Magical Masquerade: A Regency Masquerade
Read Magical Masquerade: A Regency Masquerade Online
Authors: Hilary Gilman
Hilary Gilman
Magical
Masquerade
Pleasant
Street Publications
Cover Design by Lee Wright, Halo Studios London
www.halostudios.co.uk
Copyright © Hilary Lester 2013
ISBN-
13:
978-1497411654
ISBN-10:
1497411653
All
rights reserved: No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publisher.
By the same author
Historical Romance
Moonlight
Masquerade
Mysterious
Masquerade
Merry
Masquerade
Dangerous Escapade
(
first
published as Dangerous Masquerade)
Gamble
with Hearts
The Cautious Heart
Fantasy
Tides of
Fire
(as
Hilary Lester)
One
It had been another cold and blustery day in the bleakest November the
oldest inhabitants of the little village could remember. As the evening
advanced, the wind dropped, and a freezing mist rolled in from the harbour. Those
villagers yet abroad wrapped their cloaks tight about them and hurriedly sought
the shelter of their own firesides.
On the outskirts of the village, there stood a
tumbledown old house, half-timbered, with overhanging gables and tall, twisted
chimneys. Within its inhospitable walls, two young ladies sat huddled over an
inadequate fire in the dark, oak-panelled parlour. The pair shared a vivid
beauty that did much to improve their dreary surroundings, but the tarnished
gilt and faded brocade of the chairs formed a poor setting for the girl who held
her hands to the embers in a vain attempt to warm them. The glow of the fire
set the great ruby on her left hand flaming, and she twisted it absently this
way and that so that
its
light reflected against the
spotted mirror and the cracked, diamond-paned door of the china cabinet.
Eugénie, the newly married Duchess of Rochford,
wore a modish, fur-trimmed pelisse of burgundy velvet, with a high collar and
frogging, Hussar style, across the breast. Her sable muff was tossed carelessly
onto the settle, and her high-crowned bonnet lay on top of it, sadly crushing three
expensive, dyed ostrich plumes. Her Grace wore her hair in a mass of glossy
black ringlets, and from her pretty ears hung heavy diamond drops. Her twin,
Mignonette de Saint-Saze, in contrast, wore a shabby round-gown of fawn merino;
her only ornament a fine cameo brooch at her throat. Her hair was parted in the
centre and drawn back in two, smooth, black wings across her, no less pretty, ears,
which were, however, unadorned.
The twins were, at birth, identical, but there had
never, even in childhood, been any doubt as to which was which. Eugénie was a
restless, mercurial creature, charming, helpless, and utterly beguiling, while
her twin was characterised by the family, who relied entirely on her selfless
devotion, as practical, reliable, and dull. Indeed, when a ribald old duke of
the
ancien régime
had said, his eyes
lingering on her tender, full-lipped mouth, that he envied the man who would
have the awakening of her, he was held to be senile, as well as disgusting.
Mignonette, more inured than Eugénie to the Spartan
conditions prevailing at home, took her sister’s cold hands in hers and rubbed
them vigorously to warm them as she said, ‘Oh Génie, what happy, happy news! A child
on the way and you only married in September! Is the Duke very pleased? He must
be, I think.’
Eugénie pulled her hands away pettishly. ‘Oh, leave
be. Rochford does not know. I have not told him.’
‘You have not told him? But, my love, why ever not?’
Eugénie dropped her head into her hands, pressing
the palms against her eyelids. Her fingertips trembled against her hair. ‘I
cannot. You do not understand.’
Mignonette gently pulled the fluttering hands away
from her twin’s face and imprisoned them between her own. ‘But I want to
understand. Something has gone terribly wrong. Tell me.’
‘You want to know what is
wrong?
’
Eugénie laughed a little hysterically. ‘Only this: the Duke, my husband, has
yet to consummate our marriage!’
The colour drained from Mignonette’s face. ‘But—but,
Génie, how can this be?’
‘Come, you are not
so
innocent as all that! You know how babies are made.’
‘I meant how—
Oh
, it is
Charles D’Evremont’s I suppose.’
Eugénie’s face crumpled. ‘I discovered I was
enceinte
just days after the Pelican was
sunk. I was in despair, for how could I tell Grandmère that I would not marry
the Duke after all the sacrifices she had made to send me to London? I dared
not.’
‘You married the Duke knowing that you were—? Ah, I
see, you meant to pass the child off as his?’
‘Of course.
What else could I do? But when he came to me, on our—our wedding night—
I could not—I could not feign a—I showed him my disgust and—well, the upshot
was he told me that, as his embraces were so repugnant to me, he would not
trouble me with them again. And he has kept his word.’
Minette put both arms around her twin, rocking her
gently. ‘There, there, my love, there, there.’ Eugénie sobbed quietly against
her sister’s shoulder. Presently, she lifted her tear-stained face and cried, ‘Oh,
Minette, what am I going to do?’
‘You must tell the Duke the truth and throw
yourself upon his mercy,’ answered her twin in a decided tone.
‘I would rather die! He has no mercy. You do not
know him.’
‘But in your letters to Grandmère, you were full of
his praises. You said you were in love!’
