A Difficult Disguise (18 page)

“No! No, not at all,” Rosalie exclaimed quickly, her agile brain having lit on a solution to her problems. “You told me you had only come to the stables to advise me of your plans to have Beck find me a seat on the stagecoach so that I can join my aunt in Tunbridge Wells as soon as possible. Poor lady. You convinced me that she must be completely distracted over my absence. Don’t you remember?”

Fletcher shook his head, his expression blank, willing to play Rosalie’s game a little longer, just to see where her devious brain would take them. “No, I can’t say that I do. I seem to have forgotten more than I remember.”

“Oh, that is too bad,” Rosalie commiserated, coming out of Pagan’s stall to pass by Fletcher on her way to check on the gelding, his unwavering gray stare beginning to wear on her already ragged nerves. “Then you also do not remember how I begged you not to put yourself out for me, as I have had enough of being a groom and, with the money I have set aside, had already decided to book passage on the coach leaving the village this afternoon.”

The devil you will, Fletcher thought, still refusing to smile.

“I shall hate leaving Hedge in the lurch, what with all these animals to tend to, but you have made me see the grave error of my ways in running off as I did. I have responsibilities to shoulder, and am now ready to face them like a man. You were,” she added prudently, her back still to Fletcher, “quite pleased with the arrangement, sir, as I remember it, and wished me godspeed.”

“I didn’t! But what of my plan to have you move into the house, just until I have located my ward? I did tell you I have a ward, didn’t I?”

“Yes, indeed, sir, you did, which was just another reason I could not let you become a martyr in my cause,” Rosalie improvised, turning to face him but as yet unable to meet his eyes. “You have enough on your plate now, kind sir, and although you have done me a signal honor by suggesting it, I am afraid I really must turn down your kind invitation.”

Fletcher had to turn away to hide his grin. It was the “kind sir” that had done it. Oh, the business about it being a “signal honor” was delicious, but the “kind sir” had put the capper on it.

He’d say one thing for Rosalie Darley: she thought fast on her feet. If it weren’t for her tendency to overact, she might still have him believing that she was in truth Billy Belchem. Turning back to her, he said kindly. “It is you, dear Billy, who should not become a martyr in my cause.”

“But—”

Fletcher raised a hand to forestall her protest. “I don’t want to hear another word. Now, I know I was very drunk last night, as I could not otherwise have agreed to such a plan, and I now rescind my permission for you to leave. You will pack up your things and move into the house at once, where I can keep an eye on you until such time as I am free to personally escort you to Tunbridge Wells. A fine young lad like you forced out onto the road again, alone? No, no. I would not sleep nights, halfling.”

“But, sir,” Rosalie insisted, still doing her best to wriggle out of the noose she could feel fastening tight about her throat—so tightly, in fact, that she couldn’t even draw enough breath to whistle her beetle-headed plan of running off and returning as herself down the wind. “I could not sponge on you. Please, if you won’t let me go, at least allow me to stay here, in the stables, where I may be of some assistance to Hedge.”

“Sponge on me?” Fletcher repeated, at last feeling as if he were beginning to get a little of his own back. “I seem to have misled you, halfling.” His next words were couched in the terms of a demand. “You won’t be sponging on me. Indeed, no. You shall be my personal servant for the time you remain at Lakeview. Remember how well you did with my boots? Beck labors morn till night, what with the two of us having been in London for so long, and I’m sure he will appreciate the relief your presence will bring. Now, drop that brush at once and come along.”

Rosalie was willing to fight to the bitter end, but she was also intelligent enough to know when the battle was over, and logical enough to know that she had lost. “Yes, sir, Mr. Belden, sir,” she grumbled, flinging the brush to the floor before going to fetch her bundled belongings.

A few moments later, Fletcher in the lead—his long-legged strides forcing Rosalie to take two steps to his one—the two of them were on their way across the lawn to the house.

From his vantage point hidden behind the half-door to She-Devil’s stall, Hedge, who had heard every word that had passed between his employer and the groom, reached inside his shirt for the flask he always kept close to his heart, suddenly in dire need of a restorative drink.

