The Magnificent Masquerade (2 page)

"Twenty thousand pounds!" This
information brightened Lord Birkinshaw's brow considerably. "That is
generous of you, Greg, I must say. My wife couldn't say twenty thousand isn't a
bright prospect! In that case, I see no impediment at all to my little plan.
None at all. So what say you, my boy? Shall we come to an agreement?"

Lord Edgerton remained hesitant. "Just
like that? Settle two people's lives without further ado?"

"Exactly. Without further ado."

"I don't know, Birkinshaw. It's a bit
high-handed, isn't it, to conclude a matter of such moment in so cavalier a
fashion?"

"And how would you describe your brother's
and my daughter's behavior, eh? High-handed and cavalier hardly covers it. The
fact remains, my boy, that the two of 'em have been causing us all sorts of
difficulty, and my plan will relieve us of a heavy burden. Many 'em off, I say,
and give 'em the burden themselves. Let them have the delight of dealing with
each other."

Lord Edgerton felt his grin break out again.
"Rather like the pair in `The Taming of the Shrew," eh?"

"Now you mention it, it will be rather
like that. Except that in this case each will tame the other. Well? Is it
agreed?"

Edgerton, sorely tempted despite the voice of
his conscience whispering that there was something morally questionable about
meddling in people's lives behind their backs even if it was for their own
good, rubbed his chin with the tips of his long fingers while he considered the
proposition. He couldn't deny that making such an agreement was reprehensible.
But reprehensible as it was, his brother deserved it. The letter still crushed
in his hand was tangible proof that the boy was indeed incorrigible. Not having
known a father, he'd been too much coddled by a weak mother and too much
indulged by an overly fond brother. Toby had never been forced to pay the
penalties for his misdeeds. Perhaps marriage was a solution for the fellow. It
was time he was forced to face some of life's responsibilities.

Edgerton lifted his eyes to Lord Birkinshaw's
face. "Very well," he said with a sigh. "Why not?"

"Oh, splendid!" chortled Lord
Birkinshaw. "Absolutely splendid! Then we have a bargain!"

"Yes, it's a bargain."

And the two men, without further ado, took the
only step considered necessary to make the bargain utterly binding: they shook
hands on it.

Chapter One

An undersized eight-year-old girl in an
oversized white pinafore opened the door of the music room of the
Marchmont
Academy
for Young Ladies and peered
inside. What she saw made her want to laugh, but she stifled the impulse by
clapping her hand over her mouth. Even though the sight before her was quite
ridiculous, she knew it would go ill for her if she laughed aloud.

The six students of the upper school had formed
a queue across the middle of the floor of the music room and were practicing
the steps of the gavotte. Dressed in a similar fashion to their observer, in
white pinafores and black stockings, they looked like a row of clumsy penguins.
Each was standing at arm's length from the next girl, each had a book on her
head, each had extended a right hand as if it rested on a partner's arm, and
each had pinned up her skirts so that Miss Hemming, the dance instructress,
could see if the steps were being properly executed. Miss Hemming herself was
pounding out the Gossec "Gavotte in D" on an ancient pianoforte while
counting out the beat in a shrill soprano. "STEP and STEP and three and
four and TURN, CROSS, seven, eight! STEP and BACK and three and four and TURN
... hold your right arm UP, Clara! ... seven, eight!"

Clara, the plumpest and most penguin like of
the five young dancers, while trying to comply with the instruction to lift her
arm, unfortunately moved her head. This, of course, caused her book to slide to
the floor with a thud. The noise distracted the others, two other heads turned,
two more books slid down, and all the dancers' bodily discipline evaporated in
a confusion of missteps and giggles.

"Young ladies, really!" Miss Hemming
scolded, slamming her hands down on the keys in disgust and rising angrily.
"You must move with a LIFT! An inner LIFT! Smoothly! With grace! You must
think Up, Up, Up! How will you ever make your marks in a tonnish ballroom if
you persist in this giddy-? Good gracious, child, what do you want?" This
last was addressed to the little black-stockinged interloper in the doorway.
The child's grin died away at once. "Mith Marchmont thent me," she
lisped, dropping the dance instructress a quick curtsey. "She wanth to
thee Mith Jethup."

