The Magnificent Masquerade Part 12

Lord Edgerton could do nothing but blink in amazement. After a moment, he silently backed out and closed the door with the same care Kitty had shown earlier. "Good G.o.d!" he exclaimed in a hushed whisper. "Was that Toby?" Kitty, remembering all the nasty things Toby had said to Emily at first, did not understand what had caused this apparent change in him and was still suspicious of his motives.

"He's your brother, my lord," she pointed out tartly. "You should know."

His lordship looked down at her with one eyebrow raised. "Even the accident to your mistress hasn't sweetened your sharp tongue. I warned you to guard against that tendency, didn't I? Haven't you taken my good advice to heart at all?"

"Oh, yes, my lord," she a.s.sured him with almost convincing earnestness. "Very much to heart. Mr. Naismith hasn't scolded me once since you lectured me the other day."

"What?" he asked suspiciously. "Not once?"

Kitty guiltily remembered the butler's last words to her just a short while ago. "Well, perhaps once," she admitted. He guffawed. "What a sauce-box you are, girl! If I had the sense I was born with, I'd send you packing. Have you had tea?"

The abrupt change of subject confused her. "Tea, my lord?"

"No, of course you haven't. Neither have I, so I told Naismith to leave a tray in my study. Come along and have a cup with me."

"Thank you, my lord, you are most kind. But I don't think I should leave my post."

His lordship shook his head in despair. "You really are incorrigible. When your master tells you to go, it is your duty to obey. Can it be that you are unfamiliar with the word obey?

It means to follow instructions, to comply with orders, to submit to those in authority "But, my lord, Mr. Naismith said that if I left this post it would be the finish of me."

"And, knowing you, he was quite right to say it. But since you've already left your post to my brother, and since my brother seems in no hurry to desert it, I think it permissible to take a little time for tea."

"But what if Mr. Naismith should discover-?" "You can trust me to deal with Naismith if it becomes necessary. Now, come along, girl, and let me hear no more arguments."

He set off down the hall without further ado. Kitty, looking appropriately meek, followed obediently. But her pulse raced with excitement at the realization that he wished to spend a bit more time in her company. Her inner excitement, added to the necessity of running to keep up with his long-legged stride (which he made no attempt to slow down to accommodate her), caused her to arrive at his study door in a state of extreme breathlessness.

He opened the door and stood aside for her. "Oh, what a lovely room," she exclaimed, pausing in the doorway.

It was indeed an impressive room. The ceiling was high, and the three multipaned windows, which covered the entire wall opposite where she stood, climbed the full height of the room. Books lined two of the other walls while the third held the fireplace and an awesome array of paintings. A huge, eight-legged desk, covered with ledgers and papers, stood before the window, and a library table (on which the tea tray had been set) dominated the center of the room. Two armchairs before the fireplace completed the furnishings.

Lord Edgerton gave her only a moment to look about her. "I'm delighted that you approve, my dear," he said drily, "but if you insist on keeping me standing here holding the door for you, we shall never get our tea."

"Oh ... I'm sorry," she murmured, stepping inside. "Make yourself comfortable, girl." He made a sweeping motion toward the armchairs near the fire. "I'll pour the tea."

But she didn't sit down. Instead she crossed the room and stood studying the various portraits on the wall. She decided that the portrait right over the fireplace, of a heavyset gentleman in a red velvet frock coat with gold b.u.t.tons, had to be the late Earl of Edgerton, for he had Toby's thick lips and a look of the present Lord Edgerton about the eyes. A portrait of a slim girl in white was Lady Edith in her younger days. And another, showing the same girl, now not quite so slim, seated on a chaise with a baby in her arms and two children standing beside her, was the most interesting painting of all. "Oh, what a darling little boy you were," she remarked, staring at the likeness closely.

"1 can't imagine how you recognized me," he said, coming up to her with a br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup. "I couldn't have been more than ten when that was painted."

Unable to tear her eyes from this representation of his younger self, she reached for the cup without looking, jostling it in its saucer. The hot liquid spilled over, wetting the bandage on her hand and causing a sharp pain on the already raw palm. "Oh!" she cried out, wincing, and dropped the cup and saucer.

"Good G.o.d," his lordship exclaimed in horror, "what's this?"

Kitty reddened in embarra.s.sment. "Oh dear," she murmured, bending down and trying desperately to mop up the spilled tea with her ap.r.o.n, "I'm so clumsy. Please forgive ... the cup isn't broken, but I'm afraid the saucer-"

"I'm not concerned about the china, you idiot!" he barked, grasping her arms and lifting her to her feet. "What have you done to your hand?" Without giving her an opportunity to object, he took her hand in his and pulled off the makeshift bandage. When he saw the red, raw, discolored palm he winced. "d.a.m.nation!" he muttered under his breath. "How did this-?"

