A Bride Unveiled Page 3

  At any other time the baron would have said, “Twaddle,” but the sight of Eldbert limping up the slope with a bloody nose stole his attention. “Dear, dear,” he said. “I hope you got in a good one, Eldbert.”

  Violet touched her uncle’s arm. “Uncle Henry, have you ever visited a workhouse?”

  He glanced back toward the churchyard before allowing Violet to lead him to the manor path. “Yes, my dear. I have.”

  “Was it as horrible as Ambrose says?”

  He hesitated. She looked up at him and waited. He was an honest man, and she knew that she could believe whatever he told her. “There are few places on earth as hellish as a workhouse, Violet. Pity those who must live there and depend on our charity.”

  “But children are well treated there, aren’t they?”

  “Some are. Most aren’t. There are twenty-three of them sleeping to a room.”

  “And beatings?”

  “Yes. Beatings.”

  “Why isn’t it stopped?”

  “The parish needs funds to build a decent school and hospital to take care of the sick, and to separate the children from the criminals.”

  “I didn’t dream anything like that could exist,” she said in despair, looking off into the woods. And with her newfound knowledge, her innocence gave way to a compassion that would influence the course of her life.

  One of the wardens had caught Kit climbing over the locked gate and gave him a blow across the head that turned his vision red. “So Master Cockroach has been good enough to come ‘ome, and by the gate this time. You’ve had it now, Kit. You’ll be in lockup soon, my boy, or sold to the first bidder. You’re almost of the age.”

  They flogged him in the yard early the next morning. He bit his tongue so he wouldn’t cry out. It only made it worse for the younger boys who were getting beaten at the same time. Stupid though it seemed, the thought of Eldbert and Violet took some of the sting away. He’d tricked them into thinking he was invulnerable. Now he had to trick himself.

  The cane came down harder. He buckled, and a hand caught hold of his shirt. The seam tore at the shoulder. Bugger it. Violet and Miss Higgins would be embarrassed. Don’t think of them. Stop.

  Prison.

  Workhouse boy. Dirty little beggar.

  Give me another chance. I was born in sin and I don’t know why, but I swear I’m good inside. I know it doesn’t show. I know that I’m all blow—

  “Get up,” a voice said, and filthy water hit his chin.

  He closed his eyes. Better now. He couldn’t see any faces. He couldn’t see anything at all.

  Summer was coming to an early end. Kit turned fifteen. He was always on edge and felt as if he were being watched. Every day one of his pals at the house disappeared or died. He knew he was next.

  He frowned at the sketch of him that rested across Violet’s lap. “Stop doing those.”

  She glanced up. “Are you all right?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked, covering a cough in his fist.

  “Your face is flushed. And your eyes are red.”

  “I’m fine. Don’t draw pictures of me. You always have to make me look like a prince or a knight. Make me a nobody.”

  The warden diagnosed him with the measles the next day. Kit wished the illness would kill him, but it didn’t. He recovered faster than his workhouse friends, but he still felt rotten almost a fortnight later when he sneaked to the churchyard to see his friends.

  “What is it, Kit?” Violet asked him as they watched Ambrose and Eldbert fencing among the trees.

  He noticed that she hadn’t brought her sketchbook, and he felt bad for that. But not as bad as when she stood, her eyes glassy, and put her hand to her face.

  “What’s the matter?”

  She dropped her hand. Then she started to cough and sway on her feet. “Oh, God,” he said. “Eldbert! Ambrose!”

  The boys came running. By the time they arrived, Violet was shaking and holding her arm up to cover her eyes, whispering, “Why is the light so bright? It’s never this bright down here.”

  “What have you done to her, you filthy beggar?” Ambrose asked in panic.

  Violet swayed on her feet, one arm outstretched. “I’ve caught the plague,” she whispered. “I feel like I’m dying.”

  Eldbert stared at her in fright. Ambrose turned an ungodly shade of gray and took off for the woods.

  “Help me, Eldbert,” Kit said, sweeping Violet up in his arms. Violet white and sickly was preferable to what he saw at the palace, and he had done this to her. “Where is Miss Higgins?”

