Fragile Mask

A FRAGILE MASK

Elizabeth
Bailey

© Elizabeth Bailey 1996,
2014

All rights
reserved.

The moral right of the
author has been asserted.

No part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior
permission in writing of the author. Nor be otherwise circulated in
any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is
published and without a similar condition including this condition
being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters and events
in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain,
are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.

First published in Great
Britain by Mills & Boon Limited 1996

Re-edited and published by
Elizabeth Bailey 2014

www.elizabethbailey.co.uk

Published by Elizabeth
Bailey at Smashwords 2015

© Cover art and design by
David Evans Bailey 2014

www.davidevansbailey.com

Visiting friends in
Tunbridge Wells, Denzell Hawkeridge is struck by the warmth of a
beautiful girl playing with children in the snow. But when he meets
the mysterious Verena Chaceley, she is as cold as a statue.
Provoked into flirting, Denzell cannot judge his success in
pricking through the mask.

Anxious for her abused
mother’s health, terrified the perpetrator will come after them,
Verena struggles to remain aloof from Denzell’s charm. He retires
defeated, until a chance encounter produces a clue to Verena’s true
background.

Will Denzell’s affection
be enough to coax Verena out of her ingrained fear of
matrimony?

Fine flakes, still drifting through the air, sparkled in
the early morning sun. The heavy fall in the night had shrouded the
countryside in a winter blanket of white, but it would not last;
for the air was warm, as the young gentleman visitor discovered
immediately upon flinging up the window of the bedchamber allotted
to him by his hosts.

Mr Denzell Hawkeridge pulled the nightcap off his head,
spilling a profusion of fairish locks over the neck of his
nightshirt. He looked out upon a large patch of ground beyond the
garden, in which a group of urchin children were engaged, he saw,
blinking sleepily upon them, in building a snowman.

A very proper occupation, he conceded, under the
circumstances, if a trifle energetic. For Denzell, lured by his
friend Osmond Ruishton into spending some days at Tunbridge Wells
before Christmas was well upon them, with the promise of absolutely
nothing to do, had every intention of doing precisely
nothing.

Filling his lungs with fresh country air, he
yawned contentedly. This was the life. Not that he had not enjoyed
the Season. He had. So much so, in fact, that he was quite tired
out from the hectic pace one was obliged to maintain in Town. Not
to mention the exigencies to which he had been put, cudgelling his
ingenuity to steer that fine line between flirtation—for with so
many pretty girls about any man must be tempted to it—and the
avoidance of matrimonial traps. He had no desire to settle with
just
one
female, not yet awhile. All he wanted now was to
lounge about, enjoy a little idle conversation with his hosts, and
avoid women. Especially young women who might wish to marry
him.

It was a fine thing to be heir to a worthy barony, but it
could be a curst nuisance to be an eligible male. A nuisance, and
extremely exhausting. Yes, this had been an excellent notion of
Osmond’s. The Wells was so dead at this season that the chance of
any debutante coming within a hundred miles of the place was too
remote to be worthy of consideration. He could be off guard and
laze at his ease.

He was glad, for instance, to think that it was not he, but
some unfortunate female who was obliged to cavort about in the snow
in company with these busy youngsters.

For there was a female with them, her back to him just now
as she leaned to help infant fingers pack snow against the rapidly
expanding waistline of the snowman. A nursemaid, perhaps. A shout
floated up to him.

‘
Hoy, Charley! Gimme a...

He could not hear the rest, but the voice told its own
tale. And now he came to look at them, the children did not appear
to be the offspring of the gentry, their frieze garments rather
rougher than those in which Osmond’s elder boy, only recently
breeched, was likely to appear.

‘
Is we done ’ere, missie?’

The female straightened up, and shifted to the other side
of the snowman, and Denzell, a budding connoisseur in the matter of
female dress, at once recognised that the brown pelisse she wore
was of too fine a cut and material for any servant, edged as it was
with a fur trim.

There was a sudden disturbance to one side, a running boy
bumping into another.

‘
Hoy, watch out!’

‘
Ow!’ came clearly as the second boy slipped and went
down.

‘
You donkey!’ shouted another.

General laughter and a flurry of calling ensued, and
Denzell caught a glimpse of the lady’s face as she dashed to the
rescue. Evidently her assistance was not needed, for the boy picked
himself up unhurt amid the ribald catcalls and chanting of his
companions.

‘
Lawks, Joey!’

‘
You look like the snowman.’

‘
Joey’s covered in snow-oh.’

The shouts faded in Denzell’s ears, for the lady lifted her
head as she stood poised, still ready to help, and his gaze became
riveted upon her face.

It was, even at this distance, one of the most beautiful
countenances he had ever seen: a perfect oval, with eyes set wide
apart, a nose classically straight, and a mouth shaped in so
pleasing a bow that any artist seeing it must at once beg its owner
to sit for him. A cluster of loose curls escaping from under a
close-fitting bonnet, small-brimmed and ornamented with knots of
ribbon, whispered a promise of golden treasures within.

