A Lady of Notoriety (The Masquerade Club) (6 page)

The maids were brimming with excitement. She’d not thought about maids enjoying pretty clothes just as she had done, not until she’d seen Monette’s delight in wearing modern fashions.

The abbess had said to her more than once,
God made us all the same.

In some ways people were the same, Daphne could agree, but she was always treated differently, even at the convent.

Because of her beauty.

‘I cannot help you as I thought,’ Daphne said, examining the blue floral print Monette had purchased for the gowns. ‘I must entertain Mr Westleigh. He has a desire to take a walk outside.’

‘Do not fear, ma’am,’ Mary said. ‘We can sew and still tend to our chores.’ She turned to her sister. ‘Can we not, Ann?’

‘We can. Oh, yes,’ the other girl said agreeably.

‘I will help later,’ Daphne said.

‘Ma’am?’ Mary spoke. ‘You ought not to be sewing our dresses in any event, if I may be so bold to say. We will finish them.’ She turned to Monette. ‘Ann and I can finish them, can we not? You will show us what you want?’

Sewing a new dress and tending to maid’s chores all in the same day seemed a daunting task to Daphne. She wondered how much work she’d created for the maids at Faville House without giving them a single consideration.

‘Well, make the dresses your priority today,’ she told them. ‘You can tend to the cleaning and other chores tomorrow.’

The three women curtsied. ‘Thank you, ma’am,’ they said in unison.

Daphne hurried off to her bedchamber for her bonnet and shawl, which should do for the cool day. She stopped in Westleigh’s room to get his hat.

Carter was there with the footman, who was to trail him all day to learn his duties.

‘Carter, I am taking Mr Westleigh for a turn in the garden,’ she told him. ‘Does he have a hat and gloves?’

Carter’s eyes widened. ‘No, m’l—ma’am. I did not think of a hat and gloves. He must have lost them.’ He turned to the footman. ‘Find Mr Pitts and see if he has a cap the gentleman might wear.’

‘No.’ Daphne stopped him. ‘Let me see first if he minds going out without them. Carter, perhaps you or—or—’ She could not think of the new footman’s name.

‘Toller, ma’am,’ he said.

‘Toller.’ She was ashamed of herself for forgetting. ‘Perhaps one of you could go into the village and buy the items for him.’

‘We’ll see to it.’ Carter crossed the room. ‘I do have something the gentleman asked for.’ He lifted a wooden cane.

‘A cane?’ She was surprised.

‘He said it would help him walk.’

She took it from his hand. ‘Thank you. I will take it to him.’

She left the room and started down the steps, but slowed her pace.

What happened to her resolve to spend as little time as possible with him? She could have insisted Carter take him for a walk, but then she would have disrupted his instructions to the new footman. And the maids were right. She should not be sewing their clothes for them.

She could not delegate the care of Westleigh to the servants. It was her job as hostess. She could do so without revealing who she was. He still did not need to ever find out who Mrs Asher really was.

Be truthful, especially to yourself,
she could hear the abbess say.

Very well. To be truthful, she liked the man’s company. No, more than liked his company. All her senses sparked into life when she was near him, in a way she’d never experienced before.

Such a reaction was simply more she must conceal from him. If it was better he never know the truth about who she really was, it was better still that he never know the thrill she felt in his presence.

Chapter Six

‘I
fear you have no hat or gloves.’ Mrs Asher startled Hugh with her entrance. ‘Shall I see if you can borrow some?’

‘I do not need them.’ He’d walk out in nothing but his drawers, if that was the only way.

‘We did not even think of them.’ She made it sound as if this was important. ‘They must have been lost in the fire.’

With his overcoat, some of his money and a change of clothing.

And possibly his sight.

He certainly did not want to dwell on that topic. ‘Let us not think of hats and gloves now. I am too eager to stretch my legs and breathe in fresh air.’

‘I do have something for you,’ she said. ‘A cane from Mr Carter.’

