A Difficult Disguise (6 page)

“If that means you have not redecorated it, Aunt, let me assure you that I shall strive to bear up under the disappointment,” Fletcher told her, willing himself not to wince as they entered the yellow saloon and the violent purple assaulted his senses.

There were times—not many of them, granted—but times Aunt Belleville could be perceptive. This was one of them. She subsided into a chair and looked around the room. “You don’t like it, do you, Fletcher?” She gave a heartfelt sigh. “I had so hoped—”

“I’m a cad. A thoughtless, thankless cad,” Fletcher intoned sorrowfully, shaking his head as Beck sat down on a nearby settee, pulling a face at his friend’s execrable acting. “But I must admit it, Aunt, breathtaking as it is, I cannot like it. You see, I had kept a picture of this room in my heart while I was away, and I believe I need to see this fond picture brought to life once more now that I am home.” He shook his head and sat down beside Beck. “I should have been more thoughtful. I should have perished, my dream intact, and not burdened you with my ungrateful reaction to your splendid good taste.”

“Then you do like it!” Aunt Belleville exclaimed, clapping her hands as her conformable mind took in only what it wished to hear. “I knew you would. But I understand how you are feeling, my boy. I once had a gown, a lovely pink satin with little bits of lace tacked all along the scalloped hem, that I tried to duplicate in green, everything the same down to the last scallop.” She shrugged, eloquently spreading her hands. “It wasn’t the same, of course. It was the pink or nothing.”

“I’m so pleased that you understand, Aunt,” Fletcher said, grinning triumphantly at Beck,  who, mentally kicking himself for allowing Fletcher’s single failure make him believe the man had lost his unerring touch in dealing with females, reached into his pocket to withdraw a guinea and place it in Fletcher’s outstretched hand. “Thank you, Beck,” he said quietly, slipping the coin into his own pocket. “I shan’t so insult you as to bite on it first to see if it is genuine.”

Aunt Belleville, who had been in the midst of fanning herself with a lace handkerchief and therefore thankfully hadn’t noticed this last exchange, sat forward to stare at her nephew. “Fletcher,” she began in a quavering voice, “why are you home? There is a most wonderful party going on in London. I know that because, even way up here, away from everything, we have heard about it. The princes and princesses, the parties, the fetes... Are you ill?” She wiggled herself forward even farther, to sit perched on the very end of the chair. “Of course you are ill! Oh, dear, all that festivity, all the rich food, and too much drink as well, I should suppose. You’re burnt to the socket. Yes, I see it now. You have a certain drained look to you, hasn’t he, Beck? See it”—her own eyes narrowed as she pointed to Fletcher—“right there, around the eyes?”

Beck, who knew it was time and more that he got a little of his own back, leaned across the settee to peer into his employer’s eyes. “Yes, yes, Miss Belleville, you’re right. I see it too.” He turned to look at the woman. “What do you think? A good dose of salts might do the trick.” He turned back to Fletcher, his face a study in concerned condemnation. “And you wanted to go haring about the countryside, sleeping outside and eating as catch can. Shame on you, Fletch.”

Chapter 3

I
t hadn’t been easy, but Fletcher had finally convinced his aunt that, contrary to what he privately believed to be the woman’s fondest hope, he was not in fact sickening for something and in need of her ministrations. Even more difficult to bring home to the woman was his reasoning for abandoning her at first light to go traveling through the Lake District on horseback with naught but a groom to accompany him.

In the first place, she declared, ever since overseas travel had suffered such a dreary setback during the war, the district had been inundated with flighty young men taking walking tours and otherwise using the excuse of sightseeing for all sorts of rumpus-making in the area. As a result, anything even vaguely interesting left to see, Aunt Belleville reasoned, would be overrun with young dandies on a spree, and Fletcher wouldn’t like that above half, now, would he?

And in the second place, Aunt Belleville had declared rationally, hadn’t her dear nephew just driven through a good part of the district in order to arrive at Lakeview, which was in nearly the exact center of the area? How many hills and cows and sheep did one man need to see before he could feel satisfied he had seen enough, for goodness’ sake? The whole idea did not make sense to the woman.

