Damsel in Disguise
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Epilogue
Teaser chapter
“So what do I owe you for the rescue, my lord?” she asked, wriggling into a more upright position, her knees pulled tightly toward her chest.
“You can’t even approach what you owe me, Julia.”
“Very well, then. I’ll simply say thank you and leave it at that.”
Leave it at that? Indeed, he supposed he should. But he wouldn’t.
“Not on your life,” he said and was foolish enough to touch her.
He stroked her shoulder where the skin was exposed. A bolt of unexpected lightning coursed through his veins and his fingers flexed. She was warm, soft. Somehow he hadn’t expected that. It seemed after becoming Mrs. Fitzgelder she should have turned as cold and serpentlike as her damned husband. But she hadn’t. Her skin was as perfect as he remembered it.
His hand ached for more of her, so he slid his fingers down to hook the blanket. Slowly, he dragged it lower until it hung off her shoulder, and she had to clutch it against herself to remain covered. She glared at him, her dangerous eyes tempting and warning at the same time. He’d be an absolute fool to continue.
Then again, he’d always been her fool, hadn’t he? He’d believed her lies; he’d fallen for her deception. He’d promised to make her his wife, for God’s sake. And even after three years, the woman still occupied his mind and tortured his dreams.
PRAISE FOR
Mistress by Mistake
“Sparkling with superbly crafted characters, humor, and deliciously sexy romance, Heino’s debut . . . is splendidly entertaining.”
—Booklist
Berkley Sensation Titles by Susan Gee Heino
MISTRESS BY MISTAKE
DAMSEL IN DISGUISE
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
DAMSEL IN DISGUISE
A Berkley Sensation Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Sensation mass-market edition / August 2010
Copyright © 2010 by Susan Gee Heino.
Excerpt from Temptress in Training by Susan Gee Heino copyright © by Susan Gee Heino.
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eISBN : 978-1-101-45887-7
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For Jack. I’m so lucky to be the damsel in dis guy’s life.
Chapter One
WARWICKSHIRE, ENGLAND,
15 JUNE 1816
Julia St. Clement had never tried to eat soup through a mustache before. It was dashed difficult, she found. No wonder the awful embellishment had gone out of favor with modern men. Three days now she’d hidden behind the blasted thing, and already she felt weak and malnourished from struggling to strain any decent sustenance through it. Why ever had she let Papa talk her into this dreadful disguise?
Because she’d had no other choice—that was why. Papa had whacked off her long dark hair, fashioned a sorry little mustache from a lock of it, and threw a pack of clothing at her.
“Change quickly, ma chérie!” he’d ordered. “Fitzgelder will know my face, but he’s not seen you before. With this, he’ll never suspect who you are.”
And it was true. The man they both feared—for good reason—had been completely deceived. He’d not caught a glimpse of Papa, and Julia had faced Fitzgelder alone. She was properly introduced as Mr. Alexander Clemmons, and the foul little man had no reason to guess his new friend was as much a sham as the shabby facial hair. Papa had escaped. This bloody mustache, it seemed, had saved his life.
And now, God willing, it would save a few others’. Hopefully, Julia’s would be one of them. Provided, of course, she didn’t succumb to starvation first.
“You’ve got soup on your whiskers,” her pretend wife, Sophie, announced with a girlish giggle.
“Of course I do,” Julia grumbled. “I’ve got soup on my chin, soup in my cravat, soup everywhere but in my mouth. Blast this disgusting mustache!”
“But you look quite dashing, you know,” Sophie said as she daintily spooned plenty of soup safely into her own mouth. “Really, it’s a pity mustaches aren’t more the style.”
“I feel wretched, and I look worse,” Julia assured her. “It’s a monstrous thing, and Papa will never hear the end of it when we finally meet up with him again.”
“If we meet up with him,” Sophie corrected, her sweet voice quavering. “The coachman has been so slow, miss. What if Mr. Fitzgelder catches us?”
“He won’t. Surely that locket you stole from him isn’t so important he’d come chasing us all the way out here.”
“I didn’t steal it!” the girl insisted for at least the dozenth time. “When he attacked me, it must have torn off in the struggle and fallen into my apron.”
“Little that will matter to him, will it? But I doubt he’ll be looking for you,
Sophie. That locket is the least of Fitzgelder’s worries just now. He’s got bigger things on his mind, I’m afraid.”