Fascinated, Denzell stared. Chaste stars, but not one among
the debutantes paraded for inspection in the Season just ended
could have held a candle to this girl.

She was young, too. Some few years his junior, eighteen or
nineteen, he judged. But why in the world was a beautiful girl of
marriageable age immured in this rural backwater, unless she was
already wed? Was he mistaken in the status of the children? Might
one of them even be her own?

Yet he had no eyes to search for this possibility among the
urchins. His attention was all for the lady as he watched the
warmth of a smile enter her face while the children, finding Joey’s
trip into the snow an enticing lark, began to fake falls so that
they might also receive a cargo of snow upon their small
persons.

This sport led naturally into a snowball fight, which the
lady made no attempt to discourage—definitely not a nursemaid—but
watched with laughing enjoyment, brushing an errant snowflake away
from that heavenly face with the back of one glove-encased
hand.

Denzell’s breath caught. What animation. Such a glowing
vivacity! She was utterly delightful. All at once two small figures
erupted from under Denzell’s window, and he recognised young Felix
Ruishton, his godson, all of four years old, running to join the
fray; and tottering after in his infant dress, with their nurse
Dinah in hot pursuit, little Miles, his brother.

Felix dashed across the garden and hurtled through the back
gate, and Denzell saw the girl bend down to greet him with both
hands held out, and a warm welcome on her lips, delivered, although
he could not hear the words, in a pleasant musical
voice.

So she knew Felix and Miles? Capital! Denzell shut the
window and crossed to the bell pull to summon his valet. His
determination to abjure the society of young women was forgotten.
There was no time to lose. He must dress at once. Undoubtedly
Osmond and Unice could identify this dazzling beauty, and he must
know who she was instantly.

Nevertheless, it was quite half an hour later before he
made his belated appearance, suitably attired for the country in a
frock-coat of dark blue tabinet for warmth, over a grey cassimere
waistcoat and breeches of black corduroy.

He entered upon a scene of contented domesticity in the
Ruishtons’ cosy breakfast parlour, a neat apartment with faded
yellow paper to the walls and spreading warmth from glowing embers
in the grate of a simple marble-framed fireplace.

‘
Who,’ he demanded without preamble as his hosts looked up
to welcome him, ‘is the fairy princess even now blessing your back
garden with her entrancing presence? And does she already have a
prince on her leading string? If not, be warned that I intend to
apply at once for the position.’

Osmond Ruishton, as casually clad as his guest
but affecting stronger hues of plum and a salmon waistcoat, was
seated to the window-side of the round mahogany table fashioned in
the Hepplewhite style. He lowered the
Gazette
upon
which, as befitted a family man at breakfast, his attention had
been engaged, and gazed at his friend over the top of
it.

‘
What the devil are you talking of, Hawk?’

‘
The girl, dear boy, the girl. And don’t pretend you don’t
know her, because Felix and Miles have just been clasped to her
bosom.’

Looking at his wife, Osmond shook his head. ‘Crazy. Stark
staring crazy!’

Unice Ruishton, in a plain round gown of cambric,
long-sleeved and made high to the throat, had been engaged in
plying her spouse with ham and eggs from a central dish, and
keeping his coffee cup filled from the steaming pot by her elbow
from which emanated a tempting aroma, but she paused in this work,
a frown creasing her brow.

‘
What in the world is the matter with you,
Denzell?’

‘
Unice,’ he responded in the tone of one afflicted by
anxiety, as he dragged a chair out and took his seat between them
both, ‘have pity on me. My head is reeling, my heart is bursting
and I must know her name or I shall go mad!’

‘
Go mad?’ interpolated Osmond. ‘You are mad!’

‘
Whose name?’ asked Unice, bewildered, her pansy eyes
blinking at him out of a pleasant countenance surrounded by dusky
locks worn fashionably long just now under a lacy wisp of a cap.
‘Who is it you mean?’

‘
The ravishing female who has been building a snowman with a
gang of urchins outside my window.’

The puzzlement vanished from Unice’s face. ‘Oh, I
see.’

It was no mean part of Unice’s attraction that she was apt
to treat all her husband’s bachelor friends as if they were an
extension of her responsibilities to Osmond, and in need of such
female care and guidance as she might be able to offer—a trait that
rather amused the light-hearted Mr Ruishton than afforded him
grounds for jealousy. Their mutual devotion was, besides, plain for
all to see, particularly at a time when Unice’s natural plumpness
was exaggerated in the course of her third pregnancy—to which the
coming fashion of high waists was admirably suited.

She gave Denzell her full attention. ‘What does she look
like?’

‘
Look like?’ echoed Denzell. ‘Deuce take it,
Unice, there cannot be
two
such beauties in
this town! Who is she?’

‘
Oh, Lord,’ uttered Osmond in disgust, at last
grasping the purport of his friend’s conversation. ‘Don’t tell me
you’re at it again.’ He threw down the
Gazette
and
addressed his wife. ‘He hasn’t been here five minutes and already
he’s setting up a flirt.’

‘
Flirt? Nothing of the sort,’ objected Denzell. ‘I’m going
to whisk her off to Gretna Green.’