"Me?" Miss Katherine (but always
called Kitty) Jessup, one of the six young dancers, had knelt down to retrieve
the book she'd dropped, but her head came up in instant alarm at the sound of
her name. "Miss Marchmont wants to see me?" The girl in question was
not the most beautiful of the group-plump Clara had more perfect features and
Bella, the tallest, had a more perfect form-but Kitty was the one a stranger
would notice first. Her hazel eyes seemed at first glance to be almost green,
her upturned nose was covered with a sprinkling of charming freckles, and her
hair was not only wildly disheveled but a unique shade of orange-red. If she
were not the daughter of the very British Thomas Jessup, Viscount Birkinshaw,
and his equally British wife, one might have taken her for a little Irish lass.

"Of course it's you," Miss Hemming
sighed, sitting down on the piano bench and shaking her head in a gesture of
hopelessness. "Who on earth else?"

"Egad, Kitty, not again!" muttered
one of the girls, not quite under her breath.

"Miss Marchmont warned you that there'd be
drastic punishment if you got into another scrape," Clara reminded Kitty
in a worried whisper. "She warned you! This time it'll be
Coventry
, and we won't even be able to
speak-!"

"It must be a mistake," Kitty
declared firmly to the child in the doorway. "I haven't done anything
wrong in ... in weeks!"

The child stuck her chin out pugnaciously.
"I didn't make no mithtake. The name I wath told wath Kitty Jethup."

"Kitty Jessup, you sly-boots," tall
Bella demanded, "have you been up to some mischief that you've kept from
us?" Kitty stood erect, her reddish eyebrows drawing together over a pair
of offended eyes. "I haven't been up to anything that could remotely be
called mischief."

"Oh, that's very likely, isn't it?"
Bella sneered. "Listen to Miss Innocence Incarnate!"

"Don't be a clunch," Clara said, putting
a protective arm about Kitty's shoulders. "If Kitty says she didn't make
any mischief, she didn't."

"Then why is Miss Marchmont
summoning-" "That will be enough!" Miss Hemming rose from her
bench again with magisterial authority and clapped her hands for order.
"Stop this babble at once! Kitty, Miss Marchmont awaits you. You are
excused." She was about to turn her attention to her other charges when a
final glimpse of Kitty's appearance brought her up short. "Wait a moment,
miss! You can't go to our headmistress looking like that. Unpin your skirts, if
you please, and put on your half-boots. You can't run through the corridors in
those dancing slippers. And good God, girl, do something about your hair before
you go down. You look like a Zulu! As for the rest of you, back to your
positions, please. Books in place? Good. Now then, once again: WALK and two and
three and four and TURN,

CROSS, seven, eight. One and BACK and three and
TURN and COME TOGETHER, seven..."

Kitty picked up her half-boots from the row of
shoes lined up against the wall, tiptoed across the room, and let herself out.
She closed the door behind her carefully, expelled a breath, and leaned against
the corridor wall to change her shoes. When this was done, her eye fell on the
little messenger who still remained in the corridor watching her with an
expression of fiendish delight. "Well, what are you waiting for?" she
asked the child coldly.

"I'm thuppothed to ethcort you."

"I don't need an escort, thank you.
Besides, I have to straighten my hair. So you may run along. Go back to your
spelling class, to your geography book, or to whatever was occupying you before
you came barging into my life."

"Mith Marchmont'll be livid for keeping
her waiting," the child predicted gleefully.

Kitty frowned at her. "You needn't enjoy
this quite so much, you little toady," she hissed.

The child felt a twinge of shame. "I'm
thorry. I'm really not a toady. I didn't athk to go on thith errand."

"Mmm. Are you willing to help me,
then?"

"Yeth, I thuppothe I can. But you ain't
going to athk me to tell Mith Marchmont I couldn't find you, are you?"

"No, it's nothing like that. Just find
Emily and send her to me. She's the only one who can fix my hair properly.
She's probably making the beds in the fourth-floor dormitory."

"I can do that, all right," the child
agreed.

"Good. Run along, then, quickly. And then
go back to Miss Marchmont and explain that I had to change. Say that

I'll be right along."

The child nodded and ran off. It soon became
evident that she'd followed the instructions to the letter, for Emily, the
school's most valuable maid-of-all-work, appeared in the corridor even before
Kitty had finished unpinning her skirts. "Ah, there you are," Kitty
greeted the maid in relief. "Sorry to take you from your chores, but Miss
Hemming said my hair looked like a Zulu's."

The maid bobbed a curtsey. "I don't mind,
Miss Jessup," she said in her soft voice. "I'd rather do hair than
beds."