“Such as killing your friend, you mean.”
Julia shushed her. They were sitting off alone in the crowded common room of the posting house, but still it couldn’t hurt to be cautious. There was no telling who might be listening in. Fitzgelder had men out and about, and they could be anywhere right now. The room was quite full of strangers, not all of them respectable-looking.
“Anthony won’t be killed if I can help it,” Julia muttered under her breath.
Sophie gave a dreamy sigh. “He must be very special to you.”
Lord, she’d quickly disabuse the girl of that deranged notion. “The man is a selfish lout who doesn’t have an honest breath in his body,” she announced. “He very nearly deserves to be murdered.”
Sophie wasn’t swayed. “Then why have we spent the last three days traveling all the way out here to warn him?”
“I said nearly,” Julia had to admit. “No one deserves what Fitzgelder has planned for him; murdered on the highway by cutthroats and left there to rot.”
Sophie shuddered, momentarily forgetting her soup. “Are you sure we shouldn’t just find the local magistrate and tell him? I’m not too keen on all this cutthroat business.”
“I told you to wait back in London, didn’t I?”
Now the girl was offended. “What? And leave you to come out here alone? I couldn’t do that, Miss Clement! You saved my life.”
“Well, I certainly didn’t save you from Fitzgelder just so his hired thugs could do you in on the road,” Julia said and stared longingly at the two shriveled potatoes in her bowl. “It’s getting dark. I think we should let the mail coach go on without us and spend the night here.”
“Here? But surely we’re getting close to—what’s that place where your gentleman friend is staying?”
“Hartwood; it’s likely some musty old estate. The lord of the manor had Rastmoor stand up at his wedding, and no doubt they’re all still reveling. Since we’ve not yet passed through Warwick, and as difficult as the roads have been, it’s bound to be another full day’s travel for us.”
Sophie sighed. “Well, I suppose we ought to stay here, then. I just hope, for the sake of that selfish lout you want to rescue, we get there in time.”
“So do I, Sophie,” Julia agreed, making another brave go at the soup. “So do I.”
Almost as irritating as this blasted mustache was the worry that Fitzgelder’s men had already reached the destination and accomplished their goal. True, she and Anthony, Viscount Rastmoor, had not parted on the best of terms, but she’d give anything right now to see that he was alive and well. If he could just walk through that door safe and sound, she’d . . . well, she’d be very relieved.
Then she’d knock him on his arse and ask what in the hell he’d been thinking three years ago when he’d wagered—and lost—her at the gaming table. Good God, as if she was chattel he could own and barter at will! Well, he’d owned her, all right—owned her heart and soul—right up until that night when Fitzgelder marched up to Papa, waving Anthony’s vowels and claiming that he was her fiancé now. As if such a thing could be legally binding.
But it was the fact that Anthony had done such a thing, even as an angry jest, that had broken Julia’s heart. She knew what it meant. Anthony had found out the truth about her identity and wanted no part of such a wife. He’d cast her off like the rubbish he believed her to be and Julia had never seen him again.
Indeed, Anthony Rastmoor simply had to remain alive. If Fitzgelder’s men got to him first, how would Julia ever get her revenge?
“IT’S BROKEN,” ANTHONY, LORD RASTMOOR, SAID AS he inspected the underside of their carriage.
“Damn,” his companion, the Earl of Lindley, fumed. “I just bought this phaeton three weeks ago. Quite a piece, don’t you think?”
“I think you got taken.” Rastmoor dusted the dirt off his hands and trousers. “Most of the higher-quality conveyances have axles that actually attach to the wheels.”
“It certainly was doing that when I bought the blasted thing,” Lindley said, fairly diving onto his hands and knees to crawl under the carriage. “Are you saying there’s been shoddy workmanship here?”
Rastmoor was perfectly content to let his elegant friend get muddy. It was, after all, Lindley’s carriage. He should have been the one down there investigating in the first place, although what Lindley would have investigated, Rastmoor couldn’t say. The stylish earl likely wouldn’t have known the difference between a broken axle and a hay rake. Still, Rastmoor was happy enough not to be the only one with dirt on his knees.
Lindley swore, and Rastmoor had to chuckle. While most men might let out a string of colorful words over the condition of the axle, Lindley was more likely upset over what he’d just done to his clothes. He probably wouldn’t even notice it was some very shoddy workmanship, indeed, that put them in this predicament.