She placed it in his hand.

‘Good man!’ He gripped the handle and tested it. ‘I must thank him. This should help me walk around on my own.’ He’d seen blind people using canes to feel their way, waving them in front of their feet to warn of obstacles. He tested it in the room.

‘Not seeing must be so difficult....’ Her voice trailed off.

‘None of that.’ He extended his hand. ‘Come. Show me the way.’

She led him out the front door, holding his arm as if they were walking through Hyde Park. ‘There is a step down.’

It felt like flagstone beneath his feet, and he was surprised how insecure it felt to walk into a space without knowing what was ahead. He swept the cane in front of him and it swung free. She held on to him as well, but that gratified him in other ways. The air was crisp and cool and it nourished him. This was not a day to be hesitant or gloomy. This was a day to enjoy the scent of flowers, of a stable nearby, of stone and grass. All cheered him.

They descended the step. ‘Tell me what I would see in front of me.’

‘There is a walkway,’ she responded reassuringly. ‘Nothing to trip on.’

‘Not what is in front of my feet.’ He swept his hand across the vista hidden to him. ‘What I would see. I smell the stable. It must be in sight.’

‘Oh.’ She paused. Had he made her feel foolish? ‘There is a stable. Off to the left maybe a hundred yards away. The walkway leads to a road and the stable is several feet away on the road. The road leads past some trees and a field and you can see it reaching a bigger road that leads to the village. You can see the village. It is a mile or two away. There is a church tower rising above the other buildings.’

It could have been a description of anywhere, but it helped him feel grounded.

‘What does the stable look like?’ he asked.

‘It is white stucco, like the cottage.’ She turned as if double-checking the cottage’s appearance. ‘Would you like to walk down the path to the road?’

‘That will do.’ He did not really care as long as he was stretching his legs.

But they could not move at any great pace. He depended on her support more than he thought he would. His feet faltered a couple of times. She and the cane helped him keep his balance. The only words spoken were her warnings. ‘Take heed, there is a puddle. There is a rock.’ It made him feel like a cursed invalid.

He forced himself to walk with more confidence, even though he did not know what was in his path.

Perhaps she sensed his frustration. She suddenly made an attempt at conversation. ‘Tell me about your family, the ones you refused to allow me to contact.’

His family? He’d already told her about his profligate father. She probably wondered what other horrors his family possessed. ‘The others are not like my father.’

‘Then why not allow them to be contacted?’

He frowned. Why was she asking? ‘Because they would all come running to care for me.’

‘And you find that objectionable?’ she asked.

She must want to rid herself of his care. ‘None would be a good caretaker.’ He tried to explain. ‘My mother would merely consign me to the role of infant and try to do everything for me. She’d drive me insane in the space of an hour.’ He need not mention his mother’s lover, now constantly at her side. ‘My brother Ned, the new earl, carries the bulk of family responsibility. If he came, he would be neglecting something more important. But worse, he married this empty-headed chit who would be utterly infuriating.’ He also did not mention Rhys, his bastard brother. He had no right to ask anything of Rhys. ‘Then there is my sister—’

‘Your sister?’ Her voice tensed.

It was puzzling. ‘Phillipa would take good care of me, I am certain. I would not ask her, though. She is busy with the baby.’

‘A baby?’ Her voice grew soft, but none of the tension in it eased.

He’d forgotten. A baby was the likely reason for her long retreat on the Continent.

‘She recently gave birth to a girl.’ He was sorry he’d brought this up.

‘How nice for your sister.’ Mrs Asher’s voice turned sad.

He put his arm across her back. ‘Is this an unhappy topic for you, Mrs Asher?’

He felt her stiffen. ‘No. Why should it be?’

He wanted to ask if she had other children. If not, what a heart-wrenching situation. A childless widow having to give up her illegitimate baby.

He asked a different question. ‘Where is your family? Your parents? Sisters or brothers? Do you see them?’

