Masquerade Read online

  Lottie realized he had lowered his voice in case Aunt Agatha had returned from her errands in the village. At age thirty-eight, never married, with all prospects long ago extinguished, her mother’s sister had no recourse but to live on the charity of her family.

  Mother continued her definition. “Above all, marriage is an act of faith in order to perpetuate, to propagate …”

  “Yes, well,” Father harrumphed. “We know where that goes.”

  Actually, Lottie knew nothing about where that went, or how it was accomplished. She’d been taught to be pretty and alluring but had little knowledge of what to do once she was successful. She’d certainly received no clues from her mother. Her childhood had been best accomplished under the charge of her beloved nanny, Eliza Hathaway. Except for her formal education under the tutelage of a stern governess whom Lottie had detested, she had looked to Nanny to provide all of her personal needs until Lottie grew too old and Dora came along and filled the bill as companion and overseer. Lottie rarely saw her mother for more than meals or an outing into society. And she never confided in her. Dora was the one who was privy to all her he-said-she-said anecdotes. In fact, Dora was the one who had explained the facts of womanhood when Lottie’s body had traversed from childhood to adolescence. And now that her mother wanted her to marry … Lottie wished to know the private issues marriage involved but would never dream of asking her mother. And certainly not her father, who knew far too much.

  Would Dora know of such things?

  Lottie found her voice. “If I were to marry this man and have a family with him, I must love him.” She thought of something to strengthen her stand. “Even the Bible says we are to love one another. If there is no love, there should be no marriage.”

  Her father’s eyebrows rose. “Where does the Bible say that? About marriage specifically?”

  She was suddenly confused. “I’m sure it does. Somewhere.”

  Mother returned to her chair. “Of course we wish for love to be present, Lottie. But how can love blossom between you and Conrad if you don’t even meet him?”

  Lottie could not imagine traveling to America and being beholden to a strange family that would scrutinize her every ruffle and flaw. She liked her life here in Wiltshire. She was quite willing to stay here in the loving arms of …

  “Ralph Smythe has continued to show interest in me,” she said.

  Her father adjusted himself in his chair, making grunting sounds— caused by his posture or Lottie’s comment? “I’m afraid you don’t understand, daughter. And perhaps I’ve been remiss in not telling you more about what has occurred.”

  “Then tell me,” she said. “If I’m old enough to travel to America, if I’m old enough to marry a stranger, then I’m old enough to know why all this is being thrust upon me.”

  Her father retrieved his pocket watch, snapped open its gold cover, then stood. “I must go check on the horses. A mare is due to foal.”

  She rushed to his side, putting a hand upon his arm. “Please, Father. Tell me why you’re so keen on my marrying this American.”

  He didn’t meet her eyes. “Do as you’re told, girl.”

  As soon as he was gone, Lottie turned to her mother. “Why won’t he tell me?”

  Mother’s voice was soft. “Why won’t he tell me?”

  It had never occurred to Lottie that her mother was unaware of the details of their life. If she knew about Father’s mistress, certainly she knew about other, less delicate matters.

  But instead of an explanation, Mother stood and went to the mantel. “I wish your father had not had to leave, but I know he wanted you to have this birthday gift from the two of us.”

  All thoughts of Conrad Tremaine were forgotten as Lottie took the velvet box. The shape divulged the contents as jewelry, Lottie’s favorite gift in the world.

  She untied the pink satin ribbon and opened the hinged case. Inside was a ruby necklace.

  “It was my mother’s.”

  “I know.” I know, I know, I know. Lottie had seen her mother wear the necklace a hundred times and had always thought it an oldfashioned, vulgar thing. It was fitting for a woman turned ninety, not nineteen. Her parents knew her taste flowed toward more modern stylings. They’d always done well with their previous choices, even having pieces custom-made.

  “Don’t you like it?”

  Lottie forced herself to at least feign pleasure. “It’s quite … nice.”

  “You don’t like it.”

  If only she had a less-transparent face. Unfortunately, every emotion felt was heralded for all to see. In order to avoid her mother’s gaze, Lottie kissed her cheek. “Thank you for thinking of me, Mother.”

