A Masked Deception

Chapter 3

The Earl of Brampton lay staring at the hangings above the bed. His body was totally relaxed and sated after three consecutive sessions of lovemaking. Lisa's head lay in the crook of his arm, her blond hair spread in disarray over his arm and chest. One full white breast lay against his side. One of her knees had been pushed beneath his. She was asleep, breathing deeply and evenly.

He was still not satisfied, though he knew he would not have the energy to take her again that afternoon. It was three weeks since his return to London, five weeks since his wedding. He could not explain to himself why he had not visited her before now. He had wanted to, but had kept putting it off. He had persuaded himself that he was too busy with the come-out ball he and his wife had given in honor of Charlotte the night before. In truth, though, he admitted now, his own part in those preparations had been negligible. His wife had taken charge of the invitations, the food and flower arrangements, the cleaning and decoration of the ballroom, and all the other trivia, with a quiet and surprisingly efficient energy. In the last three weeks he had really done little more than visit all his old haunts with Devin Northcott.

He had finally persuaded himself that he was free and eager this afternoon. Lisa had welcomed him with flattering enthusiasm.

"Ah, Richard, you naughty, naughty man," she had said, pouting her full lips and throwing her arms around his neck. "I was sure that you had forgotten all about your Lisa. Maybe your wife is prettier and more charming than I. Maybe she satisfies you more than your Lisa." She had fluttered her eyelashes at him and run a finger down each side of his carefully folded neckcloth.

She had so obviously been fishing for compliments, Brampton had found himself unexpectedly annoyed.

"Lisa, we will get one thing straight," he had said sternly, grasping her wrists firmly and removing her hands from his chest. "We will leave my wife out of all conversations. Is that understood?"

For once, she had looked unsure of herself. "Of course, Richard," she had said.

But after he had sunk into a chair in her small drawing room, she had come to sit on the arm and had chatted easily while smoothing his hair back from his brow and rubbing her finger tantalizingly across the nape of his neck. At last, she had moved to his lap and carefully untied his neckcloth and unbuttoned his shirt. Aroused, Brampton had carried her to the bedroom.

What had been wrong with the afternoon? he wondered. Lisa had made every effort to please him, using all the arts and wiles he and previous lovers had taught her. And he had been pleased-pleased to throw off the restraint he practiced in his wife's bed. He had taken her with fierce, unleashed lust.

He did not feel that he was doing anything particularly wrong, visiting a mistress while his wife sat at home receiving visitors after the ball of the night before. The practice of keeping mistresses was well accepted in his circles. In fact, it could be argued that such arrangements protected the tender sensibilities of the wives. They gave their husbands an outlet for their wilder passions. Brampton tried to imagine using his wife as he had used Lisa this afternoon. He tried to feel amusement at the thought, but felt only guilt.

Guilt? Yes, he admitted that he had no right to make her into a figure of fun, even in his imagination. He certainly did not love her, he did not even find her attractive, but she had won his grudging respect in the short duration of their marriage.

He had lengthened their stay at Brampton Court from one week to two, finding himself oddly contented in the country. He had not spent much time with his wife, but more than he had planned. He had discovered to his surprise that she could ride and had mounted her on a quiet mare from his stables. She had not told him that riding was one of her favorite pastimes, that at home in Leicestershire she had often taken out her father's horse, riding him demurely except on those occasions when she could get away without an attendant; then she would wait until she was out of sight of the house, hitch her skirts inelegantly, swing one leg over the saddle so that she was riding astride, and gallop until her cheeks and eyes glowed.

Brampton had patiently reduced the speed of his own mount to suit the sedate pace of hers and had ridden with her all over the estate. He remembered one afternoon in particular. He had taken her to visit some of his tenants, poor cottagers who were wide-eyed and agog at meeting the new countess.

They were sitting inside one of the cottages while the woman of the house, flustered, pressed cider and cakes on them. A small toddler, newly come inside from a game of building mud pies, waddled up to Margaret and put a dirty hand on her skirt. Margaret smiled down at the child.

"Tommy, come away," hissed his almost frantic mother, making a dive for him.

"Oh, please, Mrs. Hope, don't mind him," Margaret had smiled. "He is a darling." And she had touched the child's soft blond curls.

"Oh, my lady, he'll soil your lovely habit," Mrs. Hope had protested.

"I have other clothes," Margaret had replied, "and this will wash. I so rarely have the chance to cuddle a child." And she had lifted Tommy to her lap and laughed as he reached for and pulled the earrings that dangled within his reach.

"Ouch!" she had protested, and she imprisoned his fingers in hers and eased them away from the earring. And she had glanced across at her husband, a laugh in her eyes. It was only then that Brampton had realized that he had been staring, mesmerized.