"It's nothing, my lord," Kitty said, trying to pull the hand from his grasp. "It's only a little burn."

"A little burn? The deuced wound's almost festering! I'll have Naismith's head for this!"

"No, please!" she begged, placing her other hand gently on his arm. "It's not his fault. He doesn't even know about it." Her gesture softened him a bit. "Very well, we'll talk about that later. For now, we must do something about this ... this mutilation. Wait here. I'll be right back." He stalked to the door and then turned back to her. "You heard me, miss! I expect you to remain right there where I left you. You are not to leave this room for any reason whatsoever. For once in your unruly life you are to obey! Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, my lord," she said with a deep, ironic curtsey.

"Whatever you say, my lord."

Her lack of seriousness made him grit his teeth in irritation. "I don't know how you managed to reach the ripe old age of-what is it? Seventeen?"

"Eighteen, my lord."

"Eighteen, then. I don't know how you've managed to survive so many years. I'm surprised someone didn't murder you long ago." And he slammed out of the room.

She stared at the door for a moment and then looked down at her blemished palm. It was indeed an ugly wound. Now that she knew it was finally going to be attended to, she could admit to herself that it looked putrid. With a shudder, she thrust the hand behind her back and turned her mind to other things. She strolled about the room, glancing at his lordship's books and rifling through the papers on his desk. But nothing caught her interest until she chanced upon a miniature in a silver frame that had been placed in a position of importance in the center of one of the bookshelves (where, she noted, it could easily be seen by anyone seated at the desk). It was a portrait of a lady whose face bore no resemblance to anyone in the household. She was tall and graceful, with soft, blonde curls framing a delicate face. And even in miniature, Kitty could detect that the lady had long, elegant fingers. She picked it up and carried it to the fire to take a closer look. But before she'd crossed the room, the door opened. Lord Edgerton entered, carrying a tray on which he collected two bowls, several rolls of gauze bandage, some vials and jars, and a pair of scissors. "Ah, you're still here," he said, placing the tray on the library table. "I must admit I would not have wagered a large sum on finding you. Come here to me, if you please."

Hiding the hand holding the miniature in a fold of her skirt, she gingerly approached the table. Without warning, he lifted her up and sat her upon it, surprising her so greatly that she dropped the miniature. He bent down and picked it up.

"What's this?" he inquired.

"I saw it on one of the bookshelves and wished to take a closer look. I hope you don't mind." She bit her lip nervously, but kept her eyes fixed on his face. "She is very ... lovely..."

"Mmmm," his lordship grunted indifferently, putting the painting aside and sorting through the items on the tray. Kitty, perched as she was on the table, was face to face with him. She took a deep breath and looked him squarely in the eye. "Is it your Miss Inglesham?"

"My Miss Inglesham?" He stared at her, agape with astonishment. "Wherever did you hear about her?"

"Backstairs gossip." Kitty shrugged. "One of the maids mentioned her."

Edgerton snorted. "That, my inquisitive child, is a painting of Lady Matthieson."

"Oh." There was a pause while his lordship poured some evil-smelling lotion from a vial into one of the bowls. Kitty knew she should let the matter of the portrait drop, but she could not. "Was Lady Matthieson someone else you loved?" she asked brazenly.

Edgerton frowned at her in annoyance. "Someone else I loved? You are implying by that question that I once loved Miss Inglesham. If your backstairs gossips told you that, it is a perfect example of the inaccuracy of that sort of information. I may have been taken by Miss Inglesham at first, but I soon found her an insipid bore. I had to hide myself abroad for months to disentangle myself from that relationship. And as for Lady Matthieson, she was my great-aunt Mathilda. She is said to have run off to America with a captain of the Royal Guard. If my calculations are correct, and if she's still alive, she is now about ninety-three years of age. I hope that answers your question."

"Well, almost," the incorrigible girl persisted. "I would just like to know, if she is only your elderly aunt, how it is that her picture stands framed in silver in a place where you can see her every time you lift your eyes."

"Because, Miss Curiosity, it's a Gainsborough, and I happen to like the work very much. Are you satisfied now?"

"Yes, my lord," she said, lowering her eyes meekly. "Good. In that case, we can finally turn our attention to the more important matter of your hand."

He took her wounded hand in his. She kept her face turned away as he bathed and cleaned the wound, cut away dead skin, and painted her palm with a caustic liquid that made her gasp. After that the worst was over. As he covered the entire area of the burn with a soothing ointment, he resumed the conversation. "I've answered all your questions, girl, so perhaps you'll answer mine. How was it that you and 'one of the other maids' were discussing Miss Inglesham?"

Kitty had the decency to blush. "I ... we ... she just happened to remark that you were once ... betrothed to her."

He c.o.c.ked an eyebrow at her. "Just happened to remark? Out of the blue?"

"Not exactly."

"Then how, exactly?"