  “It’s from your father too.”

  She snapped the box shut. “I’ll be sure to thank him. Now I’d better get ready for my friends’ arrival.”

  Lottie was greatly glad her party was not a formal affair where her mother might insist she wear the ruby eyesore.

  Surely her friends would have better taste in gifts.

  “Lottie! If you want to change your hair, let me take the pins out.” Dora gently slapped Lottie’s hands away. Her mistress had no talent whatsoever in the art of hairdressing—or undressing.

  And no patience either.

  “I’m sorry to make you redo it, Dora, but I want my hair to look more sophisticated for the party. I’m not a girl anymore; I’m nineteen. I want to look like a woman and be treated as such.”

  Dora smiled. She was only a year older than her charge, but Dora felt a decade ahead in maturity. Although Dora had always found Lottie’s naïveté charming, she knew Lottie would have a hard time being seen as an adult by anyone who knew her. She had an able mind, but the girl possessed limited savvy when it came to real life. And her willful nature often reminded Dora of a child, insistent about getting her way. To Lottie, life revolved around pretty gowns, jewels, seven-course meals, and dancing until two. Yet she was not a snob. Lottie treated Dora well and was never demanding in a mistress-servant sort of way. Dora had never heard her speak sharply to anyone in service and doubted there was a mean bone in her body. She was simply a young aristocrat who knew nothing beyond her tightly wound sphere.

  Lottie was alarmingly ignorant of the world at large. Did she know the Marquess of Salisbury had become the prime minister for the second time last summer, or that the president of the United States was Grover Cleveland?

  Dora was proud she knew such things and gave credit to her habit of snitching Mr. Gleason’s newspaper when he was through with it. One time she’d tried talking to Lottie about an article she’d read regarding a workers strike, but Lottie had covered her ears with her hands. “Please don’t, Dora. It’s not that I don’t care what’s going on, but since I have no say in it …” She’d looked at Dora with her innocent eyes. “Is it wrong to erect a dome around myself? I’m happy and I strive not to make others unhappy, so is it so wrong to not know about such things?”

  Dora had assured her it was not wrong to be as she was. Childish, perhaps, but as far as Dora knew, ignorance was not a sin. In a way, Dora didn’t want Lottie tainted by the harshness of the world. She was a perfect rose to be admired. Dora feared if Lottie were accosted with the baser realities, she would wilt and fade and die.

  But today was her birthday and now she suddenly wanted to blossom into a woman? “Perhaps you should wear the rubies,” Dora said. “You yourself admit they reveal a more mature taste. With your hair all swept upward …” She took the hair that fell upon Lottie’s shoulders and wound it into a hank that could be pinned.

  Lottie studied her reflection. “That does make me look older, doesn’t it?”

  “Just old enough, I’d say.”

  “Then let’s try that. Maybe a new hairstyle will spur Ralph toward a proposal.”

  Dora was surprised by the statement. “He’s that close?”

  “A hairsbreadth away, if I can read men.”

  Dora wasn’t sure Lottie could read men. Or women. She
seemed in a perpetual state of self-absorption—not in a bad way necessarily, but in the way in which the boundaries of a child’s world were drawn close and she didn’t have enough experience to realize what she was missing beyond its borders.

  As far as Dora could determine, Lottie had no knowledge that her family had suffered any financial setbacks. It was the talk of the village, and the servant grapevine between the country manors vibrated with rumors and gossip. Dora had resisted the talk and had even defended her master and mistress—until Mr. Gleason ordered the north wing of the house closed up and cut the staff in half. Dora wasn’t used to serving at meals or doing other downstairs work, but in the past month all the remaining servants had been called into more extended service.

  Dora had been with the family since she was thirteen, when Lottie was only twelve. She’d started as a housemaid, but had soon been asked to help out with Lottie. Although she’d not been called a lady’s maid—nor had she been paid as much until Lottie had turned sixteen—she’d had the advantage of the work being less grueling than the constant scrubbing and polishing of a housemaid. Of course the preferential treatment had caused issues with the other servants. In their eyes she was not truly one of them. Not quite a full-fledged friend to Lottie, and not quite a full-fledged servant, Dora often felt lonely, as if she lived in a no-man’s-land between two worlds.

