A Difficult Disguise (17 page)

“What nonsense can you be talking about? I didn’t say anything,” she railed in a challenging tone. “Do you drink ’round the clock now, Hedge, instead of just morning till night? Don’t tell me you’ve taken to hearing strange voices now.” She shook her head, a deliberately woeful look on her face. “Tsk, tsk. Bad sign, that.”

But Hedge, who’d had just enough brandy to sharpen his wits, rather than to dull them, wasn’t about to be taken in by Rosalie’s attempt at deflection. Striding into the stall on his bandy legs, his hands clamped on his hips, he pushed his head forward on his skinny neck and looked intently into Rosalie’s eyes.

A long moment later he turned his head to one side and spit with great accuracy, hitting a horsefly in midflight and knocking it, buzzing angrily, to the straw. “Yer are! Yer a bloody chick-a-biddy,” he accused, glaring at Rosalie once again. “Rosalie, huh? Well, if that don’t beat the Dutch!”

A sick dread invaded Rosalie’s stomach as her knees began to knock together in fright. “You—you’re not going to cry beef on me, Hedge?”

Hedge’s head snapped backward. “Me? Would yer be daft, gel? An’ ’ow would it look—me bein’ taken in by a snip of a gel? Yer bubbled me good, yer did, an’ Oi’m not about ter make m’self a laughin’stock outta me own mouth.”

Rosalie would have fallen on the man’s neck in gratitude, if only Hedge were even slightly more prudent in his bathing habits. She restrained herself, saying only, “You have my thanks, Hedge, and I will work twice as hard as before, just to make it up to you. You are indeed the best of good fellows.”

Hedge sniffed, grumbling something about having Rosalie do twice the work she’d done before would be a welcome change from the work she was doing now, which wasn’t worth a rat’s rump anyway, before asking, “Wot wuz yer doin’ on the road anyways, Rosie? Summone atter yer?”

Was someone after her? Rosalie considered this for a moment. Yes, that sounded fairly good, and by the look on Hedge’s face, he would very much like to hear an interesting story. Far be it from her to disoblige the man!

“As a matter of fact, Hedge, I am running away from—from, um, the workhouse, where my mean uncle had put me when he took our land. My mother was there with me, but she died, of a broken heart most likely. And the master... Well, let’s just say he was beginning to look at me with a strange gleam in his beady little eyes. I knew I had to get away. I knew something about horses, as I always rode at home before my father died and evil Uncle Arnold took everything from us, and so I came here.”

Now, Hedge was not known to be the sharpest shaft in the quiver at the best of times, and he hadn’t seen the best of times in a score of brandy-soaked years, so it cannot be too difficult to understand that Rosalie’s story—a hastily spun, flimsy tissue of outlandish lies—was still strong enough to bind the muck-loving Hedge to her side.

“Yer poor, bleedin’ lamb,” the ex-jockey lamented, cuffing her affectionately on the shoulder, proving to Rosalie that the man could as easily swallow a bag of moonshine as he could a flagon of ale. “But we cain’t let the master ’ear, fer if ’e was ter rumble yer lay, it could be curtains fer the two of us. So no more talkin’ ter yerself about bein’ a gel, yer ’ear? Jist keep yer chaffer close an’ Oi promises not ter cry rope on yer.”

Rubbing her shoulder, Rosalie vigorously nodded her agreement, knowing that Hedge was more concerned for his own position than he was for hers, but she was not about to take him to task about his want of chivalry. “You’re too kind, Hedge. And I promise, just as soon as I can, I will leave Lakeview, just so that Mr. Belden never learns that you’ve been keeping an innocent young girl in the stables.”

“Innocent young gel...” Hedge repeated, rubbing reflectively at the stubble on his chin as the full import of Rosalie’s words struck him. “Yer better would,” he ordered, stepping back a pace, as if to distance himself from her. “But fer now, the geldin’s gone an’ spavined, an’ needs some ’ot fomentations right smart. The leg’ll blow up like a bladder fer a bit, but soon be fine—iffen yer do it right. Can yer ’andle that, Rosie?”

Taking her cue from Hedge, Rosalie nodded, adding only, “That I can, Hedge, just as long as you promise to stop calling me Rosie.”

