The Magnificent Masquerade (23 page)

"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 cocked 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 amusement 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 gratitude.
"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 snobbery 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"

"Emily Pratt, what you need is a good
shaking! You're not the sort to be a ... a fancy piece-anyone's fancy piece!-so
put that idea out of your head once and for all!" He took a few angry
turns around the room, and then, feeling calmer, he turned back to her. The
sight of her sitting in woebegone despair on his table, her legs dangling listlessly
below, cut him to the quick. "This has been all my fault, my dear,"
he said, taking her bandaged hand in his. "I don't know what came over me.
Believe me, I don't make a habit of kissing the housemaids."

"It d-doesn't m-matter," she said,
trying to revive her pride despite the two tears that spilled from her eyes and
dribbled down her cheeks. "I'll und-d-doubtedly recover."
"Within a month, I'd wager," he said with a rueful smile.
"Meanwhile, Emily, I'd like you to forgive me and to forget everything we
said and did in this room this evening. Will you try to do that, please?"

Kitty looked down at the hand he held.
"I'll't-try, if you wish," she said, utterly crestfallen.

He lifted her down and set her on her feet.
"Very well, then, go on your way."

He watched her walk slowly to the door.
"Good evening, my lord," she said glumly from the doorway. "Yes,
yes, good evening," he muttered, waving her away. "Thank you once
again for t-treating my burn," she added in a brave attempt to show him
that she bore him no rancor.

"Ah, yes, that reminds me," he said
in the firm, strong tone of voice befitting the master of the household,
"you're not to do a single chore until that hand has healed. Tell Naismith
those are my orders."

She dropped one of her ironic little curtseys.
"Yes, my lord."

He narrowed his eyes. "I mean it, miss!
The fact that we exchanged some intimacies here this evening doesn't give you
license to be disobedient. If I catch you so much as lifting a bowl, I will
throw you down the coal hole."

Chapter
Twenty-One

Back in London, Kitty's parents were
complacently awaiting word from Lord Edgerton that their daughter's betrothal
to his brother had been arranged. Although Hermione Jessup, Lady Birkinshaw,
had promised her husband (on pain of withdrawal of all spending privileges for
a month) not to say a word to anyone about the match until Edgerton said it was
a fait accompli, she did permit herself the luxury of making plans for the
elaborate wedding breakfast she intended to give when the time came. She
daydreamed about the gowns she would order for her daughter and for herself.
She tried to estimate the number of crates of champagne they would need to
serve the two hundred guests she intended to invite. She even went so far as to
speak (secretly of course) to the manager of Gunthers, the famous patisserie in
Berkeley Square, about the design of the wedding cake.

It therefore came as a cruel shock when she
overheard some dreadful gossip concerning her prospective son-in-law. She was
attending her regular Tuesday afternoon tea-and whist party at Countess
Lieven's when the usual gossip over the cards turned to the subject of young
men of the ton who kept their doxies in permanent rooms at Limmer's Hotel.
"It's an utter disgrace," Lady Upton declared, taking in a trick as
she spoke. "Lord Jarmies has installed his fancy piece there, and so has
Francis Tarrington. And Beatrix Simmons suspects that her prissy-faced son
keeps his chere amie in rooms at

Stephen's Hotel in Bond Street, where Beatrix
might run into her any time she visits her milliner!"

"Shocking!" declared Lady Westbrook,
shaking her head with such vigor that the corkscrew curls over her ears danced.
"We shall see these libertines parading their game pullets up St. James in
broad daylight before long."

"I wouldn't be a bit surprised. There's an
on-dit circulating about that Sir Lucas Farling, who's seventy-eight if he's a
day, has taken up with a Castle Tavern wench not. yet eighteen," Lady
Upton said in disgust. "The disreputable old lecher!"

"Speaking of Castle Tavern wenches,"
Countess Lieven remarked as she rearranged the cards in her hand, "my
brother told me that young Wishart's taken up with one of them, too. Which
shows that the young can be as revoltingly lecherous as the old."

Lady Birkinshaw paled. "Did you say
Wishart? Toby Wishart?"

"Yes. Edgerton's younger brother. Are you
acquainted with him?"

"No," Lady Birkinshaw answered
awkwardly, keeping her eyes fixed on her cards, "but I think I've heard
Birkinshaw speak of him."

"No doubt," the countess said drily.
"The boy has often provided the ingredients for scandal-broth."

Lady Birkinshaw felt faint. "I suppose
so," she murmured, "but surely the on-dits concerning him were only
of boyish pranks, were they not?"

"Not this time." Countess Lieven,
laughing at the tale she was about to reveal, threw out a card. "They say
he put his dozy up at Limmer's last month and then left her to stew while he
went down to Suffolk to rusticate."

Lady Birkinshaw put a shaking hand to her
forehead. Surely her husband could not be such a fool as to give their daughter
in marriage to so dastardly a creature! "The story sounds like a hum to
me," she declared bravely. "The boy's barely out of school, is he
not?"