Miss Weston's Masquerade

The room was crowded with diners of the Quality. Cassandra chewed absently, her eyes and mind full of the shifting colours of the women’s gowns, the richness of the men’s attire. She wanted to be there, part of it. Her father had denied her the chance to join even the provincial social life that Ware had to offer. If dinner in a Dover inn was this glamorous, how much more wonderful was Paris going to be?

She was almost lost in a reverie of elegant gowns and charming men when the party sitting nearest her door rose to reveal Nicholas and Lady Broome sitting alone at a table. Of Sir George, there was no sign.

Cassandra gasped as her eyes took in Lady Broome’s gown, cut so low it scarcely contained the full swell of her breasts. What fabric was showing was silver gauze over deep rose silk. Her dark hair was cropped dashingly short in the latest mode, its only adornment a silver filet threaded through with its loose ends fluttering at her cheek.

It was only then that Cassandra really noticed her companion. Nicholas was lifting his glass to toast her, a lazy smile curving his lips as their eyes met and held. Lady Broome leaned towards him to touch her glass to his. The two dark heads almost touched before Nicholas leaned back, still holding the look.

Cassandra drew in her breath with a sharp hiss. This was a very different Nicholas to the safe elder brother who had teased and bullied her all day. Not, of course, that she wanted him to look at her like that… even at this distance it brought the hairs up on her arms.

Absently, she took a sip of ale. Lady Broome was speaking now, her rippling laugh cutting across the hubbub of the room to reach Cassandra in her dark corner. She had obviously put a question to Nicholas who was shaking his head, a look of regret on his face. His fingers caressed the delicate filigree of silver ribbon by her cheek as his lips moved with soft words.

‘Silly goose,’ Cassandra muttered, unsure which of them she was referring to. Couldn’t he see how blatantly Lady Broome was flirting, playing with him? Of course he could, and he was enjoying every moment of it.

When Cassandra regained the bedchamber, she still felt nettled and vaguely disappointed in Nicholas for being so easily beguiled. She unbuttoned her waistcoat and took a deep breath. Male clothing gave considerable freedom, but it pinched in unexpected places. She sat on the bed and peeled off her stockings, then realised she had no nightgown to put on. She held Nicholas’s up against herself, but it was far too long. She padded barefoot across the boards to a valise and tugged out a shirt. Pulled over her head it brushed the top of her knees, not quite seemly, but then she had little alternative.

The bed was high and deep with an old-fashioned feather mattress which closed round her as she climbed in. Cassandra looked guiltily at the truckle bed, then hardened her heart. Nicholas had ordered her to take this bed, and after all he had enjoyed his evening. He hadn’t had to sit in the dark eating greasy stew while other people dined and flirted.

She snuggled down into the pillows, stretched her aching legs and waited for sleep to overtake her. But, despite all that had happened over the past twenty four hours and her lack of rest the night before, her eyes refused to close.

She supposed she ought to be worrying about what her father would be doing. Somehow she doubted he would have gone to the expense of hiring a Bow Street Runner to pursue her. Now she was out of the house, Bella Mainwaring would agree to marry him and, provided Cassandra’s flight caused no local scandal, he probably wouldn’t care if he never saw her again. Cassandra knew she was undutiful to be thinking like this, but their relationship had never been characterised by affection and she had long since given up hope of him changing.

No, what was keeping her awake was the enigma of Nicholas. Enough lingered of her old hero worship to make her trust him implicitly, but she could not deceive herself that he had taken her with him for any other reason than his own convenience, and his desire to avoid delay. But the Earl of Lydford was used to getting his own way under all circumstances and Cassandra had a sinking feeling that with her in tow, and with no experienced valet to smooth their path, things were not going to go with the ease which he had come to expect. This was hardly likely to improve his uncertain temper.

Not that he was out of temper this evening, far from it. Cassandra replayed the scene in the dining room, Lady Broome’s curls bent close to his dark head as she fluttered both fan and eyelashes. She remembered Nicholas’s gaze lingering on the vivacious face and creamy throat displayed before him.

Cassandra let her mind drift into fantasies of how she would look in evening gowns of silk and gauze adorned with feathers and jewels, set off with kid gloves and fragile slippers. In clothes like that, no gentleman would call her brat or think her a child.

She had just reached this gratifying conclusion when the door opened cautiously and Nicholas slipped in, his hand cupped round the flame of his candle. ‘Asleep, infant?’ he whispered, flattening Cassandra’s fantasy most effectively.

‘No,’ she said baldly.

‘Why not? Did you get some supper?’ He was keeping his distance from the big bed. In the flickering candlelight his face was underlit, expressionless, the face of a stranger.

‘Mutton stew.’

‘That’s all right, then.’ He turned towards the screen.

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; ‘Is it? I would rather have had guinea fowl and Dover sole and claret.’

‘You must have hung around the kitchen a long time. Wasn’t that rather tempting fate?’ He shrugged off his coat.

‘It wasn’t in the kitchen,’ Cassandra began, then realised she was getting onto dangerous ground.

‘Where then?’ Nicholas turned and faced her. ‘Have you been prowling around the inn?’

‘I saw you in the dining room with that woman,’ she snapped.

Nicholas sauntered over to the bed and looked down at her. In the semi-darkness his shirt was very white, his face inscrutable. He seemed to loom above her.

Cassandra scrambled up against the pillows, clutching the quilt to her throat. The silence stretched on, then he said slowly, ‘There are moments, brat, when you seem a lot older than your tender years. Goodnight.’

Cassandra held her breath until he had dragged the screen right across, cutting her off from the rest of the bed chamber. There was a clatter as he tossed his shoes into a corner and rustlings as he shed his clothes, then the truckle bed creaked and the light was blown out.

She found it impossible to give herself up to sleep. She had never shared a bedroom with anyone, let alone a man. There were several minutes of creaking and tossing while Nicholas adjusted his long frame to the narrow bed, then the only sound in the room was his breathing, regular and slow.

Her last thought as she finally drifted off was that innocent though this night was, she was now, in the eyes of Society, ruined beyond redemption. The surprising thing was, somehow she didn’t care.