Hedge spat, this time missing a sitting spider by nearly a full inch, and cursed under his breath. Without another word, he turned and headed for the tack room, from where Rosalie was certain he would not stir for the remainder of the day, which was a very good thing, for she had a lot of thinking to do.

Taking only enough time to quickly splash her face with cold water and rinse her mouth, she began working her way down the length of the double-sided stables: she fed and watered the horses, shoveled out the evidence of those same horses’ efficient digestive systems, turned several of the mounts out into the fenced pasture, and put a poultice on the gelding’s leg. Then she took up a brush and began to curry Pagan’s silken ebony flanks.

All the while Rosalie worked, she thought about her ever-growing problem.

She did not spend too much time considering whatever character flaw she must possess that had her continually falling into scrapes, for she had been involved in one scrape or another ever since she could remember, most of them, according to William, caused by her overactive imagination.

She did spare a moment to congratulate herself for the highly inspired crammer she had recently spoonfed to Hedge, for she had somehow unerringly found the single soft spot the man possessed—a fine sense of self-preservation—as well as one of his many weaknesses—the love of a story that smacked of juicy scandal.

What she did concentrate on was the pursuit of some way out of her current predicament, a maddening jumble caused by her nocturnal departure from Hilltop Farms, her masquerade as a groom, her lies—(all of them)—Fletcher’s ill-timed belated discovery that he had been named her guardian, his plan to install her in his house until shipping her off to her “aunt” in Tunbridge Wells, and—this most of all—her growing feelings for the man.

Her first impulse had had a lot to do with her skulking away into the night after having appropriated the gold sugar sifter she had espied one day when sent to the kitchens for a piece of raw meat to soothe Hedge’s black eye, an injury received by way of his rude introduction to the bottom half of the top half of a divided door. She would replace the sifter, naturally, once she had been hailed on the London stage as the most acclaimed actress in a decade, and then, her conscience clear, she would feel free to become Prinny’s mistress.

That plan had gone swiftly by the boards the moment Fletcher had staggered into the stables, calling out her true name. Her heart had fairly broken for him as he related his sad tale, and she could no more add to his feelings of inadequacy as a fit guardian than drive a stake through his tender heart.

She had almost blurted out the truth then and there, even if he had been too drunk to realize what she was saying, but was forestalled when he told her she would have to move into the house. Immediately she had realized that the very last thing she wanted was Fletcher to ever know that she had first presented herself to him as a groom.

Oh, she could have done it if there were nothing between the two of them but a few words spoken in passing between employer and hired servant. But they had shared much more than that—considerably more—including, she thought, blushing, a bed.

It was impossible for her to simply stand up and say, “Surprise! Your search has ended, Fletcher, and by the by, you aren’t really in danger of becoming perverted. I am a woman of eighteen, not a boy. Not only that, but I am Rosalie, your missing ward. Oh, yes, and one thing more: I think I am falling in love with you. Isn’t that above everything wonderful?”

Wonderful? Hardly. He would blink once or twice, his mouth dropping open. He would rejoice in the knowledge that William Darley’s sister had been found.

For a moment.

And then, remembering their night at the inn, recalling the intimacy they had shared and the fool he had made of himself trying to impress her with his manliness, he would kill her. Love? The last thing Fletcher Belden would ever feel for Rosalie Darley was love.

No, she thought, running the brush down Pagan’s quivering shank, she must find some way to leave Lakeview, and she must leave today.

She decided her first step would be to return to the place where she had buried her bag containing, among other things, her gown, undergarments, shoes, and cape. She wished she could remember if the spot was exactly two or three trees to the north of the stone that looked like a sheep’s head. She would bathe in some secluded beck, dress herself, and then present her person to Lakeview as the long-lost Rosalie Elizabeth Darley.

No one would recognize her as being Billy Belchem, or at least she fervently prayed they would not. People saw what they expected to see—everybody knew that. They had seen a small, slim lad with a dirty face. There was no reason for anyone to look deeper.

“Except for Fletcher,” she reminded herself, walking around to attack Pagan’s ebony coat from the other side.

Be that as it may be, she decided, no one would look at a well-scrubbed Rosalie Darley and see Billy Belchem—not even Fletcher—especially since there was no possible way anyone could stand the two of them side by side and make comparisons.