Her color deepened. "The subject came up when we were . er . . speculating about your ... er ... oh, blast, I can't tell you!"

"What? The intrepid Miss Emily Pratt afraid to speak up? Come on, girl, I won't eat you. What were you speculating about?"

Kitty put up her chin. "About whether or not you keep a fancy piece in London as your brother does," she blurted out with bravado.

Edgerton choked. He was in the act of folding a length of gauze into a thick pad, but her answer so shocked him that everything he was holding fell from his hand-the pad, the roll of gauze, the scissors, and all. It took a good deal of restraint to keep himself from guffawing, but he was afraid that a laugh might be a sign of encouragement to the abominable chit. "My word," he muttered as he bent to pick the things up, "is that the sort of thing you talk about belowstairs?"

"Well, you must admit the subject is an interesting one."

"That's no excuse. Interesting or not, it's an unfit subject for innocent girls." He rea.s.sembled his material and continued to fashion the gauze pad. "I still don't see how Miss Inglesham's name came into the discussion," he remarked, knowing full well that he'd be wiser to let the matter drop.

"It came up when Miss ... when the other maid said that any gentleman who'd been betrothed to someone as lovely as Miss Inglesham was not likely to keep a fancy piece."

"Ah I see." He placed the thick pad gently on her palm and began to secure it to her hand with a long length of bandage. "I seem to have misjudged you, Emily Pratt. I would have thought you too innocent even to know what a fancy piece was."

"I'm not a child, you know," she said, drawing herself up in offended dignity. "It's a mistress, is it not? Someone to whom a gentleman offers a carte blanche. And that means that she has a free hand to spend as much of his money as she wishes, in return for favors, of course. Am I right?"

"Quite right," Edgerton said, biting back a grin. This is indeed Birkinshaw's irrepressible daughter, he told himself. There was no mistaking it. But if Birkinshaw were privy to this shocking conversation, he would no doubt call Edgerton out! Edgerton knew he should reprimand the girl, but he couldn't do it. He was finding her naughty innocence completely entrancing.

"You see, I do know a good deal," the girl was continuing, "although I didn't know-until that conversation with the other maid that you gentlemen find your mistresses in Vauxhall Gardens."

"Oh, not only in Vauxhall, my dear," he said, teasing. "'We gentlemen' find them in all sorts of places."

"Do you really?" she asked, wide-eyed. But suddenly her face fell, and she dropped her eyes. "Oh. I suppose that means that ... that you do ... k-keep one." She looked up again hesitantly. "Do you?"

This time he couldn't hold back a hearty laugh. "Do I keep a mistress? Somehow I knew you would have the temerity to ask that question. But if you think I shall ever bring myself to answer it; you've underestimated your man."

But she did not seem chagrined by his answer. Instead she was studying him absently, as if her mind had leaped to another idea. "Where else might a gentleman find a mistress?" she inquired.

"Good heavens, girl, I hope you're not expecting me to educate you in these matters!"

"No, but ..." She c.o.c.ked her head like a curious little sparrow. "Might a gentleman find one in his own house? Among the servants?"

"See here, you irrepressible minx," he said, wavering wildly between laughter and indignation, "are you suggesting that I might be guilty of seducing one of the housemaids?"

"Only wondering if you would consider it," she retorted, her eyes dancing. "If you would, I myself might very well-"

"Emily Pratt, you go too far!" he barked, appalled. His amus.e.m.e.nt died abruptly. He was furious with her for her disgraceful suggestion and furious with himself for having encouraged it.

"If I were your father, I'd lock you in your room and throw away the key." He picked up her wounded hand, which he'd dropped sometime during this unprecedented conversation, and resumed winding the bandage around it.

"Then you won't consider-"

"Enough!" he snapped, glaring at her in avuncular disapproval. "This conversation has gone beyond the bounds of decency. Let us drop this subject, if you please, once and for all."

"Very well, my lord," she said with a sigh.

"Reprehensible chit!" he muttered under his breath. "Now I see what Birkinshaw meant-"

"What did you say?" she asked, taken suddenly aback. "Did you say ... Birkinshaw?"

Lord Edgerton wanted to bite his tongue. "No I did not," he declared firmly. "You are now bandaged, and you may go."

"Thank you, my lord," she murmured, studying him closely. She'd feared, for a moment, that she'd given herself away, but if he knew who she was he certainly would have disclosed it. She'd probably not heard him properly. She was still safe. "It was very good of you to trouble yourself like this for me," she said with real grat.i.tude. "Now, if you'll only help me down-"

"Speaking of taking trouble, girl," his lordship said, tossing the soiled washcloth and the remaining bandages and medications back on the tray, "I should have thought that someone on the staff would have doctored you long before this. Can you give me one good reason why you didn't report this to Naismith or Mrs. Prowne? Are they so forbidding that you were afraid to tell them?"