Beck, of course, had been less than no help at all, taking Aunt Belleville’s side with a joyful perverseness that had left Fletcher longing to land him a facer. He had pointed out that the owner of Lakeview should perhaps begin his touring a little closer to home, checking up on matters concerning the estate itself. Fletcher had looked askance at his friend, knowing the jolly little devil would have to be “rewarded” for his disloyalty.

But in the end Fletcher had won out, and his aunt, who had, after calmly handing her nephew the Bible, reminding him it was his duty to lead them all in their evening prayers, finally retired to her chamber, to decide where best to place the three elephant-foot tables Fletcher had warned her were going to take up residence with her the following day.

Fletcher had just finished a huge breakfast and was heading for the front door, still chuckling over the lengthy list of chores he had left behind for Beck—with the repainting of the saloon topping the list—when Lethbridge crossed his path, a large black umbrella in his hand.

“It will be dampening down before long,” the butler pronounced heavily, employing the local, optimistic expression for what was sure to be a downpour bordering on a deluge, “and your aunt expressly wished for you to take this with you.”

Looking at the huge contraption and mentally picturing himself on horseback with the thing opened above his head, Fletcher thanked the butler but demurred. “But only think, Lethbridge, I’d have no one to refold the dammed thing,” he pointed out kindly. “I’d be forced to leave it in a ditch. Please convey my thanks, and my regrets, to my aunt.”

The butler held the umbrella out once more, just like a tollgate-keeper refusing to raise his gate, showing a marked reluctance to allow his master to pass. “She was most adamant, sir,” he pursued severely.

Fletcher shook his head in wry amusement. “Ah, Lethbridge, you’ve got it bad, don’t you? Very well. If you promise not to compromise my dear aunt while I am gone, I shall take the umbrella.” He’d take it as far as the stable, Fletcher told himself silently, although he saw no reason to impart this last piece of information to the lovestruck butler.

Lethbridge overlooked the insult to concentrate on the positive: he had achieved his objective, which would ease dear Miss Belleville’s worried heart. “Very good, sir. I knew you would see the rightness of the thing.” The butler quickly handed over the large umbrella and stepped smartly forward to open the front door. “We shall look forward to seeing you within the week, sir. Have a most pleasant journey, sir. And have I told you, sir, how happy the entire staff is to have you safely home with us once more?”

“Don’t grovel, Lethbridge,” Fletcher warned genially. “It doesn’t become you, and makes me damned uneasy into the bargain. Oh, and Lethbridge,” he added, turning back just as he had been about to walk onto the porch, “why don’t you take some time for yourself when I get back? Don’t you have a cousin in Bath worth visiting? Beck tells me you haven’t been away from Lakeview since I left for the Peninsula. You deserve a change of scene, a look at some of the rest of the world. I’m sure we can muddle through without you for at least a fortnight.”

“And why should I do that, sir?”

“You are looking sheep’s eyes at my aunt and you can ask that question?” Fletcher shook his head. “Perhaps it’s already too late. Ah, well, just don’t make me have to get out my late father’s blunderbuss, will you, Lethbridge?”

The butler, coloring to the roots of his receding hairline, closed the front door without another word, leaving a chuckling Fletcher outside on the portico as the weather, which had been gray since dawn, turned suddenly wet.

Fletcher’s smile faded as he realized that he was quite alone. There was no Pagan, his favorite mount, his saddle packed and ready for adventure, waiting for him. There was no second horse, similarly laden, to serve as mount for his cheeky young groom. But—and this was most damning of all—there was no Billy Smith to be seen anywhere.

His gray eyes narrowed, Fletcher set out for the stable, his boot heels striking sharply against the gravel path as his many-caped drab coat billowed out behind him and raindrops gathered into a puddle inside the curved brim of his hat.

