A Lady in Disguise (17 page)

He walked toward her, his eyes never leaving her face. Lillian could not avert hers to free herself from the spell he wove. Thorpe took her fingers and raised them to his lips. He pressed an ardent kiss upon the back of her hand. Lillian could only pray that the others did not see either his impropriety or her response. She half closed her eyes and swayed, feeling as though she might swoon.

“A veritable goddess,” he murmured.

Lady Genevieve laughed and clapped her hands, echoed by Addy. “Prettily done, my dear. You should have been a courtier; you are quite wasted as a mere country gentleman. I should like to see the pair of you dance a minuet.”

Tossing up her head, Lillian rallied enough to lisp in the most affected accent she could muster, “La, ma’am, would you make a game of me? All the world knows this ... gentleman is naught save a cruel flirt of the worst description.” Only later did she realize how much she sounded like Paulina Pritchard.

“It’s as good as any play,” Nora declared, only to shrink once more into silence under the furious glare of her aunt.

“I also would like to see you dance, Thorpe,” Mrs. Grenshaw said, recovering a silky tone. “You really ought to give another such party as you did for Emily all those years ago. I’m sure the castle is quite longing to hear music and laughter once again, if I’m not being too sentimental.”

Lillian thought she was. But Thorpe only flourished another in his arsenal of devastating smiles. ‘Then you’ll be elated to learn that I have given in to your husband’s odes on the subject and am sending out invitations this afternoon to a social evening, with dancing, to take place on Tuesday.” His gaze returned to Lillian. “Perhaps I should have made it a costume ball.”

“Thorpe!” Mrs. Grenshaw breathed ecstatically. Then her face fell. “We haven’t brought a single suitable gown between us. Come, Nora, we must search through our dresses at once.”

“Me, too!” Addy echoed.

“Pray borrow the carriage,” Thorpe said, “if you wish to go into town. I believe Fenniman’s has a fine selection of ready-made clothing for ladies.” He addressed himself to empty air. Even his daughter had scurried off, caught up in a sudden whirlpool of alarmed femininity.

Turning to Lady Genevieve, Thorpe said, “Grandmother, Becksnaff wishes to speak to you.”

“I should think so!” Taking her skirt in her hands, Lady Genevieve hastened from the room. She either did not see or she ignored the hand Lillian thrust out to stay her.

“Now what am I to do?” she said, sighing. “I can’t get out of this without...” With a blink of disbelieving eyes, Lillian realized that she and Thorpe were quite alone.

“I’d be more than pleased to help you. Miss Cole,” he said, one wicked eyebrow rising.

“I’d prefer to ring for a maid, Mr. Everard.”

“I’m sure you would, but as you can see, the bellpull is all the way across the room.”

“Are you flirting with me, sir?” she demanded in a glacial tone. Dimly, she recalled this tactic working with importunate London gentlemen. They would instantly deny any such intention. But they had not a smile that would melt the most arctic woman.

“Yes. Yes, I believe I am. I can understand your asking. I’m not very good at it. You’ll have to teach me to improve my skills in that area. You are a governess, are you not?”

“Not yours,” Lillian said, retreating further. She felt the chill of the mirror against her back. If she could have turned to look at her face, what expression would she see now? Why, a mentally deficient cow, her baser self answered, laughing.

“I wasn’t playing a game when I said that you are lovely in that dress. It reminds me of the first day you were here. When you were up in that little room my grandmother first said was yours.” The laughter in his green eyes was not at all hidden by his lazy eyelids.

“I—I don’t know what you mean!” she said, knowing it was a stupid thing to say, but she could think of nothing safer. For she recalled all too clearly the shattering thoughts that had filled her when he’d seen her half clothed in her room, with only a cloth between them. Now she was protected by another cloth, but this one was transparent.

“Shall I remind you?” He lifted his hand, his forefinger extended. But he touched nothing save her cheek, drawing his touch along its curve. Lillian felt her lower limbs weaken and tremble. She could not keep her head from dropping back as he slowly drew a line to her mouth. He murmured her name and she felt his breath stir on her lips. This could not be kindness!

At the memory of his other attentions to her, Lillian stiffened and pulled back. She caught a fleeting impression of his face, changed by some ardent power. That expression made her breath come short, even as had his touch. But regaining her self-control, she said, “Please... I don’t want you to. Let me go.”