"No, not at all. It was just that I burned myself in such a stupid way. I picked up the curling iron without a holding-pad, you see. I don't know how I came to do something so foolish. Everyone knows that the handle gets as hot as the iron and that you have to hold it with a pad. I was ashamed to admit my stupidity, that's all."

He picked up her now-thoroughly-padded and bandaged hand and stared down at it. "And so you simply went on dusting and sweeping and ironing and carrying scrub-buckets and such?"

"Yes," she admitted, gazing down from her perch at his bent head.

"What a little fool you are!" he murmured. But his voice, at variance with his words, was more tender than she'd ever heard it. For some reason it made her pulse quicken and her heart pound tensely.

He, on his part, suddenly felt tense, too. He lifted his head and stared at her, startled by a sharp constriction in his chest. He didn't know if it was the result of the improper banter they'd just exchanged or the unusual closeness of her face, but this impish girl who had so enchanted him that night in the corridor seemed now to be infinitely more bewitching.

Not only did he see the same pixie charm of her freckled nose and pointed chin that he'd seen before, but now he discovered in her hazel eyes and firm jaw a depth of character he hadn't noticed earlier.

This little chit was every bit as wild, unpredictable, and troublesome as her father had claimed, and she'd arranged to embroil them all in a wickedly mischievous deception of which he utterly disapproved, but he had to admit that the girl, having set herself that course of action, had executed it with determination, wit, and true courage. It couldn't have been easy for her to play such a lowly role, to endure the scoldings of the butler and the sn.o.bbery of the other servants, to withstand the blandishments of the amorous footman, to deny herself the luxurious life she'd been accustomed to, and to labor from morning to night on menial tasks she never before attempted. And she'd done it with a hand whose flesh was seared raw! It was difficult not to admire her for it.

Her face was very close, so close that he couldn't help realizing how very beautiful that face had suddenly become in his eyes. At first he'd found her adorable, but not beautiful. When had the change occurred? he wondered. He tried to find the answer, but his mind was not functioning normally. The allure of her full mouth was irresistible, and without thinking of what he was doing, he put his arms about her waist and pulled her to him. The irrepressible little wench seemed not at all dismayed but fitted herself against him, slipped her arms about his neck, and pressed her lips to his.

He closed his eyes, tightened his hold on her, and kissed her hungrily. For a long, delicious moment he pushed away his awareness that he was behaving like a cad ... that this was the girl he'd pledged to his brother, that she was a mere child -seventeen years his junior-and that he was supposed to be convinced that she was a servant in his employ. On all three counts, kissing her was despicable. Even while surrendering to the sweet intoxication of the experience, he hated himself. After much too brief a wallow in depravity, he forced himself to regain his self-control. He released her and loosened her hold on him.

Kitty, overwhelmed, emitted a tremulous sigh. Her eyes slowly opened, and she gazed at him in wonder. "Oh, my!" she breathed, awestruck. "Does that mean ... you will make me your mistress?"

"No, it does not!" he shouted, putting a shaking hand to his forehead. "How did I ever get myself in such a fix?" "But why not?" Kitty asked, her face falling. "Did I not kiss you properly?"

Edgerton winced. "There was nothing wrong with how you kissed me, you goose. But no kiss, no matter how sublime, can be considered proper between us."

"Proper, pooh! Who cares about propriety?"

"Listen here, my girl, you are being excessively silly," he said impatiently, feeling a powerful surge of sympathy for poor Birkinshaw. He realized for the first time that Birkinshaw's problems in raising this willful, impulsive girl were far more difficult than his with Toby. "You don't know what you're suggesting. You're speaking of things you know nothing at all about ..."

But Kitty wasn't attending. The only thing on her mind was her need to know the extent of his feelings for her. She wanted some proof that he cared for her, and she didn't concern herself with anything beyond the desire for him to declare himself. It was that desire that drove her on. "Is it the carte blanche that worries you?" she asked bluntly. "I promise not to take advantage of that. I can be very thrifty if I set my mind to it."

He shook his head in exasperation. "Will you stop this, girl? I will not make you my mistress, and that's final!"

Kitty's heart sank. "You do not 1-love me, then?" she asked, her mouth trembling pathetically.

Edgerton felt another sharp constriction of the chest. How easy it would be, and how delightful, to tell her that he loved her, adored her, wanted her desperately, body and soul. But even if he hadn't pledged her to his brother, even if he could convince Birkinshaw that he was not too old for her, even if he could make himself believe-and he could not-that what she felt for him was more than mere infatuation, he was not the man to take advantage of her youth and innocence. "There can be no talk of love between us," he told her quietly. "It would be to no purpose."

"Because I'm a housemaid?"

He sighed. "No, dash it all! Because you're a child!"

"I'm not a child! I'd wager there are hundreds of mistresses even younger than I"