  “I don’t know,” Eldbert said, stumbling after Kit’s hurried strides. “Where are you taking her?”

  “To her house.”

  “But they’ll—”

  “Look, can you at least carry her feet? If she dies, it will be on me.”

  “Die? She can’t die. I had the measles a few years ago, and I survived. My father said it’s spreading through the parish again. But . . . Violet can’t die.”

  For the rest of his life Kit would remember that scene. He ran up the slope and toward the Tudor-framed manor. The butler, standing at the door, sent him a look of gratitude and gathered Violet in his arms. The baron burst from the house with murder in his eyes, and behind him a lady—the baroness, Kit guessed—gave a wail of despair.

  Kit watched for Violet at her window, and knew it would be his fault if she died. He and Eldbert kept a vigil outside the garden gate of Violet’s manor, until one day she appeared at the window and gave a weak wave.

  “Ye gads,” Eldbert said, passing Kit his telescope. “She looks hideous.”

  Not to Kit. She looked lovely and alive.

  A week later Ambrose caught the measles. He hacked and ran a raging fever and afterward blamed Kit for imperiling his life. Miss Higgins, having been infected years ago, did not fall ill.

  Their small band met for the last time one late afternoon in early August. They had managed to sneak off only because the baroness was helping Eldbert’s father visit sick families in the parish. Kit studied Violet’s face and thought that even her unwholesome pallor would not stop men from falling in love with her. Eldbert and Ambrose were being sent away to school. Violet wouldn’t have any friends soon, he thought.

  “I’m going away, too,” Kit said.

  She looked across the grass, her gaze stricken. “Where?”

  “I’m being sold,” he said. “There’s a bill posted on the workhouse gate if you’d like to buy me.”

  “You’re being—”

  He hated himself for having told her the truth, even if it was for her own good. A girl like Violet had no business playing with dangerous boys like him. She was so naive, he would have stayed in this godforsaken parish to keep her safe if it were within his power.

  “You’ll be a blacksmith or a chimney sweep’s apprentice if you’re lucky,” Ambrose said, sounding half-sympathetic. “Has anyone bid for you yet?”

  He could have pushed Ambrose’s arrogant face into one of the graves. “Yes, as a matter of fact. It isn’t official, but it looks as if I’m being apprenticed to a cavalry captain.”

  Ambrose snorted, unimpressed. “You mean the old drunk who thinks that his son haunts this graveyard?”

  Kit pulled a stone from his pocket. “He doesn’t drink now,” he said, daring Ambrose to defy him. “And he knows his son is dead. He was killed at war.”

  Violet had turned away, tears in her eyes. “When are you going, Kit?”

  He tossed the stone into the air and caught it. His throat hurt, and he thought he was getting sick again. “I don’t know.”

  “You could be a worse apprentice,” Eldbert said, adjusting his spectacles. “A dentist could have bought you. I wouldn’t mind being apprenticed to an officer myself. It isn’t an easy life, being the son of the parish surgeon.” He reached into his coat and took out a letter opener that Kit guessed had come from his father’s desk.

  “What is that for?” Ambrose asked, sittin
g up at attention.

  “It’s for us to seal our pact of friendship in blood and agree that we shall all meet again in ten years.”

  “What should we call ourselves?” Violet said, looking up at Kit.

  He smiled at her. “The Bleeding Idiots.” He frowned at Eldbert. “You aren’t giving her a scar?”

  “Don’t worry, Kit,” she said.

  He turned his head. He felt an inexplicable urge to kiss her hand and knew that for her sake it was a blessing that he had to go away.

  They enacted the ritual at the thin stream that trickled amid the crypts. Ambrose shrieked the loudest when he pricked his finger, not as much from the pain but from the blood that dripped onto his trousers. His cry drew Miss Higgins from her post on the slope to scrub at the spot by the stream with a stone, Lady Macbeth in a mobcap, muttering, “I’ll lose my job if I have to explain what I allowed under my guard. The four of you are incorrigible.”