He had discovered during the rest of that two-week honeymoon that his earlier opinion that she was dull was not correct. She was quiet. She seemed to have little sense of humor. And she made no attempt to use her femininity. But she had good sense and a bright mind. Her conversation was never silly or tedious. If she had nothing to say, she simply said nothing.

And for some very curious reason that he could not fathom, Brampton had come to look forward to the few minutes he spent in her bed each night. He had missed the ritual when, a few days before their return to London, she had had to inform him, blushing painfully (almost the only open sign of emotion he had ever seen in her) that he should not visit her room for the following five nights. She had even forgotten herself enough on that occasion to call him 'my lord" again. He had not drawn her attention to the lapse.

Lisa had turned her head into his shoulder and was muzzling his neck, biting the skin lightly with her small teeth. She purred like a cat.

"Richard, my love, I swear you are a wild animal today," she sighed contentedly. "I shall be covered with bruises tomorrow."

"My apologies," Brampton replied coldly. He pulled his arm from beneath her body and rolled off the bed. He stood up and began to dress, wrinkling his nose distastefully at the smell of her perfume on his skin.

"I shall not be visiting here again, Lisa," he heard himself saying. He had certainly not planned to say any such thing.

"What!" she exclaimed from the bed behind him.

"I am a married man," he said. "I owe my wife better than this. The house is yours, of course, and all its furnishings. I shall arrange with my man of business to make a settlement on you. I am sure you will find it satisfactory."

He dressed quickly and left the house while she was still crying and pleading. He did not feel very proud of himself.

Charlotte sat down beside Margaret on the drawing-room sofa. She stretched her legs out straight ahead of her and rested her head against a soft cushion.

"Oh, Meg," she sighed, "this is so exciting and so tiring, is it not?"

"Are you pleased, love?" her sister replied, smiling gently and glancing up from her embroidery. "You certainly seem to have made an impression. All the young men were clamoring to dance with you last night. I do believe Richard was almost disappointed. He was fully prepared to lead you out himself if there was any danger of your being a wallflower."

"And three calls from admirers this afternoon!" Charlotte exclaimed with an artless lack of modesty. "And all these flowers, Meg." She looked around at the posies and bouquets that had been delivered that morning, all from young men she had met the night before.

Margaret smiled again. "I am so happy for you, Lottie. I can remember how exciting my own first Season was."

Charlotte must have detected the wistful note in her sister's voice. She immediately sat up straight and regarded her sister intently.

"Meg, I wish you would not sit there so calmly at your needlework and wearing that oh-so-stupid cap, just like a-a-"

"Matron?"

"Yes, like a matron. You are a bride, Meg," her sister cried passionately. "What is the matter? You and Lord Brampton behave as if you have been wed for years. And I was sure that you would suit admirably. You aren't happy, are you, Meg?"

Margaret winced. Her sister had all the bluntness of extreme youth. "Of course I am happy," she said soothingly. "Why ever would I not be?"

"No, you aren't. You do not even try to make yourself pleasing to my brother-in-law," Charlotte accused. "I mean, really pleasing. Has he ever seen you without your hair braided? Has he ever seen you laugh? Oh, Meg, I love you dearly, but why must you hide your real self? I know you are the loveliest, sweetest, warmest person in the world." And she impulsively moved along the sofa and hugged her sister.

"It is no good, Lottie," Margaret said mildly. "You cannot turn this marriage into the grand romance. It is a marriage like most of the other marriages of people of our kind-no worse."

"Ah, but, Meg, you did love once, did you not?" Charlotte asked.

"Yes, once-when I was very young and very foolish."

"I do not believe you were ever foolish, Meg," her sister said, gazing at Margaret loyally. She hesitated a moment, then asked, "Do you love him still, Meg?"

Margaret's fingers paused over her work. "Yes," she said.

"Who was he, Meg?"

There was a longer pause. "Richard," Margaret said.

"What?"

Margaret resumed her sewing. "It was Richard I fell in love with six years ago," she said.

"But I do not understand," Charlotte said. "Did he not love you? But why has he married you now?"

"He did not know who I was," Margaret said with a sigh. "It was really all very foolish. And I do not know why I am telling you all this after so long." She proceeded to give Charlotte an edited version of what had happened that night at the Hetheringtons' masquerade ball.

"I think it was a great foolishness not to take off your mask when he begged you to," Charlotte commented. "Then he would have known you and he would have called on you as he said he would, and you would have been married years ago and it would have been a lovely marriage, full of love and romance."

"Perhaps," Margaret smiled sadly.

"But this is all foolishness," Charlotte exclaimed, leaping to her feet and pacing restlessly around the room. "You must tell him the truth."

Margaret laughed. "Do you suggest, my love, that I say to him at the breakfast table, 'Oh, by the by, Richard, do you remember the little girl dressed as Marie Antoinette at a masquerade party six years ago? The one you kissed in the garden and called your angel? That was me!' He would think I had taken leave of my senses, Lottie. He would not even recollect the incident."