  Service was all she knew. Her mother had been in service, as had her grandmother and her aunt. Not that this was their first choice of occupation, but there were few options for poor, widowed women. Actually, her mother had always wanted to own a little shop, selling candies or cakes. But such a dream was impossible. Once a maid, always a maid.

  As for Dora’s situation, if circumstances worsened, she was certain she could obtain good character references from the Gleasons. But the thought of finding another position was harrowing. Besides, she knew everything there was to know about Lottie. Since neither one of them had sisters, they’d naturally fashioned a bond that was closer than that of mistress-servant.

  Sitting at her dressing table, Lottie held a handful of hairpins in her hand, palm up. “All this talk of my marrying an American. It’s absurd. There are plenty of men around here who eat out of my hand. I have only to fall in love with one, to choose one.”

  Dora took a hairpin and put it in place. “Didn’t you tell me Gilbert Collins asked you to dance more than his fair share at the last ball?”

  Lottie shuddered. “He asked, but I put his name on my dance card but twice. He has deplorable breath.”

  “Rodney Barrister is a handsome—”

  “Engaged.”

  “To whom?”

  “Octavia Morris.”

  “Oh.”

  “Exactly.”

  “How about Reginald Thurber?” Dora asked. “I hear his father is sick and doing poorly and he’s due to inherit—”

  “Reggie is a philandering pig. I wouldn’t trust him in church.” Lottie sighed. “No indeed, although could I have my choice, I’d choose Ralph. He’s the one love of my life.”

  Dora tried not to make a face. It was hard for her to imagine a man named Ralph being the one true love of anyone. And his surname was not much better. Smythe? Charlotte Smythe? Atrocious. Yet since it was apparent Lottie had set her sights on him … “Do you love him?”

  “I could love him. If he asks me to marry him I will love him.” She closed her hand upon the hairpins and gazed at Dora in the mirror. “I wish to marry for love. Is that too much to ask?”

  “Not too much, but …”

  Lottie sighed with the full drama of an actress. “There’s someone out there just for me. I believe that man is Ralph, for other than him … the men I’ve met say all the right things, do all the right things, but they don’t make me swoon.”

  “Swoon?”

  Lottie nodded in the dressing table’s mirror. “Swoon, Dora. Every woman deserves to swoon over the love of her life.”

  Dora shook her head. “Deserves and gets are two different things.” She motioned for more hairpins.

  Lottie opened her hand to the cache, and Dora finished the upsweep. “There. All grown up.”

  Lottie studied her reflection. “I look years older, don’t you think?”

  “Years.”

  Months.

  Lottie went to the window a third time. Or was it her fourth? Dora had lost count.

  “Where are they?”

  Dora repeated the answer she’d given before. “I’m certain they’ll be here soon.” She diverted to the buffet and rechecked the serving utensils that were ready for the dishes Mrs. Movery had prepared for the birthday celebration.

  “Where’s Mother?” Lottie asked.

  “I don’t know.” Again, it was a repeated answer. Even Dora found it odd Mrs. Gleason was elsewhere. As the mistress of Dornby Manor, shouldn’t she be fluttering about, making sure everything was in perfect order? Dora had been happy to don a black maid’s uniform in order to assist—for it would give her firsthand knowledge of who said what and what gift was received—but as the hour passed into the quarter, then the half, then the three-quarter …

  Lottie needed her mother’s reassurance. And so, Dora took matters into her own hands. “I’ll go find her for you.”

  “Thank you. I—” Lottie ran from the window toward the door. “A carriage!”

  Dora raced into the foyer after her, hoping Lottie didn’t wrench open the door before the guests even had a chance to knock.

  Davies, the butler, intercepted Lottie before she did just that. And with a stolid look he implied she would not interfere with his duty of greeting all comers.

  Dora gently tugged Lottie back into the drawing room. “Be here to greet them. Don’t look too eager. Remember you’re a grown lady now.”

