Miss Weston's Masquerade

He paused, arrested, his neck cloth half off. ‘Lord, I hadn’t thought of that. Go for the water, I’ll think of something.’

Cassandra returned with a steaming ewer to find Nicholas pulling a battered screen across one corner of the room. ‘What are you doing?’ She set the jug down on the dressing table and came to peer round the edge. ‘Where did you get that from?’ A low truckle bed was set behind the screen.

‘It was under the bed. I’ll take this, you have the bed.’

‘I can’t do that, Nicholas,’ she protested, scandalised. ‘I cannot sleep in the same room as you. It’s…’

‘…the only option we have,’ he finished for her. ‘What would you prefer? To share with the male inn servants?’ He looked at her, grimaced and added ruefully, ‘Face it. You’re as compromised as you’re ever going to be, Cassie. By running away with me dressed as a boy, you burned your boats. A night in my company can make it no worse.’

Cassandra knew her blush was deepening. Her tongue felt too clum

sy to get round the words. ‘But we… I never thought…’

‘I don’t believe you thought half a day ahead from the moment you left home. But then, neither did I, at least, not about this.’ He hesitated, ‘Look, Cassie, with the screen pulled across it will be almost as if we’re in two separate chambers.’

Cassandra cast round for other reasons not to share the room. It wasn’t as though she didn’t trust Nicholas, it was just that the big bed was strangely disturbing. Her eyes fell on the shortness of the pallet. ‘Your feet will stick out of the end. You won’t be able to walk tomorrow. I’m much shorter, I’ll sleep on the truckle bed.’

‘You are in my care, Cassandra, and you will do as I tell you.’ Nicholas’s tone brooked no argument. ‘You’re my mother’s godchild and I must see you safely delivered to her. It’s bad enough that you’re jauntering around in boy’s clothing, unchaperoned, without sleeping in a servant’s bed in an inn.’

Cassandra knew when she was beaten. ‘Thank you, Nicholas.’ She gestured to the jug. ‘Your water will be cooling.’

Her capitulation appeared to surprise him. With a slight shrug, he moved the screen round the dressing table and disappeared behind it. Cassandra dithered in the centre of the room. She had begun to feel more comfortable in the valet-master role and now Nicholas had turned it on its head by treating her as a girl, if not a lady.

However, it seemed now the question of the bed was settled, he had no further qualms. A shirt came sailing over the top of the screen followed by a crumpled neckcloth. ‘Pass me a clean shirt, please.’

Cassandra handed one round the screen and busied herself with brushing down the dark blue coat and cream kerseymere breeches. ‘Which waistcoat do you want? The sage green or the white?’

‘Green. Can you pass me my, er…’ For once Nicholas seemed at a loss.

Silently Cassandra handed the unmentionable nether garments round the screen. It was a good thing he couldn’t see the smile on her face. Honestly, does he think me such an innocent? Who does he think sews on my father’s buttons?

By the time Nicholas emerged, smoothing down his cuffs, Cassandra had her face under control. She had polished his quizzing glass and found a fine cambric handkerchief. ‘Cologne, my lord?’

‘Naturally.’ He wasn’t rising to the bait, although Cassandra saw his mouth twitch briefly, as if in amusement. ‘Now, for your supper, go down to the kitchen and bring something back up here. I don’t want you eating in the inn, it would be hazardous as well as unseemly.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Cassandra said demurely.

‘Cassandra…’

‘Yes, my lord?’

He paused at the door, a tall, lean figure in the severe evening dress, the candlelight honing his features into an unfamiliar austerity. ‘Go to bed early like a good girl, we’ve a long journey tomorrow. And stop calling me my lord, you are beginning to sound like Peacock.’

The door shut behind him with a distinct click. As sounding like the butler had been Cassandra’s aim, she was rather pleased with the rebuke. Nicholas was inclined to treat her like a child and, while that had its advantages, it was beginning to gall her for some reason. Teasing him, very gently, was the only way she could assert her character without alarming him with her femininity.

She began to tidy the room, gathering up discarded clothing and straightening the dressing table, her mind on this man who had unexpectedly taken control of her life.

Revealing her true age would not matter once they were on the other side of the Channel; Nicholas would hardly abandon her on the road to Paris. And yet… Cassandra paused, her arms full of the opulent folds of his dressing gown. Something told her that he would not be pleased when he discovered how she had deceived him, fooled him into thinking she was a only a young girl.

But that was still days away, now she was starving. She would see what the kitchen had to offer.

Chapter Four

The cook had been too busy in her steamy kitchen to pay much heed to one undersized valet and Cassandra secured a plate of mutton stew and bread and a mug of ale without drawing attention to herself. But trying to find the back stair in the gloom of the labyrinthine corridors of the Ship was another matter.

Through there? No, perhaps this way… No, it was another wrong turning. Light streamed through a door which stood ajar in front of her and through the gap came the chink of glass, the scrape of cutlery and the sound of voices.

Her curiosity got the better of her and she went closer. By dint of flattening herself against the wall, Cassandra found she could see a wedge of the dining-room. It was warm, full of light and bustle and infinitely more enticing than the prospect of her own room. Besides, the plate of stew was cooling fast. Quietly she moved a stool closer to the door, perched on it and began to eat.