"Phooey! I do see your point about not being able to broach the topic, though, Meg." Charlotte's brow puckered with concentration. "I am going to return to my room and think. We need a plan! I think it might be necessary to resurrect Marie Antoinette." And she skipped lightly from the room, closing the door behind her.

Margaret let her hands relax in her lap, her embroidery forgotten. Why had she told Charlotte? She was not sure. Some compulsion, perhaps, to share her pain. Or was it that Charlotte's come-out had reminded her so strongly of her own?

Despite what Charlotte had said, Margaret was not actively unhappy. After that first traumatic night of her honeymoon, she had gradually picked up the pieces of her dignity and retreated behind her usual facade of quiet serenity. Her husband was neither cruel not neglectful. For the two weeks of their honeymoon, she had spent much time alone or with the housekeeper. But she had also spent more time with her husband than she had expected. He had taken pains to show her his estate and to introduce her to all his tenants, as well as to his neighbors, the Northcotts.

Margaret had drawn a secret pleasure from the fact that he always introduced her not just as the countess, but as "my wife, the Countess of Brampton."

She found it very hard to adjust to her bitter disappointment over their sexual relations. Each night was an exact repetition of the first, except that there was never again the pain and that he never again made the almost tender gesture of touching her cheek. He never kissed her, never talked to her, never caressed any part of her, never lingered longer than one minute after his business had been completed.

She had to convince herself that most wives probably had little more than she had. Her mother, in fact, in a speech of advice on her wedding morning, had warned that marriage would be very pleasant if she were a dutiful wife. She must learn, in exchange for all the contentment, to endure her husband's "attentions" at night "for a few minutes only, my love." Margaret admitted that, had she behaved with propriety at the masquerade ball, she would not even know that physical contact with a man might be exciting.

She trained herself to enjoy those few minutes for what they were worth. For that short span of time each night, her husband was all hers. Sometimes, if he was later than usual coming to her room, she would find her body aroused from just thinking of what was about to happen. And then his arrival was an agony. She had to keep every physical sign of her arousal strictly concealed and she had to endure the terrible frustration of having neither the time nor the freedom to reach for the unknown something that the weight of his body and his brief lovemaking made her own body ache for.

No, Margaret was not unhappy. She resumed her embroidery.

Charlotte perfected the plan the next day while driving in Hyde Park with Devin Northcott. She had puzzled over it so much after leaving Margaret in the drawing room that she had given herself a headache. So quiet was she at dinner that night, in fact, that Brampton commented on it.

"Are you feeling quite well, Charlotte?" he asked with concern.

"What? Oh, yes, my lord," she answered. "Just a little tired, maybe, after last night's ball."

"And did you enjoy yourself?" he asked. "You most certainly did not lack for partners."

"Oh, it was ever so much fun, my lord," Charlotte began, her natural enthusiasm for life beginning to bubble again. But she was immediately struck by a thought that had her once more silent and dreaming.

Should she suggest that Lord Brampton give a masquerade ball in his home so that Meg could appear mysteriously as Marie Antoinette and bowl him off his feet? No, it would not work. How would anyone explain away the disappearance of the hostess?

"Northcott informs me that he is to take you driving tomorrow," Brampton commented. Having broken off his relationship with Lisa just that afternoon, he felt somewhat ill-at-ease with his wife, and was anxious to keep Charlotte talking. Usually she chattered on without any encouragement.

"Yes, my lord. He has a new high-perch phaeton, and I have a new bonnet," Charlotte explained, as if these facts justified the situation entirely. "And Meg says that it would be quite unexceptionable for me to accept the invitation."

"Oh, quite," replied Brampton, glancing down the table to his wife. She was smiling affectionately at her sister, her usual quiet, calm self.

Charlotte's thoughts were on the wing again. Could she ask Mr. Northcott to give a masquerade party? No, he occupied only bachelor rooms. Anyway, she was still a little shy of him because he was so old (somewhere in the region of Lord Bramp-ton's age, she guessed) and was so much the perfect gentleman of fashion. She had found it easy to converse with him during the two dances they had shared the night before and during his visit that afternoon, but she did not think she yet had the courage to ask so great a favor of him.

The London weather cooperated for the afternoon drive. It was a perfect spring day. Charlotte was able to wear her new apple-green muslin dress and the matching parasol with brown fringes. Her brown bonnet was trimmed with green, yellow, and straw-colored leaves and flowers that complemented her auburn hair. Devin Northcott thought she made a perfect picture in his new phaeton and told her so.

