Read Miss Weston's Masquerade for Free Online Page B

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.
    ‘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.
     
    ‘Nicholas.’ Cassie tugged his sleeve as he stood in the stern surveying the port of Dover as it receded slowly into the early morning mist. ‘That sailor says that with this breeze we’re only going to be five hours reaching France.’
    ‘Thank heaven for that,’ he remarked absently, then focused