Lillian pushed past him. He caught her arm and said her name in a low chuckle. Fire seemed to flash through the material of the sleeve to her skin, staying her steps and leaving her gasping at the overwhelming fever. She dared not lift her eyes to meet his, for she knew he’d see into her heart. Thorpe said her name again, lower, more intently, without laughter.

In the single instant that remained before Lillian felt she could no longer resist his enchantment, Burrows pushed open the door to pop her head around. Her eyes went big to see the master and the governess suspended in a most suspicious stance. The door closed. Guffaws came from behind it.

Lillian found herself abandoned. Thorpe released her arm and walked to the other side of the room, by the windows. Her mind leapt to the delusion that his breath came as rapidly as her own, and that he was finding it every bit as difficult to maintain the semblance of civilization. Drawing back from this fantasy, for his body could not possibly be experiencing the same disorder, she managed to croak, “Come in, Burrows.”

The guffaws dwindling to giggles, the hefty maid entered. Flicking looks at the master from beneath her lashes, and giggling, she said to Lillian, “Hey, miss, Mrs. Becksnaff asked me to ask you if you’d mind helpin’ us all in the kitchen the night o’ the ball?”

“I should be hap—” But Thorpe interrupted her compliant answer.

“Miss Cole will be attending the ball. Tell Mrs. Becksnaff she may hire whatever extra help she requires from the village.”

“Mr. Everard,” Lillian said, “I’d rather not.”

“You’ll do as you’re told.” His voice was as rough as she’d ever heard it. Without meeting her eyes, he walked from the room.

After luncheon, during which the talk revolved around clothes not investments, Lillian made herself useful to Lady Genevieve. Though she would not herself admit it, the older woman did not move as swiftly as perhaps she once had. Lillian volunteered the use of her quick, light steps to carry messages and coordinate all the bits and pieces of a ball.

When next she saw Thorpe, he sat quite near to Nora, his arm draped casually over the back of her chair. Passing close behind them, Lillian heard Thorpe say, on a laughing note, “It was easier to agree than to listen to your uncle’s eternal hinting. If he requires a rout to content him, so be it.”

“Aunt Grenshaw is just as difficult,” Nora said. She seemed much more relaxed in his presence than she had been before.

“On the contrary, I like a woman who knows her own mind.” The two chuckled companionably.

Though he did not turn his attention from Nora, Lillian felt that this last was to her address. She hurried to collect a book of receipts Lady Genevieve had been certain she’d left in the library, leaving them with their heads together over discarded hands of cards in the salon.

At church the next morning, they sat beside one another in the pew, and Thorpe helped Nora find the text. Lillian said her psalm. Every morning saw Nora and Thorpe out early on horseback. The rest of the time, she walked with Thorpe or played for Thorpe or took tours of the house and gardens with Thorpe. Mr. and Mrs. Grenshaw beamed and nudged and broadly winked at each other. Lillian said her psalm in a more determined tone, even muttering it aloud at times.

In her spare moments, which were few, she found herself limning a letter to Paulina. At night, before dreaming, she could almost see her hand moving across an empty page, writing with a pen of fire dipped in ink of pure venom. She could tell Paulina that Thorpe Everard’s only “trouble” was that he forgot one woman the moment another drifted across his vision. A fickle and cold-hearted man, afflicted with a permanently wandering eye. His consideration held no more meaning than the caress of an errant breeze.

With her knowledge of Paulina’s schoolgirl character, which she doubted had changed over the years, Lillian felt certain this was the way to bring the baroness hotfoot to Mottisbury. At times, she was sorely tempted to write just such a letter. Yet, the remnants of honor inculcated at that same school held her back. Telling tales was against the code, even telling them on a miserable man. Let Paulina come herself, if she must know the man’s secrets.

Then Lillian could see, in that misty precognizance that comes on the outermost edge of sleep, Paulina Pritchard running up to Thorpe and hurling her arms about him. She saw his face change until it wore that same amorous expression she herself had so briefly glimpsed. He would profess his perpetual passion for Paulina, realizing she was indeed the one and only woman for him.

Lillian groaned at the same point every night, and woke up. Again and again, she declared that this was not jealousy. Only one who loves, she reminded herself, can feel jealous.

