The Magnificent Masquerade (20 page)

"If only ... ?" he prodded.

She stared at him for a moment, longing to
throw her arms about his neck. But she wasn't Kitty Jessup, and she had no
right to let this scene go on. "If only I were ... someone else.

You mustn't let yourself fall in love with me,
Toby. You mustn't!"

"Why not? Is it that you've fixed your
affections on some other fellow?" His smile gave way to a sudden glower,
and he strode into the Rotunda and grasped her hands. "Look at me, Kitty!
Is it that Gawain fellow you named in your delirium? Is it he who stands
between us?"

She gave a gurgling laugh that was half a sob.
"Oh, Toby, you are a fool! Gawain was one of King Arthur's knights of the
round table."

"Oh, is that who he was?" Toby, not a
bit abashed at his ignorance, exhaled a relieved breath. "Well, I don't
see why you should laugh. I told you I ain't bookish. But if this Gawain is
only some dead fellow in a book who can't possibly be a rival, then I don't see
why I mustn't fall in love with you."

 "Take my word for it, Toby. You
mustn't."

"But why?"

"Because," Emily said, dropping her
eyes and slowly turning away, "I am the wrong girl for you. The very
wrongest girl in all the world."

Chapter Eighteen

At the very time that Emily was falling off her
horse, Miss Leacock was making a revelation to Kitty in the sewing room. The
sewing room was a small, cozy place where the fire was always burning, where
the ironing board was always set up, and where a tired abigail could find
refuge. It was shabbily cheerful, with two high windows through which the
afternoon sun slanted in cathedral-like majesty. One of the walls was covered
with little spokes that held spools of thread of every color imaginable. The
room also contained a worktable

(which stood against the wall under the
windows), a number of shelves containing fabrics and button boxes, and a padded
mannequin of Lady Alicia's form on which a half-made blouse of ecru silk was
presently pinned.

Kitty liked this room best of all the rooms in
the servants' quarter, but what pleased her most of all were the room's two
armchairs. Worn and ragged though they were, they were thickly upholstered and
very comfortable. There was also a padded footstool set between the two chairs,
large enough to hold two tired pairs of feet. Since only Bess, the resident
seamstress, and the two abigails ever used the sewing room, it became a
convenient hideaway when the busy maids needed a moment to put their feet up.

Miss Leacock and Kitty met there almost every
afternoon, for it was the place where they mended small tears in their
mistresses' gowns, pressed out their petticoats, and did whatever other little
chores were necessary to prepare the ladies' dinner clothes for the evening. On
the afternoon that Miss Leacock made her revelation, she was sitting on one of
the armchairs, her feet up on the footstool and her hands busily fashioning a
lace collar with only a crocheting needle and a spool of white thread.

Kitty stood at the ironing board struggling
mightily in her attempt to press out the flounce along the hem of a blue muslin
gown that Emily would wear that evening. Between the soreness of the burn on
her palm and the fullness of the flounce, she was having the greatest
difficulty. Nevertheless, she managed to glance across the room several times,
admiring the dexterity with which Miss Leacock managed her crocheting needle
and the beauty of the lacy concoction that seemed to emerge from her fingers
like magic. Neither one of them spoke for a long while. Then, out of the
silence came Miss Leacock's voice. "The name is Thisbe, you see," she
remarked without preamble.

"What?" Kitty gaped at her stupidly,
unable to make sense of the remark, which seemed to be part of a conversation
that Miss Leacock had been conducting with herself. "You said ye'd tell me
your story if I told ye my name.

Well, my name is Thisbe."

"Thisbe? Like the Thisbe who was supposed
to be eaten by a lion but later perished for love of Pyramus?" Kitty bit
her lip to keep from laughing. The image that flashed through her mind of the
decorous Miss Leacock fleeing from the lioness on her large bare feet with her
corkscrew curls bouncing was ludicrous indeed. But it wouldn't do to tease the
abigail; she was evidently very sensitive on the subject. "It's a very
romantic name," Kitty said soothingly. "I don't see why you're
ashamed of it."

"I'm not ashamed of it. It's just that it
doesn't suit me." She gave an embarrassed giggle. "Thisbe Leacock. It
makes me sound like a Vauxhall Gardens fancy piece." Kitty blinked.
"What's a Vauxhall Gardens fancy piece?" The older abigail's fingers
ceased their work as she looked up at Kitty in surprise. "Good gracious,
girl, you are an innocent. Have ye never heard of pets of the fancy? Ladybirds?
Cheres amies?"

