A Difficult Disguise (16 page)

She slept, but only fitfully, her mind filled with a variety of thoughts, each more depressing than the last—many of them having to do with the reluctance she felt at the idea of passing out of Fletcher Belden’s life forever—so that if someone were to look closely, it would be easy to see the tracks where a few tears had dried on her face.

Because her sleep was so disturbed, or possibly because the nocturnal intruder proved so clumsy as to overturn a large oak bucket near the stable door, Billy was more than half-awake to hear a mournful male voice groan out, “Rosalie, Rosalie, wherefore art thou, Rosalie?”

Her blood running cold, Billy sat up, clutching a thin woolen blanket against her chest. “Who—who’s out there?”

A moment later Fletcher Belden’s golden head appeared around the edge of the stall, his hair falling boyishly onto his forehead, his usually clear eyes bleary with drink, and his normally perfectly groomed body wearing naught but boots, breeches, and a white, flowing, half-undone shirt. He looked, in a word, wonderful, and Billy longed to hate him. “It’s the evil guardian, Billy-boy. Who did you think it was, Father Christmas?”

Billy mastered the urge to rise up and take Fletcher’s sagging body into her arms, offering comfort to his obviously tortured soul, but chose instead to concentrate on the decanter of brandy in his hand and the odor of strong spirits on his breath.

“You’re drunk,” she pointed out unnecessarily as Fletcher, still retaining his death grip on the wall of the stall, was at that moment sliding slowly to his knees in the straw.

“Drunk? Me?” Fletcher returned haughtily, lifting his head to attempt focusing his eyes on Billy. “How dare you, sirrah! I am not drunk. I’m fat is a faddle.”

“That’s fit as a fiddle, sir,” Billy corrected sadly, unable to resist reaching out to help the man into a more comfortable position, his back leaning against the stable wall, his long legs splayed out in front of him.

His head lolling on his neck, Fletcher grinned impishly in Billy’s direction. “Isn’t that what I said? Never mind, it doesn’t matter. What are you doing here, Billy?”

“I sleep here, if you’ll recall,” she informed him, prudently prying the crystal decanter out of Fletcher’s nerveless fingers before sitting down beside him. “The question remains, however, as to what you are doing here. If you’ve come to cast up your accounts safely away from your precious carpets, I would much rather you didn’t. It smells horrid enough in here as it is.”

Fletcher laid his head against Billy’s shoulder, nearly toppling her. “No, no, that’s not why I came,” he said quietly. “I did have a reason, though, I’m sure of that. You make a nice pillow, Billy, do you know that? Of course you know that. You’re very soft for a lad, very, very soft.”

Billy’s heart leapt in her chest at his words, and she pushed at Fletcher until he was sitting upright once more. “I’ll go fetch Hedge and we’ll take you back to the house,” she said, trying to rise.

Fletcher’s right hand snaked out to rudely push her back down. “Don’t leave me, Billy,” he seemed to all but plead. “I promise you, I won’t disgrace myself. That was the brandy talking, but I’m all right now. And I even remember why I came. I want to apologize to you for that spanking. It was wrong; I was wrong. I’m not your guardian. I’m not a fit person to be anyone’s guardian.”

“Who—who wants you to be a guardian?” Billy asked, remembering with foreboding what Fletcher had said when he first entered the stables.

Spreading his arms wide, Fletcher exclaimed, “Who doesn’t? First my father entrusts my darling Arabella into my care. Then Christine Denham uses me as a guardian angel to bring her beloved to his senses. Not content with that, I deliberately set out to act as guardian—nay, Good Samaritan—to a young gentleman out on his own. That’s you, of course,” he interjected, giving Billy’s soft belly a sharp poke. “But now, now, I’ve got the worst of it—the very worst of it—thanks to William Darley.”

Billy barely restrained an overpowering urge to burst into tears. “William Darley? Isn’t that the soldier friend you talked about last night? The man who died?”

Fletcher nodded, reaching for the decanter. “He left me his sister, Rosalie. Lovely name, isn’t it? Rosalie Darley. A person could write poems to a Rosalie Darley, if a person could write poems. I can’t, not even here in the Lake District, where everyone and his brother writes poems. William’s baby sister. But I didn’t know. I never looked. And now she has run away—to God knows where—and all because I didn’t know. I didn’t look. Just like Arabella.” He pushed back his head to look sightlessly at the ceiling. “Wherefore art thou, Rosalie?” he asked the broad, bare boards.

Billy knew what Fletcher referred to, and her heart ached for him. She had heard the stories of Arabella, his young sister, and how she had fallen in love with a French prisoner, gotten with child, and committed suicide rather than tell her brother of her shame. Clearly Fletcher blamed himself, although, to Billy’s mind, he couldn’t have known what his sister had been doing.

After all, it wasn’t as if she had been entertaining her Frenchman in the house. Besides, there existed no being sneakier than a woman—wasn’t she proof of that? No mere man could possibly feel responsible for anything a woman set her mind to do—not if that woman wanted to hide it from him.

Christine Denham remained a puzzle, however. Billy had heard the name, or at least she thought she had, yet it rang no warning bells in her head. But Fletcher’s last bout of guardianship—his attempt to set his groom’s feet back on the straight-and-narrow—had certainly been fraught with problems, and for that Billy knew she could take full blame.

Fletcher’s head began to droop toward her shoulder once more, and this time Billy allowed it. “Do you mean to say that you didn’t know William Darley left guardianship of his sister—Rosalie, I believe you said—to you? How did you find out?”

“The letter,” Fletcher slurred against her shoulder. “Beck found the letter. Two letters. Mrs. Beale wrote the second one. Terrible woman, offering a reward. Very low-minded. But Rosalie’s gone. I’ve failed again.”