The maid, Emily Pratt, was a fixture at the
school. Whenever a youngster needed buttoning, whenever a girl felt sick,
whenever an upper school young lady needed a confidante, Emily was there. Every
one of the students felt an attachment to her, though she never crossed over
the invisible boundaries that separated maids from their mistresses. She was
always unassuming, always serious, always eagerly helpful. Her appearance
seemed to fit her character: modest, unobtrusive, and pleasant. Her face was
pale and full-moon round, leading one to expect that her figure, too, would be
full and rounded, but it was surprisingly slim. She had a pair of wide,
intelligent brown eyes, silky brown hair that (when not pinned up in a knot as
it was now) was long and lovely, and a smile that, in its rare appearances,
would etch an unexpected pair of vertical dimples in those full cheeks. She was
two years older than Kitty, but the round cheeks and wide eyes made her seem
two years younger.

It was rumored that Emily had been a pupil of
the school many years ago but that her parents had died in a coaching accident
and left her without a penny. Miss Marchmont had kept her on, permitting her to
continue with her music studies (for she showed outstanding talent at the
pianoforte) and letting her earn her way by doing chores and occasionally
helping to teach the pupils of the lower school. Kitty not only liked but
admired Emily; the maid seemed to handle adversity with a shy, unobtrusive
courage.

While Emily smoothed Kitty's flyaway tresses
with a comb she conveniently kept in a pocket of her apron, Kitty told the maid
what had happened. "What do you suppose Miss Marchmont wants with me this
time?" she asked, fidgeting nervously. The maid struggled to untangle the
hair on the bobbing head. "I'm sure I've no idea, Miss Jessup. Have you
been up to some mischief again?"

"No, I haven't done anything wrong. At
least ... not anything I can remember."

Emily managed to twist Kitty's locks into a
neat braid. "If you can't remember, miss, then it couldn't possibly be
some thing as shocking as the last time."

"You mean when I and my friends went up to
the attic and were caught having a party? I never heard such a fuss! We were
only a little tiddly."

"Weren't you just!" The maid grinned
in recollection. "I don't think I've heard such wicked songs in all my
life! You can't blame Miss Marchmont for being put out with you."

"'Put out' is hardly an adequate way to
describe it," Kitty muttered, the sound of Miss Marchmont's tongue-lashing
still ringing in her ears. "I wonder what she'll do to me this time."

"Miss Marchmont always says that a
punishment should fit the nature of the infraction," the maid quoted,
winding Kitty's braid into a neat coil at the nape of her neck.

"That's just it," Kitty sighed,
"I don't know what the nature of the infraction is. "

But Emily couldn't solve the problem. She could
only do up the hair. "There, Miss Jessup, that's done," she said,
pinning the bun in place with a few hairpins from her well-supplied pocket.
"It seems to me that you look quite presentable."

"Oh, thank 'ee," Kitty mocked.
"Quite ready for the hanging, eh?"

"Oh, I don't think it will go as badly as
all that." Emily was too serious to recognize the other girl's irony.
"Miss

Marchmont is nothing if not kind."

"Kind! How can you, of all people, call
her kind? She's made a veritable slave of you!"

The maid's wide eyes widened even more.
"Slave, miss? Oh, no, not at all! You mustn't think such a thing! She
doesn't overwork me. And I'm paid a fair wage, you know. I have no complaints.
Miss Marchmont's been more than good to me. I don't know what I should have
done without her, you see. I've had no one else since I was nine."

"Well, I suppose she likes you. She must,
if she's so kind to you. I think she detests me."

"Oh, no, Miss Jessup, I'm sure she
doesn't." "We'll find out soon enough," Kitty muttered
apprehensively. "Walk me down to the office, will you, Emily? If I go
alone, I shall feel as if I'm marching to the guillotine."

They started down the corridor toward the
stairs, Kitty trying to remember what transgression she'd committed that Miss
Marchmont could have discovered. She was sure she hadn't done anything very
terrible lately, mainly because Miss Marchmont's isolated and well-guarded
school did not provide even a young lady of her fertile imagination many opportunities
for wrongdoing. There were no young men in the vicinity; there were no hours of
the day when the pupils were unsupervised (for even when they slept they were
subject to bi-hourly bed-check); there were few unguarded doors (and those few
were always locked), and even if one could manage to steal out, one could find
no means of transportation to convey one to the more exciting sections of
London. With such limited opportunities for naughtiness, what else could one be
at Miss Marchmont's Academy but a good-well, almost good girl?