  Lottie’s blink told her she had forgotten her goal. She moved a few feet inside the room, her hands assaulting the bottom button of her bodice.

  As Dora feared for the button’s safety there was a knock on the door. Lottie bounced upon her toes. Dora pressed the air with her hands. Calm now. Calm. Then she moved to the fireplace wall, making herself inconspicuous.

  There was a voice in the hall and then Miss Suzanna Weaver entered. Lottie smiled, but her eyes moved past her friend into the foyer, clearly expecting to see others.

  “Dearest Lottie.” Miss Weaver set a small package on a table, then took Lottie’s hands in her own and kissed her cheeks. “The happiest of birthdays.”

  “Thank you,” Lottie said. “Please have a seat. I’m sure the others will be here presently, but until then I’d love to hear all the latest—”

  Miss Weaver looked to the floor, her one hand finding comfort in its mate. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid I can’t stay.”

  “Can’t stay? What—?”

  “My parents don’t even know I’m here, and they’d be ever so upset if they … But I had to come to wish you the best, and …” She backed toward the door.

  Lottie rushed toward her, taking her arm. “Suzanna, do tell me what’s going on.”

  Suzanna did a double take when she spotted Dora, but Dora merely dropped her gaze to the floor. She was not about to leave until Lottie told her to do so.

  Suzanna moved toward Lottie in confidence. “I can’t be the one to tell you, Lottie. It’s not my place.”

  “But it is. We’re friends. Friends tell each other everything.”

  Suzanna’s head shook no, making it appear she was denying both her position to tell the truth as well as her friendship with Lottie. She was not one of Dora’s favorites—nor Lottie’s either. Suzanna Weaver was far too full of herself and put on airs beyond her due. Lottie had told Dora an anecdote about a party when Suzanna had directed where everyone would sit and stand, to the extent that the entire affair had seemed like an audience before a queen.

  “Fine. Don’t tell me,” Lottie said. “I’ll just wait until Ralph arrives. He’ll tell me whatever I want to know.”

  “Ralph isn’t coming either.
And …” Suzanna’s face changed from one full of regret and sorrow to one steeped with smug self-satisfaction. “No one is coming to your party, Lottie. Not a one.”

  Lottie stood mute, and Dora saw her jaw tighten.

  “Did you hear me?”

  Lottie found her voice. “Hear you? Yes. Understand you? Not at all.”

  But Dora understood. The rumors about the Gleasons’ financial difficulties must have reached every ear in Wiltshire.

  Every ear except Lottie’s. Dora wished she could step forward and order Miss Snobby Suzanna to leave this very minute. Some friend.

  Suzanna moved toward the door on her own accord. “I really must go. Do try to have a pleasant birthday, Lottie.”

  And she was gone.

  Dora held her breath, waiting to see what Lottie would do. She still didn’t know the truth—only the truth’s consequences, and Dora certainly didn’t want to be the one to tell her. Please don’t ask me.

  Lottie’s eyes blazed and flitted from the door to Dora and back again.

  Then suddenly she said, “Come with me.”

  “Come—? Where are we going?”

  Lottie beat Mr. Davies to the door and burst outside, striding down the steps to the drive. Dora ran after her and had trouble keeping up with her gait. “Lottie, I’m so sorry.”

  “You have no idea.”

  “But where are we going?”

  Instead of answering, Lottie veered toward the stables. She called after the stableboy. “Hitch up the cabriolet, Derek. Now.”

  “You want to go somewhere, Miss Charlotte? I’ll take you.”

  “Dora will go with me. Now go!”

  Although his face revealed a hundred questions, Derek did as he was told. Dora had her own questions, but the stony mask on Lottie’s face revealed it was a time to be silent and follow.

  And perhaps pray for the best.

  Lottie whipped the reins on the horse, making him fly down the road. She would have liked him to go even faster. If she had her way, and if such things were possible, she would instantaneously be at the Smythe house so as not to waste another second. How dare Ralph not come to her party! What had Suzanna said to him? What lies?