  “Five,” Violet murmured.

  Six, actually, if one counted the child Miss Higgins had no idea she was carrying.

  Chapter 3

  The Marquess of Sedgecroft’s Benefit Ball

  London 1818

  Kit strode across the private stage of the Park Lane mansion. In one hand he gripped a rapier, which he was using to mark last-minute directions; in the other he held the program for tonight’s performance:MEMORABLE SWORD FIGHTS IN ACTUAL

  AND

  LITERARY HISTORY

  Presented by

  Master Christopher Fenton

  and

  the twelve pupils of his

  Academy of Arms

  whose names are listed

  in order

  of

  performance

  He searched the backstage shadows. He counted eleven students, two assistants, and a footman who belonged to the house. The youngest, the brashest, and indisputably the best of Kit’s students, Pierce Carroll, had not arrived. It was an hour before the performance. Kit started to pace, a habit that he knew drove his assistants to distraction. But it was either pace or skewer the closest moving object to the wall.

  He had never played to such a grand assembly before. His nerves felt as taut as the violin strings being tuned in the ballroom. He’d taught fencing to dukes, numerous other aristocrats, and an unconventional lady actress or two. He’d staged plenty of impromptu sword fighting performances in the street and at intimate parties. Still, this would be the first time he put his skill as a maître d’armes on display to the beautiful world.

  His challenge tonight would be to make his students appear to be masters in their own right. Teaching true gentlemen to look heroic was how Kit made his living, and it was a decent one for a former pauper. With any luck Lord Bidley would not lunge off the stage into the lap of the voluptuous viscountess who had been pursuing Kit for the last three months.

  Carrying a sword may have no longer been the height of fashionable dress. A pistol might have surpassed the sword as one’s favorite weapon. But a man’s boast of owning a well-honed blade and knowing how to use it never went out of style.

  He stared through the curtains again. Guests had begun to settle in their seats, and candlelight blazed across the stage. Who in the hell had lit all those candles? What if one of his pupils decided to emulate the trick Kit had once rashly demonstrated in a tavern, extinguishing the flames with one swoop of his sword?

  The mansion would go up like a matchbox. Kit’s greatest performance would be his last. The monies collected tonight for charity could not touch what it would cost to repair a palatial mansion in Park Lane.

  “Sir! Sir!” a frantic voice called from backstage.

  Kit pivoted, lowering his rapier as he recognized the gaunt senior footman who, next to Kit’s patron, the Marquess of Sedgecroft, and his wife, appeared to be third in command of the spacious mansion. His name was Weed.

  “Has anyone seen the young master? Has he escaped this way, perchance?”

  Kit stared at Weed in complete bafflement. It was true that he instructed pupils in various stages of development, but none of them—“Oh, that master,” he said with a laugh. “Master Rowan?”

  Rowan Boscastle was the Marquess of Sedgecroft’s son and heir, a rambunctious youngster who was Kit’s most challenging student. Like most little boys, Rowan had an affinity for swordplay and untimely disappearances. “He isn’t back here,” Kit said with certainty, motioning his assistants, Kenneth and Sidney, to his side.

  “What is it, sir?” asked Kenneth, a broad-shouldered young Scotsman.

  “A missing child.”

  “The heir,” the footman said with emphasis.

  “I shall find him,” Kit said, and handed his rapier and program to Sidney.

  “How?” the footman demanded.

  “I used to be good at hiding.” Kit took off the cape that had belonged to his father, Captain Charles Fenton. He wore it only on special occasions, to bring him luck. “You know the order of the acts if I am late.”

  Kenneth folded the cape over his arm. “Are you sure you don’t want to put on your mask and padded jacket for this adventure? Remember your last lesson with Master Rowan.”

  Kit hesitated as he recalled the incident. It was the only time that he had been injured by a foil. “Good idea.”

  Miss Violet Knowlton had spent two hours chatting with her future husband’s acquaintances and clients, but she hadn’t spent two solid minutes with the man himself. She would have thought Godfrey remiss in his duty had she not known how important this evening was to him. He was so eager to prove himself a gentleman worthy of selling goods to the ton that at times it was a relief to escape his company.

