Mary Balogh - A Masked Deception

"I shall go see about the horses," he replied. "Charlotte, my love"-he missed the glower cast in his direction by Devin-"go upstairs to Juana and let her know by some sort of sign language that she should hurry and that my sister-in-law is here waiting to meet her."

They left together. Devin crossed the room and placed a hand on Margaret's shoulder. "All's well, Lady Bram," he said. "You can stop worrying. No one need ever know-not even Bram if you choose not to tell him." He leaned forward to gaze concernedly into her face.

This was the sight and these were the words that greeted the Earl of Brampton as he pushed open the door to the parlor.

The Earl of Brampton had spent a busy few days in London. He had to see his man of business about various matters relating to his several estates, and he had more than one meeting with an eminent engineer, arranging for the man to visit Brampton Court and make plans for draining the marsh. The drainage scheme would free many more acres of land for cultivation and would help his tenants to a more prosperous way of life.

Yet Brampton was not happy during those few days. As long as he was busy, he felt tolerably contented. But the house in Grosvenor Square felt empty and cheerless with no other occupants than the skeleton staff that was kept there during the summer months. Sitting in his library on the third evening, after an early return from a sparsely populated club, Brampton mused on the change that had occurred in him in just a few months. He vividly remembered getting embarrassingly drunk in this very room because his happy solitude was about to be shattered by a dull and insipid bride.

Dull and insipid! Meg! Sweet, sensible, and intelligent Meg? He found now that life was dull only without her. He got up restlessly from his chair, refilled his glass, and sipped its contents. He smiled ruefully at himself. Was he about to get drunk because he was forced to be away from her for a few days?

Brampton set the glass down firmly beside the brandy decanter and left the library. He went to his room and let Stevens help him off with his clothes and on with his nightshirt and dressing gown. He dismissed his valet before going to bed. He wandered aimlessly to the chair beside the empty fireplace. How restless he felt! How he needed his wife, even the little she had so far been prepared to give of herself.

Brampton got to his feet again, opened the door into the dressing room that connected his bedchamber with his wife's, and then the door into her room. He wandered inside. The room was very tidy, very empty. He crossed to the bed and sat on its edge. He rubbed one hand lightly back and forth across the pillow. If only she were there. He made a decision as he sat there not to spent another night away from home-and home now meant wherever Meg was. Although he had a full day of business yet to transact, somehow he would speed through it so that he would have enough daylight hours left in which to ride back to Brampton Court.

His decision made, Brampton rose to leave his wife's room. He could sleep now. He smiled as he noticed a closet door slightly ajar, and crossed the room to close it. Something was in the way. He stooped to pick up a fan that had dropped to the floor and surveyed the rackful of ball gowns that had been left behind because they would not be needed in the country. He smiled fondly down at the fan-his favorite, the wine-colored one. He could picture her so clearly flirting it in his direction while her eyes sparkled at him through the slits of the silver mask. He raised his arm to place it on a shelf.

Then Brampton froze! My God, that was not his wife's fan. It belonged to-He felt his heart pumping and was convinced that he had stepped straight into a nightmare. How had it got there? Had she been in the house, in his wife's room?

Brampton gazed frantically around the closet. He could see that one box on a top shelf had tipped forward, probably dislodged when something had been pulled from beneath it. The lid had shifted off the box; the fan could easily have slipped out of it.

Brampton had a sickening feeling of deja vu. He knew before he lifted down the box what he would find inside; he knew the truth. Only his wife had been in her own room. His wife was his angel! By the time he had set the box on the bed and lifted the lid, he would have been surprised not to find the silver gown and mask and the powdered wig inside.

He sank onto the bed beside the box, all feeling mercifully dead inside him for a while. And yet he was struck with the thought of what a fool he had been. Now that he knew, the truth seemed so obvious that he was convinced he must have been blind. The same height, the same light, slender figure, the same response in himself, though it had been more physical in the case of his angel.

Shame and embarrassment were the first feelings to return. What a fool he had made of himself, making excuses to spend evenings away from Meg just so that he could meet her in a clandestine manner and make passionate love to her in the darkness of Devin Northcott's bed. And that heart-wrenching good-bye-when he was to see her at the breakfast table a few hours later. His avoidance of his wife's bed because he felt he had sullied his honor in another woman's arms. My God, what a prize idiot he had made of himself!

How she must have laughed at him!

Fury was the feeling that finally came-and held. He had just been spending weeks setting his wife up on a pedestal, almost worshiping her for her perfections, and all the time she was a low little schemer. She had quite deliberately set him up as a fool. He had spent all the months of their marriage feeling guilt over his physical use of her, imagining that their intercourse was causing her displeasure and perhaps pain. And yet in reality she was an experienced little slut who had opened to him with more sexual abandon than any of the most practiced lightskirts that he had ever taken to bed. Brampton viciously relived that last night of love, forgetting the first and his feeling then that she was in fact untutored in the arts of lovemaking.

Was she in the habit of such behavior? Brampton wondered. Was he the only man she had disguised herself for? Did she live a double life-the demure, irreproachable Countess of Brampton in public, a high-class little whore in private? No, that must be going too far. He passed a shaking hand across his forehead. There could not be that much duplicity in her. It was his Meg he was thinking of! But then, half an hour before, he would not have dreamed it possible for Meg to dress up and act like his little French angel. My God, that was Meg he had made love to!