Billy bit on her knuckle, trying to think, even while she was silently rejoicing that Fletcher had never meant to let William down. Could it work? Could she possibly fool him? “Maybe—maybe she’ll turn up, now that you’re back at Lakeview,” she put in hopefully, a plan forming in her mind. “After all, it is some distance from Patterdale to here, isn’t it, at least for a young girl traveling alone? Perhaps this Rosalie stopped along the way, to work for her supper, and will arrive anytime now.”

“Perhaps. I can’t spare time to take you to Tunbridge Wells now, you understand,” Fletcher said abruptly, as if suddenly remembering his mission to the stables. “I planned to have Beck send you on the stagecoach, but that would be too easy for me, and another blotch on my copybook as far as acting the good guardian, wouldn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t mind, sir, really I wouldn’t,” Billy interrupted quickly, feeling very sorry for Fletcher—even more sorry for him, in fact, than she felt for herself, and Billy felt extremely sorry for herself indeed.

“No, I must first find Rosalie. Only then will I be able to return you to your aunt. But you must come live at the house. No more sleeping in the stables. You’ve been punished enough. Come on now,” he urged, struggling to get to his feet while holding on to Billy’s sleeve. “It’s late, and little boys should be tucked up in their beds. Besides, I’ve already lost Rosalie. Can’t be mislaying you as well, can I?”

Billy opened her mouth to protest just as Beck stepped into the stall to grab hold of Fletcher’s arm. “I’ll take him,” he said, motioning Billy back. “And if you’re as wise as I believe you to be, you’ll forget Mr. Belden’s visit this evening. He has had a rather trying day and cannot be held responsible. Do we understand each other, young man?”

“Completely,” Billy answered, more grateful than angry at Beck’s interruption. She bent down to take up the decanter and held it out to him. “And I haven’t seen this either.”

Fletcher, who had been rubbing at his eyes, seemed to sober momentarily. “Beck, my good friend, have you come to scold me or to take me to bed? I’d much prefer the bed, actually, as I don’t think I feel very well.” He grabbed hold of Beck’s shirt front. “You won’t tell Aunt Belleville, will you? She’ll give me something awful to drink, and a sermon as well.”

“It will be our secret, Fletch,” Beck promised, leading his friend away as Billy slowly subsided into a pile of straw, wondering how in the world she could keep her secret once she found herself installed in one of Lakeview’s bedrooms. Eyeing the small pack of her belongings, she entertained and just as quickly dismissed the idea of running away.

She had run away enough. The time had come to stand and face the consequences of her actions—especially now, while Fletcher felt so guilty about “poor Rosalie.” He might, she tried to console herself, even let me live once the truth comes out.

Fletcher woke from a troubled sleep just as the clock in the foyer struck out the hour of six, a look of pure astonishment on his face, as he had finally succeeded in putting a name to his niggling suspicion. Weary as he was, drunk as he was, something was bothering him—something Billy had said.

He scrambled out of bed in the near dark, his head pounding, his tongue feeling twice its size, to grope on his desktop for the pieces of Mrs. Beale’s letter, before wasting more precious minutes as his uncooperative fingers worked the tinderbox trying to light his bedside candle.

Squeezing his eyes nearly shut in order to focus on the words, he looked beneath Mrs. Beale’s signature for her address, and his heart skipped a beat.

And there it was. Damn all lying, conniving, modest, soft, infuriating grooms to the gates of hell and beyond—there it was!

“ ‘After all, it is some distance from Patterdale to here, isn’t it, at least for a young girl traveling alone?’ ” he recited in a singsong voice, repeating Billy Belchem’s words as he looked down at Mrs. Beale’s nearly unintelligible handwriting and the words “Hilltop Farm, Patterdale.”

“Perverse, am I? Gently nurtured child, is she? How could I have been so blind?” In a bellow that had Beck all but tumbling out of bed to run down the hall to his friend, Fletcher raised his fist and vowed, “I’ll murder the brat!”

Chapter 7

T
he morning dawned brightly, as if purposely to mock Rosalie’s dark-gray mood of flat despair, and Hedge arrived soon after, bursting from the tack room with a spring to his step and a lilt in his voice—a sure sign that he had already been at his store of brandy—warning Rosalie that she was very definitely in for a long day.

“Pry dem peepers open, yer lazy slug,” Hedge ordered, giving Rosalie’s leg a painful kick as she curled herself into a fetal position on the mound of straw and did her best to feign slumber. “Yer gots animals ter tend.”

Rosalie groaned, sitting up to grab at her abused shin. “Just brimming over with the milk of human kindness again, aren’t you, Hedge?” she grumbled at his retreating back, although careful to keep her voice low so that the man couldn’t hear her.

Sighing deeply, she stood up, folded her thin blanket, and ran a hand through her hair.

She’d kill for a bath, Rosalie acknowledged silently, reaching for a clean piece of straw to gnaw on in the hope it would sweeten her breath.

She’d give up her hope of salvation for a night between real sheets, in a real bed.

She’d climb any mountain for a pair of soft leather slippers to replace the heavy boots that had raised hard calluses on her heels; swim any river to sit at table and have someone pass her fresh hot bread and jelly.

“I want to be Rosalie again,” she wailed, her nearly sleepless night and the all but overwhelming burden of her problems loosening her tongue at precisely the wrong moment.

Hedge’s head popped around the edge of the stall. His jug ears seemed to quiver as if caught in a high wind. His bloodshot, dirt-brown eyes nearly bulged out of his head. “Wot did yer say?” he questioned in his most piercing voice. “Yer wants ter be who agin?”

Rosalie would have kicked herself if she believed the feat to be humanly possible. As it wasn’t, and she had no intention of offering the job of rump-kicker to Hedge, she took refuge in bluster.