In fact, it hardly looked like workmanship at all. No, if Rastmoor didn’t know better, he might even wonder if the damage to Lindley’s carriage was intentional. But that was ridiculous. Who would tamper with Lindley’s carriage? Unless, of course . . .
But that was ridiculous, too. Surely dear cousin Fitzgelder would not stoop to something like this, would he? No, this had to be merely an accident.
Damn, but it was rather coincidental, wasn’t it? Mother sent a message warning he’d best get himself to London for some unnamed trouble Fitzgelder was stirring up, and now something so unusual as this threatened to delay him. Could it be mere coincidence? He wanted to believe so, but somehow he just couldn’t.
What was Fitzgelder about, this time? The terms of Grandfather’s will had been well settled these two years. Surely his cousin couldn’t think to dredge all that up again, could he? Then again, Rastmoor had learned the hard way not to put anything past Cedrick Fitzgelder.
The horses fidgeted nervously, so Rastmoor went to calm them.
“What rotten luck,” Lindley said finally, uttering a few more oaths and crawling out from under his carriage. “I don’t suppose you have a spare axle or whatever you said that was?”
“No, I don’t,” Rastmoor said. “But if you have some straps or the like, we might be able to bind the thing well enough to get it back to that posting house we just passed. We won’t be riding, though.”
Lindley bit his lip and glanced around at the dusky trees lining the road on either side of them. “That’s slow going, isn’t it?”
“I suppose, but with that axle broken, we’re done for the night, I’m afraid.”
“Yes, it appears that way, but I’m not sure my horses are up for pulling dead weight. Even if we bind it, that axle won’t turn very well, will it?”
So Lindley did have some basic understanding of the mechanics of the thing. Well, he couldn’t very well blame the man for not wanting to overtax his cattle. The only thing finer than Lindley’s wardrobe was his stables, and these two goers were as good as they got. It would be a shame for such proud horseflesh to be dragging a lame carriage all the way to that posting house.
“All right, help me loose them, then. We’ll walk the horses and send someone back to get your precious phaeton.”
Lindley agreed, then noticed his muddied condition. “Bother. My valet will have my hide over these trousers.”
Oh, not the valet again. Rastmoor rolled his eyes. “I don’t see how you abide the man. From what you say, he sounds like a ruddy tyrant.”
Lindley smiled. “That he is, but I assure you I’d never make it without him. Which reminds me.”
He left Rastmoor with the horses and went around to the back of the carriage. He dug through a box stowed there.
“Ahem, but we unharness the horses up at this end,” Rastmoor called.
“Yes, but the weapons are back here.”
“Weapons?”
“Here, take this,” Lindley called out, tossing Rastmoor a let
hal little pistol.
“What’s this?” Rastmoor asked.
“It’s a pistol,” Lindley informed him.
“I know it’s a pistol. What in God’s name is it for?”
“For shooting anyone who might come out of those trees after us.” Lindley glanced at said trees and shuddered. “You never know what sort of persons are about these days, and it’s very nearly dark out.”
“Good grief. Is it loaded?”
“Of course. What bloody use would it be empty?”
Rastmoor shook his head, but he accepted the pistol and slipped it into his pocket. He was a bit taken aback when Lindley casually tucked his own pistol into the front of his trousers. This image of the always elegant Lindley with a pistol wedged at his waist was more than a bit humorous.
“What is it?” Lindley asked.
“Aren’t you worried that will ruin the lines of your tailoring?” Rastmoor asked, not bothering to hide his smirk. “Whatever will your valet think?”
“Should a highwayman leap out after us, I would prefer to have my weapon where I can get at it,” Lindley said, stepping up to help with the horses. “A few wrinkles can always be ironed out. Blood, my valet tells me, is a bit more dicey.”
“I’m sure it is,” Rastmoor had to agree.
No highwaymen did leap out, though, and they pushed and pulled until the phaeton was safely out of the roadway. Leading Lindley’s fine horses, the men headed off to the posting house. The evening was dreary and still, yet not nearly so dreary as the day two months ago when Rastmoor had traveled this same road.
He’d been traveling with his friend Dashford, on the way to what was supposed to have been a quiet house party. Some house party, though. There were floods and fiancées and fiascos until the bloody thing ended with Dashford’s wedding. Rastmoor still wasn’t sure how he felt about that.