Fletcher threw open the door to the stable so that it crashed against the wall, startling the horses into whinnying and pulling against their halter ropes in their stalls, and stepped inside, to stand very still for a moment as his eyes became accustomed to the dimness. He saw his personal saddle perched atop a low wall, his rolled baggage beside it, and his jaw set.

Pagan, the huge black in the first stall, recognized his master and moved to hang his head over the front of the half-door as Fletcher approached, searching in his pocket for a carrot he had commandeered from the kitchens.

“Presently, Pagan, presently,” Fletcher told the stallion, which showed all the signs of being ready for a good run. “First I do believe I shall have to fight a battle of wills with a recalcitrant young groom—if I can locate him, that is. I can only hope he hasn’t already loped off somewhere, knowing I’ve seen through his disguise. I didn’t used to be so unsubtle. I must be getting old, Pagan, which is a lowering thought indeed, and yet another grievance I shall hold over Master Smith’s head, as I wouldn’t have entertained the notion of age at all if it hadn’t been for him.”

Leaving the horse for the moment, Fletcher walked along the long row of stalls that lined either side of the stable, looking into each stall in the hope of discovering his truant groom. Pausing in front of the last stall, he at last located his quarry, curled up in a corner of the small enclosed area, fast asleep atop a mound of fresh straw.

He unlatched the half-door quietly and entered the stall, walking up to Billy to deliver a short, sharp poke to the groom’s hindquarters with the tip of the umbrella. “Come on, slugabed, time to get up!”

There was an immediate, very vocal response as a small hand snaked out to push the umbrella to one side. “Ow! Hey, what do you think you’re doing, you sapskull? Can’t ye see I’m sleeping? Who do you think you’re poking anyway, Hedge? I’ve got a good mind to... Oh, Lord!”

“Oh, Lord, indeed, Master Smith,” Fletcher repeated with as much hauteur as he could muster, dropping the umbrella and deliberately putting his fists on his hips and trying to look intimidating, a feat that was, according to Beck, impossible to achieve, thanks to his youthful blond good looks and perpetually laughing eyes. “I thought I had made it clear that we had planned to be on our way at first light?”

Billy scrambled to her feet, a thundercloud aspect on her small face, and growled, “We didn’t plan anything. It was all your idea, and a worse one I cannot remember since your aunt thought it would be a jolly good idea to paint the stables pink. Can’t you hear? It’s raining fit to flood out there.”

“And the sun will be shining before noon, if it isn’t already shining on the other side of the hill. You know that, Master Smith, as well as I do. Besides, you look as if you could do with a good bath. Do you really sleep in here every night? Why don’t you sleep in with Hedge? Surely there’s more than one cot in the room. I am not so pinch-penny an employer as to have my people bedding down in stalls.”

Billy rolled her eyes at this last bit of nonsense, willing to overlook his insult concerning her personal cleanliness because he was right: bathing head to foot with any frequency at Lakeview was a problem she had yet to overcome. “You don’t know much, do you?” she retorted, too sleepy and out of sorts to guard her tongue. “No one in their right mind ever stands, yet alone sleeps, downwind of Hedge. He hasn’t seen soap or water in twenty years.”

“Thirty would have been my guess,” Fletcher replied, grinning. “Now let’s be on with it. I want to reach Langdale before dinner, with time to take in my surroundings at my leisure along the way.”

Billy pushed out her lower lip. “I haven’t even broken my fast.” She was very hungry, having only picked at her evening meal before spending a decidedly unquiet night in dread of what morning would bring. Yet she knew better than to mention that she also hadn’t had any time alone to take care of her bodily functions or make use of her toothpowder, which was one of the few things she had brought with her upon leaving home some two months earlier.

“Don’t pucker up at me, Master Smith,” Fletcher warned, turning away before the highly amusing sight of Billy, the indignant young groom’s dark curls stuck with straw, goaded him into unleashing a shout of laughter. He saw a small bundle of carefully folded clothing sitting in a small wooden box, and bent to pick it up. Flinging it in the general direction of the groom, he ordered, “Find something to wrap this in, and let’s get on with it. I’ll saddle Pagan myself. Which mount is yours?”