She worried at her lower lip with her teeth, doing her utmost to convince herself that at last she had hit on a plan that would work, so lost in a brown study as she bent to smooth Pagan’s foreleg that she did not hear Fletcher approaching along the center aisle that ran down the stable.

He stopped a scant five feet away, to rake her with his eyes, eyes that, now that the scales had been stripped away from them, took in every betraying curve that proclaimed that Billy Belchem was indeed a female.

How he had been so blind he could not fathom, for her every graceful, feminine movement screamed her sex to any who took the time to really look at her. It was no wonder she had intrigued him from the moment he’d first laid eyes on her; it was no wonder he had been drawn to her.

What was a wonder was that he had needed to be hit over the head with a red brick to figure it out.

Fletcher moved a step closer, remembering how he had felt upon awakening at the inn, as if he had held something precious in his arms, only to let it slip away. Fast upon that memory came the shame of knowing that he had slept in the buff. No wonder Billy—no, Rosalie—had been looking at him so strangely from her perch on the window seat. By rights the girl should have been dissolved in strong hysterics.

By rights, the girl should be locked in a bedroom on a ration of stale bread and brackish water! By rights, the girl should be read a lecture on behavior befitting a female until her ears burned a bright red! By rights, the girl—who was, contrary to his and Beck’s first thoughts, most definitely not a young child still putting frogs in her governess’s bed—should be married!

Married? Fletcher staggered beneath this new, damning thought. He had been so angry, so self-directed in his thoughts ever since realizing that Billy Belchem was Rosalie Darley, that it had taken him this long to come to the conclusion that should have smacked him square in the face the moment he’d discovered her true identity.

He, Fletcher Belden, carefree bachelor and a man who had promised himself that the one thing he needed was a prolonged break from female companionship, had taken up with a young woman within minutes of his return to Lakeview, carted that same young woman all over the Lake District, inherited her as his ward, and was, after compromising her in nearly every way possible, now honor-bound to marry her.

“Talk about being punished for your sins,” he murmured disgustedly. “I hadn’t known I have lived such a terrible life that this should be my fate.” And then, surprising himself, Fletcher smiled.

“You! What are you about, sneaking up on a person like that?”

Fletcher, not realizing that he had spoken aloud, was startled by Rosalie’s abrupt attack as well as by his strange delight at the thought of his impending marriage to her, and he responded the only way he could without resorting to actual physical violence.

Eyeing her from head to foot and back again, quietly taking in the distinct feminine cast of her features and the small, square hands that could have belonged to a lad but definitely did not, he pointed out coldly, “You’re filthy, boy, and your hair looks like a birch broom in a fit. What do you do—comb it with a rake?”

Rosalie opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it. How could she possibly have been feeling sorry for this insufferable man? What maggot had invaded her brain to have her believe she could actually love him?

She leaned against the side of the stall, the brush propped on her hip, and quipped, “How’s your head, Mr. Belden, sir? Or would it be your stomach that delights in giving you the devil this morning? I must say, you don’t look well.”

Fletcher refused to take the bait and only smiled, his tanned skin crinkling around the outer corners of his eyes in a way that turned Rosalie’s insides to melted butter.

“I feel wonderful, Billy, much more the thing, thank you for asking. It takes more than a little brandy to lay me by the heels, although I do apologize for disturbing your rest last night. I don’t make a habit of drinking to excess, you know, although I am no Methodist either, and have been known to kick up a lark now and then. I didn’t bore you with any sad stories, did I? I can’t seem to remember much of anything about most of the evening,” he lied smoothly, as inspiration hit him, “although Beck has taken great pains this morning to read me at least a partial listing of my sins.”

“You don’t remember anything?” Rosalie asked intently, her hopes already leaping for the boughs as she unwarily took Fletcher’s bait. “Nothing? Nothing at all?”

Little demon, Fletcher thought, watching in amusement as a spark of mischief invaded Rosalie’s green eyes. He wondered yet again precisely how old she was. It was deuced difficult telling age with these small ones. She could be anything from seventeen to twenty. “Barely a thing,” he said when he thought he had made her hold her breath long enough in anticipation of his answer. “Why, did I say something terrible?”