‘Of course, I did. I was so afraid she would find
out that I was still seeing Charles.’
‘So you never loved Rochford?’
Her sister shuddered.
‘
Mon Dieu
, no!
Apart from all
else, he is quite hideously ugly.
And old!’
Minette pictured Charles D’Evremont as she had last
seen him on board The Pelican, young and strong, with his sun-bleached hair
ruffled by a brisk sea-breeze. ‘I see. Then you must leave him. Go to the house
in Avignon to have the baby, and when you return—’
‘And give him grounds to divorce me? No. I have
lost everything else; I cannot lose all this.’ She gestured at the diamonds in
her ears and the sable wrap discarded on the floor. ‘I will be a duchess
whatever happens.’
‘But what else can you do? Do you hope he will not
notice? He is only eight-and-thirty, not yet, I think, on his dotage.’
‘I know! I know! Certainly, I must go to Avignon,
as you say. You remember the Bovarys? They lived on the estate. Madame is kind.
I shall give the child to her. She will raise it as her own. Of course, I shall
pay them well. But the Duke must not know that I have gone to France.’
Minette shook her head. ‘You are not making any
sense.’
‘Yes, I am. Do you not see yet? I shall go to
France, and you will take my place as Rochford’s wife.’
‘What!’
‘Do you not see how perfect it is? No one outside the
family even knows you exist. Who would suspect?’
‘Génie!
This is nonsense. I might look like you, but I could never
be
you. You have a whole life in London,
new friends, relatives of whom I know nothing.’
‘Silly, I’m not suggesting that you give
Ton
parties and pay morning calls. I
know you could not. But you could very well set it about that you are indisposed
and retire to Camer Castle. You would tell the servants that you are too unwell
to receive callers, and all you need do is spend the next few months dawdling
around the house and grounds, just as you do here.’
‘And the Duke?
I suppose he will notice nothing?’ said Minette with unusual acidity.
‘I doubt if he will come near you. If he does, why then
your illness accounts for any differences.’
‘And if he should change his mind about the—the
consummation of the marriage?’
‘Why should he? He has his own amusements and, in
any event, he is so absurdly sensitive about his disfigurement that he would
rather die than offer himself to be rejected again.’
‘Disfigurement?
What disfigurement? You said nothing about this in your letters.’
‘I thought you knew. Everyone knows. There was a
fire at the Castle years ago, and he was, no doubt, very brave and saved many
lives; but the upshot is that he has only one eye and the whole of one side of
his face is scarred. It makes me shudder even to think of it.’
‘Poor gentleman.’
‘Oh, you need not pity him. He has a perfectly
devoted mistress in the saintly Lady Ashbury, and goodness knows how many
high-flyers he has had in keeping.’ She dismissed her husband with a little
shrug and, fixing her huge dark eyes on her sister’s face, she said, ‘You will
help me, will you not, dearest Minette? I am quite ruined else.’
‘Darling, how can I? You know I would do anything in
the world for you, but—’
Eugénie slipped from her chair and sank to her
knees in front of her sister. ‘Minette, please, please do this for me! I shall
kill myself if the Duke discovers the truth, I swear it.’
At that moment, the door opened, and a personage
entered the room. She was a very old lady but, although she walked with a cane,
she still held herself exceedingly upright. Her white hair was beautifully
coiffed, in the style of fifty years earlier, under a black lace cap. The
exquisite moulding of her cheekbones and jaw was evident beneath the fragile,
porcelain skin for which she had once been celebrated. She stood watching her
granddaughters, one eyebrow raised enquiringly.
‘It seems strange to find the Duchess of Rochford
in this humble position,’ she remarked in her thin, beautiful voice. Her accent
was pure Versailles despite the fact that she had now lived in England for over
thirty years.
Eugénie rose with more haste than grace and brushed
her creased skirts with unsteady hands. ‘Good evening, Grandmère.’
The Marquise de Montauban inclined her head
slightly, offering a cheek, which the duchess dutifully kissed.
‘I—I hope
I
f-find you
well?’ stammered Eugénie ‘Has this horrid damp weather been b-bad for your gout?’
‘We will not speak of what I have suffered,’
pronounced the Marquise. ‘You will tell me now what foolishness you have
perpetrated. Oh, do not look so innocent. I have known you all your life
recollect.’
‘Nothing, there is nothing!’ insisted Eugénie in a
hysterical voice.
Her grandmother looked her up and down and, seating
herself in a winged armchair by the fire, she said calmly, ‘You are with child,
I see.’
‘How did you—?’
‘Never mind how. You are with child, and it is not
a matter for rejoicing. The child then is not your husband’s.’
Eugénie nodded, twisting her fingers together and
shuffling her feet as she had been wont to do when taxed with a misdemeanour in
childhood.
‘You have reason to know this. Would the Duke
also?’
Another nod.
The Marquise’s eyes gleamed. ‘This must be thought of.’ Her gaze rested
consideringly on Minette. ‘Yes, it might work.’
Eugénie flashed her twin a look of triumph. ‘That is
just what we have been discussing. Have we not, Minette?’