* * * *

Despite Thorpe’s fiat in reference to Lillian helping the staff in their preparations, she had spent the last few days lending an extra hand where it was needed. She assembled the layers of the pink gateaux prior to icing. She polished silver and helped fill vases with blooms from vast gardens she had not yet visited. With the maids, she cleaned the parquet floors of the ballroom and the petite salons to the sides of that enormous chamber, listening all the while to their gossip.

“I come just before she died,” Burrows confided. “She wept and wailed something fierce about that baby. Called the master things no right-feelin’ woman should say. I mean, it’s God’s way, ain’t it? But she was the scaredest woman I ever saw.”

“Aye,” said the second maid, Hale. “And the prettiest. Do you remember how she looked? No, you weren’t here then. But I remember the first time she ever danced here. All in silver and gold, she was, with her hair all bound up with roses. The master took one look... aye, you could see it in his face. He never took the hand of another gel that night, I can tell you! Ate their hearts out for him, and he never noticing.” Her voice dropped away to nothing, as she mopped the floor with extra vigor.

“How soon after that did they marry?” Lillian asked, wishing she had sufficient self-control not to ask.

“Oh, not more ‘n six weeks, I reckon,” Hale said. ‘Then they went to Lunnon for the bridal month. And the boxes and valises they came home with! All for her, every stitch. I scarce ever saw her in the same gown twice, I can tell you!”

‘The master fair doted on her,” Burrows added. “Nothing was too good. He was always bringing her something to take her mind off the child. Not that it ever did.” She frowned.

“You should have been here before she found out she was breedin’! Things was different. Gay! She laughed all the time.”

“I heard Mr. and Mrs. Becksnaff say there was a house party near every week!”

‘True enough, true enough.”

“And the gentlemen as thick around her as bees around a honey pot!”

“Very generous, some of them, if you happen to see one of ‘em in the hall some night.” Hale leaned on her mop, lost in memories of the grand days. “Not that the master made any mind of it. He never would hear ill of her.”

“Was there any ill to hear?” Lillian asked. Had she really sunk so low as to question his servants?

“There’s always ill, miss, for those who’d hear it. Being Chapel, we don’t hold with such talk.”

Lillian changed the subject after that set-down, talking about the flowers that would fill the ballroom, and hearing in turn about the fits Mrs. Becksnaff threw over the hors d’oeuvres.

The morning of the ball, Lillian sat alone in the schoolroom, drawing letters in a round hand on a sheet of foolscap. Addy could now pick out any letter in the alphabet, even when given to her out of their proper order. Lillian had begun to ask Addy to read along after her in one of the easier books on the shelf. She thought these lessons would be reinforced if Addy could learn to trace out the letters as well as to say them.

When a rap sounded at the schoolroom door, Lillian jumped, scraping a line through the large G. Vexed at herself, for she well knew that Thorpe had taken Mrs. Grenshaw and Nora into the village, she called out, “What is it?”

Mr. Grenshaw came in, his gleaming face organized into a grin. “What a pleasant little room!” he said, glancing about. “Exact perfection for learning! And a remarkable fine background for your beauty. Miss Cole, if I may say such a thing.”

Lillian inclined her head a scant inch. Unfortunately, Mr. Grenshaw did not seem to require much encouragement. He said, “What a pity my dear daughter could not have lived to see her little girl all grown up, with a governess of her very own. Emily doted on learning. I’m sure you would have had found many subjects in common with her. There never was such a girl for facts ... and figures.”

“No doubt, Mr. Grenshaw.” This did not tally at all with Mrs. Grenshaw’s description of Emily’s turn of mind. Hoping he’d continue to talk about the late Mrs. Everard, Lillian said, “Now I know where Addy found her aptitude for learning.”

“Not that Thorpe isn’t a clever fellow. Yes. Why, he administers the entire Everard fortune by himself, or virtually so. And that’s no paltry sum, I can tell you!”

“Mr. Everard gives the impression that this responsibility rests lightly on his shoulders.”

“Oh, he’s a gentleman, right enough. As I told my girl when she said he was the one she wanted to marry, ‘Money’s money, but the gentry’s bankable even when they’re short of the actual.’ Not that an Everard worries about that. He’s got the needful in buckets.” Mr. Grenshaw stuck his hands in his coat pockets and his expression was not nearly as admiring as his words.