“Oh, gloomy hour,” Hedge moaned in self-pity, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “ ’E knows, Rosie, m’gel. Sure as check, Belden knows. Why’d yer hafita pick this ’ere stable ter light in? We’re both in fer it now.”

There were many things in life that Fletcher viewed with delight, among them being a fine meal, a good joke, the company of friends, and the smell of the morning after a spring rain. But there was nothing more certain to bring him pleasure than to watch his lifelong friend, Beck, at a loss for words.

Fletcher, having completed his disclosure of Rosalie’s true identity—a revelation he had drawn out with considerable glee—sat back in his chair and allowed his heart to be filled with the satisfaction that Beck’s unnaturally pale complexion and slack jaw engendered in him.

“He—he’s a she?” Beck got out at last, still standing so stiffly that he appeared for all intents and purposes as if he had been stuffed. “He—he’s your she? I mean, she’s Rosalie?”

Fletcher’s smile carved a slashing dimple in his cheek. “How clever of you, Beck,” he commented pleasantly. “Your statement, although barely coherent, actually seems to rhyme. Yes, my friend, my he’s a she—she’s Rosalie. Fairly boggles the mind, don’t it? Not the rhyming—although the feat remains remarkable—but the success the brat has had with her devious little deception.”

Beck was not amused. “Oh, shut up,” he ordered distractedly, collapsing into a chair to glare at his employer. “You must still be castaway if you can find any humor in such a terrible situation. Only think, Fletch—you slept with the girl!”

“Hardly, Beck,” Fletcher corrected, although his smile did slip a notch. “If I had truly slept with her, the deception wouldn’t have lasted until her verbal slip last night. And I must remind you that you still haven’t complimented me on my fine powers of detection, considering the fact that I was more than three parts drunk at the time.”

“My congratulations,” Beck bit out, knowing he would have no peace until he had actually uttered the words.

“Thank you, my friend. And now, to continue my rebuttal to your statement that I have slept with the young lady. My best guess would be that Rosalie is about nineteen years of age, hardly William’s infant sister. I may not have your wide experience with women—devil that you are—but I’ve slept with enough of them to know that there exists a distinct anatomical difference between them and ourselves. I slept beside the girl, which is very different. And so, I repeat, our relationship was completely innocent.”

“Innocent? Innocent!” Beck was on his feet once more, pacing stiff-leggedly up and down the length of Fletcher’s bedchamber. At last he stopped, directly in front of his friend, and pointed an accusing finger. “With, beside—it makes no difference. Not to the world, anyway. You’ll have to marry her. You do know that, don’t you, Fletch?”

Fletcher closed his eyes, nodding. “I know that, Beck.”

“Well, good,” Beck responded weakly, surprised at Fletcher’s ready acceptance of a fate he knew the man had vowed to avoid for as long as humanly possible. “I don’t suppose you’re pleased.”

Fletcher grinned, not about to gift his friend with his innermost thoughts. Not this time, when his heart was involved as it had never been before, not even during his association with Christine Denham.

“Ah, Beck,” he said silkily, “you know me so well. No, I am not pleased, not pleased at all. You know it, I know it, and when I am ready, our little groom will know it.”

“When you’re ready?” Beck felt his muscles clench as he watched Fletcher’s expression. “Uh-oh, I know that look, and I can’t say I like it one bit. You’re up to no good, aren’t you, Fletch?”

Rising, Fletcher deliberately donned a most innocent, injured expression—just the sort that would have had Aunt Belleville running for the syrup of figs if she had been gifted with the sight of it. “Me, Beck? Can you be insinuating that I am a mean, perhaps even petty person? Can you be saying that I am out to punish poor Rosalie Darley, merely because she rigged herself up in boy’s clothing, passed herself off as a groom, allowed me to sleep beside her, naked as the day I was brought into this world, putting me through several levels of hell? Then she stood back and watched while I proceeded to make a complete cake of myself for feeling attracted to her, and trying to convince the both of us that I was more manly than Gentleman Jackson in his prime—if you laugh, Beck, by God, I’ll have your heart on a spit—and all of this because she wanted to check up on me? Could you possibly also be saying that you believe a man—I?—would stoop so low as to wish to wreak revenge on such a maddening, trouble-causing infant as my ward?”