‘I have no family.’ Her tone hardened.

No other children, then.

He held her tighter. ‘Forgive me. I did not know you were so alone.’

She shrugged. ‘I am used to it. My parents died a long time ago. As did my husband. There is no one else, really.’

‘A long time ago? You make yourself sound as old as Methuselah.’ In his mind she was young, but was she?

‘I am old,’ she said with conviction, avoiding his question.

He halted, dropping his arm from his half embrace. ‘I do not believe you.’

‘I am,’ she insisted.

He hooked the cane around his arm and reached up to her face. He explored her face with his fingers. Her skin was smooth, free of wrinkles, free of blemish. She had high cheekbones, large eyes, a pointed chin. He rubbed her lips with his thumb and felt her sharp intake of breath. Her lips were full. Lush. Moist.

A long sigh escaped her lips and her breath warmed his hand.

His body seized with sudden desire. He leaned closer and felt her tremble.

He caught himself and stepped back. ‘You are not as old as Methuselah, that much I can tell.’

She took his arm again. ‘I am, though,’ she insisted, her voice a bit shrill. ‘I am two and thirty.’

He frowned. He was a year older. They were neither of them in the bloom of youth, but neither were they what he would call old. On the other hand, he well knew the feeling of being aged. It came from enduring the horrors of life. The losses. She’d certainly endured losses.

‘How old were you when your parents died?’ he asked.

This was not the sort of conversation a gentleman should have with a lady, but he preferred talking of something substantial over exchanging inanities about the weather or gossip.

Besides, he wanted to learn about her.

She could always refuse to answer, if she liked.

To his surprise, she did answer. ‘I was eighteen. Hardly married a year.’

She’d married so young?

‘Poor Papa and Mama,’ she went on. ‘They never had much of a chance to bask in their triumph.’

‘Their triumph?’

She did not speak right away. ‘My husband was a wealthy man. It was quite a coup for me to marry him.’

‘I wonder that I cannot recall ever hearing his name.’ Perhaps her husband was not of society. Or perhaps Hugh had been too busy at war to keep track of the members of the
ton
.

‘We did not go to town much,’ she said. ‘He preferred the country.’

‘Tell me about him.’ He might as well try to satisfy all of his curiosity.

They walked several steps before she answered. ‘My husband was very good to me. My happiness was his greatest concern. Anything I wanted, if it was in his power to provide it, he gave to me.’

Except a child.

Rhys’s son and Phillipa’s daughter seemed to have sent them both over the moon with happiness. Last he heard from Ned, his wife was obsessed with wanting a child. Hugh had never thought about it for himself. It seemed a part of life to anticipate after one settled down. And he had no intention of settling down.

But she did not know that, did she? What could she know of his situation, if he had a wife or children?

‘You never asked me if I was married.’ He tried to say this without an accusatory tone.

It took several more steps for her to respond. ‘I knew you were not married.’

‘How did you know?’ He asked, too sharply.

Again she hesitated. ‘My husband always received the London papers and I continued receiving them. I—I liked reading about society, the parties, the people. The marriage of a son of Lord Westleigh would have been announced.’

A logical explanation. Still, she was holding something back, something she did not want him to know. Good God. Could it be—?

‘Did you know my father, Mrs Asher?’ He frowned.

If she’d encountered his father—

* * *

Daphne’s heart raced. He asked too many questions. Was suspicious of her, as well he should be. She was deceiving him after all.

‘No, I did not know your father,’ she answered him.

That was the truth. She might have met the man once or twice, in those early days when Faville had taken her to town for the Season, but she didn’t remember precisely.

He blew out a breath. ‘Good. For a moment I feared he might have misused you. He was entirely capable of such behaviour.’

‘But I read of him in the newspapers, of course.’ The papers never used full names when spreading scandal and gossip, but everyone knew of whom they wrote.