"Yes, of course I have," Kitty said
with more confidence than she really felt. "A pet of the fancy is ...
well, like an opera dancer, is she not? A woman of loose character? The sort
who's offered a carte blanche by a gentleman who is unhappy in his marriage?"

Miss Leacock resumed her crocheting, smiling to
herself at the girl's obvious innocence. "Yes, or who doesn't wish to
marry at all."

"Oh, I see. Then a Vauxhall Garden fancy
piece is such a woman who is found at Vauxhall?"

"At Vauxhall, or Castle Tavern or one of a
dozen other places." She glanced across at Kitty with a mischievous gleam.
"Lily says that Lord Toby had one of them tucked away at Limmer's Hotel,
but that his lordship discovered her and bribed her to disappear."

"Toby Wishart kept a mistress?" Kitty
queried, shocked. "What a deuced loose fish the fellow is, to be
sure!"

"I don't know," Miss Leacock
demurred. "He's not so different from most of the men in his circle.
Keeping a mistress is not at all unusual."

"It's not?" Kitty gaped at the other
woman for a moment and then resumed her ironing, her brow wrinkled
thoughtfully.

After a long while she looked up again.
"Has ... does his lordship keep a f-fancy piece?" she asked, trying
to make the question casual.

"Oh, I don't think so," Miss Leacock
responded promptly. "A very proper gentleman, his lordship. Though I
suppose one can't be certain. He was once engaged to Miss Helen Ingle sham, and
she, ye know, was the most elegant of females. A man who chooses someone like
Miss Inglesham isn't the sort to keep a mistress."

Kitty resumed her ironing with angry vigor.
"Then why didn't he marry the so-elegant Miss Inglesham?"

"They were to be married three years ago
this fall, but it was the time that Miss Alicia was taken with her first spell.

We all thought she was on the verge of death.
The wedding had to be postponed. Then, when she recovered, Lord Edgerton
decided to go abroad to study the French system of dairy farming. He was gone
so long that Miss Inglesham must have believed he'd lost interest. She married
the Earl of Glenauer and now has two babies."

"Oh." Kitty carefully replaced the
iron on the coal brazier and frowned down at the flounced gown. "Do you
think his lordship is ... sorry?"

"I don't know. A thing like that . . .
it's hard to say."

"What was this Inglesham woman like?"

"Oh, very lovely. Tall and willowy, ye
know, with the most graceful fingers. I remember when she came here to visit-I
was helping to serve the tea that day-I remember that she picked up her cup
with such delicacy that I couldn't take my eyes from her beautiful hands."

"Mmmmph!" Kitty grunted,
involuntarily looking down at her own hands, which were far from beautiful. The
right, with its burnt palm, was bandaged with a worn and begrimed handkerchief,
and the left, after only one week of household labor, was already becoming red
and rough. "If Lord Edgerton is the sort who seeks out elegant ladies with
graceful hands," she snapped, pulling the evening dress from the board in
irritation and stalking to the door, "he's not the man I took him
for."

"Goodness, what did I say to set ye so off
the handle?" Miss Leacock inquired in surprise. "And where might ye
be going so abruptly? Ye can just take yerself back here and sit down. You have
to keep your part of the bargain."

"Bargain? What bargain?"

"You said ye'd tell me your name if I told
you mine. Well. I've told ye. Why do ye think I revealed it to ye if it wasn't
to get something in return?"

"You know my name," Kitty said
evasively. "It's Emily Pratt."

"It may be," Miss Leacock retorted,
"but there's more to yer story than that."

Kitty shook her head. "I'm sorry, Miss
Leacock, but it's too long a story to tell you now. I have to bring this gown
to Miss Jessup's room. We'll talk about it sometime soon, I promise."

The older abigail frowned. "How
soon?"

"In a few days. I give you my word to
reveal all to you in a few days." And before Miss Leacock could protest,
she whisked herself out of the room.

Miss Leacock shook her head in annoyance, put
aside her crocheting, and was starting to rise from her chair when the door
opened again. It was the young abigail, poking her head round the door and
peeping in. Miss Leacock sat back and asked hopefully, "Changed yer mind,
Emily Pratt? Have ye decided to make yer confession?"

