Pam Rosenthal
ISBN 0-7582-0444-2
Mass Market
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A Daring Masquerade…
For three years, London’s haute ton has been captivated by the cool elegance of Philip “Phizz” Marston. Tall, refined, an expert gambler with a cold, unerring eye for style, what keeps the ruthless social climbers attuned to this dandy’s every move is something more unsettling…a grace and beauty that leaves women and men alike in a state of unthinkable yearning…
…Will Be Deliciously Undressed…
Lord David Hervey must be losing his mind. How else explain the disturbing desires he feels whenever his eyes meet the penetrating gaze of Mr. Marston? When he overhears a threat on the gentleman’s life, he intervenes and alone discovers the glorious truth…beneath the bindings of Mr. Marston’s masquerade hides an exquisite body that is every bit a woman’s…
…And Every Hidden Desire, Revealed.
Armed with desire and entrusted with her bold game, Lord David won’t give up till the lady gives in, revealing herself to him completely, surrendering her deepest secrets with every persuasive pleasure he can offer…
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Prologue
London, 1819
“Kate?”
The eyes fluttered open in a very white face, surrounded by wild, shining tangles of hair.
Her cheeks are so pale, thought the woman sitting beside the bedstead. They’re whiter than the lace pillow she’s resting on. And her eyes are huge against the dark shadows around them.
She squeezed the hand she’d held for hours while her friend had writhed in tormented sleep. She tightened her grasp, willing a lifetime of love, gratitude, and sympathy to pass through her warm flesh into the slender, icy fingers that clung to hers.
“I’m here, Phoebe. Don’t try to talk, darling.”
But the white face was composed, the gray eyes focused, the lips wrought so finely they seemed to have been etched with acid.
“I remember all of it, Kate.”
“Hush, not now.”
The cold fingers squeezed back tightly.
She’s strong, Lady Kate Beverredge thought. Even after the horrors of this week. And even after those four dreadful years of marriage.
Phoebe’s voice was a bit louder now. Louder and strangely matter-of-fact, as if she were choosing a new fall wardrobe or instructing the gardener to plant zinnias instead of dahlias.
“It doesn’t matter, Kate, whether I say it or not. It’s true, it all happened, it’s not some terrible dream.”
“Your brother will be here soon.”
“He knows?”
“Not all of it. I wrote to him as soon as I arrived, to tell him there’d been an… accident.”
The phaeton overturned, the two handsome grays panicked and tangled in their traces. Bryan was thrown from his mother’s arms onto the gravel path. One of the horses had reared back . . .
“What date is it today, Kate?”
“September twenty-second, dear.”
“I must have slept through Bryan’s birthday, the day he would have been three years old.”
Kate nodded. You slept, thank God, with the aid of a powerful dose of laudanum.
“I sent the cakes to a foundling home.” Tears began to trace wavering paths down Kate’s pockmarked cheeks. But Phoebe’s eyes were disconcertingly dry. She raised dark eyebrows, plucked into a fashionable arch.
“And the baby I lost. It was a girl, wasn’t it?”
Kate tried to say yes, but no sound came through her lips.
“I would have liked a daughter. But I would have been afraid—ashamed, you know—to let her see how weak I’ve been, how easily dominated by her silly father. Still, how lovely to have a little girl …what a pleasure for me, and what an irritation for Henry. He’d have felt obliged to get me with child again as soon as possible…”
“Shhh, darling.”
The noise that came from the bluish lips might have been a laugh. But it sounded dreadful, mechanical.
“Oh, he wouldn’t have minded. It wasn’t his preferred . . . mode of gratification, but he could schedule an evening now and again for it. Anything, after all, for the requisite heir and a spare.”
Kate shook her head helplessly. “Don’t, Phoebe.”
“Just this once, Kate.”
“All right, dear.”