Beck was unmoved by this outburst, although the thought of Fletcher believing he had been attracted to a young boy was, in truth, rather amusing. Folding his hands across his chest, he responded dryly, “Yes, Fletch. You.”

Fletcher’s grin split his face. “Ah, Beck, how well you know me. Of course I’m going to put her through a few hoops before telling her I know her true identity. I’d be ashamed of myself if I didn’t.”

“Leaving it to me to feel ashamed for you,” Beck groused resignedly, sitting once more. “It will end badly, mark you. I can feel it in my bones, and I, for one, want nothing to do with it. Exactly what nefarious plan dances in your head? And why have you ordered that tub brought back in here? You already had a bath this morning.”

Fletcher shook his head. “What a bundle of contradictions you harbor, Beck. You want nothing to do with it, yet you insist upon hearing all the details. Perhaps I won’t tell you.”

Beck wasn’t dismayed. “And perhaps I shall march directly down the hall to Miss Rosalie Darley’s bedchamber and inform her that we have become aware of her identity.”

Fletcher inspected his shirt cuffs. “It remains remarkable, the sheer lack of terror I instill in the members of this household. As a matter of fact, except for the incidence of the elephant feet, Aunt Belleville seems to be my only solace, even going so far as to worry herself about the state of my finances. You, however, and Lethbridge, seem to believe you have been gifted with some God-given right to bully me at every turn.”

“What are you planning?” Beck asked again, his lack of fear showing both his lifelong affection for Fletcher and his knowledge that the man was never truly malicious.

“I’ll need three days, as I see it,” Fletcher told him, watching as two footmen brought in pails of water for his bath. “It will take that long for Mrs. Beale, who I am sure will prove a most poisonous female, and Sawyer, whoever he might be, to join us here after my letter arrives at Hilltop Farm. One day to put Billy Belchem—Lord, how I hate that name; Belchem, Belden, just as if she’d planned it that way—firmly in his place for making a May game of me, and two more for Aunt Belleville to whip her into some sort of shape for our guests.”

“Upon which time you will announce that not only have you agreed to take on the duties of Miss Darley’s guardian, but you have become her betrothed as well,” Beck urged hopefully.

“Exactly,” Fletcher agreed, pushing Beck toward the door. “Unless, of course, I decide to strangle her instead. Now, my friend, excuse me, but you will please go away now. Billy Belchem will be joining me soon to help me with my bath.”

Beck stumbled as he felt himself being propelled out of the room. “Help you with your bath? But she... But you... But, Fletch, no! I should say not. You can’t do that!”

“Oh yes I can, Beck. Would you care to make a wager of it?” Fletcher asked him, looking down the hallway to see Rosalie approaching, a sullen look on her rather dirty face. “Ah, Billy, you have come to join me. How nice. And you have settled in comfortably, I trust? Come say hello to Beck, who is just leaving. You may not see him again, for I am thinking of sending him to inspect a small estate of mine in Jamaica.”

“Fletch, you wouldn’t,” Beck muttered beneath his breath.

“Try me,” Fletcher warned, his smile bright although his gray eyes were cold. “That sculpture you were eyeing in London against a trip to Jamaica.”

Beck took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and turned to look at Rosalie Darley. He had seen the groom before, but had never really taken the time to do more than glance in Rosalie’s general direction.

But now, with his secret knowledge to guide him, Beck could see that, although small and slight, there existed a definitely appealing form to her body, as well as a fine, strong little face that, once re-introduced to soap and water, might just prove to be extremely attractive.

All that to one side, the thought of Rosalie Darley— tidied up to look like a woman, or even remaining as she appeared now—becoming the victim of one of Fletcher’s pranks was still infinitely more appealing to Beck than either the sculpture or the chance of a sea voyage to Jamaica.