Miss Weston's Masquerade

‘Damn it, Cassandra,’ he ground out without turning. ‘Will you get out of here?’

‘But I…’ she stammered.

‘Go.’ He gestured abruptly with his hand and she turned and fled, banging the door behind her.

‘Then I can go back to being a boy?’ Cassandra started to sit down on the low stone parapet of the bridge, remembered her skirts and checked the movement.

Nicholas gazed past her to the edge of the river where an old woman was collecting driftwood. ‘I think it would be as well.’ His tone was studiedly neutral, as it had been since the rather stilted breakfast they had shared that morning.

A little devil prompted her to ask, ‘Why?’

The question was rewarded by a sharp glance from Nicholas’s green eyes. ‘People such as the Bulstrodes are in no position to know whether I have a ward or not, but the ton most certainly are. If a whisper of your presence gets back to those who know me then the coincidence of my mother’s missing goddaughter and a mysterious young woman travelling with me would be too marked to overlook.’

‘Yes, Nicholas,’ Cassandra agreed demurely. ‘That is a very good reason.’

And it was. But she knew the real reason as well as he did. Nicholas did not want the constant reminder of her femininity. Dressed as a boy and with the formality of the master-servant relationship restored, it would be easier to pretend she was simply young Cassie again.

In the cold light of day she realised what a narrow escape they had had last night from something they would have both bitterly regretted. She had only Nicholas’s self-control to thank for that.

‘Will we be moving on today?’ she asked, gathering up her skirts to cross the cobbled bridge. ‘I haven’t any boy’s clothes.’

‘The apothecary’s wife is buying some. I asked her this morning while I was making arrangements for the carriage.’

‘And the rest of the luggage?’ Cassandra rested her palms on the bridge parapet and watched the treacherous sucking water below that had so nearly taken her life.

‘We can buy everything we need in Orange, according to Madame. Stop looking at the river, Cassie, dwelling on the accident will not help you recover from it.’

She shivered and decided he was right. Her restless sleep the night before had been full of swirling green water overlying the image of Nicholas’s face and the remembered sensation of someone touching her skin with cold lips. He had kissed her when he had dragged her from the water.

Raising her eyes from the surface to the water’s edge, she watched a group of urchins chasing minnows in a muddy pool, shrieking with laughter. ‘The river is not all bad,’ she remarked with a smile, which froze on her lips at the appearance of the Bulstrode family party strolling along the far bank.

The Mesdames Bulstrode were a startling vision, the elder in lilac, the younger in an argumentative shade of puce. Both were having trouble controlling overlarge poke bonnets in the strong morning breeze.

‘Oh, yes, Cousin Nicholas,’ Cassandra remarked in a high, clear tone. ‘You are so right in observing that the state of the deserving poor in this country is much worse than that of our own. Good morning, Mrs Bulstrode.’ She dropped a neat curtsey. ‘The Earl and I were discussing the condition of the lower orders in these parts. The absence of a benevolent landowning class must be much to blame.’

‘Well, they are all Papists, and they murdered their rightful masters in the Revolution, so what can they expect?’ the older woman announced sweepingly, before turning her attention to Nicholas.

He, however, was too experienced in the ways of social climbers to be trapped by the Bulstrodes into a lengthy exchange. ‘You are so right, Madam,’ he agreed, straight-faced. ‘I wonder why that did not occur to us. Come Cas… Catherine, the wind is getting quite keen.’ He raised his hat to the Bulstrodes and shepherded a demure Cassandra back towards the inn.

‘You baggage,’ he accused, as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘Benevolent landowning class, indeed. Where did you learn to spout such nonsense?’

‘The vicar’s wife talks like that all the time. I did it rather well, I think,’ she congratulated herself.

‘You do like to sail close to the wind, don’t you, Cassie?’ he remarked drily. ‘Now stay upstairs until the carriage is ready. I doubt my constitution will stand any more encounters between you and the Bulstrodes.’

How and when Cassandra would transform herself from demure young lady to valet had exercised them both. It would not do to risk encountering the sharp eyes of the older Mrs Bulstrode with Cassandra in boy’s guise but Nicholas cravenly refused point-blank to risk the icy disapproval of Madame Aubrac by enlisting her aid. Nor could Cassandra change in an inn along the way or the postillions would gossip.

Eventually she hurried out to the carriage while the horses were being hitched up, drew the blinds and scrambled out of the dress and into her shirt and breeches. She was just tying her second garter when Nicholas joined her.

She was perfectly decently clad but, for some reason, she felt exposed in her shirt sleeves and stockinged feet. Hastily she pulled on the waistcoat and coat, fastened the buttons tight, jammed on her shoes and began to fiddle with her neckcloth. She knew she was mangling it, but Nicholas made no move to help her as he would have done two days before. He seemed as conscious as she of the changed condition between them.

Chapter Eleven

By the second day, as they neared Aix en Provence, it seemed the illusion of the clothes had worked, the truth about her age was forgotten and they were at ease with each other again.

Aix lived up to Cassandra’s expectations of what a ‘p

roper’ foreign city should be. There were wide, clean avenues of lime trees, fountains on every corner and gracious squares where the inhabitants took the air in the evening.