They passed the stable and two other small buildings whose purpose she did not know. The road was lined with shrubbery, bright green with new leaves. Buttercups and heartsease dotted the lawn beyond. Should she describe them to him? Or would it make it worse to know that spring bloomed all around and he could not see it?

He spoke. ‘You never said how long ago your husband died.’

Why must he persist in this interrogation?

She might as well answer. ‘A little over three years ago.’

‘Three years ago?’ His voice rose in surprise. ‘I thought you said it was a long time.’

‘It seemed like a long time to me.’ So much had happened to her since, even if most of it had occurred in her mind and emotions. Her marriage seemed like a dream in comparison.

‘How did it happen?’ he asked.

‘How did what happen?’

He made an exasperated sound. ‘Your husband’s death.’

‘Oh.’ Of course. ‘He fell from his horse.’

He’d been with her one minute and dead the next. She’d gone through mourning, but had she grieved his loss? She feared not.

What sort of wife did not grieve her husband’s death, especially a man who had been good to her?

Faville had always loved her. He’d loved her as a man loved a prized possession or a precious jewel. At the convent she’d realised there had been a man behind all that devotion, a man with his own needs and emotions. He’d given her far more than she’d given him. Instead, she’d filled her head with fantasies of Xavier Campion—husband of this man’s sister.

She ought to tell him. Tell him now.

But he would hate her if she did. She could not bear it, knowing a man in her house, under her care, hated her. She hated herself enough.

‘Why did you not marry, Mr Westleigh?’ she asked brightly. Flirtatiously. Such skills as turning the conversation in the direction she desired were her forte—or had been once.

He answered in a bantering tone. ‘I was mostly fighting Napoleon. Not a good time to start a courtship.’

‘But the war has been over for years now.’

‘I did not sell out until 1818,’ he explained. ‘Then my brother discovered my father had put our family at the brink of ruin. That certainly did not make me a good marriage prospect.’

She’d had no idea. Gossip about the Westleighs’ financial woes had never reached the newspapers. ‘The brink of ruin?’

‘We were in danger of losing it all. The River Tick was lapping at our toes, you might say. Debt collectors were mere minutes from our door.’ He stepped on a rock she’d neglected to warn him about and she had to hold tighter to his arm—his well-muscled arm—so he could catch his balance.

‘We should turn around.’ They were at the end of the road where it intersected with the road to Thurnfield. When they walked a few steps back towards the house she dropped her flirtatious tone, truly interested now. ‘You said you
were
in danger of losing your money. You didn’t lose it, then?’

‘We were rescued. We scraped together every pound we could get our hands on and convinced our half-brother to run a gaming house for us.’ His voice brightened. ‘He—Rhysdale—had a brilliant idea. He called the place the Masquerade Club and made it so men and women could gamble there in masks and protect their identity. Ladies are able to attend without risking their reputations.’

Daphne felt the blood drain from her face. How could she have attended the Masquerade Club all those weeks and not have known its connection to the Westleighs?

‘Was—is—the gaming house successful?’ It must be. When she’d attended, there had always been a crush of people, all throwing away their money to the roll of the dice or a turn of a card.

‘Successful beyond our imagining,’ he responded. ‘The Westleigh fortune is restored and is growing by the day.’

Daphne had never gambled heavily when she’d attended the Masquerade Club. She’d been too obsessed with making Xavier Campion admit he loved her.

But it had not been she whom Xavier loved.

She’d first seen him in a ballroom when she’d been twenty years old. A beautiful young man, the most beautiful young man she had ever seen, the sort of man who’d inspired the Greeks to make statues. His dark hair and skin had been the perfect counterpoint to her pale, blonde beauty. And even his magnetic blue eyes were the equal of hers. She’d thought that meant they were destined to be together, that they were the perfect lovers, an exquisite pair beautifully matched.

But her husband separated them before they became lovers and Daphne spent years dreaming of a reunion with Xavier. Ten foolish years.