“No, what would really anger Henry would be seeing me all swollen and bloated. Wasted months when he couldn’t parade me about during the Season, tricked out like a show pony in satin and kid gloves with twenty vicious little pearl buttons up my arms, diamond bracelets like manacles on my wrists, and that stupid family tiara threatening to topple off my head without so much as a by-your-leave.”
Kate nodded slowly, forcing herself to suppress a smile at Phoebe’s jaundiced view of life at the center of London’s most exclusive circles. Rarely going out into society herself, Kate followed the notices in the newspapers, especially about the ton’s most celebrated couple. Tall and elegant, young and effervescent, Lord and Lady Claringworth had been the crown jewels of many a glittering dinner party. Kate could well understand how entering a room with a stunningly gowned Phoebe on his arm would have stoked the fires of her husband’s vanity.
“He was terribly drunk, Kate. He’d been drunk for days, since he’d lost all that money on a racehorse. They’d laughed at him at his club, his mistress had made eyes at Lord Blassingham—all excellent reasons to torment his wife and child, don’t you think? So he went round and got the phaeton, ordered us into it, and drove to Hyde Park.
“I should have refused to go. Or insisted, at any rate, that we leave Bryan at home. But, but…” her lower lip trembled, “Bryan was so happy to go anywhere with the papa he so rarely got to see.”
She hesitated before continuing. “He drove like a madman. He wanted to make us scream, you see. But Bryan and I were too frightened to scream. So he drove even faster, until he lost control.”
Kate thought the tears would come now. But Phoebe’s contralto voice—always a surprise how low it was— seemed almost tranquil, as though she’d found some bleak comfort in the word control.
“He’ll never control us again, Kate. He was a weak, spoiled, arrogant cad. A little man really, for all his long legs and fine looks. He was a cur and a coward and he’s dead and I’m glad of it. And I’m going to sit up now and you’re going to brush the tangles out of my hair.”
This time Kate allowed herself to smile, even to rejoice at Phoebe’s commanding tone of voice. And to respond, as readily as she’d done for the past twenty years, since she’d been eight years old, shyly returning to school after nearly dying of smallpox.
The other girls had quietly shunned her, frightened, probably, by the ugly pitted skin on her cheeks. But a nasty little clique had taken to taunting her, until Phoebe had boxed the ringleader’s ears and proclaimed that henceforth she’d be playing and sharing treats with nobody but Kate—Kate and anybody else, she’d added as a casual afterthought, whom Kate might like to play with.
And because games were no fun without Phoebe, who was taller, faster, and more daring than any of the village boys, Kate had regained her place within the circle of schoolgirls and Phoebe would reign in Kate’s heart forever.
“You have such beautiful hair,” she murmured, drawing the soft brush through its thick waves. A little long to be quite à la mode, it rippled down Phoebe’s back, pale chestnut with shivery highlights of champagne.
Phoebe looked thoughtful. “Lately it’s seemed to have a mind of its own; sometimes it wants to stand straight up, like a person demanding the respect she’s due. If you fetch a pair of scissors from the drawer in that table, we can trim it back a little.”
“Right now?” Kate felt a chill as she pulled the drawer open.
“Right now, Kate.”
They were heavy shears. “The draper used them,” Phoebe explained, “when he recovered the damask chairs.”
And while Kate hesitated, Phoebe took the shears from her hand. “Don’t worry, dear. I’m not going to plunge them into my breast.”
“Of course not. But do let me help you.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
It only took four swift cuts. The thick, shining hair fell to the coverlet like the curtain dropping after a tragedy.
“So simple,” Phoebe murmured, “to effect the death of that sham creature, an elegant lady of the ton.”
With her hair chopped to an inch below her ears, one could see a resolute jawline. And the shadow of Phoebe’s old, mischievous smile. A few golden sparks danced in her gray eyes.
She ran a hand through her cropped hair. A mass of willful curls sprang up in its wake.
“So simple,” Phoebe repeated, “and yet so satisfying. Rest in peace, Lady Claringworth.”
