Kate did feel somewhat uneasy for her employer on another matter. She did not believe she imagined that the Marquess of Uppington had been brought to Barton as the girl’s suitor. The earl treated him with great deference. There seemed to be no other reason why he would have been invited, since he had no intimate among the other guests. And Kate had noticed more than once the previous evening the proprietary, though somewhat contemptuous way in which the marquess looked at Thelma. What chance would Mr. Moreton have with the girl if her father had ambitions of arranging an alliance between her and a marquess?

  Kate shrugged off the concern. She had the luxury of an afternoon to herself, and she must decide what to do with it. The prospect of a walk was very appealing. The day was not brilliantly sunny, but the air was fresh. And she longed to wander about the park. She knew that it was lovely just from the glimpses she had had of it from close to the house and from the driveway. And she had discovered since her arrival that it had been set out by Mr. Capability Brown himself.

  But she decided after all not to walk. She would ask Lord Barton if she might begin working in the library. Cleaning the books and perhaps reorganizing them would be a formidable task. She had realized that in her few visits to the room, when she had looked about her and realized just how many volumes there were covering the two long walls of the library from floor to high ceiling. And apart from the challenge of the task itself, she had no real hope of any great reward. She did not know what the earl was looking for—if anything—or if his search was in any way connected with Mr. Seyton. And if she found what he was looking for, she was not at all sure she would recognize it.

  But Kate felt the need to do something. Her indignation over Nicholas’ selfish desire to take her to bed had subsided in the week since they had last met. Perhaps he had not meant to be selfish. Perhaps he did not realize that “that” brought no pleasure to a woman. Perhaps her eager reaction to his kisses and caresses had led him to believe that she would not be averse to allowing him to possess her. Perhaps.

  Or perhaps her willingness to make excuses for him stemmed from the fact that she missed him. It was stupid, of course, to think about missing someone one had met on only two occasions. But her two meetings with Nicholas Seyton had brought her the only excitement she had felt in years. She wanted him to kiss her again. She had been left unsatisfied the last time. His very upsetting suggestion had put an end to the pleasure that had been building in her. She ached physically for another chance to experience those pleasurable feelings.

  But it was not just his kisses that she missed. There was something else about the man that exhilarated her, something that appealed to a kindred spirit in her. Mr. Seyton was a man with a goal in life, and he was willing to work toward that goal even at the expense of his own safety. There was a spirit of adventure in him. Kate found herself envying him greatly. If only there could be more adventure in her life! She would burst soon at the boredom of her present existence.

  So she decided to begin searching the library for she knew not what. At least while doing so she would be able to pretend that she was doing something furtive and highly dangerous. Perhaps she would find some document for which the earl would be prepared to kill, a document of such crucial importance to Mr. Seyton that she would not be able to entrust its care even to the servants he had named. She would have to deliver it herself. And then . . .

  Kate made a face at herself in her glass as she smoothed her hair into place again, smoothed out the folds of her brown cotton dress, and left her dressing room in search of the earl. She found him without any effort at all. He was standing at the top of the marble steps outside the main doors, apparently describing the fountain to Lady Lacey and her daughter Angela. Kate waited respectfully in the doorway until the ladies began to descend the steps and the earl turned to reenter the house.

  “My lord,” she said, “if it is convenient to you, I should like to spend a few hours in the library cleaning and perhaps beginning to catalog the books.”

  “Ah, Mrs. Mannering,” he said, “what a good idea. I am pleased to see that you know your place and that you do not take advantage of the absence of my daughter. It would not be the thing, you know, for you to mingle with the other guests while she is gone.”

  “Quite so, my lord,” Kate said briskly, her hands gripping each other almost painfully. “Do you have a spare moment to tell me exactly what you wish me to do in the library?”

  The earl led the way there. “You may begin at the top of this side,” he said, waving an arm in the direction of one long wall. “Those are probably the volumes least used over the years. Dust them carefully, Mrs. Mannering, and make sure that nothing is enclosed in any of them. I am afraid my uncle was a poorly organized man. From my years with him I remember that he had the habit of using any papers he could lay his hands on to mark his place in the books he read. And he was a haphazard reader. He rarely came back to the same book once he laid it down. Many was the time we searched for some paper of importance that had apparently disappeared, only to find it between the pages of some obscure volume.” He chuckled.

  “What an alarming habit in someone of importance,” Kate murmured.

  “Yes, indeed,” he agreed. “If you find any papers, Mrs. Mannering, you need not trouble your head examining them or deciding if they are of any importance. Set them on the desk and I shall look them over myself.”

  “I shall certainly do so,” Kate said agreeably, tying around her waist an apron she had brought with her.

  “If you wish to take note of the titles and begin planning some organization of the books, you may do so and make your proposals to me at a later date,” the earl said.

  “Yes, my lord,” Kate said, and she curtsied as he left her alone in the library. She felt like a conspirator as she gazed along the shelves all jammed full with leather-bound volumes. Oh, dear, what a formidable task it was, and how unlikely that she would come across anything that would be of any assistance to Mr. Seyton in his quest. What sort of document was likely to be of importance to either him or the earl anyway? Something that named his mother and the place where she had lived five-and-twenty years before? Was it possible that that letter his mother was reputed to have written after his birth still survived? Was that what she was looking for? Kate sighed and pushed the movable staircase along the wall until she could climb it and reach the heavy books in the top corner.

  More than an hour later she looked back along the shelf to view the books she had already cleaned and examined. It was a depressingly small number. The trouble with her, Kate decided, was that she could not open a book without having to examine and become engrossed in its contents. In fact she had almost forgotten her main purpose in opening each volume. It was only the slim and yellowed piece of paper she had found in this particular one that had brought her mind back to the task at hand. The paper appeared to be an ancient bill for candles and quite unimportant. But she
dutifully climbed down the steps and placed it on the desk.

  She was climbing back up again when the door opened and she turned to see who had decided that the library was a suitable retreat for the afternoon. She was not at all pleased to discover that it was Sir Harry Tate.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” Kate said as curtly as she dared, and she continued on her way to the top of the stairs and removed a book from the top shelf.

  “Well, if it is not Mrs. Mannering playing at being bookworm,” he said in that bored drawl that had begun to grate on Kate’s nerves. “And an apron, ma’am? Never tell me that you have taken on the task of housemaid and are actually dusting the books.”

  Kate turned to stare down at him, not bothering to try to smile or look polite. She was quite unsurprised to find herself being surveyed through a quizzing glass. “I doubt if many housemaids are entrusted with the task of dusting valuable books, sir,” she said. “I have volunteered for the task.”

  “Dear me,” he said. “Lord Barton must consider that he has hired a treasure, ma’am. Companion, housemaid, librarian all in one deliciously attractive parcel.”

  Kate dusted the book with care and leafed through the pages before answering. “I am Lady Thelma’s employee, sir,” she said at last. “I am employed as her companion. But I would disdain to offer only those services I am contracted for. I believe in using my time wisely and well, no matter what the circumstances. Some things are done for personal satisfaction and not for monetary gain.” She looked down at him, she hoped with great dignity. “And my appearance has nothing to do with anything, sir.”

  Sir Harry lowered his quizzing glass and strolled across the room until he stood at the foot of the library stairs. “Why are you leafing through each volume, Mrs. Mannering?” he asked. “Are you hoping to discover that the late earl was eccentric enough to line the pages with treasure maps?”