Charlotte admired his appearance no less. He wore biscuit-colored buckskins and white-tasseled Hessian boots that shone so brightly she felt she would be able to see her face in them if she leaned forward. His dark-green coat had the perfect cut that only the renowned Weston could have tailored; his snowy-white neckcloth had been arranged in complicated folds, though Charlotte could not put a name to the creation. Was it a waterfall? A mathematical? He wore a dark beaver on his fair hair. Devin Northcott was not a tall man, and he had a slight figure, but Charlotte concluded that she liked his air of kindly gentility.

They arrived at Hyde Park at the fashionable hour of five o'clock. It seemed that half the haut monde were there, most people wheeling around slowly in carriages of various descriptions, some on horseback, a few on foot. Everyone was there to see and to be seen, to nod at acquaintances, to cut enemies, to exchange the latest on-dits with friends.

Charlotte enjoyed herself thoroughly. She found herself admired and ogled by several young bucks, some of whom she had met at the Brampton ball two nights before. She was soon twirling her parasol with confident gaiety.

When they were not exchanging pleasantries with various acquaintances, Northcott entertained Charlotte with an enumeration of all the pleasurable activities she could experience now that she was "out." She listened with one ear while she enjoyed the sights and sensations of the park.

"And you will have to visit Vauxhall Gardens," he was saying. "Beautiful outdoor gardens lit by lanterns: music, food, masked guests…"

The plan was born in Charlotte's brain full-grown. She reacted with lightning promptness.

"Oh, Mr. Northcott," she sighed, giving the parasol a light twirl, "it sounds so heavenly. Alas, I do not think it is the type of entertainment to appeal to Meg and my brother-in-law. They are really dears, you know, but somewhat-"

"Stuffy?" supplied the obliging Mr. Northcott.

"I hate to appear disloyal," Charlotte breathed, lowering her lashes.

"Say no more, Miss Wells," said the gallant Devin. "You would do me a great honor if you would join a party to Vauxhall that I plan to make up. I have some influence with your brother-in-law and will guarantee that he and your sister will be of the party."

"Oh, would you!" Charlotte gushed, hands clasped together over the handle of her parasol, eyes wide and worshipful. "That would be divine."

Devin returned Charlotte to Brampton's house and drove away feeling like public benefactor number one, and convinced that the little chit was not really as silly as the bulk of the new crop of debutantes. Quite a fetching little thing, in fact!

"Meg, Meg." Charlotte took the stairs, with shocking inelegance, two at a time. She burst into the drawing room to find her sister reclining on a chaise longue, reading a book.

"Lottie, my love, what is it?" Margaret asked, laying aside the book and regarding her sister with some alarm. "Did Mr. Northcott upset the phaeton?"

"Oh, no, no, nothing like that," Charlotte answered impatiently, tossing parasol, bonnet, and gloves onto the chair closest to the door, "but Mr. Northcott is to see that we all go to Vauxhall one night and you and Lord Brampton are to go too, but you are not to go, but you are to go as Marie Antoinette, but Lord Brampton will think you are not there, but you will be there, of course, although he won't know it, and then he will fall in love with you, though he won't know it's you-and you will live happily ever after!" She finished with a flourish and beamed.

Margaret stared and then laughed. "Lottie, my love, I lost you after 'Vauxhall,' " she said.

Charlotte sank down onto the sofa with a resigned sigh. "I shall explain again," she said. "Oh, Meg, please, could we ring for tea?"

Margaret got to her feet and obligingly rang the bell.

Charlotte began again. "Mr. Northcott has promised to make up a party to go to Vauxhall Gardens one night," she said. "He told me that almost everyone goes there wearing masks. The thing is, Meg, that you and Lord Brampton must accept the invitation, but at the last moment you must stay behind-you must have the headache, I think. Lord Brampton must go, of course, to accompany me.

"When we are gone, you will dress as Marie Antoinette again, with a mask; then you must follow us to the gardens and made sure that Lord Brampton sees you. Then he will fall in love with you and you can reveal your real identity. It can't fail, Meg."

"It is quite the most absurd plan I ever heard in my life," said Margaret.

"Name one thing wrong with it."

"I can name several," she said. "For one thing, I am no longer a girl to play games. Second, I do not still have the costume of Marie Antoinette. Third, how would I get to Vauxhall alone at night? Fourth, Richard would probably not give me a second glance even if I were dressed as before. Fifth, if he did pursue me, he would recognize me immediately. Sixth, it is wrong to play such tricks on my husband. And seventh, it couldn't possibly work-could it, Lottie?"

"Of course it would work," Charlotte replied, quite undaunted by the list of objections. And she crossed to the chaise longue, sat beside her sister, poured the tea, which had arrived a few minutes before, and proceeded to hammer out an ironproof battle plan.

"Oh, Lottie, do you really think it might work?" Margaret asked anxiously fifteen minutes later, her voice almost pleading. "I really do not believe I could."

"Phooey!" her sister replied.