  Violet was not always in a mood to charm and flatter Godfrey’s customers—in fact, to a merchant, everyone in England was a potential client. She felt ashamed to admit that being nice on command quite exhausted her.

  In fact, she felt ashamed that instead of appreciating the marriage proposal that her aunt had conspired to secure, she had begun to wish it had never been arranged. Her aunt had sacrificed so that she and Violet could come to London, certain that here Violet would find a better husband than in a lonely parish. The wedding was to take place in two months. Godfrey wanted a small ceremony to which only important guests were invited.

  Violet had accepted Godfrey’s proposal more to please Aunt Francesca than herself. Uncle Henry had died two years ago, and her aunt had become restless in her grief. The pair of them had traveled for fourteen months straight.

  “We don’t have to move for me,” Violet had insisted.

  “What is there in Monk’s Huntley for us now?” was her aunt’s mournful reply. “There are no other decent young men left in the village. It has become a . . . grave.”

  Violet knew that her uncle’s death had darkened her aunt’s perspective. Even so, she could not completely disagree. Monk’s Huntley grew lonelier for her every year, and yet Violet had been loath to leave it.

  “Maybe we’ll make happy memories there one day again,” she said. “Eldbert and Ambrose will come back one day when they inherit.”

  “But you would never marry either of them, would you?” her aunt would innocently ask whenever the two gentlemen were mentioned.

  “No, I wouldn’t,” Violet would answer, and then she and her aunt would end up laughing at the very idea.

  “It’s good to laugh again, Violet,” her aunt said on one occasion. “Neither of us has laughed much since arriving in London.”

  It was true. The baroness had busied herself contacting old friends who might suggest a suitable husband for Violet. It wasn’t until they met Sir Godfrey Maitland while buying umbrellas at one of the shops in his emporium that Violet took any interest at all in courtship.

  She should have known that a romance sparked during a rainstorm was bound to fizzle before it caught fire. Her aunt approved of Godfrey’s good manners and common sense. He was anything but a rake, and she and her aunt couldn’t live on the baron’s inheritance foreve
r.

  “Are you certain you’re up for the sword fighting display, Aunt Francesca?” she asked in concern as her aunt rose from the couch of the retiring room. Francesca had grown frail in the last few months, and Violet worried about her all the time. She was the only family Violet had left.

  “I shall be fine. Go and have a footman find us seats that are not too close to the stage.”

  “Of course,” Violet said, and as she reached the door, she glanced back. Godfrey had been taking fencing lessons for months and was about to perform in tonight’s benefit.

  “Off with you!” her aunt said.

  So off Violet went, asking a young footman to show her the way, which he did until he was summoned by an older footman on an undisclosed emergency. “Wait here, miss,” he said. “I shall be right back.”

  But after a few moments Violet wandered into an unlit antechamber that led to a staircase carpeted in rose and gold tones. Before she could change direction a small boy bearing two swords shot through the door and charged up the stairs, dropped one of his weapons, and vanished from sight.

  “Excuse me,” she called after him, bending to pick up a battered wooden sword. “I think you’ll be missing this.”

  He didn’t come back.

  She straightened, swinging the well-worn weapon at the wall. It must have been a first toy. The grip felt smooth with use; not a splinter snagged her glove as she ran it along the short blade.

  She gave it another experimental thrust. “Stay back, all of you,” she instructed the peacock feathers that trembled in the pink vase that sat on the alcove table. “Let me pass and I promise to keep your whereabouts a secret. But you—”

  She restrained a cry as a man in a fencing mask and padded jacket flew toward her through the curtained alcove adjacent to the feathers. “Don’t say another word,” he said, holding up his hand in warning. “Just between the two of us, the feathers can’t be trusted.”

  She backed up a step, clutching the wooden sword. “Who . . .” Had she interrupted a part of the evening’s performance? Was this a rehearsal or an actual act? She stared at the foil in the stranger’s right hand. There weren’t any other players in the vicinity.