"No, not that. Only to tell you that
you're wrong about your name." She threw the older woman an affectionate
grin. "If you ask me, the name Thisbe Leacock is positively
beautiful."

Chapter Nineteen

Emily's climb up the stairs proved more
difficult than either she or Toby had anticipated. A stabbing pain in her hip
made itself noticed at the first lift of her foot, and when she clutched the
banister to support herself, she almost cried out from the even greater pain
in. her shoulder and arm. By the time she reached the top, her whole left side
was throbbing. She managed to reach her bedchamber by clinging to the hallway
wall, but as soon as she stepped inside the room and closed the door, she
fainted away.

It was Kitty who found her. She'd come up
intending to help Emily change from her riding clothes to the newly pressed
dinner gown. Terrified at the sight of her friend sprawled unconscious on the
floor, she first tried to bring her round by calling her name and patting her
cheeks. When this method failed, she forced herself to be calm and searched
through the bottles on the dressing table for the salts volatile. One whiff of
the salts brought Emily back to consciousness. 

Kitty, awash in guilt for having encouraged
Emily to ride, couldn't seem to keep her knees from trembling uncontrollably.
Nevertheless, she helped her friend onto the bed and gingerly removed her
boots. Then, remembering that she'd heard Miss Leacock remark that Dr. Randolph
was expected again this afternoon to take tea, she raced downstairs to see if
he was still on the premises.

She caught him at the doorway, attended by both
Mr. Naismith and Miss Alicia. While the butler helped him into his caped
overcoat, Alicia hovered about, clutching his doctor's hat and medical bag
while awaiting the opportunity to say a private farewell. Under normal
circumstances, Kitty would have remained hidden in the background to observe
the coy glances exchanged between the doctor and his now-favorite patient, but
at this moment she was too alarmed about Emily's condition to hold back.
"Dr. Randolph," she cried, bursting in on the little group, "you
must come at once!"

Mr. Naismith glared. "You've not had
permission to speak!" he hissed. "Can't you ever-"

"You don't understand! Em-er, Miss
Jessup's taken a tumble from her horse! I found her fallen senseless on her
bedroom floor!"

The doctor did not have to hear more. It did
not even occur to him to question the illogic of someone's falling from a horse
onto a bedroom floor. He snatched his bag from Alicia's hand and ran
immediately to the stairs, with Kitty close behind. Naismith, well able to
distinguish between major and minor problems, did not bother to reprimand the
abigail again. Instead, he hurried after them, knowing that his assistance
might be needed upstairs. Alicia wavered on her feet for a moment, as if she,
like poor Miss Jessup, would faint dead away, but love had so strengthened her
character that she quickly got hold of herself. "Alicia," she said to
herself aloud, "you will be strong!" With that, she squared her
shoulders and followed the others up the stairs.

Kitty and the others entered the bedroom to
give the doctor whatever assistance he required. Kitty helped to remove the
white-faced Emily's clothes and, during the doctor's examination of her bruises,
squeezed her hand when the injured girl cried out in pain. After a thorough
going-over, the doctor lifted Emily's head from the pillow and discovered a
smear of blood. Kitty saw the smear, too. "Oh, my God!" she cried.

"Look!"

Alicia clutched the bedpost. "It's
blood!" she gasped, whitening. "She's bleeding profusely. I think
I...I'm going to swoon!"

"You will not swoon," the doctor
snapped, throwing Alicia a quick glance of reproof. "The girl has a minor
laceration here on her scalp. Scalp wounds tend to bleed rather freely. No need
to make a fuss." He examined Emily's head, bound it round with a length of
gauze bandage, and settled her back on her pillow. "Now, Naismith and I
are going to have to set a bone," he announced, rising from his place at
the side of the bed.

"A bone?" Kitty gasped, exchanging
looks of consternation with her white-faced friend. "What bone? Is it...
broken?"

"I shall tell you the details in due
time," the doctor responded with what Kitty thought was infuriating
terseness.

"Alicia, you and the abigail are to wait
outside."

"Yes, Hugh, if you wish it," Alicia
said, looking chastened and ashamed. "I'm sorry if I behaved foolishly a
moment ago."