Brampton closed his eyes and tried to force his whirling thoughts into some order. A loud cracking sound brought his eyes open again. The fan lay in two pieces in his hands. He tossed them on top of the other contents of the box and pulled himself wearily to his feet.

Meg! His angel! His wife! His hopes for a beautiful marriage had died in the last half-hour. The woman he had loved and longed for did not exist. There was only a woman he did not know. Physically, he knew her intimately. And they had shared the same home for several months. But he did not know her. He had married her so that she would bear his heirs. And after almost daily intimacies, there was no sign of a pregnancy. Did she know how to prevent that, too, the little schemer? Brampton laughed harshly and returned to his own room, leaving the box of clothes open on his wife's bed.

He lay down on his bed, though for many hours he did not close his eyes. He fell into an uneasy doze at dawn and awoke in a foul mood and with a crashing headache when Stevens brought him his shaving water and pulled back the heavy draperies from the windows.

There could be no continuation of business that day. Brampton wrote hasty notes to his man of business and the engineer he had hired, instructed his valet to pack his bags and have his curricle ready to leave in one hour's time, and proceeded to dress himself and eat what breakfast he had appetite for.

He was on his way a little before the appointed time. He estimated that he should be at Brampton Court soon after the luncheon hour. What a different homecoming he was contemplating this morning, though, from the one he had looked forward to yesterday. Then he was going home to his perfect Meg, his little porcelain doll, to try, ever so gently, to win her love. Now he was going to confront a bold, two-faced little schemer with her duplicity, to demand an explanation, to mete out punishment. She was certainly going to discover how hard his hand could be before he decided which of his estates would serve as the most cheerless place of banishment for her.

The Earl of Brampton drove his curricle into the courtyard of his country home through a drizzle that seemed to herald a heavier rain later on. It suited his mood to perfection, he thought grimly, making no attempt to prevent droplets of rain from dripping off his hair and down the back of his neck. He jumped down from his high perch, handed the ribbons to a groom who had come running from the stables, and glanced up to the windows of the drawing room as he ran up the steps and into the house.

"Where is her ladyship?" he asked the footman who took his damp hat and gloves.

"The countess is not at home, my lord," the footman replied, his voice expressionless, his posture stiff. There had been some gossip belowstairs about the goings-on of the morning, and he did not at all like the sound of his lordship's voice or the expression of his face.

"My mother?"

"The dowager Countess of Brampton is in her room, I believe, my lord."

"Thank you." Brampton took the stairs two at a time and knocked on his mother's door. Perhaps she would know where he could find his wife. He was in no mood to postpone this confrontation until she chose to put in an appearance.

"Enter," his mother's voice said from inside the room. She was reclining on a chaise longue, a lace handkerchief held delicately to her forehead. Her lady's maid stood behind her, holding her vinaigrette.

"Ah, Richard, my dear," she said languidly, "thank heaven you are home."

"What is it, Mama?" he asked, his brows knitting.

The dowager paused in the middle of her big scene and surveyed her son. He was obviously blue-deviled over something. He could not have heard yet, though, surely, or he would not be standing so still in the doorway. It flashed through her mind that marriage had not brought much happiness to her favorite son. And yet Margaret was a gem of a wife, even if she was not as flashy and elegant as some of the girls of the ton. And why had there been no announcement of the impending event? Her woman's intuition told her that such an occasion was less than nine months away. Was he not pleased? Had Margaret not told him for some reason? The boy needed a good jolt to convince him of what a treasure he was ignoring. And how dare he barge into her room looking as black as thunder when she was the one with all the woes? She decided on impulse to play devil's advocate.

"It's Margaret," she said faintly.

"Meg?" Was that a look of alarm that momentarily flashed into his eyes. "Is she ill, Mama? Hurt? Where is she?"

"Gone!"

"Gone? What are you talking about, Mama?" The earl strode impatiently into the room and stood over the wilting form of his mother.

"Gone to Portsmouth, Richard. Don't ask me why, my dear."

"Why in thunder has she gone to Portsmouth, Mama? You make no sense at all. Who accompanied her?"

"Devin Northcott, Richard."

"Dev? Why?" Brampton had gone very still.

"Betty, my vinaigrette, please!" The dowager waved a hand vaguely in the direction of her maid. "I think maybe you should go after them, Richard."

Brampton stood rooted to the spot for a moment.

"When did they leave?" he asked with dangerous calm.

"Maybe half an hour ago, dear," she said.

Ten minutes later, the earl was galloping through the gates of Brampton Court, having taken time only to change into a dry coat and to saddle his fastest horse. But already he was soaked.

Margaret rose to her feet as Brampton stood in the doorway of the private parlor at the Crown and Anchor Inn. Devin's hand stayed on her shoulder.

"Richard!" she cried. "What brings you here?" But the glad smile died from her lips as she realized that he was not looking at her. He stood, dripping rainwater onto the carpet, his blue eyes arctic, gazing at Devin.